Even Republicans Aren’t Buying Trump’s “End” to His Slush Fund

Republican senators are still unconvinced that President Trump is dropping his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund—and want assurance that Trump won’t use taxpayer funds to pay off his allies. Without it, their own immigration reconciliation bill may also be in jeopardy. 

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that it would hold back on its plans for the fund after a federal judge ordered them paused until June 12. While the administration promised to abide, Republican senators are unconvinced it’s a permanent end. 

“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,” Senator Lisa Murkowski told Politico. Senator Shelley Moore Capito called for  “more investigation” into the fund, while Senator James Langford urged the Trump administration to “say what they actually mean” regarding the fund. 

“The reconciliation bill looks like a broken arm with the bones sticking out,” Senator John Kennedy added. “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.”

The continued questions about the slush fund suggest that there is much more internal discord among the GOP Senate than initially thought—and less inherent rallying around President Trump. 

This all comes as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche prepares to testify before the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday, where he will most surely be asked about the future of the slush fund.

The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, said Tuesday that if the Delaney Hall ICE detention center isn’t closed soon, the city may file a lawsuit.

Ras Baraka pointed to reports of the center’s poor conditions, with detainees suffering from serious health conditions. He said that in one report, a detainee suffered a miscarriage and wasn’t given proper care.

“It’s troubling, which forces us to expand our lawsuit against Delaney Hall,” Baraka said at a press conference outside of the facility, referring to a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the private contractor that runs the facility, GEO Group.

For more than a week, detainees in Delaney Hall have been on a hunger strike due to inadequate food, a lack of proper medical care, and unsanitary conditions. Protesters have shown up outside of the facility and have been met with violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Among them was Senator Andy Kim, who was hit with pepper spray last week outside Delaney Hall after attempting to defuse tensions between the agents and protesters.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin mocked Kim, saying he shouldn’t have been there, and also denied the existence of a hunger strike, making a racist attack on the detainees.

“There was only a handful of individuals that was refusing to eat, because they want their ethnic group—or their ethnic-right food. Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” Mullin said. “The fact is, we’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn. We’re giving them sanitation.”

Kim, Baraka, and other New Jersey elected officials have shown up at the facility and said they’ve seen the conditions firsthand. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill has also called for Delaney Hall to be shut down.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is pleading with the White House to nix Donald Trump’s so-called “anti-weaponization” slush fund in order to pass Congress’s behemoth budget reconciliation bill.

Thune called the White House Monday to ask it to abandon plans for a $1.8 billion fund for alleged MAGA victims of political targeting. Shortly after, the Department of Justice announced it would suspend its plans (after a major court loss).

Still, the South Dakota Republican told Punchbowl News Monday afternoon that additional assurances that the fund was dead would be “helpful” toward rallying Republicans to pass the $72 billion budget reconciliation bill.

“Confining the bill to its original intent, which was a very narrowly focused reconciliation bill that just addresses the funding for [ICE and CBP], is the clearest path to ultimately getting a bill on the president’s desk,” Thune said.

Punchbowl reported that Thune was “practically begging” the Trump administration to shutter plans for the fund entirely, believing it is the only way to prevent Republicans from defecting on the vote and siding with Democratic-led amendments. Consequently, Thune also said that a $1.5 billion fund for a wide range of projects at the DOJ would be dropped from the budget bill.

Ahead of the midterms, it seems that Thune is desperate to rein in Trump’s rampant spending and keep the president’s personal vendettas out of his legislative agenda—but it’s Republicans who have already allowed him to get away with so much who are responsible for the nation’s spiral out of control.

Republicans are slinging mud at the wall trying to counter Graham Platner’s popularity in Maine.

Lacking any competitive, ideological alternative, Kellyanne Conway suggested Monday night that Democrats should be forced to step away from Platner, who has been polling with a tremendous lead for the state’s Senate seat over Governor Janet Mills. (Mills ended her campaign in April, but she is still on the primary ballot.) But the language Conway chose to express her complaint was particularly odd—particularly as she tried to liken the working-class oyster farmer’s intraparty prominence to that of David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and what she perceived to be an unfair double standard.

