Trump admin backs off controversial $2B fund, clearing path for stalled GOP immigration bill
The DOJ paused the Trump administration's proposed anti-weaponization fund Monday, giving Senate Republicans space to push immigration enforcement funding.

President Donald Trump ripped California’s elections as a “fraud,” triggering Gov. Gavin Newsom to respond by calling him names. The long-running war of words between the president […]
The DOJ paused the Trump administration's proposed anti-weaponization fund Monday, giving Senate Republicans space to push immigration enforcement funding.
'People will hurt you a lot to gain you a little'
Trump's $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that would have benefited political allies is being scrapped, according to the Department of Justice.
Senate Democrats plan to kill Trump's $2 billion anti-weaponization fund as GOP dissent grows and a reconciliation vote-a-rama approaches this week.
BREAKING UPDATE: The Justice Department released a statement on Monday afternoon on a district court judge's ruling on the weaponization fund. The post BREAKING UPDATE: Trump DOJ Drops $1.77 Billion Weaponization Fund appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Donald Trump's administration pulled the plug on his $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" after a federal judge temporarily blocked it over the weekend — but that doesn't mean the rising confrontation it's caused between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill is over, Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman told MS NOW's Katy Tur on Monday."Maybe you have some information about what Speaker Mike Johnson might have said to the president when he was at the White House a little bit earlier today," Tur asked Sherman, referring to the recent meeting on the status of the reconciliation bill, which Republicans have debated updating with language limiting the fund.Sherman acknowledged he didn't know exactly what was discussed there about the fund, but that his sources tell him "the administration is going to announce through DOJ that they are going to comply with the court order ... but the administration plans to say they plan to take no further action."Despite that, he argued, this "is not going to be an immediate salve for Capitol Hill" because Trump could simply decide at a later date to restart it up again when the court order expires. "They're going to want to put language in ... the reconciliation legislation, which funds ICE and CBP, to make sure that the administration can't, at some point, return and do this again."In other words, he said, Republicans will take a "trust, but verify" attitude and "put teeth into legislation to make sure that the administration doesn't, in a couple of months, say, actually, we've changed our minds. We're going to go back and set up this $1.8 billion fund."Ultimately, though, he said, this is probably good news for Republicans because the administration's surrender means they can move forward with the broader reconciliation bill."This was the only path, Katy, to get this done," he said. "The administration would have been frozen up here for weeks, if not months ... if this weaponization fund was put in place, they would have had to deal with this on every single bill that the House and Senate were looking to pass." As a result, Trump had "no other option" but to throw in the towel on the slush fund. - YouTube youtu.be
Republicans returned to Capitol Hill on Monday facing a cascade of crises of President Donald Trump's making, and a prominent Beltway insider delivered a blunt diagnosis for the party's predicament.Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman described Senate Republicans as "absolutely screwed" and stuck in a "very bad jam" over the anti-weaponization fund specifically, with the administration failing to send language that could win over GOP holdouts."These are critical weeks for Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress, with just over five months left until Election Day. Trump has been bogged down in peace negotiations with Iran. The conflict remains at a stalemate somewhere between war and peace. Trump blames ‘Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans’ for not understanding that ‘it will all work out well in the end,'" Punchbowl News wrote. Republicans hope to launch a vote-a-rama Wednesday night and muscle the immigration reconciliation bill through by Thursday morning, the outlet reported. Two provisions have badly snarled that timeline.Security funding for Trump's planned White House ballroom was already attached to the package, costing support among lawmakers worried about electoral blowback. The Senate parliamentarian ruled last month that the $1 billion provision violated the Byrd Rule, forcing Republicans to redraft.The anti-weaponization fund has proven to be an even larger hurdle, with some Senate Republicans refusing to advance the bill until the White House places guardrails around the money, which the administration has shown little interest in doing. Democrats are preparing what Punchbowl called a "massive amendment blitz" to force public votes on the fund.“Senate Democrats will launch a coordinated effort to kill the slush fund before one cent goes out the door,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proclaimed Monday. “And no matter what Republicans do, we will force them to vote on it.”