Congress

GOP senators keep wary as DOJ tiptoes away from ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

Published

4 weeks ago

June 2, 2026

The Justice Department took a small step back Monday from its controversial $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” It wasn’t nearly enough to quell the furor on Capitol Hill.

Republican senators, including some top leaders, said a DOJ statement that it would “abide by” a federal judge’s recent ruling to temporarily halt any payouts did not do enough to clear the intraparty concerns that have thrown the GOP’s immigration enforcement bill into limbo.

Instead they nudged President Donald Trump to make a more explicit move to renounce the fund, which could be used to pay participants in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and other Trump political allies that have been subject to federal prosecution.

“It’s pretty clear that the president has to say very explicitly that there’s not going to be a weaponization fund,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters.

Sen. James Lankford, a member of the Senate GOP leadership team, added that the administration needs to “say what they actually mean.” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), another junior party leader, said the fund still needs “more investigation” and that there are still “a lot of questions” for the administration to answer.

Those warnings come as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche heads back to Capitol Hill Tuesday for the first time since a heated closed-door meeting last month with GOP senators that led to the scuttling of planned votes on a more than $70 billion funding package for immigration enforcement agencies.

In a scheduled appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Blanche is likely to face more pointed questions about the fund and its future. During an appearance before Senate appropriators last month, Blanche refused to put any concrete guardrails on how the $1.8 billion might be paid out — specifically refusing, for instance, to rule out payment to Jan. 6 rioters.

This time, he will be under pressure to say more as Republicans grow more eager to revive the immigration enforcement bill this week — legislation they are counting on to fund agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.

The administration’s obstacle is that there were wildly different interpretations of the DOJ statement Monday. Some, like Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), said the statement about respecting the court decision left the fund “moot.”

But others said the language fell short. The order is in place pending a June 12 hearing before a Virginia district judge, who could then remove or extend the injunction.

Enough Republican senators to block progress on the immigration bill, given the united Democratic opposition, said there were unanswered questions that could keep the bill from moving forward without a clear resolution.

“The reconciliation bill looks like a broken arm with the bones sticking out,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “They have to abide by the district court decision — that’s in the Constitution. I’d have to know more about their position on the weaponization fund to know whether it would be enough to dislodge the reconciliation bill.”

“If it means it’s completely pulled, then that would satisfy me, but I haven’t heard anybody say that that is actually what is happening,” added Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). She also hinted she could oppose the immigration enforcement bill regardless of how the fund debate plays out.

The qualms aren’t limited to the Senate. One House Republican granted anonymity to speak frankly about the situation said the fund was “DOA” in the closely divided House and that it “seems telling this is the court order they decide to abide by.”

Some Republicans in the House are privately mulling how to add language to the reconciliation bill that would kill off any future attempts by Trump to create such a fund, adding another complication to the stalled effort, according to the House Republican and two other GOP lawmakers.

Senate Republicans will discuss the status of the fund and the immigration enforcement bill during a closed-door lunch Tuesday, according to several Republican senators — just hours before Blanche is set to testify on the other side of the Capitol complex.

Also testifying Tuesday is Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who is expected to underscore the need for the much larger tranche of immigration enforcement funding to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for his part, characterized the Justice Department’s comments as reflecting a broader shift away from the fund by the Trump administration.

“The way the statement is worded, I think it’s clear that they’re not proceeding with the fund, but obviously whether that’s sufficient to satisfy a number of our members is something we’re still sorting through,” Thune told reporters.

He added that Republicans should know by Tuesday if they are going to be able to revive the immigration enforcement bill this week.

The risk for GOP senators is a certain flurry of Democratic amendments to the legislation meant to expose incumbents to politically risky votes just months ahead of the midterm elections. Under the party-line process Republicans are employing, Democrats can force a slew of amendment votes before the bill’s final passage.

“The first amendment I will offer will be to ban the slush fund permanently and forever,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. “And if Republicans try to use toothless constraints to make the slush fund more palatable, we will press them to dismantle it entirely.”

To help inoculate the bill against efforts to add in language related to the fund, Thune said Monday night Republicans would remove a section of the bill related to the Justice Department. That, Republicans believe, will require any amendments related to the department to clear a higher 60-vote threshold instead of a simple majority.

But several GOP senators didn’t completely close the door when asked about adding language related to the DOJ fund into the bill or supporting separate legislation. Some Senate Republicans could also still vote to add a preemptive ban to the bill or vote for other amendments that would limit or nix the fund, four Republican aides acknowledged.

Such a step, if it’s not explicitly backed by Trump, could threaten to sink the overall bill.

Asked if he was worried about a possible Trump veto if the fund was banned, Thune said, “Oh yeah, don’t you?”

Calen Razor and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Ethics dismisses allegations against Ruben Gallego

Published

4 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed allegations of misconduct levied against Sen. Ruben Gallego, who stood accused by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of “campaign finance violations and inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature.”

