Unfit to Print: FUND FAREWELL
Plus: Graham Platner's dirty laundry & Dart derangement syndrome
Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.
Today we’re covering the death of the anti-weaponization fund, Graham Platner’s campaign implosion, and the latest in the Jaxson Dart-Donald Trump saga.
FUND FAREWELL
President Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” appears to be dead after the Department of Justice indicated they don’t have plans to appeal a federal judge’s ruling temporarily halting payments to victims of lawfare.
DOJ told the Daily Caller it “disagrees strongly” with the court decision halting the fund but will abide by the ruling. “This has become a distraction,” one administration official told Axios, while another said the president still “likes the fund,” suggesting the idea may not be permanently sidelined.
The administration could conceivably revive the fund after the expected June 12 final ruling on the fund’s legality, but all signs are currently pointing to it not continuing.
The fund was announced just two weeks ago after Trump settled his $10 billion lawsuit against the Treasury Department and IRS over the leak of his tax returns.
But it quickly ran into resistance from Democrats, a federal judge and even some Republicans, who raised concerns about using taxpayer dollars for payouts without clearer guardrails.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said shortly after the DOJ’s statement Monday that he wasn’t aware that the fund had been dropped. Meanwhile, Trump met with Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday morning. NOTUS reported that their conversation helped convince the president to drop the bill.
The fund’s collapse is a major setback for one of Trump’s most aggressive efforts to answer Biden-era weaponization claims with direct financial relief for alleged victims.
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