Just So We’re All Clear

 Axios, a/k/a The Mouth of Sauron:

The Trump administration plans to drop its controversial $1.8 billion "weaponization" fund the president sought to compensate alleged victims of prosecutorial conduct under his predecessor, two senior administration officials told Axios.

"It's dead for now," one of the sources said.

As they say in those annoying ads about leaving property to someone after your death without a will: “Doesn’t count.”

Everyone seems to be interpreting this as a vow by the administration to end the fund entirely. It is not

It’s a commitment to abide by a court ruling that *temporarily* blocked the weaponization fund until next week while litigation over disbursements is ongoing ... https://t.co/ytDFzFO9yw

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) June 1, 2026

Pay attention to the DOJ, not some “anonymous source” in the administration.

The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with…

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) June 1, 2026

The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.

Does that sound like it’s over?

There's no order not to comply.

There's an order to not fund it for now, and an order to explain whether @ASGWoodward defrauded the court, which, if it happened, happened with the attempt.

Please stop pretending this is about courts. https://t.co/SMBVpYqlFp

— EU says Elon should not lie abt my blue check (@emptywheel) June 1, 2026

As emptywheel points out:

Neither order tells the government that they can’t set up a Terrorist Slush Fund (though Williams could find that Woodward and Epshteyn engaged in fraud by even attempting to do so).

Nevertheless, Trump’s minions got Marc Caputo and Jake Sherman to claim that the judges’ rulings were the reason Trump decided to halt, “for now,” the Terrorist Slush Fund.

What they’re saying: “We’re planning to respect the courts,” one of the administration officials said.

“This has become a distraction,” a second administration official said. “The president believes government was weaponized against people — it wasn’t just him. But this isn’t the time and vehicle for it.”

So: not dead. This is just a head fake to get the Senate through reconciliation.

And once Trump has his brownshirts funded for the next several years, he’ll revert back to paying off terrorists, as an update to Caputo’s post describes he might do.

“The plan right now is to halt it. But the president likes the fund, he believes in it. So nothing is final until it’s final,” one of the sources said.

The lesson is: don’t rely on the courts, or Axios, or the Administration. Tell Congress to stop this shit. Vote ‘em out if they won’t.

Epilogue:

"Maybe you have some information about what Speaker Mike Johnson might have said to the president when he was at the White House a little bit earlier today," Tur asked Sherman, referring to the recent meeting on the status of the reconciliation bill, which Republicans have debated updating with language limiting the fund.

Sherman acknowledged he didn't know exactly what was discussed there about the fund, but that his sources tell him "the administration is going to announce through DOJ that they are going to comply with the court order ... but the administration plans to say they plan to take no further action."

Despite that, he argued, this "is not going to be an immediate salve for Capitol Hill" because Trump could simply decide at a later date to restart it up again when the court order expires. "They're going to want to put language in ... the reconciliation legislation, which funds ICE and CBP, to make sure that the administration can't, at some point, return and do this again."

In other words, he said, Republicans will take a "trust, but verify" attitude and "put teeth into legislation to make sure that the administration doesn't, in a couple of months, say, actually, we've changed our minds. We're going to go back and set up this $1.8 billion fund."

Ultimately, though, he said, this is probably good news for Republicans because the administration's surrender means they can move forward with the broader reconciliation bill.

"This was the only path, Katy, to get this done," he said. "The administration would have been frozen up here for weeks, if not months ... if this weaponization fund was put in place, they would have had to deal with this on every single bill that the House and Senate were looking to pass." As a result, Trump had "no other option" but to throw in the towel on the slush fund.

I’ll believe it when it passes into law.