The charges came following the resignation of the Arizona Democrat’s longtime friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who was forced to step down amid accusations of serious sexual misconduct. Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to implicate Gallego by claiming in an interview on CBS that a woman would come forward about an “incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time and the event was sexual in nature allegedly.”

But in a letter to Gallego sent Monday — which he shared in a public news release — the notoriously inactive Ethics Committee cited Gallego’s “prompt contact with the Committee following media reports of the allegations and appreciated your full cooperation with the Committee throughout the investigation.”

Gallego has maintained he was unaware of the allegations against Swalwell and said in a statement he was a victim of “right-wing conspiracies peddled by far-right activists like Anna Paulina Luna, the White House, and their allies.”

He continued, “I look forward to an apology from Rep. Luna for weaponizing the ethics process while refusing to investigate historic corruption that’s making life harder for families.”

Luna, in a post on X, defended her referral to the Senate Ethics Committee.

“The good news about DC is everyone talks, and eventually the reporters come forward with your texts,” Luna wrote on social media. “Do yourself a favor and keep raising for your legal defense fund. Once a creep always a creep, and you’re gonna need it.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s state. She represents Florida.

Congress

Rubio, Witkoff to brief Congress on Iran

Published

8 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Top deputies of President Donald Trump will brief Congress on the Iran peace talks in a Monday conference call — the first time administration officials have addressed a broad group of lawmakers since Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Tehran earlier this month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, will lead the briefing for all House and Senate members at 4 p.m., according to seven people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Republicans and Democrats have called for more transparency about the 14-point agreement inked on June 18, which initiated a cease-fire between the two countries. Since then, the U.S. and Iran have continued to engage in hostilities.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Red, white and GOP hard-liner blues

Published

10 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans finally cleared a runway this week to finish some of their top legislative priorities before the July 4 recess.

That is, unless a small band of hard-liners trip up those plans at takeoff.

Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to move quickly to pass fiscal 2027 appropriations legislation, the annual defense policy bill and a kids online safety bill that has been years in the making. The movement comes after President Donald Trump instructed GOP hard-liners to stop holding up a procedural vote amid a protest from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and others that the Senate hadn’t passed Trump’s election security bill.

But Luna and other hard-liners are still threatening to tank the procedural vote that could delay the defense policy bill and other measures until they get concessions on the SAVE America Act, amid other demands.

Johnson, for example, had also promised hard-liners a vote before July 4 on a sweeping GOP immigration bill introduced in the prior Congress as H.R. 2, which is highly unlikely to happen.

Johnson for his part has said the House will “pass the SAVE America Act again” by folding parts of it into a third party-line reconciliation bill. But the slimmed-down version he’d need to pursue in order to meet strict Senate rules for the budget process is already being panned by hard-liners as insufficient.

That reconciliation bill is also already delayed. House Republicans aren’t on track to meet their goal of advancing its framework before the July 4 recess as members on the Budget panel balked over how to pay for the legislation in a closed-door meeting last week.

“Time is of the essence, given how many legislative days we have,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, who is sponsoring the kids online safety legislation, said in an interview last week. “If we lose a week, that would be important.”

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is grappling with their own heated internal divisions this week. Members are split over supporting the adoption of an amendment to a fiscal 2027 spending bill from Rep. Thomas Massie that would end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aid program by $3.3 billion.

Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro did not instruct her colleagues on how to vote during a rare Sunday evening caucus call, two sources granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting tell Mia and Riley. Leaders did, however, criticize the amendment as poorly written.

One other item this week that could split members of each party: House lawmakers are also slated to vote on a rewritten war powers resolution from Rep. Rashida Tlaib to reign in Trump administration military actions in Lebanon. Leadership worked with Tlaib to come up with new language last month that is expected to garner more Dem support, but the resolution is still expected to fail without GOP votes.

What else we’re watching:

— SENATE GOP GETS ANTSY ABOUT NOMINATIONS: Some Republican senators are unsettled by Trump’s apparent lack of urgency in filling vacant posts, even as GOP control of the chamber beyond the midterms is increasingly in doubt. There are more than two dozen federal court vacancies. Labor secretary, FDA commissioner and scores of other open positions do not have nominees, and a senior White House official said Trump is in no rush to fill them. “We’re running short on time,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of Senate HELP, which oversees health, labor and other issues.

—RICK SCOTT SAYS HE’S JUST TRYING TO HELP: Fresh off his controversial Trump invite to a Senate GOP lunch last week, Sen. Rick Scott told Blue Light News in an interview he’s trying to make a mark — not trying to challenge Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Scott insists that neither his invitation to the president nor a letter he circulated afterward outlining how the Senate GOP should be preparing for the midterms should be seen as a prelude to a leadership challenge. The Florida Republican said he’s perfectly happy running the conference’s conservative Steering Committee and predicted Thune would easily secure another term as leader. What has become eminently clear in recent weeks is that Scott — after a long career in business, two terms as governor and nearly eight years as senator — just isn’t a back-bench kind of guy.

Meredith Lee Hill, Riley Rogerson, Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.