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.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.