Good Friday evening. In this edition: Senate approves ICE and Border Patrol funding, fails to advance FISA reauthorization.
Plus, asylum, Ukraine, jobs report, Collins and reflecting pool.
Reconciliation
The Senate early Friday morning approved Republicans' reconciliation package funding the nation's immigration enforcement agencies after weeks of delays and bipartisan backlash over an unrelated settlement fund that threatened to derail the bill.
The final vote on the filibuster-proof bill came just before 5am ET, following a marathon vote-a-rama that lasted 18 hours and 21 minutes and featured 30 votes.
The measure passed 52–47, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joining all Democrats in opposition and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) missing the vote.
During the vote-a-rama, Republicans beat back numerous amendments from members of both parties seeking to permanently eliminate a $1.8 billion Justice Department "anti-weaponization" fund that had drawn bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blancheassured lawmakers earlier in the week that the fund — intended to compensate alleged victims of "lawfare and weaponization" under Democratic administrations — had been permanently scrapped, but Democrats and some Republicans wanted that prohibition written into the bill.
Ultimately, none of the amendments were adopted, a win for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who also opposed the fund but worried that any changes could complicate the bill's path in the House, which now plans to take it up early next week.
The measure would provide about $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), enough funding to sustain the agencies through the remainder of President Trump's term.
Republicans chose to fund the agencies through the reconciliation process after Democrats refused to provide funding without reforms to immigration enforcement operations.
The bill does not include the $1 billion in security funding for the Secret Service requested by President Trump as part of his East Wing ballroom project.
The Senate then failed to advance a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — a key surveillance authority set to expire next Friday — amid an uproar over President Trump's appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
The procedural vote failed 47–52, well short of the 60 votes needed to begin debate, with every Democrat except Sen. John Fetterman (PA) voting in opposition.
The Democrats were joined by seven GOP senators — Josh Hawley (MO), John Kennedy (LA), Mike Lee (UT), Rand Paul (KY), Eric Schmitt (MO), Rick Scott (FL) and Tommy Tuberville (AL) — who have concerns about the surveillance program.
Section 702 allows the government to collect the communications of foreign targets overseas without a warrant, even when they are communicating with Americans.
The intelligence community views the program as essential to its work, but the incidental collection of Americans' data has raised privacy concerns among lawmakers in both parties.
Democratic votes are necessary to move the bill in both chambers, and the legislation reauthorizing the program for three more years was crafted on a bipartisan basis.
But Democrats pulled their support after the president tapped Mr. Pulte, the current Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has no experience in intelligence matters, to oversee the nation's 18 spy agencies.
President Trump told reporters Thursday he has no plans to nominate Mr. Pulte for the DNI role permanently, though it did little to ease Democrats' concerns, which are also shared by a lot of Republicans.
"He's not going to be permanent, because you know, I don't think he'd want to be permanent," the president said in the Oval Office. "We're interviewing people right now but it's somebody just to take it over for a little while."
The president also defended Mr. Pulte's lack of experience, saying he believed he was up to the task because he's "smart."
"I think he does because he's smart," he said. "I wasn't greatly experienced in national security, and I think I've done a really great job with it."
Mr. Pulte is best known for using his perch at the mortgage regulatory agency to target President Trump's political adversaries, and the president indicated that he would be focused on investigating "rigged elections" during his time in the position.
"He's a very smart guy, and you may find out some things about the rigged elections," he told reporters.
It's unclear how lawmakers will proceed on FISA when they return next week.
A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked a series of Trump administration policies that prevented federal officials from granting asylum, green cards and other immigration benefits to many immigrants in the United States. The policies, enacted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, included a hold on asylum applications filed with the agency and a pause on decisions involving applicants from 39 countries, most of them in Africa and the Middle East. They were adopted late last year following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, allegedly by an Afghan man granted asylum in 2025. The judge said the policies were fueled by "anti-immigrant sentiments" and "threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo."
The House on Thursday evening approved a bill providing fresh aid to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia, rebuking President Trump and Republican leaders who sought to prevent the measure from receiving a vote. The bill was approved in a 226–195 vote, with 18 Republicans and one independent, Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA), voting in favor alongside all but one Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN). Republican leaders tried to prevent the measure from reaching the floor, but their hands were forced when Rep. Gregory Meeks's (D-NY) discharge petition reached the 218-signature threshold. Nevertheless, it faces an uphill climb in the Senate and virtually no chance of being signed into law by the president.
The U.S. economyadded 172,000 jobs in May, far exceeding economists' expectations of about 80,000, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%. Leisure and hospitality led all sectors with 70,000 new jobs, possibly reflecting hiring tied to the upcoming World Cup, followed by local government, health care and social assistance. Average hourly earnings also rose 0.3% in May and were up 3.4% from a year earlier. Stocks fell sharply following the report amid concerns that stronger-than-expected economic data could keep interest rates elevated. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.2%, while the S&P 500 dropped 2.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.4%.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) cast her 10,000th consecutive roll call vote during the vote-a-rama, a streak unmatched by anyone else in Senate history. The Maine Republican, who is locked in a tough reelection battle, has never missed a vote since being sworn into the chamber in 1997. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Angus King (I-ME) all took to the floor to congratulate her on the milestone.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is being refilled after undergoing renovations and repainting, one of numerous beautification projects President Trump has undertaken in Washington, DC. "The Great Reflecting Pool, that stretches between The Lincoln Memorial and The Washington Monument, just opened to 'rave reviews' but, maliciously or not, some say, like The Washington Post, it was a 'paint job,'" the president wrote on social media. "This was not a paint job. This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years." The project has cost at least $14.8 million, considerably more than the $1.5 million to $2 million estimate the president provided in April. Preservationists have also raised concerns that the administration bypassed traditional review processes for changes to historic landmarks.
For your radar…
C-SPAN gets unique access to the United States Marine Corps barracks in Washington, DC, for their weekly Friday evening parade. Watch LIVE on C-SPAN at 8:45pm ET.
