Beyond the brazen venality and disdain for the other branches of government, Trump’s attempted sham IRS lawsuit settlement and $1.776 billion slush fund raise the prospect of a new and frightening danger. That is the use of funds from the government to support and incentivize the same people who attacked our government on January 6 to do it again, as new elections loom, only now as well-funded, better- armed, paramilitary-like mobs.
Fortunately, one district court has temporarily enjoined the establishment of the settlement slush fund, and another is demanding explanations from the administration. The Acting Attorney General says the President is abandoning the slush fund, but as of this writing, nothing is in place to confirm its formal abandonment or to ensure that something like it will not resurface. No matter what happens, the fact that a President and his enablers have created this danger would, in more ordinary times, be grounds for impeachment. It should be an alarm bell for continual vigilance.
The Lawsuit Was a Pretext
Trump was suing and controlling the defense of a suit about something that occurred while Trump himself oversaw the government and for which the government would have no liability in the first place (a leak of Trump data by a private contractor, not the IRS) Trump waited to file the suit until he was back in office, with a DOJ and IRS he controlled. But by then the statute of limitations had expired.
Instead of moving to dismiss, Trump’s DOJ, led by an acting Attorney General who was recently Trump’s personal criminal lawyer, never made an appearance or filed any papers in the case. Then, shortly before it was ordered to file briefs justifying the case's existence, the DOJ dropped it. No “settlement” was presented to the court for approval.
The Settlement Fund Would Have Been a Sham
The administration pretends the settlement would be covered by a pre-existing Judgment Fund established by Congressional legislation. It needs this cover because the President has no independent power to appropriate funds from the treasury; that is a power reserved exclusively to Congress. (The Treasury Department’s general counsel resigned shortly after the settlement was announced.)
The Judgment Fund does not provide that cover. At most, it might allow compensation for people other than Trump harmed by the act at issue in the lawsuit Trump dropped—a leak of Trump’s data. But the slush fund did not even purport to be related to the data leak. It was to compensate people for unspecified, unrelated acts of government law-enforcement “weaponization.”
And then there is the Constitution. The terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same Constitution Trump relied on to pardon the intended fund beneficiaries who stormed our Capitol forbade the Government from compensating insurrectionists.
The “1776” Settlement Fund Was Set Up as A Slush Fund
There would be no Congressional or judicial oversight of this proposed giveaway of nearly $ 1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars. There was no requirement for public disclosure of how or to whom the funds would be disbursed. Implementation was entrusted to five people to be selected by Trump’s DOJ, all of whom the President could fire at will. All kinds of Trump cronies or MAGA supporters—even Trump enterprises-- might conceivably be beneficiaries. To get votes to approve the slush fund, the Acting Attorney General even presented a document to Republican Senators showing that several of them could have expected to be among its beneficiaries.
We Have Every Reason to Be Scared
A slush fund like this could be misused in many ways, but there is no mistaking its ultimate aim and objective. 1776 was used for a reason: it sounds patriotic, but it is a code word for the January 6 insurrectionists. A principal goal of this fund was always to find a convenient way to give generous rewards to the “victims” of the government’s defense of the Capitol on January 6— “victims” who are, in reality, the people who attacked it.
We should be very fearful of where the goal may lead. Every day, we hear the administration’s lies about election integrity. We see the tireless full-court press for voter suppression legislation. We have had foretastes already of the deployment of the National Guard, ICE, and even the postal service to turn away voters and undermine states’ electoral processes.
Controlling sources of compensation, whether through the slush fund settlement or some other means, gives Trump a new tool from the autocrat’s playbook: rewards for the insurrectionists and encouragement for them to do it again. This time, they would be primed in advance and would have other administration-appointed allies. This time, compensation from the slush fund would allow them to be well-resourced and well-armed. This time, they might succeed.
We may think that the courts, Congress, and public outcry from the rest of us have prevented this scenario from happening. But even if the slush fund is abandoned, the proposal has only whetted the insurrectionists’ appetite for generous compensation, as some already have; the lawsuit-settlement maneuvers leave no doubt about the President’s appetite to facilitate it. We are right to take heart in temporary victories. But we should be appalled that kowtowing to unitary executive power has allowed us to even approach the point where any of this could conceivably occur.
James B. Kobak, Jr., has been a lawyer in New York for over fifty years. He is a former President of the New York County Lawyers Association and currently chairs the National Center for Access to Justice. He prepared this article as a volunteer with Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.