The Justice Department is expected to stand down on its $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," according to multiple reports, after a federal court temporarily blocked it and Senate Republicans threatened to join Democrats in killing it.
The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported late Monday that Trump administration officials are expecting the Department of Justice to scrap the controversial fund. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Republican leaders are expecting the same.
The department announced the fund earlier this month as part of a settlement of President Donald Trump's civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax records. In a statement posted on X $TWTR, the DOJ said it "disagrees strongly" with the court's decision but "will abide by the Court's ruling."
Friday's order from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema put the program in a state of suspension, forbidding the DOJ from moving money into the fund, processing submitted claims, or issuing any payments while the litigation proceeds. The judge scheduled a hearing for June 12 to weigh whether the injunction should be extended. The Virginia case is among at least three separate federal suits seeking to shut the program down.
The legal challenge before Brinkema was filed Friday by Democracy Forward alongside other plaintiffs, among them a former federal prosecutor whose work had included prosecutions arising from the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Worth $1.776 billion in DOJ judgment funds, the program would have been administered by a five-member board chosen by the attorney general, with authority to distribute money to claimants who said they had been targeted by a politically driven government.
Political pressure from within the Republican Party had become equally significant. As many as half the members of the Senate Republican conference were prepared to cross the aisle and side with Democrats against the fund, according to NBC News. During a May 21 Senate Republican conference meeting, senators lined up to berate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over the fund, with several characterizing it as an exercise in self-dealing, NBC News reported. Republican resistance to the fund had already derailed a reconciliation measure intended to secure funding for ICE and Border Patrol operations through the end of Trump's term.
After telling reporters he had talked with the president over the weekend about the matter, Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined Monday to call for congressional action. "I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves," he said. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley made clear that a statement from the DOJ fell well short of what he required. Nothing short of a presidential decision to formally kill the fund would unblock the path to immigration enforcement funding, Grassley told NBC News, adding flatly that the department's statement was "no" substitute for that, according to NBC News.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats plan to push stand-alone legislation banning the fund. "Trump's word is nowhere near enough," Schumer said on X.
On a separate front, the Florida federal judge who originally presided over Trump's IRS suit took steps to reinstate the case, according to CBS News. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said a group of retired jurists had raised what she called "grievous allegations" — specifically, that the dismissal had been engineered to keep her from examining whether the underlying lawsuit was legitimate.