It’s official: It pays to be an insurrectionist

At 10:24 in the morning, the Department of Justice delivered another blow to our country when it bent to corruption and chose to reward political violence. The $1.776 billion slush fund for Trump's enablers, including the January 6 insurrectionists, was made official. They named it "The Anti-Weaponization Fund," and they chose the number 1776 on purpose. They are branding corruption as patriotism. This may very well be one of, if not the most dangerous abuses of power in the history of our country.

Based on the events of 5-18-2026

The Breakdown:

• The DOJ officially established the "Anti-Weaponization Fund," also called "The President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission," funded with $1.776 billion
• The money comes from the Treasury's Judgment Fund, which the DOJ calls "a perpetual appropriation," with no congressional vote required
• A five-member commission appointed by Trump's former criminal defense attorney, Acting AG Todd Blanche, will hand out the money
• Quarterly reports go only to the Attorney General. No requirement to inform Congress or the public. Audits are optional.
• Payouts run through December 15, 2028, conveniently covering the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election
• The nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol can file claims
• Trump's $10 billion IRS lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice days before Judge Kathleen Williams could rule on whether it was even legitimate
• Trump's lawyers argued the dismissal was "self-executing" and that "no judicial analysis is appropriate," language designed to bypass the judge entirely
• Senator Ron Wyden called it "one of the most corrupt acts in American political history"
• CREW called it "the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency"
• 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief warning of "the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history"
• Why this fund is a signal to anyone willing to commit political violence on Trump's behalf that they will be protected legally and financially
• How this is January 6, version 2.0, and it is now funded
• Alligator Alcatraz cost nearly $1 billion to operate before being shut down this week, at $1.2 million per day with $850 per bed
• The Trump administration is proposing $2 billion per year to rebuild the disease surveillance systems we used to access through the WHO for a fraction of that cost
• Why every contract goes to someone in his orbit
• Why the economic squeeze and the voting squeeze are the same squeeze
• Hennepin County filed criminal charges against ICE agent Christian Castro for the January 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis
• A nationwide warrant has been issued, and the record does not go away
• The New York Times/Siena poll out this morning has Trump at 37 percent approval

