Donald Trump just got his biggest immigration win of the term, but only after his own Republicans spent all day fighting over a White House ballroom and a bizarre 'payback' fund.

Right, here's what went down in Washington on Friday, via cbinewstv:

The Senate finally signed off on a massive $70bn package to bankroll Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol for the rest of Trump's term. It's a huge victory for him on his signature issue, and it comes after months of bitter rows.

The bill now heads to the House, where Republican leaders want it on Trump's desk by early next week.

This whole fight was born out of that record partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. Democrats refused to fund ICE without limits on tactics like raids in schools and hospitals, and on officers wearing masks. Republicans told them no, and instead rammed the money through using the budget reconciliation process so they could bypass the Democrats entirely — if they could keep their own side in line.

That’s where it got messy.

Senators went through a marathon amendment session — the infamous Washington 'vote-a-rama' — and it turned into a public airing of Republican nerves. Two things kept coming up:

A $1.8bn Justice Department "anti-weaponisation" fund that critics slammed as a slush fund for Trump allies — potentially even people convicted over the 2021 Capitol attack.

The $1bn that had been earmarked for security around Trump's planned White House ballroom.

The ballroom cash was already stripped out of the final bill, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told senators the weaponisation fund was dead. Trump didn't help, calling it "beautiful" and saying he'd have to "ask the lawyers" if it was really gone.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis summed up the Republican panic perfectly: "When you're explaining, you're losing. There's no way to explain the $1.776 fund. So the only way you can explain it is explain that you got rid of it."[billion]

The amendments didn't kill the immigration bill, but plenty of Republicans broke ranks to vote against the fund, against any future ballroom money, and against Trump's plan to put a loyalist housing official in charge of US intelligence.

Democrats used the chaos to try and redirect the cash towards housing and the cost of living, arguing the GOP was prioritising deportations over people's bills. In a separate dig at Trump, several Republicans even joined Democrats to push new Russia sanctions and $8bn in military financing loans for Kyiv.

Republicans say this was simply about fixing the hole left by that earlier DHS stopgap, which funded FEMA, the Coast Guard, the TSA and the Secret Service through 30 September — but deliberately left out ICE and Border Patrol.

So yes, Trump walks away with the money and the headline win on immigration. But the vote also showed the same problem he's had all year: even with full control of Congress, his own party's unease about his more personal priorities keeps turning routine wins into public rebellions.

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