But in one of those cases, a judge has told the Justice Department to halt all activity related to the fund until there’s been more briefing.

The case was filed by a semi-random collection of people and organizations, including a former AUSA who headed up the prosecution of January 6th insurrectionists (and who Trump fired) named Andrew Floyd, but also a California professor who was arrested for protesting ICE nonsense, the city of New Haven in Connecticut, the National Abortion Federation, and Common Cause. Each has credible reasons to try to stop this slush fund from coming into existence.

The complaint details the MAGA obsession with the mostly false claims that Democrats weaponized the government against MAGA:

The creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund follows directly from President Trump and his allies’ longstanding and frequent accusations that Democrats used the government and the legal system as political weapons.

For example, in June 2023, after DOJ charged then-former President Trump with mishandling classified documents, Trump posted a video on social media exclaiming, “This is warfare for the law . . . . Our country is going to hell, and they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI.”

Republican lawmakers quickly adopted the same language. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted that “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” and then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pledged on Twitter that House Republicans would “hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

Even before his election to a second term, members of President Trump’s campaign spent months developing a scheme to compensate those of Trump’s political allies who were purportedly the victims of “weaponization.”

It further notes that while MAGA keeps whining about weaponization, it appears to be doing far more weaponization of the government than anything Democrats have ever even been accused of doing. And, they point out that the Trump administration (while weaponizing the government) only seems to point to faux claims of weaponization by Democrats, refusing to even suggest their own side has ever done anything wrong and abused the levers of power:

Notably, none of the administration’s efforts to combat “weaponization” include any mention or review of abuses of government authority by Republican officials.

But Trump himself has used “the levers of government power” in unprecedented ways “to target individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons.” See Ex. A ¶ II.C.

During his first term, Trump broke historical norms by being the first president to reject the post-Watergate firewall that separated the White House’s political decisions from independent DOJ criminal investigations.

In his second term, Trump has been arrogating and using power in increasingly unprecedented and abusive ways to carry out his personal political agenda.

For example, DOJ has sought indictments against Trump’s political opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and six Democratic members of Congress. 23 It has also launched investigations into Trump’s critics like California Senator Adam Schiff, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Special Counsel Jack Smith. 24 Trump revoked the security clearances of 50 people he accused of aiding former President Biden’s presidential campaign, including former top intelligence officials. Exec. Order No. 14152, Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information, 90 Fed. Reg. 8343 (Jan. 20, 2025).

The complaint shows how this is nothing more than a slush fund for often law-breaking Trump allies:

Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6 insurrection, said he planned to apply to the Fund. He said that he assumed he could get between $2 and $5 million.

Jenny Cudd, another January 6 defendant, told reporters that “all J6ers will apply for restitution,” noting that news of the Anti-Weaponization Fund was widely circulating among January 6 defendants on social media and “group chats.”

Caroline Engelbrecht, a prominent election denier and founder of True the Vote, a group that amplified conspiracies that the 2020 election was stolen, stated: “I would put myself and True the Vote … squarely in that camp who have been targeted, and we have the receipts to show just how deep that targeting ran. And hopefully, we will see some level of compensation.”

Several attorneys aligned with Trump’s allies have confirmed that they, too, have already received many requests about submitting claims to the Fund.

For example, Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which defends and advocates on behalf of abortion opponents prosecuted under the FACE Act, said his group is “actively exploring available avenues to seek compensation for clients who were unfairly targeted by politically motivated government overreach.”

The judge declined to formally grant a temporary restraining order, but functionally accomplished the same thing by ordering that the DOJ cannot do anything regarding the fund until after there’s been more briefing on the details here.

Because full briefing of the issue will enhance the ability of the Court to make a sound decision. plaintiffs’ Expedited Motion, [Dkt. No. 30], is DENIED and defendants’ request for additional time is GRANTED; however, to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the AntiWeaponization Fund (hereinafter, “Fund”) while plaintiffs’ Motion is pending, it is hereby ORDERED that defendants be and are ENJOINED from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund;

The judge set an aggressive briefing schedule: the government must file its opposition by next Friday, plaintiffs reply by the following Wednesday, with a hearing shortly after.

