Trump Isn’t Giving Up on $1.8B ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund

(Reuters)
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Our world may be plagued by war, riven by political strife and burdened by economic and financial concerns, but tonight in New York, where we are, much of the city is obsessed with one thing and one thing only: the Knicks' Game 3. President Trump, who stormed out of a Friday interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" after being challenged to provide evidence in support of his baseless claims of election rigging, is set to become the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game. He is expected to get booed lustily.

Here's what else is happening.

Trump Again Defends Controversial $1.8B 'Anti-Weaponization' Fund

Now it's the House's turn. After the Senate last week pushed through Republicans' $70 billion bill funding immigration enforcement agencies, House GOP leaders are reportedly confident that they will be able to do the same without any major impediments - though that remains to be seen.

At the same time, there are lingering questions about the fate of the Trump administration's proposed $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund.

While a Senate Republican revolt over the fund fizzled, the issue hasn't gone away, thanks in large part to President Trump, who continues to defend the fund even after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers last Tuesday that the government would not move forward with the plan.

Trump again spoke in support of the fund - and defended rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 - in his Friday interview with NBC's "Meet the Press." Trump claimed that "radical left lunatics" in the Biden administration had destroyed people's lives and argued that people who had been harmed by the "weaponization" of government deserved to be compensated. He seemed to call on Republican lawmakers to authorize the payout fund.

"So me, personally, I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do many other Republicans," Trump said. "You have to get it approved. If they get it approved, that's great. If they don't get it approved, I'd be disappointed."

Trump might still end up disappointed, given that Democrats and many Republicans remain vehemently opposed to the fund, especially given the possibility that January 6 rioters who attacked police could benefit from it. (In his NBC interview, Trump would not rule out the idea that taxpayer money could go to people who attacked police officers at the Capitol. He even defended those who pleaded guilty to assaulting police, repeating unproven claims that FBI agents were "ushering them into the building" and arguing that people who pleaded guilty only did so "because they were frightened" of receiving longer sentences.)

Punchbowl News reports that Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi are set to launch a discharge petition this week to block the Trump administration from establishing a weaponization fund - and the lawmakers should be able to get enough signatures to force a vote on the House floor. Fitzpatrick and Suozzi introduced legislation last week that would prohibit any federal funds from being used to pay claims submitted to the "anti-weaponization" fund.

Still, the Senate has demonstrated that there aren't 60 votes in the chamber to block the fund. The Republican senators who made considerable noise last week about stopping the "anti-weaponization" payouts ended up approving the GOP's party-line immigration bill even without language to block or limit the fund. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voted against the bill. Asking Senate Republicans to formally reject the idea appears to be a tall task, meaning the fund might not be as dead as Blanche indicated last week.

"Trump is still moving forward with his cop beater slush fund," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote in a Sunday post on X, citing the NBC interview. "He says it here plainly - if Congress doesn't stop him, he's doing it. Republicans had their chance last week to prohibit the [fund] and they voted with Trump. So let's stop the breathless talk of the GOP finally standing up to Trumps corruption. They never will."

The bottom line: Trump sure sounds like he still wants the "anti-weaponization" fund to be set up.

Number of The Day: $980 Billion

New tariffs that the Trump administration has proposed for virtually all major trading partners would raise $980 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The tariffs proposed by the U.S. trade representative last week would apply import levies of 10% or 12.5% on 60 trading partners, based on the claim that they are failing to guard against goods produced with "forced labor." The tariffs would be authorized by Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which the Trump administration has turned to after the Supreme Court rejected an earlier effort to impose broad tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Section 301 allows the trade representative to impose tariffs to address unfair trade practices.

Under the proposal, the new, additional tariff for Canada, Mexico, the EU, Indonesia, Ecuador and Pakistan would be 10%, while the rest of the affected economies, including China and the U.K., would see an additional tariff of 12.5%. Altogether, these tariffs would affect roughly 95% of U.S. imports by dollar value.

According to CRFB's analysis, the estimated $980 billion in revenues over the next 10 years from the proposed 301 tariffs would fall well short of the $1.7 trillion that the IEEPA tariffs were projected to raise.

The U.S. trade representative will appear at a hearing on these proposed measures on July 7, 2026.

Quote of the Day: SpaceX at the Core

"They want to be the rails that all of the trains are riding on."

− Kimberly Burke, director of government affairs at Quilty Space, a market research and advisory firm for the "space economy," speaking to The Wall Street Journal about the growing role of SpaceX in the nation's national security infrastructure.

As the Journal's Drew FitzGerald and Micah Maidenberg report, the federal government is SpaceX's largest single client, providing about $4 billion in revenue for the company in 2025. That number is expected to rise sharply in the coming years, the journalists say, due in large part to the company's successful effort to put "SpaceX at the center of military and intelligence agencies' plans for space."

The numbers are already rising for SpaceX, which is going public in what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, with a valuation of $1.75 trillion. Just last month, the U.S. Space Force granted SpaceX contracts worth $6.5 billion for two separate satellite systems.

As for SpaceX's centrality to the government's operations in space, it looks like the company is already all but irreplaceable. When SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President Trump were feuding last year, Trump publicly speculated about canceling government contracts with the company. But White House officials reportedly concluded that the services SpaceX provides for the Defense Department and NASA are critical.

"In struggling to find ways to reduce the government's dependence on SpaceX, the Trump administration highlighted how much agencies rely on the company's sophisticated technology," the Journal said last summer, in the wake of the Trump-Musk feud. "At least for now, the government has limited alternatives for many rocket launches and low-Earth-orbit satellite services, a situation that continues to give SpaceX-and Musk himself-an outsize role in space."

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