He is bleeding the American people dry so we cannot afford to fight back. Desperate people cannot push back, donate, fund legal challenges, or run for office. The squeeze on us is not collateral damage. The squeeze is the whole point. And the ground is shifting under his feet faster than he can keep up. That gives us a real chance in November.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm Heather Clainey Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. Yesterday was a dark day for America. At 1024 yesterday morning, the Department of Justice delivered another blow to our country when it bent to corruption and chose to reward political violence. In a press release posted on the official DOJ website, the $1.776 billion slash fund for Trump's enablers, including the January 6th insurrectionists, was made official. Loud alarms were raised when this story first leaked. And now that it has been confirmed, we are watching the federal government openly transform into a loyalty machine for an authoritarian movement. They named it the Anti-Weaponization Fund. On official paperwork, they are also calling it the President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission. At least that's what was leaked. And it will be funded with $1.776 billion. And I say that again because that number is not an accident. They chose 1776 on purpose. They are branding corruption as patriotism and trying to dress a slush fund in the language of American independence, so that we think this is a good thing. Good for our country and good for our fellow Americans. The money comes from the Treasury's Judgment Fund, which the DOJ press release openly calls a perpetual appropriation, meaning a permanent, ongoing pool of taxpayer dollars that the Justice Department can draw from at will. Now, Congress never voted on this, even though the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. And to stack corruption on top of corruption, the five-member commission that will hand out the money will be appointed by the Attorney General, or in this case, the acting attorney general, Trump's own criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche. The President can also remove any member without cause. Quarterly reports go only to the Attorney General with no requirement to inform Congress or the public. Audits are optional. The Commission can issue payouts through December 15th, 2028, which conveniently covers the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Anyone who claims they were harmed by what the administration calls weaponization and lawfare can file a claim, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump, his sons, and the Trump organization are technically barred from direct payments. Entities associated with Trump are not, which means Trump could still benefit financially. The legal maneuver that made this possible is its own kind of fraud. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS earlier this year. Federal judge Kathleen Williams had already questioned whether Trump and the IRS were sufficiently adverse for the case to even be legitimate, because Trump is the president and the IRS is an agency he controls. She had ordered both sides to justify why the case should be allowed to proceed. And then, yesterday, days before her deadline, Trump's lawyers filed a notice dismissing the lawsuit with prejudice, which means it can never be filed again, and they argued the dismissal was self-executing and that no judicial analysis is appropriate. That language was specifically designed to bypass Judge Williams entirely. She did not get to rule or weigh in. The case was made to disappear before she could decide whether it was legal. And the price of making it disappear was the $1.776 billion fund. This may very well be one of, if not the most dangerous abuses of power in the history of our country. Senator Ron Wyden called it one of the most corrupt acts in American political history. Senator Elizabeth Warren called it an insane level of corruption. And Representative Raskin pointed out that only Congress has the constitutional authority to appropriate money. And Congress never voted on this. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called it the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency. 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief warning of the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history. This is a constitutional crisis. Those are my words. This fund is not compensation. It is not reconciliation. It is not justice. It is a standing infrastructure for rewarding political violence on Trump's behalf. And until yesterday, if you stormed the Capitol for him, you were gambling on a pardon. Trump delivered that. He pardoned the January 6th defendants in his first week back in office. But pardons came after the fact. They were not guaranteed, and there was always a risk. As of yesterday, that risk has been replaced with an investment opportunity. If you commit political violence on his behalf in the past, you can now file a claim. If you commit it on his behalf between now and the 2028 elections, and even through December of that year, you can file a claim then too. This is a signal to everyone who has ever wanted to break the law on his behalf, to interfere in our elections, and to stop the legal and constitutional transfer of power. Trump will protect you legally and financially. And he has a fund to back that. Because he would never use his own money. And this is just one chapter of the playbook Trump is following to completely destroy what America used to be. This is the section about rewarding loyalty, protecting enablers, and teaching the entire country that allegiance to the regime is now more valuable than the rule of law. Because when you think about how a government is supposed to work, it's about shared resources. We pool our money through taxes. We do it because there are protections and services we cannot buy alone. It is not unlike shopping at Costco. You combined your resources with other people, and together you get access to things you could not afford individually. That's roads, schools, disease surveillance, national parks, Medicare, a military disaster response. The government is supposed to take what we pull together and use it to deliver protections and enrichments that work for us. That is the entire point. And Trump is using that pool against us. The anti-weaponization fund is our money. He is taking the money we pulled together to defend ourselves against harm. And he is using it to pay the people who attacked us on January 6th. The math is that simple and it's that grotesque. This is the same pattern we have been watching for over a year. Look at Alligator Alcatraz, which the Trump administration announced this week is finally closing. That facility should never have been built in the first place. And when it was first announced, it was estimated at $450 million for a full year of operation. And by the time it shut down, the operation costs had