The Anti-Weaponization Fund was, by every official account, finished.

A federal judge froze it. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House Appropriations subcommittee on May 19: “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” The Trump administration told Congress the fund was dead.

On June 5, the Senate moved on. It brought the fund along.

Senators passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package 52–47, funding ICE and CBP through fiscal year 2029. Embedded in the bill: the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, untouched and uncapped. Senators from both parties offered amendments to ban or limit it. Every one failed. The fund that wasn’t moving forward is now law.

How It Started

In 2019, a former IRS contractor leaked Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump filed a $10 billion civil lawsuit against the IRS. The settlement, announced this year, didn’t result in a government payment to Trump. It resulted in the government creating a fund to compensate others who claimed they were similarly targeted.

The fund would process claims from anyone alleging they were victimized by government “weaponization” under the Biden administration. Eligibility criteria were broad and vague. Legal experts called the arrangement unprecedented: a sitting president’s personal lawsuit producing a taxpayer-funded compensation pool administered by his own Justice Department.

The Problem Nobody Could Answer

“We are not moving forward with the fund, period.”

Acting AG Todd Blanche — House Appropriations Subcommittee, May 19, 2026

Blanche was asked, repeatedly, whether January 6 rioters who attacked police officers could receive payouts. He could not promise they couldn’t. The same applied to Trump campaign donors and to Republican lawmakers whose phone records had been seized by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith. No guardrails existed.

A federal court froze the fund before any claims were processed. Blanche declared it over. Then it appeared in a $70 billion border security bill — a context designed to make opposition politically costly.

Every Senate amendment to remove or limit the fund failed. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the bill.

The legislation now moves to the House.

The fund moves with it.