The Senate on Thursday morning was set to vote on a motion offered by Democrats that would bar President Trump from establishing a fund to compensate his political allies.
“America has never seen a more clear-cut case of corruption than Donald Trump’s slush fund,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor as he introduced his motion, which would need just 50 votes to pass. His motion would send the immigration bill back to committee, as well as ban the fund.
“Republicans are trusting the word of Todd Blanche, who built a career on lying, that the administration will just drop this slush fund,” he said, referring to the acting attorney general, who earlier this week testified under oath in front of a House committee that the fund was dead, permanently.
Democrats are hoping to frame the motion as a vote for or against the president’s corruption.
Republicans, in turn, said that the focus on the $1.8 billion fund — which had become a piece of a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill — was a Democratic effort to distract from their “defund” law enforcement position.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and majority leader, took to the floor on Thursday morning to try to keep the focus on the immigration bill that was supposed to be a point of unity for the party to rally around. The Senate is set to vote on it later in the day.
“We are here today only, only because Democrats refuse to appropriate a single dollar for our border and immigration law enforcement,” Mr. Thune said.
Passage of that bill was expected after an hours-long vote-a-thon on Thursday that is expected to feature votes on the fund; an I.R.S. settlement shielding Mr. Trump, his business and family from audits; and other issues on which Democrats will seek to put Republicans in a political bind.
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