WASHINGTON — A multibillion-dollar package to fund immigration enforcement for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term faced new delays Thursday as Senate Republicans showed a rare split with the president over his new “anti-weaponization” fund.

The administration dispatched Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans as many fought to add restrictions to Trump’s $1.776 billion fund as a condition for passing a proposed $72 billion for the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the hourslong closed-door meeting with Blanche included “spirited discussion.”

The Department of Justice announced Monday the fund for “victims of lawfare” in exchange for Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Both agencies are under his purview.

“It’s unprecedented to see a settlement between two parties that seem to be the same person,” Paul said.

Ultimately, senators left their meeting with Blanche with no immediate path forward for the budget reconciliation bill that requires a simple majority to pass. Senate Majority Leader John Thune can only afford to lose a handful of votes in the GOP-led Senate that is split 53-47, as all Democrats vow to oppose the package.

“We’re going home,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said as he made flight arrangements with his staff while standing outside the meeting room. 

Thune told reporters “we will pick up where we left off.” 

Asked whether he thinks a resolution can be reached, the South Dakota Republican said “that’s what I’m counting on.” 

The Senate has adjourned except for pro forma sessions until the afternoon of June 1, the date Trump set to have the finished bill on his desk.

Among the sticking points in the Blanche meeting: whether Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants who assaulted police officers would qualify for the financial relief.

“I did raise that issue,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “But we haven’t seen (bill) language yet.”

The administration maintains the fund will be nonpartisan, and not only open to Trump supporters. A five-seat commission — four to be appointed by Blanche and the fifth in consultation with Congress — will issue decisions on financial claims.

Further details emerged Tuesday from the Department of Justice, revealing that Trump and his family will be forever immune from tax audits as part of the settlement.

Ballroom battle

Before debate erupted over Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund, Republicans had already fractured over a $1 billion Secret Service security earmark in the bill, $220 million of which was set to be used to “harden” Trump’s White House ballroom project.

The funds for the “East Wing Modernization Project” would have paid for bulletproof glass, drone detection technologies and filtration systems designed to detect chemical or other contaminants. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who lost his primary Saturday after Trump supported another candidate, told reporters he would not vote for ballroom funds.

Democrats claimed credit for getting the $1 billion tossed from the bill after challenging whether the provision fit within the strict parameters of reconciliation. Ultimately, the Senate parliamentarian ruled it out, sparking a social media attack from Trump Tuesday.

Trump told reporters Thursday if Senate Republicans didn’t find a way to pass the extra security money, “Then the White House won’t be a very secure place.”

Senate Dems vow to stop ‘slush fund’

Democrats pounced on the opportunity to spotlight the Republican division.

“This afternoon, Republicans — so divided, so dysfunctional, so disorganized — are fleeing Washington,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters at a press conference after movement on the package stalled. 

“Republicans are divided over things that Americans don’t want, but Democrats are united around things that the people do want — for us to lower their costs, rein in the chaos, fight the corruption that is endemic to this administration,” the New York Democrat added. 

Schumer added that “we’ll do everything we can to stop this slush fund, whether it’s in the courts, whether it’s legislative, whether it’s through reconciliation, or any other legislative means.”

Senate Democrats still plan to offer up a handful of painful amendments for GOP senators to vote on during a marathon voting session when and if the bill finally reaches the floor. 

War powers vote postponed

On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans abruptly delayed an Iran War Powers Resolution vote moments before it was scheduled to open on the floor.

This would have been the fourth time Democrats brought the privileged motion to the floor. The 1970s-era War Powers Resolution sets reporting procedures and limitations on a president’s military campaigns abroad.

An effort to curtail Trump’s campaign in Iran failed in a tied House vote just one week ago.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., shouted on the floor as the presiding officer moved procedures forward, skipping the War Powers Resolution.

“Are we not voting on it because the American people are sick and tired of this illegal war that’s costing tens of billions of dollars? Gas prices are through the roof. People can’t afford their groceries,” McGovern said, alleging the Republicans lacked the “guts” to vote on it.

The House now also leaves for the Memorial Day break and will not return until June 1.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Medicinal marijuana products that are legal at the state level will see looser federal regulation under an order the U.S. Department of Justice published Thursday, while a process that could remove the drug in all forms from the federal list of the most dangerous drugs is set to begin in late June.

The order, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, shifts many marijuana products from Schedule I — the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and least legitimate use — to Schedule III. 

That will open the door to greater research and provide an effective tax break for businesses that sell medicinal marijuana that is legal under state law.

The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order last year directing the DOJ to move toward rescheduling.

“The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” Blanche said in a statement. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”

The order applies to state-licensed medical marijuana products in the states that allow medicinal use of the drug.

The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from their federal taxes and researchers have access to state-legal products. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federal facility could be studied, severely limiting the supply available to researchers.

The DEA also scheduled a hearing on broader reclassification to begin June 29 and end no later than July 15. That hearing will explore the possibility of rescheduling marijuana products that could include recreational use.

The order likely has no immediate impact on the difficulty marijuana businesses have had accessing the banking system. Institutions that lend to even state-legal businesses could be prosecuted on federal money laundering charges for offering banking services to businesses that violate federal drug laws.

