Trump now has $2 billion of taxpayer money to spend however he wants
Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
May 19, 2026
Yesterday the Department of Justice announced it is creating a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate what it calls victims of the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden. Acting attorney general Todd Blanche said the fund was “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
First of all, the insistence of Trump cronies that the Department of Justice and federal judges “weaponized” the law against them under former president Joe Biden—or under former president Barack Obama—is another example of regime officials blaming others for what they, themselves, are doing as Trump’s appointees try to manufacture criminal cases against those Trump considers his enemies. Trump’s attacks on the justice system are designed to convince his followers that he hasn’t really committed the crimes for which he has been indicted, and sometimes convicted, and they help to undermine faith in the rule of law, weakening our democracy.
Second of all, though, what this agreement is not, is a settlement of Trump’s case against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), although that term is being widely used to describe it. Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for damages after a contractor leaked his tax information—along with that of more than 400,000 other taxpayers—during his own first term after it became clear that the judge to whom the case was assigned seemed inclined to say that the case could not move forward because Trump could not be in charge of both sides of the suit.
The recognition that this is not a legal settlement is important. The Trump administration maintains it is doing what the Obama administration did in establishing a compensation fund to settle the case of Keepseagle v. Vilsack, when the Department of Justice established a $760 million fund as a settlement of a long-running class action suit charging that the Department of Agriculture had systematically discriminated against Indigenous farmers and ranchers.
Unlike the Keepseagle settlement, though, Trump’s fund is not part of a legal settlement.
In her order dismissing the suit, Judge Kathleen Williams noted that because Trump’s dropping of the suit “does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement, there is no settlement of record. Additionally, Defendants—federal agencies represented by the Department of Justice, which has an independent obligation to uphold the ‘public’s strong interest in knowing about the conduct of its Government and expenditure of its resources’ and the ‘fair administration of justice,’ neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”
Judge Williams was not alone in her skepticism about the deal. Andrew Duehren of the New York Times reported today that career lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service thought the agency should fight Trump’s suit, noting that the statute of limitations for such a suit had run out, the Justice Department has previously taken the position that people cannot sue the IRS for the actions of a contractor, and the Justice Department settled a similar case from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin with a public apology rather than a monetary payoff.
The document that purports to be a “settlement” has the words “settlement agreement” written in capital letters across the top of it, but the important word is “agreement.” It is not the settlement of a legal case: Trump dropped the case when it looked like the judge would throw it out.
It is simply an agreement between Trump and his own appointees at the Department of Justice.
And what an agreement it is. It says that Trump and his older sons who also brought (and dropped) the suit “will receive a formal apology from the United States, but will not receive any monetary payment or damages of any kind.” The agreement sets up a fund made up of five people, four of whom Trump’s hand-picked attorney general will choose. The fifth will be chosen “in consultation with congressional leadership,” but Trump can remove any one of them “without cause.”
That group has complete say over how it decides to grant or deny claims, but what it does will be confidential, overseen only by the Department of Justice. The fund ends in December 2028, just after the 2028 presidential election. If all the money isn’t spent by then, Trump gets to decide to which federal account it goes.
In essence then, the settlement gives Trump full control over almost $2 billion of taxpayer money to spend however he wants, without oversight. The Department of Justice document establishing the fund declares that “[o]nce the funds are deposited into the Designated Account, the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.”
On the agreement, the signature of the lawyer representing the United States is not that of acting attorney general Todd Blanche, but rather that of Stanley E. Woodward Jr., who has been a key defense attorney for people in Trump’s orbit accused of committing crimes, including Kash Patel, now FBI director; Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro; and Walt Nauta, the Trump aide indicted for his actions surrounding Trump’s retention of classified documents. Woodward also has represented a number of those charged with crimes relating to the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
With the announcement of the agreement, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer, Brian Morrissey, resigned.
The agreement says the amount dedicated to the fund “does not represent the value of any current claim by [Trump], but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims” and thus “is not taxable income” for the Trumps, “who receive no economic benefit” from the agreement. But the number the Justice Department released for the establishment of the fund puts the lie to the idea the number was random. It is $1.776 billion, linking the fund directly to the attempt of Trump and his cronies to destroy American democracy and begin it again, on their terms.
Famously, on January 6, 2021, newly-elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted, “Today is 1776.” During the attack, the rioters shouted “1776.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Greg Sargent of The New Republic that Trump and his loyalists “are figuring out a way to refund the January 6 militia, presumably to get them ready for the next round of battle.”
As political scientist Jonathan Ladd noted, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits compensation for those who engaged in insurrection. It says that “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States…, but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.” In his comments to Sargent, Raskin noted that if the fund pays off the January 6 rioters, the government will be doing precisely that: “using federal taxpayer dollars to compensate people who participated in insurrection.”
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today, facing senators for the first time since taking over for fired attorney general Pam Bondi. He refused to rule out paying money to rioters who had attacked police officers.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) noted that “an individual who after being pardoned by the president went on to molest two children, and that person actually tried to buy the silence of these children by saying that he would pay them some of the funds that he was hoping to get from your slush fund. Can you commit to making the rule so that that person is not eligible for a payout under this fund?” Blanche accused Van Hollen of “obviously lying” because no such fund existed until yesterday.
But, in fact, administration officials have talked about paying off the January 6 rioters since at least December 2024, and in June 2025 the Justice Department paid close to $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, killed by police as she tried to break into the House of Representatives.
Apparently based on those signals, Florida’s Andrew Paul Johnson, a January 6 rioter pardoned by Trump, was convicted earlier this year of sexually abusing two twelve-year-olds and trying to buy their silence by saying he would share some of the millions of dollars in restitution money he expected the Trump administration would pay him for his January 6 case. Van Hollen went on to read a series of news stories reporting that January 6 rioters expected payments.