This is a temporary hold, not a permanent win. The government gets to file its opposition, there will be briefing, there will be a hearing. The fund could still come into existence. But for now, at least one federal judge decided that maybe — maybe — the DOJ shouldn’t be disbursing $1.776 billion to Proud Boys leaders and election deniers before anyone’s had a chance to argue why that’s an extraordinarily bad idea.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Then it went to where the real bias has always existed: US law enforcement agencies. It promised to tie their systems in with those deployed by private citizens. It attempted to talk Ring (another company with too-close ties to cops) into bed, before shitting the shared bed in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers during the most recent Super Bowl.

Flock’s reputation had already been in steep decline prior to the Super Bowl debacle, but that aborted arranged marriage saw its shady doings exposed to millions who previously weren’t aware there was a surveillance camera company even less concerned about rights and privacy than Ring.

Flock was doing things even Ring wouldn’t do. It was telling citizens one thing and giving cops something else entirely: a nationwide surveillance network with built-in ALPR (automatic license plate reader) capability with zero oversight. Flock said it would prevent federal abuse of local law enforcement camera networks and then did absolutely nothing to prevent this. Meanwhile, cop shops were using Flock’s cameras to track people across the country — you know, dangerous criminals like the woman (at the request of her abusive ex) who left Texas to seek an abortion in another state.

All of these concerns have resulted in Flock losing plenty of public market share. Sure, it may still be doing brisk business in the private market, but government contracts are where the real money is. Flock can’t seem to stop the bleeding. Multiple local governments have terminated contracts with Flock and plenty more are considering doing the same, especially now that it’s shady dealings have been called out by federal lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden.

Still, the company has its supporters. And they’re exactly the sort of people you’d expect them to be. A public meltdown by a public servant is the subject of this excellent reporting by Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Here’s a bit of background, which also contains some super-useful background on Flock’s PR team.

Like in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock’s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera (Texas). In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use. 

Dial in on a couple of things. First, there’s the fact that former public servants are now running flack for Flock. Second, there’s the mention of Bandera, Texas city council member Jeff Flowers, who’s apparently so smitten of Flock that he’s willing to go full batshit when confronted by public criticism. Bandera’s city council voted 3-2 to end its contract with Flock in response to public resistance, which included repeated vandalizing of the town’s eight cameras.

Flowers apparently couldn’t handle this vote or the resistance that generated it. He went right off the rails, almost immediately:

After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites.

Nice. This deep disconnection from reality wasn’t limited to comments made during the vote. He also posted an op-ed (subtitled “Bandera Declaration of Independence”) in the local newspaper, in which he ignorantly continued to claim that rejection of government surveillance was a hypocritical stance taken by people who voluntarily own smartphones and access the internet.

Flowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly ‘private,’ we must leave our smartphones at the city line.” He will also propose “a total ban on outward facing cameras,” and “a total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.”

Flowers is the kind of idiot that’s almost smart enough to be dangerous. But he’s not quite there yet. It’s one thing to “share” information with service providers, apps, and online services. It’s quite another to be forced to share information with the government. While the government may actually demand less information in exchange for services than most internet service providers, people are far more willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience when the recipient is another private party.

Pretending these two things are equivalent is lazy at best, and totalitarian at worst. They’re not the same thing. And even if the collection of data by third parties might result in warrantless access of this data by the government, very few citizens are going to affirmatively choose to surrender data to the government, even if it’s nothing more than an always-on collection of their movements via automatic license plate readers.

To be sure, there are people working for Flock who think Flowers is worthy of a high five or two, if not a permanent position in the PR department. They’re no smarter than Flowers is. This is not a win for Flock. This is another unforced error by surveillance state enthusiasts who are voluntarily creating more negative press for Flock. Flock loses. Flowers rants. Flock loses again. If either party was truly smart, they’d be distancing themselves from each other.

You are to ignore that the FCC has no actual authority to even be proposing this. The TV Oversight Management Board is an independent, industry-created coalition that manages the TV ratings system without legal influence by the FCC.

