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Congress delayed a vote on immigration enforcement funding for the next three years after internal GOP disputes disrupted planned legislative steps, leaving lawmakers unable to meet President Trump’s June 1 deadline, NPR reported. The week ended with what NPR described as growing discord within the Republican Party as both chambers prepared to recess.
NPR said House Republicans called off a vote Thursday night on a resolution that would have restrained the president’s war powers. The report said Speaker Mike Johnson wanted Republicans to defeat the measure, but the leadership could not gather enough votes, so it did not allow the vote at all.
With Congress heading into a weeklong recess for the Memorial Day holiday, NPR said the House and Senate also did not advance the president’s top priority: funding immigration enforcement for the next three years through a process known as a reconciliation bill. NPR framed the failure to meet the June 1 deadline as part of the broader breakdown in GOP cooperation.
NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt said the immigration-enforcement funding was not delayed because of issues specifically tied to immigration. She described reconciliation as complex and delicate, but she said the immediate cause of the drama centered on demands from President Trump that Senate Republicans could not agree to include.
Sprunt said one of those demands involved security for a ballroom-related project. She described an initial plan in which the president had said it would be funded through private donations, but she said the framing shifted into making the ballroom a secure facility after a shooting at a correspondence dinner and that the project then grew to about a $1 billion effort, with the president seeking congressional funding for additional security that she said did not adhere to strict reconciliation rules.
She also said President Trump’s other major demand was a nearly $2 billion anti-weaponization fund. Sprunt said Republican senators expressed early concern about the fund’s design because it would provide money to people who said they had been wronged by the government, including people tied to the Jan. 6 events, and she said at least some senators wanted to address that proposal before approving the immigration-enforcement funding.
In NPR’s description, Sprunt linked the legislative friction to a broader strain between Trump and senators in his own party. She said the president endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against sitting Sen. John Cornyn, and that Trump’s backing extended to attempts to unseat other Republican incumbents such as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost a primary election.
Sprunt said Cassidy’s subsequent moves reflected the rift, including public opposition to ballroom funding and Cassidy’s support for a stalled war-powers resolution that would have required the Trump administration to pull back from its conflict with Iran. She said Cassidy also criticized the anti-weaponization fund, raising questions about whether a new group of GOP senators had become more willing to push back on Trump.
NPR said Congress was out next week, and Sprunt pointed to what could happen when lawmakers return. She described a bipartisan effort in the House to eliminate the anti-weaponization fund led by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, and she said reconciliation would still likely be handled in some way.
At the center of NPR’s reporting was the question of whether President Trump would reconsider the proposals tied to security for the ballroom and the anti-weaponization fund. Sprunt said that was what she would be watching as lawmakers returned from the holiday recess.