Congress

Capitol agenda: Trump fund drama comes to vote-a-rama

Published

4 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Republicans are on the verge of finally passing their massive $70 billion immigration enforcement bill — but first they’ll need to stick together through an obstacle course of tricky votes meant to squeeze their most vulnerable incumbents.

The Senate is expected to kick off an hours-long marathon vote series, known as vote-a-rama, around 10 a.m. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters the House could vote on the package as early as Friday morning.

GOP leaders are feeling fairly confident they’ll ultimately be able to pass the bill, but they are facing efforts by some in their own party to use the vote series to formally nix or place guardrails on Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Retiring Sens. Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy have both filed amendments on the fund, which set off a firestorm last month when Trump officials said those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 could apply to receive payouts.

“We have a third of our members up for reelection this year … I’m trying to fend off some headwinds our members will have” Tillis said. “There’s no way to explain the fund [to voters], so the only way to explain it is to explain that you got rid of it. It’s that simple.”

Several more of their GOP colleagues told us they may support trying to get language related to the fund into the bill, which GOP leaders believe could threaten the legislation’s prospects.

Tillis’ proposal would reallocate the $1.8 billion that would have gone toward the fund to fraud prevention instead.

Meanwhile, Cassidy has filed amendments to prohibit payments from the pot of money and to create a “Capitol defenders fund” for law enforcement officers involved in Jan. 6. Another Cassidy measure would prevent prohibitions of tax audits of the president, which targets a Justice Department agreement last month ending any IRS scrutiny of Trump.

“You want to make sure it’s really dead, and I think we can make it really dead,” Cassidy said of the fund.

Democrats have several amendments of their own related to the funding, including a proposal from Sen. Chris Coons to prevent taxpayer money from being used to make payments through the fund and one from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to require Trump to pay taxes on the settlement.

Democrats also have proposals to redirect the immigration enforcement funding toward health care, child care and other cost-of-living concerns as they try to hammer home an affordability message heading into midterms.

And wait, there’s more.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren filed an amendment seeking to force the government to release more information on Jeffrey Epstein and a Sen. Mark Warner measure would prevent the director of nationalintelligence from getting a salary “if the individual does not have extensive national security expertise” — a knock at Bill Pulte, who Trump named to be the acting DNI this week.

What else we’re watching:

— BLANCHE’S POSSIBLE NOMINATION SPLITS SENATE GOP: Trump is imminently expected to nominate Todd Blanche as attorney general, the position he’s held on an acting basis since April. Tillis, as a member of Senate Judiciary, could single-handedly block the panel from approving his nomination, and this week was already signaling hesitation given the role Blanche played in defending Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

— REPUBLICANS COMPILE RECONCILIATION 3.0: House GOP leaders are looking to have a blueprint for their next party-line reconciliation bill ready within the next few weeks as some Republicans are antsy about making progress. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz was on Capitol Hill Wednesday discussing with senior House Republicans ways to crack down on Medicaid and hospice “fraud,” according to four people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Dasha Burns, Myah Ward, Aaron Pellish and Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

Congress

Lawmakers urge DOJ to investigate 2 men tied to Jeffrey Epstein

Published

13 minutes ago

June 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Several House Republicans are now calling on the Justice Department to investigate two men tied to Jeffrey Epstein after being accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s former assistant, Sarah Kellen.

Kellen sat for a transcribed interview with the Oversight and Government Reform Committee last month as part of its Epstein probe, where she told lawmakers she was abused as part of the convicted sex offender’s criminal enterprise.

She also told the committee she had been abused by celebrity hair stylist Frédéric Fekkai, who she alleged introduced her to Epstein under the auspices that he was a Victoria’s Secret model scout, and Philip Levine, the former Miami Beach mayor.

“[T]he Committee requests that the DOJ use all available tools, including immunity for certain witnesses, to investigate the allegations against, and any other criminal conduct committed by, Philip Levine and Frédéric Fekkai,” wrote Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and several panel Republicans in a letter Thursday to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The DOJ did immediately return a request for comment about the letter. A press contact for Fekkai’s haircare company also did not immediately return a request for comment about the allegations.

Levine could not be reached, and he did not respond to a request for comment through his LinkedIn profile.

In their letter, the House Republicans noted that Levine’s name appears hundreds of times in the so-called Epstein files released by the Justice Department, and Fekkai “routinely [provided] salon services to women at Mr. Epstein’s instruction.”

Lawmakers also noted that Kellen only spoke to authorities in the Southern District of New York around Epstein’s 2019 criminal case. She had not been contacted by law enforcement before then.

“As part of its investigation into the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s handling of the Epstein and Maxwell matters, the Committee seeks to understand why Ms. Kellen was not interviewed or otherwise contacted during that period,” the House Republicans wrote.

In wake of arrests abroad for some individuals who associated with Epstein, pressure has been mounting on U.S. authorities to also pursue additional criminal accountability in the case. But lawmakers have struggled to build new evidence that could lead to other prosecutions. Only one person so far has been convicted as part of Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme: Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving 20 years in prison.

Congress

Vote-a-rama is underway

Published

1 hour ago

June 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate has kicked off another marathon session of amendment votes on Republicans’ massive $70 billion immigration enforcement bill.

It is the sixth “vote-a-rama” of the 119th Congress, an unusually high number prompted by Republicans’ interest in moving multiple party-line bills under budget reconciliation rules that set up the exhausting voting rounds.

“I suspect there will be a lot of amendments today on a lot of topics,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune warned in a floor speech, but one topic will have an outsized focus.

A flurry of amendments from both parties are expected to attempt to put into law guardrails or an outright prohibition on President Donald Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” That’s despite acting Attorney General Todd Blanche telling House appropriators Tuesday that the administration would scrap plans for the fund, which could have offered payouts to Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Congress

Trump pans ‘bad Republicans’ who voted to end the Iran war

Published

3 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump lashed out at the four Republicans who lent their votes to a war powers resolution against the Iran war this week, calling them grandstanders and questioning their patriotism.

Wednesday’s vote represents the latest blow for a president increasingly at odds with his own party in Congress.

“Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday morning. “Who would do such an unpatriotic thing. They know where the negotiations stand.”

The Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tom Barrett (Mich.), Warren Davidson (Ohio) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.) joined House Democrats on a largely symbolic resolution to bring the war to an end, absent congressional approval. They come from diametrically different ends of the party, but united on Wednesday to rebuke the Middle East war, now well into its fourth month.

Their offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

It comes as the White House looks for a diplomatic breakthrough in peace talks with Tehran. Negotiations have sputtered since an April ceasefire brought hostilities between the two sides to a temporary halt.

“The Democrats are fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories. The four Republicans, that’s a whole other story – They’re GRANDSTANDERS! They should be ashamed of themselves.”

At least one of the Republicans won’t be in office for long.

Massie, long a thorn in the side of the president, lost his primary election last month to former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, a little-known Trump-backed challenger.