The FCC’s justification for these demanded changes are based entirely on the false claims of a bunch of anonymous “parents” who may or may not even exist:

“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being
included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”

Of course these issues have only been made “controversial” by Republicans, who have taken brutal and ignorant aim at a very small segment of the population in order to actively hurt marginalized people and divide, misinform, and disorient the electorate. Like gay marriage was during the George W. Bush administration, trans rights are an effective wedge issue that exploits public fear, bigotry, and ignorance to redirect public attention away from things like, say, historic levels of corruption.

The idea that media and tech companies are actively flooding the population with a bunch of dangerous “gender non-binary programming” aimed specifically at children is a popular Republican lie designed to agitate and mislead, but there’s no evidence to support the claim. Still it pops up a lot; like Josh Hawley’s false claim at a recent hearing that Netflix is pushing trans-heavy kids programming.

Understandably the proposal didn’t sit well with organizations like GLAAD, which pointed out that it’s grotesque, ignorant, and dangerous to conflate gender fluidity with obscenities, drug abuse, and violence:

“And the Public Notice does not state how a change in TV ratings will impact gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters and stories on TV. Applying warning labels to programs with transgender and nonbinary characters and stories incorrectly equates them to programming with coarse and crude language, sexual situations, or violence. 

This makes life harder for LGBTQ Americans. It sends a message that the FCC can pressure the TVOMB to add even more ratings that stigmatize other diverse groups.”

A broader coalition of 40+ public interest groups ranging from Free Press to Public Knowledge were equally disgusted by the proposal:

“This is Carr’s latest attempt to shut down speech and shift U.S. public discourse to please President Trump. Television-program ratings are wholly outside of the FCC’s control, and the use of this public-comment procedure to coerce change raises constitutional concerns. The FCC should abandon this contrived and morally repugnant exercise.”

Part of Carr’s actual job at the FCC is supposed to involve protecting the public from corporate power, whether it’s a telecom monopoly that leverages corruption to rip off broadband customers, to a cable company using sleazy fees to jack up the cost of TV service. Carr’s not interested in that. He’s repeatedly given large companies free reign to engage in whatever consumer abuses they see fit.

Carr likely figures that the more time the public spends freaking out about nonexistent trans kids’ programming, the less time they have to realize that he’s been captured by industry to the detriment of everyone.

Instead of doing his job, Carr’s obsessed with being a weird little zealot and authoritarian lapdog, whose post-FCC legacy, if he has one, will be one of ignorance, censorship, distraction, and fear.

But it’s largely been a European effort thus far. That’s why I think it’s worth noting that the movement is now starting to gain traction in America as well. In California, where the Protect Our Games Act is seeking to add some of the same protections for consumers, and was constructed under the advice of Stop Killing Games.

California’s Protect Our Games Act, as currently written, would require digital game publishers who cut off support for an online game to either provide a full refund to players or offer an updated version of the game “that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.” The act would also require publishers to notify players 60 days before the cessation of “services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game.”

As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes.

And here’s the meat of the bill’s language itself:

1. (A) 60 days before a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall communicate all of the following information to purchasers and prospective purchasers of the digital game:

(i) The date on which services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game will cease.

(ii) Any services that will no longer be provided by the operator.

(iii) Any game features that will no longer be available to the purchaser.

(iv) Any known security risks that may result from the cessation of services.

(v) How the purchaser can continue to use the digital game, or obtain a refund, pursuant to paragraph (2).

(B) A digital game operator shall communicate the information required by subparagraph (A) by doing both of the following:

(i) Notifying purchasers directly through the operator’s digital game.

(ii) Posting the information publicly on the operator’s internet website.

(2) Beginning on the date a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall provide the purchaser with one or more of the following:

(A) A version of the digital game that can be used by the purchaser independent of services controlled by the operator.

(B) A patch or update to the purchaser’s version of the digital game that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.

(C) A refund in an amount equal to the full purchase price paid for the digital game by the purchaser.

What this is really saying is that game publishers moving forward would either have to find a way to allow those who bought the game to keep playing it as intended when they don’t want to support it with backend requirements any longer, or else offer a refund. And I remain in a place where it’s very hard to argue with any of this. Publishers can talk all they want about how they aren’t selling games, but merely a license to play those games for some indeterminate period of time that is solely at the discretion of the publisher.