Since Trump’s blanket pardon of nearly 1,600 of those convicted of crimes related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many of them have been rearrested for crimes. At the time of Johnson’s sentencing, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that Trump’s support has made the January 6 rioters “think they’re untouchable.”
Then, today, the plot got even thicker.
A document—this time signed by Blanche himself—amended the previous agreement to add: “The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES” Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization, “and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims” that, as of yesterday, “have been or could have been asserted” by the IRS against them or “related or affiliated individuals” or companies. In other words, Blanche is asserting a blanket promise to stop all IRS audits of Trump’s taxes and not to prosecute any crimes Trump, his family, his businesses, or his associates might have committed that crossed the IRS.
In 2024, Russ Buettner and Paul Kiel reported in the New York Times that Trump had been double-dipping his tax breaks for years. In her Civil Discourse, legal analyst Joyce White Vance called the document from the Department of Justice “a pardon on steroids.”
Vance commented that “[t]he optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal.” It’s probably worth remembering that, after years of pursuing the gangster Al Capone, the government finally managed to convict him of tax evasion. It appears Blanche and Trump’s loyalists are trying to make sure that can’t happen again, declaring any such investigations the “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
Holly Baxter of The Independent reported today that in the midst of all the chaos—including his war on Iran and rising fuel and food prices—Trump called a sudden, urgent press conference today as Blanche was testifying. But what was on his mind was not Iran, or prices, or his corrupt agreement with the Department of Justice. He wanted to talk about his ballroom.
Trump’s comments in that press conference have invited commentary suggesting he is turning the White House into a fortress. Describing the ballroom, he said: “Between the drone-proofing, the missile-proofing, we have ah, and the drone capacity upstairs, we can have all sorts of military—I hate to use the word snipers—but we have great sniper capacity. It’s built for our snipers, not enemy’s snipers, our snipers. And because of the height we get a very clear view of everything all over Washington.”
Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY
Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
May 17, 2026
Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity.
The “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” event is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to use the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to rewrite America’s history, turning it from one that champions the Enlightenment values of natural rights, equality, and self-government to one that requires Americans to accept that some people are better than others and to defer to their leaders.
This was not Congress’s intent when it established a bipartisan America250 commission in 2016 “to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.” But shortly after he took office for the second time in January 2025, Trump and his loyalists began to take over the planning for the nation’s birthday celebration.
As Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore of Mother Jones explained, right-wing operatives, including the company that staged the January 6, 2021, rally near the White House before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, jumped into the management of America250. But Trump chafed under the idea of congressional oversight and a pretense of bipartisanship, so in December 2025 he created his own new organization, Freedom 250.
Congress appropriated $150 million for the Department of the Interior to distribute to organizations for celebrations of the 250th. Of that money, America250 has been allocated $50 million and Freedom 250 has been allocated $100 million, although as of February, America250 had received only $25 million. Freedom 250 has also solicited donations in exchange for access to Trump. According to Karissa Waddick of USA Today, sponsors include ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Deloitte, Palantir, and IndyCar. Donors can also request anonymity.
As Kenneth P. Vogel, Lisa Friedman, and David A. Fahrenthold of the New York Times explained in February, Freedom 250 has planned events that showcase Trump rather than important events and themes in the nation’s history. Those include an IndyCar race around the National Mall, the construction of a triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial, an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn on Trump’s 80th birthday in June, and today’s “Rededicate 250” event.
President Trump was golfing today, but he, along with Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, spoke on video to the crowd, assuring them that the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke in person. All but one of the nineteen clergy and faith leaders who spoke were Christian, and most were right-wing evangelical Protestants.
The video of Trump the organizers played was the same one he recorded three weeks ago for “America Reads the Bible.” The passage was 2 Chronicles 7:11–22, one Christian nationalists believe marks the U.S. as a Christian nation, when the Lord says to Solomon: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
But the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that. In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the Senate just a decade after the Constitution went into effect, U.S. leaders said “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of” Muslims. They went on to say that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between” the U.S. and Tripoli.
Thomas Jefferson, the key author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, both wrote explicitly about the importance of keeping the government separate from religion. Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship.” “[T]he legitimate powers of government reach actions only,” he wrote, “[and] not [religious] opinions.”
In 1785, Madison explained that what was at stake in keeping the state and religion separate was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights, including those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution.
Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.
Rather than basing the United States on religion, the nation’s founders and framers, as well as Americans of later generations, sought to instill in Americans reverence for the nation’s core political values, especially the right of self-government and the checks and balances that made that self-government possible. In speeches and memorials, novels and poems, they emphasized the sacrifices Americans had made to protect the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
That civic religion unified the nation, but it did more than that. It also instructed Americans on the rights and duties of citizens who live in a nation that rests on “We the People.” They must think for themselves, question elected officials, and take an active role in their government.
Replacing Americans’ civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects.
The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.”
But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America.
From its origins in resistance to the British government, the story of America has been the opposite of obeying. It has been about questioning, debating, criticizing leaders, and working to build “a more perfect Union,” as the Framers charged us to do. The story of America is how those who believed in the principles of democracy, those ideals articulated by the Founders however imperfectly they lived them, have struggled to make the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our government, come true.
Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American
Margo “Live” at the Floyd Country Store – “In the Pines”
Hollace Oakes (fiddle) and Margo MacSweeney (banjo) perform the Appalachian folk classic “In the Pines” as part of their opening set for Grammy-winning artist Tim O’Brien concert at the historic Floyd Country Store