Trump Completely Undercuts Two of His Top Advisers on Slush Fund

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is not dead, according to the president.

Donald Trump told the New York Post podcast Pod Force One that his administration had not dropped the $1.8 billion slush fund, putting him at odds with what his officials told Congress.

“No. A court ruled against it. But just so you understand, these are people that’ve been decimated. These are people who have lost their lives over nonsense,” Trump said in an interview published Wednesday morning. “These were many great people, and I gave them pardons, and I’m very proud to have given them pardons. And I think they should be reimbursed for a crooked government.”

The honeypot payments were pitched as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger who felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.

Hundreds of Trump’s MAGA-aligned allies have already lined up for their slice of the pie. They include MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Republican lawmakers. A slew of pardoned January 6ers are also in the queue, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, a sex offender who bear-sprayed cops, and a convicted child molester who told his victims he would give them money from a Trump payout in exchange for their silence.

But Trump’s ongoing affinity for the payouts defies his administration’s latest position on the DOJ slush fund. As Trump’s interview was being published, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday that the federal financial hub intended to comply with a DOJ directive to shutter the fund.

The evening before, during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the fund was dead in the water and that his agency would not “ever” move forward with the payments.

The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his waning $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. The arrangement included a curious addendum from Blanche, immunizing Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote, would be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business.

The idea of the fund fell apart following weeks of backlash, numerous lawsuits, and opposition from Republican lawmakers who felt the issue had gummed up party efforts to pass a reconciliation bill.

President Trump was sporting a swollen eye and hand in an interview with New York Post’s Miranda Devine on the conservative podcast Pod Force One.

Trump’s right eye clearly showed puffiness and looked oddly misshapen compared to his left eye, while his right hand looked much bigger than his left.

Trump and White House staff are constantly disputing reports questioning the president’s physical and mental health. Just one week ago, Trump had his third medical checkup in 13 months, raising questions about whether he has underlying medical conditions. Doctors noticed omissions in the medical report released by the Trump administration afterward, with one saying the “report is almost too good to be true for somebody of his age.”

But it’s very difficult to dispute what people can see with their own eyes, and the president’s outward physical appearance coupled with his tendency to fall asleep on camera don’t inspire confidence in his health. No matter how much Trump talks about how great his medical tests are going or how well he’s doing, it’s plainly evident that the public isn’t being told the whole story.

America’s semiquincentennial is coming at a cost to the country’s national parks.

The Trump administration has teed up a pricey celebration for the country’s 250th anniversary, but the cost is apparently more than the White House can chew. To foot the bill, officials are diverting roughly $90 million away from the National Parks Service, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

All entry fees to some of the country’s most popular parks—such as Yellowstone and Yosemite—will be used to fund America 250–related projects, according to internal agency documents obtained by the Post. That includes a $1.6 million fireworks display (which costs more than five times Washington’s normal amount for a July 4 celebration) and $76 million for repairs to the capital’s monuments, including the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

While the bulk of the diverted NPS funds are technically being spent on national park remediation, it will be at an incredible detriment to the rest of a nationwide system that suffers from a $24 billion funding backlog and needs money for “deferred maintenance” projects for park infrastructure repairs and improvements.

“That is not how it was designed to work,” Ed Stierli of the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, told the Post. “It shouldn’t just be all at one park at the expense of the entire national park system.”

The reallocated expenditures also hint at a larger truth: that Donald Trump’s vanity projects are much more expensive than he has been telling the public. Trump had initially promised the restoration of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would hover around $1.8 million. Last month, however, the Interior Department said it planned to pay $13.1 million to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm that Trump chose because they had previously worked on his golf club’s swimming pools. The NPS documents indicate that the price tag to repaint the Reflecting Pool has more than quintupled since, and now sits at $76 million.

The cost of Trump’s White House ballroom has similarly ballooned over time. Trump pledged last summer that the 90,000-square-foot ballroom wouldn’t cost more than $200 million, and that it would be entirely funded by private donations. That has not been true: By May, the price had doubled to $400 million. The price tag skyrocketed again after an armed gunman attempted to kill Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with Republican lawmakers insisting that U.S. taxpayers should devote $1 billion to security at the proposed East Wing replacement.

Democratic lawmakers are hoping to force Republicans to remove Bill Pulte from his new side-gig as acting director of national intelligence.

Senator Mark Warner told Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get Pulte removed or risk Democrats withholding their votes for Donald Trump’s long-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Punchbowl News reported Wednesday.

FISA expires in just nine days, leaving Republicans with a short window to force Pulte out.

Democrats aren’t alone: Republican lawmakers have also expressed their concerns about Pulte. “Well, we don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” Thune told reporters Tuesday.

Pulte has none of the military or intelligence background necessary to lead ODNI. He’s made a name for himself by being Trump’s pitbull, recklessly targeting the president’s political enemies and making himself wildly unpopular in the process.

By positioning Pulte as a dealbreaker for FISA, Democrats believe they’re doing Republicans a favor, Punchbowl News reported. If there’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it’s hating Bill Pulte.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered a scathing dissent after the court on Tuesday allowed Alabama Republicans to eliminate one of two majority-Black districts ahead of the midterms.

“Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map that protects Black Alabamians’ right to vote and with which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians,” Sotomayor wrote in a withering 17-page dissent.

She also noted that the last-minute ruling—sent down just months before midterm elections— would “require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousand[s] of voters in just days at best, a task that Alabama previously represented would take months.”

“Just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos,” Sotomayor concluded. “Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.”

The NAACP also sounded off against the decision.

“The Supreme Court continues to unleash chaos in our democratic process, and with this latest action, gives Alabama approval to use a congressional map that had previously been found to be intentionally discriminatory,” general counsel Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “This is a Court that is stripping Black voters of power and voice at a speed that would put Jim Crow jurists to shame. Our message to communities remains the same—the best way to express dissent is by showing up at the ballot box this election season.”

The Supreme Court’s decision will likely force newly elected Black Democratic Representative Shomari Figures out of his seat.