As Stop Killing Games mentions commenting on the California Bill, there is no other place in commerce where such an insanely anti-consumer scenario is allowed to exist.

In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice… As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”

The ESA, which is lobbying hard against the bill, responded with nothing beyond the exact license-focused reasoning I mentioned above.

The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance.

My response to that is simple: then modern software shouldn’t fucking get copyright protection. If that’s the route the ESA really wants to go in, then let’s do it.

That’s true north on this entire question and the one thing that lobbyists like the ESA never, ever comment upon. Copyrighted works are supposed to end up in the public domain. If a publisher actively keeps that from ever happening by essentially making a product that is unusable without its backend support, but plans to stop that backend support, then that publisher is breaking the copyright bargain.

And while I am a fan of all of these incremental preservation efforts, the copyright fight is the real fight.

The United States is experiencing one of the steepest declines in violent crime in modern history, including a murder rate at its lowest point in more than a century.

Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.

Yet the Trump administration has yanked hundreds of millions of dollars from the programs that helped make those numbers possible.

As a scholar focused on how policy decisions and structural conditions shape crime in marginalized communities, I see a pattern forming that could put these historic gains at serious risk.

‘Wasteful grants’

In April 2025, the Department of Justice terminated 365 previously awarded grants. About US$500 million in promised funds evaporated, affecting more than 550 organizations across 48 states.

The cuts stretched across the public safety landscape: community violence intervention, victim services, law enforcement training, juvenile justice, offender reentry and criminal justice research.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi described the cancellations as eliminating “wasteful grants.” The White House argued that the grant programs had been “funding DEI and cultural Marxism” rather than helping to keep Americans safe.

The DOJ’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal reduces the pool of funds for public safety and justice programs by an additional $850 million – about a 15% decrease from the prior year.

Bipartisan programs

On the ground, the effects of the cancellations were immediate.

Initiatives implementing a federal law to support ex-inmates with temporary housing, job training and healthcare lost $40 million in funding, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York Unversity.

Many of the terminated programs had deep bipartisan roots.

Project Safe Neighborhoods, a crime-reduction initiative launched in 2001 under President George W. Bush, lost its training funds, the Council on Criminal Justice found. Also axed was an anti-terrorism program that had trained more than 430,000 state and local law enforcement officers and other partners since 1996.

More modest programs were targeted as well.

In rural Oregon, a DOJ grant had allowed the Union County district attorney to hire an investigator who, after a few years of probing a 43-year-old cold case involving the killing of a 21-year-old woman, finally developed some leads. When the money was cut, the investigation stopped.

Funding cliffs

The funding cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. States and local jurisdictions were already facing looming cuts, as billions of dollars provided by President Joe Biden’s COVID recovery plan run out on Dec. 31, 2026.

Many local governments had used that money to build violence prevention programs from the ground up: employing community-based mediators, launching youth employment initiatives and expanding behavioral health teams.

And now? A double funding cliff with the sudden cancellation of DOJ grants, paired with the expiration of COVID recovery money.

In Chicago, this cliff has already forced a 43% cut to the city’s domestic violence prevention budget for 2026 – even as its share of domestic-related homicides rose 13% over the previous year.

Larger and more targeted

Criminology research helps explain the particular risks of abrupt disinvestment. Emory sociology professor Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory identifies a direct relationship between increased strain – economic pressure, blocked opportunities, the withdrawal of institutional support – and higher risks of criminal behavior.

Historical precedent reinforces the concern. In 2013, federal across-the-board spending cuts eliminated services for more than 955,000 crime victims in a single year. The capacity of the FBI and related agencies was slashed by the equivalent of more than 1,000 agents.

Between 2014 and 2016, the violent crime rate climbed 7%.

The 2025 cuts are substantially larger and more targeted, and have devastated some groups.

Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to end the death penalty and reduce violence through community-based interventions, shut down in August 2025 after losing more than $3 million in DOJ grants.

Local programs like Baltimore’s LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope lost $1.2 million to provide therapy for gun violence survivors.

“What shocked me the most … was what feels like the utter cruelty of it,” said Adam Rosenberg, who runs the center, referring to the cancellation of the funds.

