senate democrats

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is backing away from plans to create a $1.8-billion fund to compensate people who claim the government was weaponized against them, a retreat that comes amid a cascade of legal setbacks and a revolt within members of the Republican Party.

But Senate Democrats say the concession is not enough, and are pushing legislation to ensure no president can ever attempt the creation of such a fund again.

“If Republicans are serious about ending this brazenly corrupt scheme, they should have no problem voting for legislation banning any president from creating such a slush fund in the future,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote Monday in a post on X.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) added that Democrats plan to force a vote on a measure to ensure that Trump and Republicans are “truly abandoning this corrupt scheme.”

“Trump’s word is nowhere near enough,” Schumer wrote on X. Earlier in the day, Schumer vowed to force a floor vote to make Republican lawmakers take a public stance on the issue.

Schiff, along with Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, introduced the “Drain the Slush Fund Act” on Monday. The bill, if approved, would bar any payout arising from a lawsuit filed by a president or vice president, language that is designed to permanently foreclose the fund, or anything like it, from being put in place by a future administration.

The White House did not comment on the president’s thinking. But in a statement, the Department of Justice said the decision to scrap the fund was in response to a federal judge’s ruling last week that temporarily blocked payouts from the fund while legal challenges remain pending. The department said it “disagrees strongly” with the move, but stopped short of saying it would challenge the decision.

“This fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise,” the statement read. “The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, a Democrat, has scheduled a June 12 hearing for argument on whether to extend the order blocking the fund.

While the court ruling is not permanent, the unraveling over the fund is a notable defeat for Trump, who has cast it as a long-overdue reckoning for Americans he says were targeted by “an evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden administration.” For Republicans who publicly criticized the fund, it may come as a relief as the concept had been widely seen as a political liability heading into the midterm elections.

The Department of Justice created the fund to settle a lawsuit Trump personally brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The settlement also includes a clause permanently barring the IRS from pursuing any tax claims against Trump and his businesses that were filed before May 19 — a provision that, according to an analysis by Forbes, would save Trump and his family more than $600 million.

The White House declined to comment on whether the administration would also make changes to the tax immunity clause. The Democrats’ bill does not address that provision.

“Congress doesn’t need to pass a law to remind the Acting Attorney General [Todd Blanche] that he doesn’t have the authority to grant a blanket pardon for tax crimes by the president, much less when the AG is his personal attorney,” a Schiff spokesperson said in a statement. “The attempt at IRS immunity is corrupt and undoubtedly illegal — and we look forward to seeing it exposed as a fraud.”

Beyond Trump’s own legal disputes with the IRS, the fund was structured to accept claims from anyone who said they had been targeted by the government, a category the administration made clear could include those who were convicted for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump pardoned and commuted the prison sentences of 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the attack, and neither he nor Vice President JD Vance ruled out the possibility that those individuals would be able to receive money from the fund.

That possibility immediately ran into trouble with lawmakers. Senate Republicans, many of whom were caught off guard by the arrangement, publicly revolted against the fund and derailed plans to vote on legislation to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown amid the deep disagreement.

A closed-door meeting last month between Blanche and GOP senators grew heated, with lawmakers demanding answers the administration was seemingly not prepared to give.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who attended the meeting, described it as “angry” in an episode of his podcast last month. Cruz said that roughly 45 Senate Republicans had attended and estimated that “at least half of them were blasting the attorney general.” Based on those reactions, Cruz predicted the administration would need to amend its position on the fund.

“We will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don’t they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate,” he said.

The fund also led to criticism outside of Congress. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served in Trump’s first administration, told NBC News in an interview Sunday that it was a “bad idea from the start.”

“I would encourage the administration just to drop it,” Pence said.

WASHINGTON — A proposal to fund $1 billion in security additions for the White House campus and President Trump’s new ballroom fails to meet procedural rules, according to the Senate parliamentarian, dealing a blow to Republican plans to include it as part of a bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies for the next three years.

The parliamentarian’s ruling, described late Saturday by Senate Democrats, said that funding for a project as large and complex as Trump’s massive East Wing renovation is too broad to be included in the narrow GOP budget bill, which cannot be filibustered and needs only a simple majority to pass.

It’s unclear whether Republicans will be able to immediately salvage any part of the billion-dollar Secret Service proposal, which would fund security for Trump’s ballroom along with other parts of the White House, including a new visitor screening center, additional training for agents and extra reinforcements for large events. Republicans said Saturday night that they are revising the legislation based on the parliamentarian’s advice.

Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), wrote in a post on X that “none of this is abnormal” during the complicated budget process that Republicans are using to try to pass the immigration enforcement and White House security money on a partisan basis.

“Redraft. Refine. Resubmit,” Wrasse said in the post.

