{"id":21717,"date":"2026-06-05T18:11:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T18:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/congress-didnt-kill-trumps-1-8-billion-anti-weaponization-fund-so-where-does-it-stand-news-channel-3-12\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T18:11:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T18:11:43","slug":"congress-didnt-kill-trumps-1-8-billion-anti-weaponization-fund-so-where-does-it-stand-news-channel-3-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/congress-didnt-kill-trumps-1-8-billion-anti-weaponization-fund-so-where-does-it-stand-news-channel-3-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress didn\u2019t kill Trump\u2019s $1.8 billion \u2018anti-weaponization\u2019 fund. So where does it stand? – News Channel 3-12"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Kaanita Iyer, CNN
(CNN) — <\/b>Senate Republicans rejected multiple attempts to kill President Donald Trump\u2019s nearly $1.8 billion \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund amid bipartisan concerns and a temporary court ruling against it.
The Trump administration announced the creation<\/a> of the $1.776 billion fund last month. The effort would allow the government to use taxpayer money to pay those who claim they were victims of political prosecutions by the Biden administration.
Critics of the fund have said it would serve as a slush fund for Trump\u2019s allies. Some lawmakers, including key Republicans, raised concerns<\/a> that the fund lacks guardrails. Lawmakers were particularly concerned that payouts would go to rioters, including those who assaulted police officers, at the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, which the Trump administration didn\u2019t rule out.
Here\u2019s where the status of the fund stands.
The fund has faced at least two legal challenges<\/a>, including from a watchdog group and from police officers who defended the Capitol during the riot.
Last week, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked<\/a> the administration from taking steps to set up the fund and barred it from releasing any funds from it. But that ruling was highly technical: It didn\u2019t address the legality of the program but was instead intended to get the court time to review a lawsuit seeking to kill the program in full.
The Trump administration is expected to file its response to the lawsuit in court on Friday.
In the meantime, the issue created a rift among Republicans in Congress with some stalling on considering an immigration funding bill until the White House committed to dropping the compensation fund.
In an attempt to convince Congress to vote for the immigration bill, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House lawmakers on Tuesday that the Justice Department will not be \u201cmoving forward<\/a> with the fund, period.\u201d
Democratic Rep. Grace Meng then asked, \u201cNot moving forward, ever?,\u201d to which Blanche responded, \u201cCorrect.\u201d
Ultimately, Republicans didn\u2019t want to derail one of Trump\u2019s key legislative priorities, and advanced the immigration bill<\/a> without any language formally killing the fund early Friday after hours of talks between GOP leaders and Republican holdouts. One party member still defected.
Meanwhile, the president has not been so unequivocal, giving mixed signals about the future of the fund.
Trump, a day after Blanche\u2019s vow to lawmakers, said that he doesn\u2019t know if the fund is dead<\/a>, which has led to confusion about its status.
\u201cI\u2019d have to ask the lawyers, I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said when asked whether the fund is fully dead or just on hold. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, it was a beautiful thing.\u201d
The fund is a result of a settlement between the Internal Revenue Service and Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization, after the president dropped his $10 billion lawsuit alleging that the IRS failed to protect them from an unauthorized leak of their tax returns.
Trump himself will not receive any payments, but will receive a formal apology, the Justice Department has said.
So far, the fund remains temporarily blocked by a court \u2014 but its future ultimately depends on who you ask.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN\u2019s Devan Cole, Aileen Graef, Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox, Manu Raju, Ted Barrett, Alison Main, Adam Cancryn, Kaitlan Collins, Hannah Rabinowitz, Tierney Sneed, Casey Gannon, and Paula Reid contributed to this report.
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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Email Alerts from KEYT.com!By Kaanita Iyer, CNN(CNN) — Senate Republicans rejected multiple attempts to kill President Donald Trump\u2019s nearly $1.8 billion \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund amid bipartisan concerns and a temporary court ruling against it.The Trump administration announced the creation of the $1.776 billion fund last month. The effort would allow the government to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}