Republican senators want more answers on $1.8 billion settlement fund as
Trump considers its future
[June 02, 2026]
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, KEVIN FREKING and SEUNG MIN KIM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next
steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court
order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund
designed to compensate President Donald Trump’s political allies.
GOP senators who revolted against the settlement before leaving for a
Memorial Day recess two weeks ago say they want more information from
the administration about the future of the fund, which could potentially
go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan.
6, 2021. Meanwhile, Trump is reconsidering whether to move forward with
it at all, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
Caught in the middle is legislation that would fund Trump’s immigration
enforcement agencies for three years. Republicans abruptly left town
without passing it after Democrats said they would offer amendments to
scrap or scale back the judgment fund, forcing Republicans to go on the
record for or against it and endangering the money for Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Returning to Washington on Monday evening, Senate Majority Leader John
Thune said he wasn’t sure if the immigration spending bill would move
this week.
“To be determined,” he told reporters.
The extraordinary standoff comes after Trump announced the fund with no
heads up to lawmakers as part of a settlement to resolve his lawsuit
against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. When word of the
settlement broke, the Senate was navigating tricky passage of the
immigration legislation with an added $1 billion in White House security
costs — including for Trump’s ballroom project.
Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned the White House security money
from the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all
unless the White House made major changes to the settlement.
“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides
to shut it down themselves,” Thune told reporters Monday, referring to
the fund.
He said Republicans will have a better idea of how to proceed after they
meet for their weekly conference lunch on Tuesday.
Senators say they need more ‘explicit’ commitment
The Justice Department said it would comply with a ruling Friday from
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who temporarily halted the fund for
two weeks. The judge scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on
whether to extend her order.
The department said in a statement that it strongly disagrees with the
ruling but would comply.
Republican senators weren't satisfied. They said Monday evening that
they need more detail from the administration on what happens after that
deadline before deciding next steps.
“It’s pretty clear that the president has to say very explicitly that
there’s not going to be a weaponization fund,” said Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
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Supporters of President Donald Trump try to break through a police
barrier at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio
Cortez, File)
Oklahoma Sen. Jim Lankford said Trump administration officials “need to
say what they actually mean.”
“They need to say, we’re setting this whole thing aside,” Lankford said.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that if the settlement is “completely
pulled, then I’m satisfied. But I haven’t heard anybody say that.”
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the administration
already has to abide by the court decision, “that’s in the Constitution.
I have to know more about their position.”
“Right now, the reconciliation bill looks like a broken arm with the
bones sticking out,” Kennedy said. “It won’t move this week, in my
opinion, unless we have some resolution on the weaponization account.”
Senators issue ultimatum to Justice Department
The outrage of the fund came to a head last month at a closed-door
meeting between senators and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas described on a recent episode of his
podcast as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in
the Senate.”
GOP senators had been discussing several ways that they could curb the
fund, including limiting who can receive payouts, changing the makeup of
the commission in charge of settlement decisions, adding some sort of
judicial review for applicants or scrapping the fund altogether.
Amid the backlash, a person familiar with the matter, who insisted on
anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking, said Monday that Trump
was reconsidering whether to move forward with the fund. But the
president has not said publicly what he intends to do.
Also complicating matters is Trump’s campaign-year push to defeat GOP
lawmakers whom he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune’s most
reliable Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate. Sens. Bill Cassidy
of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids in May
after Trump endorsed their primary opponents, and it’s unclear how
supportive they’ll be of the president’s agenda going forward.
“I think it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s
happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune said before the
Senate left town.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Eric Tucker contributed to
this report.
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