By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republicans abandoned plans to vote on an ICE funding bill on Thursday in an act of revolt over one of President Donald Trump’s priorities: a $1.8 billion fund for victims of government “weaponization,” including those convicted of crimes during the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Senate walked away from a planned vote on a $72 billion bill funding Trump’s massive migrant deportation program as a result, delaying the vote at least until June.
From the beginning, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the legislation should be narrowly targeted in order to secure the $72 billion with a simple, majority vote. But at Trump’s behest the $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund and another $1 billion for building a White House ballroom became major sticking points.
“It was something that was supposed to be very narrow, targeted, focused, clean, straightforward, and it got a little bit more complicated this week,” Thune said, expressing his frustration. “It makes everything way harder than it should be.”
The battle over the partisan immigration funding bill also came on the heels of Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana losing his primary election to a Trump-backed challenger and the president endorsing the primary challenger to veteran Republican Senator John Cornyn.
Presidents usually back their fellow incumbent lawmakers in bids for re-election.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Bo Erickson, Jacob Bogage, David Morgan, and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Caitlin Webber)