ballooned to nearly $1 billion. Court records showed a cost of $1.2 million per day to run, with a $3 million per day burn rate at its earliest weeks. The per bed cost reached $850 per day, more than four times the cost of standard ICE detentions, which are just as disgusting, just cheaper. That money went to the companies hired to operate it. It went to Trump's enablers. The money was not spent on anything for the public. It was funneled to private companies and individuals, and then the whole project was shut down. And it's not just projects that he hires his own people for, like the Reflecting Pool. It is also programs that he has cut, like USAID and taking us out of the World Health Organization. The United States formally withdrew us on January 22nd of this year. We were roughly 18% of the WHO's total funding. We had access to the largest disease surveillance network on the planet at a fraction of what it would cost to build it alone. And Trump pulled us out. And the same administration is now proposing to spend $2 billion per year to duplicate the disease surveillance systems we used to have access through our World Health Organization membership. $2 billion per year to rebuild from scratch what we already had. And once again, that $2 billion will not go to public health. It will go to contractors, vendors, and loyalists, branded as a new initiative, delivered through a private supply chain that Trump's allies could profit from. The pattern is so consistent. Every contract goes to someone in his orbit. That is the theft pipeline. We pay in, he takes out. He hands it to enablers and enriches himself. And here's what yesterday has clarified more than any other moment of his second term. The squeeze on us is not collateral damage. The squeeze is the whole point. Every single thing Trump is doing is designed to make it so that we cannot fight back. Because we can't afford to. He is bleeding the American people dry so that he can concentrate the wealth at the top. He wants the people at the bottom and those in the middle to be too scared, exhausted, and desperate to protest, vote, and organize. Because desperate people cannot push back. Desperate people cannot afford to donate to politicians. Desperate people cannot fund legal challenges or run for office. And desperate people cannot pay attention, push back, or do anything except keep their heads down and try to survive. And I want to add something here. Because even the people who think they are at the top or close to the top, he's coming for them too. He will bleed them dry. He will start at the bottom. He will work through those that are living paycheck to paycheck. Then he will go to the middle class and the upper middle class, and then he will go to his fellow enablers who he's grown tired of. He doesn't see anybody as someone to be loyal to. He will take over everybody, like every authoritarian does. Nobody is safe. And that is the greater goal of this whole administration, not just Trump. They are trying to grind us down until resistance is impossible. Right now, Trump has a team of people sitting around the clock creating ways to disenfranchise us, to take our money, to use taxpayer money against us, to make sure our needs are not met. They're taking away access to healthcare, they have gutted the Voting Rights Act, they are tightening ID requirements, restricting mail and ballots, and they are just getting started. The economic squeeze and the voting squeeze are the same squeeze. And when you understand that, the anti-weaponization fund stops looking like a one-time corruption story, and it starts looking like a launch pad. Because the fund covers the 2026 midterms and it covers the 2028 presidential election, it runs through December 15th, 2028. Trump is preparing for the next coup attempt, and he is preparing it with a budget line. The Trump loyalist base is so far down the tunnel of believing only what Trump tells them that they no longer recognize the truth. They will believe whatever he says about the election. And we already know what he is going to say. He is going to tell them it was stolen. He is going to point at the results and call them fraud. He is going to say the same lies he said in 2020 and the same lies he said in 2024 when he was preparing to lose. And this time he is going to add something new. He's going to tell his followers that they have a pardon waiting if they act on his behalf. And he is going to tell them that they will get paid through the anti-weaponization fund so they do not have to worry about their livelihoods. Their families are their futures. He will offer them protection, vindication, and money. That is what he made official yesterday. This is the January 6th, version 2.0. And now it is funded. And this is why the power of the states is so important right now and in the future, because earlier yesterday in Minnesota, Hennepin County filed criminal charges against ICE agent Christian Castro. Four counts of second-degree assault. One count of falsely reporting a crime. A warrant has been issued for his arrest, and the charges relate to the January 14th shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa Cellas, a Venezuelan national who was shot in the leg by federal officers in Minneapolis. A federal immigration agent has been criminally charged in connection with Operation Metro Surge, and it happened yesterday. On the same day, the federal government created a $1.776 billion fund to pay for political violence on Trump's behalf. Now, even if Castro's case ends up being moved to federal court where he could try to claim immunity under the supremacy clause, what happened yesterday still matters. A nationwide warrant has been issued for his arrest. The criminal complaint is filed in public. His decision to lie under oath is documented, and that record does not go away. Every ICE agent watching this needs to understand. Even if you avoid prison, you do not avoid the record. Your name follows you. Your children read about it. Your grandchildren will read about it. The country will always remember who chose to follow the unlawful order and who refused. So before anyone else carries out the next raid, shooting, and cover-up, they should think long and hard about whether the paycheck is worth the rest of their lives being defined by this moment of cruelty, because history will not be kind to the people who chose that side. And the polling release yesterday shows the ground is shifting under Trump's feet faster than he can keep up. The New York Times Siena poll that was published yesterday morning has Trump at a 37% approval. People are becoming more and more disgusted by his destruction and dismantling of our country. And that gives us a real chance in November to limit his power grab and start holding him and his enablers responsible for everything they have done. And that is why I still have hope for America, and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day. And together, we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.