As of April 2026, the DOJ has not paid out $200 million in approved grants to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.

This comes after the department last year allowed more than 100 grants for human trafficking survivors to expire, affecting more than 5,000 victims, despite Congress allocating $88 million for these services.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania warn that cuts to violence prevention programs are likely to lead to increases in gun crime.

What happens next

The initiatives now losing funding are the ones that helped drive crime down in many American cities.

Community members trained in conflict mediation help extinguish tensions before they turn lethal. Youth programs provide alternatives to street economies. Forensic labs process the evidence that solves cases. Reentry programs keep people from cycling back through the system. With each serving a distinct function, together they form the infrastructure of public safety.

As funding for crime prevention from two main sources runs out, whether progress continues depends on what happens next.

Andrea Hagan is Instructor of Criminology & Justice at Loyola University New Orleans

If we imposed safeguards on consumer data, everybody from app makers to telecoms would make billions less per quarter. So our corrupt lawmakers pretend the vast human harms of our greed are a distant and unavoidable externality (unless the privacy issues involve some kid tracking rich people on their planes, of course, in which case Congress moves with a haste that would break the sound barrier).

I’ve warned about this for the last decade here at Techdirt, and the check is coming due. The Pentagon is steadily coming to realize that enemies are using location data purchased from unregulated data brokers to target and kill U.S. troops overseas:

“In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.” 

Poor Ron Wyden. The guy has been warning about this outcome for longer than Techdirt, and his reward is generally an apathetic congressional body too corrupted by greed to function.

This should surprise absolutely nobody.

Two years ago, Wired released an excellent report documenting how it was relatively trivial to buy the sensitive and detailed movement data of U.S. military and intelligence workers as they moved around Germany. And for much of the past decade cellular providers had been found to be collecting user movement data, selling it, and either not telling consumers or outright lying about it.

If foreign governments can’t get your sensitive location data from a litany of apps that track your every movement, they can get it from data brokers or the wireless carriers themselves.

When the FCC tried to fine wireless carriers like AT&T for spying on and monetizing consumer movements, the fines were vacated by Trump’s Fifth Circuit appeals court. Wyden had previously revealed how right wing extremists were able to easily purchase the location data of abortion clinic visitors and then target them with dangerous health care disinformation. The congressional response: bupkis.

It’s not subtle: the U.S. is too corrupt to function. Instead of fixing that problem, Republicans, “free market” Libertarians, and many centrist Democrats spend most of their time figuring out new ways to lobotomize our regulators, pre-empt meaningful privacy legislation, and completely defang what’s left of corporate oversight. You know, because we just love free market innovation so much.

In his latest letter to the Pentagon, Wyden once again makes the case that the ad tech industry, as currently formulated, poses a direct national security threat:

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries ​to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned. Wyden said in a statement that it ​was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

Of course, it’s not just the ad industry that poses a national security threat, it’s corruption. It’s the mindless deregulation of industry by bad faith actors. It’s lax government privacy and security oversight of private companies (and their executives). It’s regulatory capture at the hands of corrupt, weird zealots. And it’s a government obsessed with hyper-scaled domestic surveillance with no meaningful guardrails.

Law schools are famous for coming up with “hypotheticals” to try to test students’ knowledge of the law. Sometimes the hypos are fun. Sometimes they’re just bizarre. But the reality of the Trump world now throws out things crazier than law school hypos every few days. As you’ll recall, earlier this year, sitting President Donald Trump sued his own IRS because during his own first administration, a contractor had leaked hundreds of thousands of tax returns, including Trump’s. As we keep pointing out, every single President since Nixon has regularly released their tax returns as a sign of transparency to the American public… except Trump. Who has promised to release his tax returns for a decade now and then not done so, often claiming he couldn’t because he was being audited (leaving aside that when Nixon started this practice, he was being audited).

Of course, the real reason that Trump probably didn’t release his tax returns was because (as we found out thanks to the leak) his actual tax returns showed evidence of pretty significant tax fraud to the tune of $100 million.

