This is Brian Laird's Daily Politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, June 5th.

I'm Tiffany Hanson in for Brian today. Happy Friday, everybody. President Trump did not have a very great week, politically speaking.

Some in his own party are at least partially responsible for that. First, there was the motion put

forth in the Senate to kill the president's $1.8 billion fund for people who claim to be unfairly

prosecuted by the federal government.

Money of that fund was part of a bill seeking funding to the tune of $70 billion for the

administration's immigration crackdown. Opposition to the fund meant money for one of the

president's signature policy initiatives was also in question at one point. But that's not all. Also this week, a bipartisan majority in the House of the House of the president's signature policy initiatives was also in question at one point.

But that's not all. Also this week, a bipartisan majority in the House voted to end the war in Iran with a war powers resolution.

And Trump's endorsed candidate in the Iowa gubernatorial race lost to a challenger and some in his own party publicly questioned the qualifications of his

pick to be the director of national intelligence. With us to talk about all of this is Alana

Shore. She's the senior Washington editor at Semaphore. Hi, Alana. Welcome back. Thanks for

having me. Let's just start with this news of the day, which is this fact that the Senate did pass

this $70 billion GOP immigration bill. Now, if you can help me understand this, as I hear it,

there was an amendment attached to that bill, to the immigration bill, that included this $1.8 billion

slush fund that we're talking about. That was taken out. The bill was passed without any

additional amendments regarding that slush fund. Am I right? That's correct. Okay.

It took a long time to get there.

There was, I believe, more than two hours on one particular vote in which Republicans spent trying to twist the arm of one senator to support, you know, removing all language on the fund.

And that ultimately allowed, stay with me here,

a bunch of senators who actually haven't even criticized the fund, but are in tough re-election

races to effectively vote against it. So it was a bit of political theater that took a long time.

...