“Remember, everybody who’s a Republican anywhere had to disclaim David Duke,” Conway told Fox News. “I want every single Democrat who’s running as United States Senate candidate this year to step away from [Platner], to tell him to get off the ticket.

“This guy needs to go and take care of his family. They’ve been married two short years, he’s bored already,” Conway added.

Platner has recently been at the center of several controversies that have created some anxiety amid the higher echelons of the Democratic establishment. The first involved Platner’s tattoos, which included a skull-and-bones symbol that resembled Nazi imagery. Platner claimed in October that he had covered up the tattoo and eventually planned to remove it.

Platner told the Associated Press at the time that “going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while.”

That same month, Platner apologized for resurfaced Reddit posts that revealed some of his unfiltered thoughts, such as messages that minimized the experiences of military members who had been victims of sexual assault, and posts in which he referred to white rural Americans as racist and stupid, among other topics.

Another scandal emerged Saturday when The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had warned the oyster farmer’s team, days into his campaign, that he had previously sent sexually explicit text messages to other women.

Gertner told CNN that she was “deeply hurt” that their marital problems had become public knowledge. She has decided to stand by her husband anyway.

“We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy,” Gertner said in a statement provided by Platner’s campaign. “And we came through it, not in spite of how much we’ve been through, but because of how much we love each other and the life we’ve built. Our marriage today is stronger than ever before.”

Platner still has a cadre of progressive figureheads standing behind him, including Senators Bernie Sanders, Ruben Gallego, and Martin Heinrich.

“We got a housing crisis. People can’t afford health care, they can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford to fill up their gas tanks. And I think it’s important for us to focus on the issues facing working families a little bit more than Graham Platner’s marriage,” Sanders told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I wish their marriage the very best. But right now, I think we should be focusing on the crises facing the working class and electing people of the guts to stand up to the oligarchs who control our country.”

Representative Tom Kean Jr. just earned the president’s endorsement—despite the fact that the New Jersey Republican hasn’t been seen in three months.

Kean has been missing in action since March 5, has so far missed 104 House votes, and hasn’t been seen in Washington for more than 89 days. He has offered up thin excuses for his prolonged, mysterious absence, vaguely claiming that he has been dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.”

Yet despite being completely gone from the picture, Kean still has Donald Trump’s support.

“A Tremendous Advocate of our America First Agenda, Tom is working tirelessly to Keep our Border SECURE, Stop Migrant Crime, Grow our Economy, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Champion Small Business, Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE, Support our Brave Military and Veterans, and Protect our always under siege Second Amendment,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday.

Kean retweeted the endorsement and circulated his own message on his official X account, thanking Trump for the midterm blessing.

“Thank you for your support, President Trump! Primary Election Day is tomorrow—get out and vote!” Kean posted. His primary election is Tuesday night.

Who knows if Kean actually wrote the missive, however? The lawmaker’s staff has been issuing newsletters and fundraising messages from his office for weeks, all written in the first person so as to suggest that the lawmaker is still capable of not just his job but also running for reelection.

Kean told The New Jersey Globe last month that his health prognosis was “good” and that he would be transparent about his illness soon. He also said that he planned to return to Washington—and the campaign trail—in the coming weeks, though he has so far failed to do either.

Yet the political intrigue around Kean’s sudden disappearance goes deeper. Although he’s supposed to be sick, the 57-year-old took Amtrak rides and used several ride-share apps around San Francisco during the month of April, according to pre-primary reports that Kean filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Kean’s staff have also been traversing the country with their boss’s express approval. His chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, obtained Kean’s signature in early March for at least two trips funded by special interest groups. They include a jaunt to Las Vegas, paid for by the Republican Main Street Partnership, and a trip to Middleburg, Virginia, for a “spring issues conference” sponsored by bipartisan policy organization Center Forward, reported NOTUS.

Kean has also been trading stocks during his prolonged absence, buying and selling shares of Amcor, Chubb Limited, First Citizens BancShares, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo, according to congressional financial records obtained by NOTUS. The combined value of the trades ranges from $50,008 to $190,000.