Either way, the Biden administration (not Trump) prosecuted the guy who leaked the tax returns and that guy, Charles Littlejohn, is sitting in prison as part of his sentence. But Trump still sued his own IRS and demanded an astounding $10 billion, which would be significantly more than Trump is worth all combined, even with his net worth going up by by over $2 billion since becoming president this time around.

Last month, the judge in the case suddenly called for a timeout, noting that she was unsure that she could actually hear the case, given the fact that it appeared both sides were one and the same, meaning there could be no cause or controversy. She had asked the “parties” (again, effectively one and the same) to brief the court on whether or not the case could even continue. Desperate to end the case before such filings were due, the parties (Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s DOJ) “settled” the case, setting up an unlawful and unconstitutional $1.776 billion fund for MAGA loyalists who claimed Biden wronged them, as well as ending and forever preventing IRS audits of the entire Trump family and family businesses for any transactions up until now.

This is a massive windfall for the president (and I’ve seen some people suggest that perhaps he should face a tax bill for both, since they are positioned as part of a settlement on his behalf) that shouldn’t be allowed without serious judicial scrutiny to make sure that the president is not engaged in the sort of self-dealing he is pretty obviously engaged in.

But the judge in the case did close the case, noting that the voluntary dismissal gave her little choice:

Because the dismissal with prejudice extinguishes the claims regarding the unlawful disclosure of Plaintiffs’ tax returns, the Court cancels all deadlines, including the date that the Parties were required to submit briefing as to whether an actual case or controversy existed in this matter.

The judge does note that the court has no way of knowing whether or not the “settlement” is reasonable given the circumstances:

Because the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement, there is no settlement of record. Additionally, Defendants—federal agencies represented by the Department of Justice, which has an independent obligation to uphold the “public’s strong interest in knowing about the conduct of its Government and expenditure of its resources” and the “fair administration of justice,” 28 C.F.R. §§ 50.9, 50.23—neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring hat settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but there’s a detectable whiff of snark in that order.

Either way, dozens of former federal judges are now asking Judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the case. They argue the fake “settlement” and dismissal prevented us from ever finding out if the original case could have been heard in the first place. Furthermore, they point out that because the DOJ and Trump have publicly discussed the “settlement” the court should have some jurisdiction over whether or not it was legitimate, even if it wasn’t filed with the court:

On May 18, 2026, this Court dismissed this action with prejudice (ECF No. 62) in response to Plaintiffs’Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice (the “Notice,” ECF No. 52), filed earlier that day. The Court expressly noted in its Order dismissing the case that “the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement,” and thus “there is no settlement of record.” The Court further noted that Defendants “neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.

The Court was deceived. Despite Plaintiffs not having mentioned any settlement in their Notice, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) publicly announced a “settlement” of this action shortly after Plaintiffs filed their dismissal. That “settlement” commandeers the contrived sum of $1.776 billion from the United States Treasury, to be handed out to recipients chosen by a commission effectively controlled by the President. 3 The DOJ is calling this the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The day after the “settlement” containing the Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced, the DOJ announced that it had subsequently agreed to release “any and all claims . . . whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been asserted by [the United States] against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals . . . or parties . . . by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of . . . any matters currently pending or that could be pending . . . before Defendants or other agencies or departments.”4 The plain language of this extremely broad provision sweeps in Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audits of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and all other claims the United States might have against Plaintiffs—extraordinary benefits for which no consideration was provided to the government.

They further note just how blatant the Trump DOJ has been in tying these “settlements” to the present case, despite not telling the court about any such settlement agreement:

The parties to this case are using this lawsuit as the legal justification for these actions. This is not speculation; the parties themselves have proclaimed it, repeatedly. For starters, the DOJ implemented all of the actions described above via a document expressly titled “Settlement Agreement,” captioned with this case’s caption, plus a three-paragraph addendum that references that “Settlement Agreement” in its first paragraph and in its third paragraph purports to “forever bar[] and preclude[]” the United States from pursuing claims that could have been asserted “by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs” in this case. The “Settlement Agreement” was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward the same day Plaintiffs filed their Notice; in fact, Plaintiffs’ filing of the Notice was expressly required by the “Settlement Agreement.” The addendum granting the extraordinarily broad releases to the President and his family and businesses was signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche the next day, May 19. Yet none of the parties filed either of these documents with the Court. In addition, shortly after announcing the “settlement,” the Acting Attorney General issued an order creating the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” That order—which references the “Settlement Agreement” in this case—explicitly identifies the Judgment Fund statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, under which Congress has authorized appropriations for payments of settlements against the United States, and 28 U.S.C. § 2414, which authorizes payments of “final” judgments against the United States including compromise settlements and “imminent” claims, as the statutory bases for the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Payments purportedly made pursuant to these statutes in the absence of a genuine case or controversy are not authorized.

