Hey everyone. Happy Monday. The big story today: Trump just created a $1.7 billion slush fund for his political allies, January 6 defendants, and basically anyone else the Administration decides deserves taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, the insider trading story around Trump only got worse over the weekend. The Senate parliamentarian blocked Trump’s new White House ballroom (for now). Federal courts have ruled against his ICE detention policy more than 10,000 times. And the National Mall was turned into a political rally under the guise of a nonpartisan day of prayer for America’s 250th.
1. Trump Just Created a Personal $1.7 Billion Slush Fund — With Your Tax Dollars
The Trump Organization filed a dismissal in federal court today, dropping their lawsuit over the 2019 leak of Trump’s tax returns by a former IRS contractor. What replaced it is the part that should alarm you.
The Justice Department announced it is creating what it is calling an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to compensate people who say they were wrongly targeted by the Biden administration’s Justice Department.
But most Americans immediately called it what it is: a slush fund. The money flows from the DOJ’s judgment fund, a perpetual appropriation with minimal congressional oversight. The administration has the discretion to decide who qualifies. Among those eligible: the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with January 6th. The fund stops processing claims in December 2028 — two months before Trump leaves office.
The structure here is worth understanding. A president sued an agency he controls. His Justice Department — run by an acting AG who was until recently his personal defense attorney — negotiated a settlement with itself. The money comes from taxpayers. A federal judge never reviewed the merits. And the settlement was filed in a way that explicitly sought to prevent judicial scrutiny of the deal.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Americans are selling plasma to afford gas and groceries while this fund gets stood up. Rep. Jamie Raskin called it the most brazen theft of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history. And you know what? They are not wrong.
2. The Trump Insider Trading Scandal Just Got Worse
New filings with the Office of Government Ethics show Trump executed between $220 million and $750 million in transactions during the first quarter of this year, buying and selling stocks in Nvidia, Boeing, Amazon, and dozens of others. More than 40 trades per day on average.
The timing is what matters. Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million in Nvidia stock on February 10th. One week later, Nvidia announced a major chip deal with Meta.
He bought another $500,000 to $1 million in Nvidia stock in the days before the Commerce Department approved the sale of Nvidia chips to China — a decision his administration made.
He bought $260,000 in Palantir stock during the first quarter while Palantir was securing a billion-dollar DHS contract to run software for the deportation program.
The examples go on and on. And they aren’t even trying to hide it!
Trump’s special envoy Paolo Zampolli told the Financial Times his pitch to foreign buyers is simple: “Buy Boeing. If you want to make the president happy, buy Boeing. It’s the simplest thing in the world.”
The White House says the assets are held in a trust managed by his children and there are no conflicts of interest. Federal law does not prohibit a sitting president from trading individual stocks.
That is the problem. A president who trades the stocks of companies his administration regulates, at a pace of 40 transactions per day, while his envoys tell foreign buyers which stocks to purchase — that is a conflict of interest that the current law was just not built to handle. Like so many other offenses of the Trump administration, the rules and standards of previous presidents were simply not built for a man with complete and total disregard for the rule of law or what is best for the country.
3. The Senate's Referee Just Blocked $1 Billion for Trump's Ballroom — But Republicans Aren't Done Trying
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled this weekend that the $1 billion in funding for Trump’s planned East Wing ballroom is not able to pass using the Senate procedure called budget reconciliation. Because reconciliation was the mechanism Republicans were using to pass this without democrat votes, the ruling effectively forces them to find 60 votes instead. But the math is simple: they do not have them.
Senate GOP leadership’s response was three words: “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit.” They are going to keep trying.
Remember: the ballroom itself was supposed to be privately funded — Trump said so repeatedly, and private donors have already committed $400 million. The additional $1 billion in taxpayer money was framed as security upgrades.
But, according to Jesse Watters, Trump told him the real reason for the ballroom:
Republicans still plan to find another path for the funding. Watch whether they try to attach it to a must-pass spending bill in June. The parliamentarian may have blocked the mechanism, but she did not end the effort.
4. The Federal Courts Have Ruled Against Trump's ICE Policy 10,000 Times — Even His Own Judges Have Had Enough
Since ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a memo in July 2025 declaring that virtually every undocumented immigrant detained in the U.S. would be reclassified and stripped of the right to a bond hearing, the federal court system has been flooded with lawsuits.
The results were resounding: more than 10,000 rulings against the administration. Roughly 1,200 in its favor. That is a 90 percent loss rate across 425 federal judges, appointed by presidents of both parties.
The language coming from those rulings is striking. U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointee in New York, wrote in one case: “This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America. Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”
The administration has responded by moving detainees from state to state to prevent lawsuits, dumping released detainees hundreds of miles from home without their belongings after courts ordered their release, and recruiting inexperienced lawyers to manage the caseload when career DOJ attorneys refused to keep arguing positions courts kept rejecting.
This is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, where the administration has more favorable odds. But 10,000 federal judges, including Trump’s own, ruling that a policy violates human decency is not a number that should be easy to dismiss.
5. "Rededicate 250" Was Billed as Nonpartisan Prayer. It Was a MAGA Rally with a Cross.
Tens of thousands gathered for “Rededicate 250,” billed as a nonpartisan prayer event ahead of America’s 250th anniversary on July 4th. The speaker list told a different story. Trump, Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Gabbard, and House Speaker Mike Johnson all addressed the crowd, alongside Franklin Graham and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Trump appeared by pre-recorded video.
Then MAGA evangelical Eric Metaxas took the stage to tell the crowd that God chose Donald Trump to be president for one specific divine purpose:
Critics said the event advances Christian nationalism rather than religious freedom. NPR noted that the speaker list — entirely drawn from the MAGA political universe plus selected religious allies — presented an exclusionary vision of whose America is being celebrated.
The America 250 commission was supposed to be an inclusive, bipartisan effort. What happened Sunday was the administration using a national milestone as a backdrop for its own coalition. There is a version of a 250th birthday celebration that belongs to all Americans. This was not it.
That is the show for May 18th. A lot of money moving in unusual directions today, and the ballroom fight is not over. Please like, share, and subscribe — it is genuinely the best way to keep this going. We will be back tomorrow.
