Barbara Sprunt

Hey, good morning, Steve.

Right, so if we cast back to earlier this year, Senate Democrats blocked funding the Department of Homeland Security over concerns about the way it was conducting immigration enforcement, specifically after federal agents killed two protesters in Minneapolis.

Eventually, at the end of April, after a long shutdown,

Congress funded the department everything except immigration enforcement, and Republicans decided to use a budget tool called reconciliation in order to fund that, to fund ICE, to fund Border Patrol, in a separate bill.

And this is that bill.

It would fund those agencies for three years.

That's right.

Well, you know, it's interesting.

I mean, in this voterama scenario, both parties can offer amendments, get the other party on the record on various things.

And the thing that was most interesting to me were these amendments where there was crossover support.

You know, there was some Republican support for an amendment to restrict funding for President Trump's ballroom, another one of his big projects, for example.

But the subject that came up again and again was the Trump administration's earlier proposal to create that nearly $2 billion settlement fund you were mentioning earlier.

to pay out supporters who say they've been persecuted by the government.

There was a proposal from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to prevent that creation altogether.

It failed, but three Republicans, including senators in tough races in Ohio and Alaska, voted with Democrats.

Another proposal would have redirected the money from that fund to fraud enforcement.

That had more Republican support.

And Republicans writ large voted against an amendment that would prohibit payouts from any weaponization fund

to people convicted of assaulting law enforcement on January 6th.

Eight Republicans did join Democrats in voting for it.