That last bit is particularly interesting. The entire trick that the Trump administration is trying to pull here to route this around congressional “power of the purse” approval is by taking it from the Judgment Fund, which is used to pay off any judicial monetary awards against the US government. But here, there is no judicial award. The Trump/Blanche DOJ is trying to pull a fast one on everyone by announcing a settlement, but avoiding telling the court about it, other than to say that the case is dismissed. And then just announcing a separate settlement, while pretending that this out of court (and not reviewed or approved of by any court) satisfies the rules for access to the Judgment Fund.

That’s just stealing from the American taxpayer.

And thus, these former federal judges argue, the court should be asked to review the settlement.

Movants submit that this “settlement” is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court. But the Court need not decide that ultimate issue now. At this juncture, Movants request only that the Court exercise its powers under Rule 60 to set aside its order ending the case based upon Plaintiffs’ voluntary dismissal. That will allow the Court to commence an inquiry into whether the Court was deceived, including with respect to the existence of an underlying case or controversy and any purported arms-length negotiations undertaken to resolve it. As set forth below, this Court has the power under Rule 60 to determine whether there has been a “corruption of the judicial process itself,” 11 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2870 (3d ed.), and may set aside a judgment and reopen a case under Rule 60(d)(3), as well as other subsections of Rule 60, whether by this motion or sua sponte. Doing so will allow judicial review of the extraordinary—and historically unprecedented—circumstances presented by this litigation and by the collusive “settlement” that invokes this litigation as the legal justification for its terms.

The rest of the filing makes a fairly compelling (these are former federal judges, after all) argument for (1) why the court has jurisdiction to review the settlement, and (2) why these judges as non-parties to the case can move to have the case re-opened to allow the judge to review the terms of the settlement, especially when there’s evidence that a fraud has been perpetrated on the court.

Even if the Court declines to entertain a non-party motion under Rule 60, it has the authority to issue sua sponte relief where, as here, the parties have effectuated a fraud upon the Court. Rule 60(d) specifically states that it does not “limit a court’s power to . . . set aside a judgment for fraud on the court,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d)(3), and the Supreme Court has long recognized that courts have certain inherent powers that cannot be displaced by statute or the Rules of Civil Procedure. See, e.g., Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 43 (1991). These inherent powers flow from “the nature of [the] institution” and “cannot be dispensed with . . . because they are necessary to the exercise of all others[.]” United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 34 (1812). The court’s inherent powers include, as relevant here, the power to vacate a judgment upon proof that it was procured by fraud, Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238, 245 (1944), or conduct an investigation to determine whether a fraud upon the court has been committed, Universal Oil Products Co. v. Root Refining Co., 328 U.S. 575, 580 (1946) (“The inherent power of a federal court to investigate whether a judgment was obtained by fraud, is beyond question.”). Thus, the Court has the authority to sua sponte invalidate the voluntary dismissal.

They also point out that simply by reopening the case, the court could stall the ridiculous and corrupt anti-weaponization fund, since the Judgment Fund is only available for final settlements. And if the case is still open the settlement is no longer final.

Should the Court exercise its authority to reopen the case and hold additional proceedings, it would effectively preserve the status quo. Importantly, the Judgment Fund is only available for “final” settlements. 31 C.F.R. § 256.1(a)(1). A settlement premised on a dismissal that has been voided is not “final.” Similarly, voiding the Notice and reopening the case would allow the Court to continue its jurisdictional inquiry. And, if the Court ultimately concludes that it did not have jurisdiction and dismissed the case on those grounds, such a dismissal would deprive the parties of their claimed justification for the settlement.