‘Historic’ shift

Moving a limited number of products from Schedule I, which includes drugs such as heroin and cocaine, to Schedule III, which includes highly regulated prescription drugs such as acetaminophen with codeine, does not satisfy advocates who have called for complete legalization. 

But it does represent a major shift in the federal government’s official position on cannabis, several pro-legalization groups said.

“It’s historic because the federal government, historically, has denied the existence of medical cannabis, even as a concept,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the advocacy group the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an interview. 

The federal government was in recent memory “outright hostile” to medicinal marijuana, Armentano added. The order “finally acknowledges and recognizes not only the legitimacy of marijuana as a medicine, but also the legitimacy of these state programs, and it is trying now to integrate these state programs into our own existing federal regulatory schemes.”

Forty states and the District of Columbia allow medicinal marijuana.

Jasmine Johnson, CEO of Florida-based cannabis company GŪD Essence, wrote in an email that the federal government’s acknowledgement of cannabis’ legitimate medical value was the most important part of the order. 

“That shift alone helps move the industry out of decades of stigma and opens the door for expanded research, more institutional participation, and a more rational regulatory framework,” she wrote.

Medicinal vs. recreational

Recreational use will see no immediate changes from the order. In the 24 states in which recreational use, also called adult use, is legal, businesses that sell both medicinal and recreational products may experience confusion.

Chuck Smith, the CEO of Colorado Leads, an industry group, said in a statement that for Colorado cannabis businesses, “the immediate effects of this order are significant but relatively narrow.”

“Hybrid businesses should expect a transitional period in which federally covered medical activity and federally non-covered adult-use activity may be treated differently for registration, tax, and compliance purposes,” Smith said.

Such businesses would likely not see a tax benefit “when it comes to producing and selling, arguably, the products that consist of the majority of their business,” Armentano said.

Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer for Colorado-based marijuana company Spherex, called the DOJ order “a very silly announcement,” noting that it created a third regulatory category of a single plant species.

“Though this is all the same plant,” hemp and medical marijuana “are now considered Schedule III substances under the Controlled Substances Act (similar to Tylenol + Codeine),” while non-medical use is still considered Schedule I, he wrote in a statement. “My mind boggles at these arbitrary and artificial distinctions, but here we are.”

Eventual changes

Johnson, the Florida CEO, said she expected regulators to eventually merge how they treat different uses of the drug.

“The distinction between medicinal and recreational use has always been more regulatory than practical. From an operator’s standpoint, the same plant, supply chain, and compliance standards exist regardless of how it’s categorized,” she wrote. 

“Over time, we’ll likely see a continued shift toward a more unified framework that reflects how consumers actually engage with cannabis, rather than maintaining rigid distinctions that complicate operations.”

A grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which alleges payments the organization made to informants in extremist groups functioned as financial support for them.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC, a civil rights nonprofit based in Montgomery, Alabama, that helped take down some of the most prominent white supremacist groups in the country.

“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement Tuesday evening that the organization was “outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC — an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive.” 

“Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do,” Fair said. “To be clear, this program saved lives.”

Fair said in a video released earlier on Tuesday that SPLC was the subject of a criminal probe and that he believed it was connected with a now-discontinued paid informant program, which Fair said provided information and intelligence on extremist groups that was passed to law enforcement.

The indictment characterizes those payments, dating back to the 1980s, as funding for leaders and organizers of racist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the National Alliance.

No individuals were named in the indictment, but Blanche at the news conference, referred to one individual who was paid $270,000 over eight years. In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight people.

The indictment also pointed to an imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, as well as an alleged member of the online leadership chat group that planned the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Additionally, the indictment accuses the organization of funneling money to violent extremist groups by using the informants SPLC recruited.

FBI Director Kash Patel said at the news conference that SPLC tried to hide criminal activity from banks.

“They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that the money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in perpetuation of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud,” Patel said.

The indictment includes  six counts of wire fraud, alleging SPLC defrauded donors; three counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank and one count of money laundering.

Fair said earlier on Tuesday that the paid informant program operated “in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system.”

The interim CEO said that SPLC did not “share our use of informants broadly with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families.”

“And while we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously,” he said.  

A spokesperson for the organization said Tuesday that the program “predates me and a lot of people here. Most people who were involved are not even with the organization, because it has been a very long time since it has ended.”

Fair accused President Donald Trump and the DOJ of targeting SPLC for political purposes.

“Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people, and any organization like ours that stands in the breach,” Fair said. “We stood in the vanguard then, and we stand in the vanguard today. We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”

The SPLC, founded in 1971, rose to prominence by bringing lawsuits against the Klan and other organizations that forced them to declare bankruptcy. Members of the Klan bombed the organization’s headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, in July 1983. The group has also done work on voting rights, immigration and labor issues.

The group has often been outspoken and critical of Trump, and Republicans and conservatives have made it a target for years, saying it lumps right-wing groups in with extremist organizations. The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the SPLC in December.

Updated at 6:37 p.m. with details of indictment, comments from DOJ press conference and reaction from SPLC.