{"id":862778,"date":"2026-06-12T18:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T18:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862778\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T18:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T18:38:13","slug":"judge-extends-block-on-1-8b-trump-anti-weaponization-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862778\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge extends block on $1.8B Trump ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) \u2014 A federal judge agreed on Friday to extend indefinitely a court-ordered block on the Trump administration\u2019s creation and operation of a $1.8 billion settlement fund<\/a> for compensating people who claim to be victims of a weaponized government.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress<\/a> that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot. But plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys aren\u2019t satisfied by Blanche\u2019s assurances that the fund won\u2019t move forward.<\/p>\n

Neither was U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who ruled that the \u201cAnti-Weaponization Fund\u201d will remain blocked until further notice from the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe (government\u2019s) mootness argument, in my view, doesn\u2019t go anywhere,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has not publicly and unequivocally endorsed the fund\u2019s cancellation. He has continued to express support for it in remarks to reporters.<\/p>\n

Brinkema gave the parties a week to negotiate an agreement for Trump administration officials, including Blanche, to submit a sworn declaration that the administration won\u2019t revive the fund. <\/p>\n

Brinkema previously agreed<\/a> to temporarily block the administration from proceeding with the fund for at least two weeks. Her May 29 order was due to expire on Friday.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Republican administration created the fund to resolve his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.<\/p>\n

Plaintiffs who sued to block fund payouts argue that the government can\u2019t legally divert taxpayer money into what they argue is a slush fund for compensating Trump\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n

In a separate case on Wednesday, a different judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a government watchdog\u2019s parallel request<\/a> for a court order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from forging ahead with the fund. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he accepts Blanche\u2019s representation that the fund is now moot.<\/p>\n

Leon had asked Justice Department attorney Andrew Block why Blanche doesn\u2019t formally rescind his May 18 order establishing the fund. Block said he didn\u2019t know. He still didn\u2019t have an answer to that question when Brinkema posed it two days later. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge gap in the record that we don\u2019t have an answer to that question,\u201d said Brinkema, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.<\/p>\n

Block said he couldn\u2019t provide her with a \u201cconcrete answer\u201d because he doesn\u2019t have direct access to Blanche.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I would be doing is speculating,\u201d he told the judge.<\/p>\n

In the Virginia case, attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward asked for an order to temporarily suspend the fund\u2019s implementation and stop the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts from it.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs include a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest. Also named as plaintiffs are the government watchdog Common Cause; the city of New Haven, Connecticut; and the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers. <\/p>\n

Even before the Trump administration said it was dropping the fund, the Justice Department did not form the five-member commission that would decide on payout criteria, so no money was paid out nor claims accepted.<\/p>\n

Many of the Republican president\u2019s allies are opposed to compensating rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol<\/a> on Jan. 6, 2021, after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. In May, however, Blanche wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility that Capitol rioters who engaged in violence could be eligible to apply for payments from the fund. <\/p>\n

Trump issued mass pardons to Capitol rioters on his first day back in the White House last year. More than 1,500 people were charged in the Jan. 6 attack before Trump erased every case with his sweeping act of clemency.<\/p>\n

Democracy Forward attorney Pooja Boisture said reviving the fund would irreparably harm the lawsuit\u2019s plaintiffs. A court order to block it wouldn\u2019t harm the government if the administration is truly abandoning it, as Blanche testified, Boisture told the judge, who agreed with that argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) \u2014 A federal judge agreed on Friday to extend indefinitely a court-ordered block on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":862779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[351827,3881,7096,2738,356,2734,12785,84,69,57,82,336,16563,50,80,246235,95,313941,13210,89,61,67,370,132,68,906,93],"class_list":["post-862778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-andrew-block","tag-ap-top-news","tag-bill-clinton","tag-connecticut","tag-courts","tag-ct-state-wire","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-joe-biden","tag-lawsuits","tag-new-haven","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-richard-j-leon","tag-todd-blanche","tag-trump-hub","tag-trump-lawsuits","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-virginia","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116738595719287269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}