The former judges don’t mince words about how ridiculous this whole damn thing is:

To be clear, the parties’ settlement was not, and never will be, legally justified. That is because the Acting Attorney General’s Order creating the Anti-Weaponization Fund identified the Judgment Fund, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, and the Attorney General’s authority to enter “compromise settlements” under 28 U.S.C. § 2414, as the basis for the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Both of those authorities require the existence of a legitimate litigation and not, as here, one that is collusive, feigned, or fraudulent.

The DOJ is only allowed to enter “compromise settlements of claims”—such as this one— “for defense of imminent litigation or suits against the United States, or against its agencies or officials upon obligations or liabilities of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2414. And a feigned or collusive suit is not active or “imminent” litigation against the United States pursuant to which the DOJ is authorized to access the Judgment Fund and § 2414. See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., GAO-08-978SP, 3 Principles of Federal Appropriations Law 14-35 (3d ed. 2008) (requiring that “[t]he agency must be confronted with a genuine disagreement or impasse” and “[t]here must be a legitimate dispute over either liability or amount”); 31 C.F.R. § 256.1(b) (“Fiscal Service requires that requests for payment identify the statute that forms the basis of the underlying claim. The award or settlement must comply with the statutory and regulatory requirements that authorize the award or settlement.”).

None of this means Judge Williams will reopen the case. But she was already suspicious, she was already asking questions the parties clearly didn’t want answered, and she’s now been handed a formal legal basis to pick this apart. The former judges aren’t asking her to do something radical — they’re asking her to finish what she already started before the parties ran away from her courtroom.

Whether she does it or not, the filing itself is useful: 35 former federal judges have now put on the record, in plain language, that a sitting president sued himself, settled with himself, hid the settlement from the court, erased his own tax liability, and raided the Treasury for $1.776 billion in the process.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Nope, this is Trump’s kink. This is a blatant attempt to juice the deportation numbers to soothe the throbbing bald skull of Stephen Miller, who still has yet to see his 3,000 arrests per day bigoted fantasy become reality, no matter how many billions we’re (forced to) throw at ICE.

This is just blatant racism masquerading as slightly-less-blatant racism. The law was never unclear. The system wasn’t being exploited by immigrants. Pretty much everyone has always been fine with the US’s green card program. And yet, this is what America means now, just as it heads into its 250th year.

Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.

The obvious question is “WHY?” The obvious answer is this: this administration hates people who aren’t white. If you think this policy might affect the small percentage of migrants from predominately white nations, you’re living in a self-induced psychosis. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the words falling out of the administration’s collective mouth:

In an emailed statement to the Associated Press the agency said people who provide an “economic benefit” or “national interest” could likely stay in the U.S. while others would have to go abroad to apply.

No need to read between the lines here. This administration is as unsophisticated as a used Croc. Both terms stated here can be read as “white” and “also white.” If you think this means otherwise, be sure to show your whole bigoted ass in the comment section below.

The “agency” mentioned here is the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services), which used to be more concerned with ensuring applicants kept on their path to citizenship. That’s no longer the case. It should rebrand as GTFO, since all it does now is give Trump whatever he wants when it comes to expelling non-white people from this nation.

I’m not even exaggerating. More than 90% of successful asylum seekers are white people from other nations. Any actions taken to limit lawful access to citizenship have targeted non-white people. Pretending that living in the US while seeking a green card is the exploitation of a legal loophole is nothing more than more blatant racism from an administration that has already been pretty fucking blatant about its racism.

The fully-suborned USCIS had this to say about a directive I can’t imagine it saw coming:

USCIS described the change as a return to “the original intent of the law” and closing a “loophole.”

Get thee to a white shoe law firm, he said in a Shakepearian voice. Bro, the “original intent of the law” never resulted in a demand to “close” a “loophole” for over FIVE DECADES. To claim it’s imperative NOW is to pretend you’d rather honor the law, rather than the nation’s foremost golf club groundskeeper.

To sum up: get fucked, Trump. This is nothing more than the administration deciding Lady Liberty is free to assault just because she showed a bit of ankle more than 100 years ago.