Democrats say they’re ‘ready to stop them again’

Democrats have seized on the security request, accusing Republicans of dedicating federal resources to the ballroom project instead of focusing on helping Americans with rising costs. Republicans have insisted that private donations will be used to build the ballroom and that the federal dollars are focused just on much-needed security enhancements.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took credit for the ruling after Democrats argued to the parliamentarian that the security money doesn’t belong in the bill.

“Republicans tried to make taxpayers foot the bill for Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom,” Schumer said Saturday evening. “Senate Democrats fought back — and blew up their first attempt.”

Schumer added that Democrats “will be ready to stop them again” as Republicans say they will revise the bill.

The ruling from the Senate parliamentarian is advisory, but such rulings are rarely if ever ignored when lawmakers put together legislation that can pass with a simple majority. Most bills are subject to a filibuster and thus need 60 votes for passage — meaning Republicans must find some Democratic support in the 53-47 Senate.

Part of immigration bill

Republicans are looking to approve a roughly $72-billion package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection until the end of Trump’s term after Democrats have blocked the money for months.

As part of that package, Republicans included $1 billion for White House security enhancements, part of it connected to Trump’s ballroom. The Secret Service had requested the money after a man was charged with trying to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner last month.

The overall budget package is providing another boost of funding for Trump’s immigration and deportation agenda, fueling operations through September 2029. It comes on top of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funds Congress provided last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed into law.

The parliamentarian kept most of the immigration portion of the legislation intact, though some minor provisions were blocked, including Customs and Border Patrol funds to hire, train and pay Border Patrol agents. Republicans said those were only technical fixes.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said Saturday evening that “Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill.”

Americans shouldn’t spend “a single dime” on Trump’s “Louis XIV-style ballroom and throw tens of billions more at two lawless agencies,” Merkley said.

Jalonick and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — White House economists estimate that President Trump’s deals with pharmaceutical companies to drop some of their U.S. prescription drug prices to what they charge in other countries could save $529 billion over the next 10 years.

The analysis obtained by the Associated Press includes the first economy-wide projections behind a policy at the core of Trump’s pitch to voters going into November’s midterm elections for control of the House and Senate. Democratic lawmakers have been doubtful about the savings claimed by Trump and these new numbers are likely to trigger additional questions about the data.

Cost-of-living issues are at the forefront of voters’ concerns and higher energy prices tied to the Iran war have deepened the public’s anxiety. Trump has tried in part to address affordability concerns by focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations.

“Now you have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a Friday rally before a crowd of seniors in Florida. “And that alone should win us the midterms.”

The analysis was done by administration officials for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. They also estimated that federal and state governments could save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade because of what Trump calls his “most favored nation” policy on drug prices.

Few of the details of the deals struck by the Trump administration and 17 leading pharmaceutical companies have been made public, making it hard to independently verify the projected savings. The White House analysis sought to estimate the prospective savings as more medications come onto the market and fall under Trump’s framework — with one model in the report tallying the possible savings at $733 billion over a decade.

Trump and his Department of Health and Human Services have touted his drug-pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law. Democratic lawmakers have challenged the administration’s claims of savings. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and 17 Senate Democrats in April proposed a measure requiring the administration to disclose the terms of the agreements signed by pharmaceutical companies.

“If these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public?” Wyden said when announcing the measure. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his team would share details that didn’t include proprietary information or trade secrets.

The White House said it has not shared the text of the agreements because they include highly sensitive data that could move financial markets.

The potential savings estimated by the Trump administration would be substantial as Americans spent $467 billion on prescription drugs in 2024, according to the most recent government data available. The analysis is premised on the idea that foreign countries would also pay more for their prescription drugs, which would diversify drugmakers’ sources of revenue and preserve their ability to innovate with new treatments.

Outside economists have caveated that any savings might not flow directly to patients, many of whom already pay discounted prices for their drugs through their insurance coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office in October 2024 estimated that a plan similar to what Trump ended up adopting could reduce prescription drug prices by more than 5%, though the decrease “would probably diminish over time as manufacturers adjusted to the new policy by altering prices or distribution of drugs in other countries.”

The scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats, who counter that any price reductions would be offset by higher costs for prescription drugs not covered by the “most favored nation” framework. One of their main critiques is that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.

In April, staff working for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released an analysis that looked at 15 of the companies that have agreed to this drug-pricing plan and found that their combined profits jumped 66% over the past year to $177 billion. The report noted that the tax cuts Trump signed into law last year “exempted or delayed many of the most expensive drugs” from price negotiations with Medicare.

The Trump administration has countered that they consider Sanders’ critique to be flawed, saying that it’s based on the list prices for pharmaceutical drugs instead of the actual price that patients pay.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.