Trump Admits His Slush Fund Plans Loud and Clear

President Trump won’t let go of his corrupt IRS settlement.

At a Cabinet meeting hosted Friday at Camp David in Maryland, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created by his settlement with the IRS, which set aside $1.776 billion for anyone who felt politically prosecuted by the government, was actually dead and, if it was, why the Department of Justice wouldn’t put that in writing.

“Well, it is dead, but you know, I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused,” Trump said. “I’d like to see them compensated for the pain. They lost their families. They committed suicide, many people committed suicide.”

So just to recap: Trump doesn’t want the slush fund dead, despite past claims from the Department of Justice that the fund isn’t moving forward.

Trump was also asked about whether he was willing to waive the settlement’s provision that he, his family, and his businesses would be protected from all IRS audits in the future in order to have acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed. He dodged the question, only saying Blanche “should be confirmed forthwith.”

All of this points to Trump trying to hold on to the IRS settlement even after federal judges have ruled against it. It raises the question of whether he’s still going to try and implement the fund secretly—and validates the Republican holdouts who are refusing to confirm Blanche until they get some answers.

As an aside, Trump’s claim that the fund is necessary due to suicide among January 6 insurrectionists is rich. On Thursday, New Jersey Governor Mike Sherill proclaimed July 30 “Brian Sicknick Day,” in honor of the Capitol Police officer and Garden State native who died from his injuries one day after responding to the Capitol riots. Four other police officers who responded to the riots committed suicide within seven months.

President Donald Trump baselessly claimed Friday that Minnesota had committed a cyberattack against itself.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump dismissed officials’ concerns that a cyberattack on municipal water systems in Minnesota was the work of Iranian hackers.

“I don’t think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota, because they’re grossly incompetent,” Trump said.

“I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota,” Trump continued, referring to Governor Tim Walz. “They like to say, ‘Oh, it’s Iran!’ Iran should be so lucky. Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.”

But Trump offered no evidence to support his claim, apparently motivated not by facts, but by sheer pettiness.

Federal and state officials said earlier this week that the cyberattack was probably the work of Iranian hackers, but they have not definitively determined who is responsible. They also cautioned that the hackers could simply be posing as Iranians in order to escalate the conflict between the two countries, though former intelligence officials said this was unlikely.

If the hackers were hoping to ratchet up the tensions between the U.S. and Iran, they failed by picking a state that Trump has designated as an outlet for his blatant Islamophobia.

As reporters moved to exit the Cabinet meeting, Trump resumed his ranting about Minnesota.

“I think that Minnesota is behind it!” he declared.

“You know who’s behind it? Minnesota. Because they’re grossly incompetent. I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack,” Trump continued. “I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together. It’s one of the worst-run states.”

The president teased that his administration was planning “massive future things having to do with corruption” in Minnesota. The Trump administration has continued to pursue fraud allegations against Minnesota officials in a transparent effort to punish Democrats and antagonize immigrants.

The Trump administration is not making its case against Anthropic.

A federal judge flamed the government during a hearing Thursday, noting that Justice Department attorneys had failed to provide evidence “justifying” the Defense Department’s decision to class the AI company as a national security risk, or Donald Trump’s subsequent order barring federal agencies from utilizing the company’s services.

California-based U.S. District Judge Rita Lin literally spelled out the questions she would ask the government’s attorneys via a legal notice earlier this week, but the DOJ still failed to impress. Lin remarked at the outset of the hearing that, “if anything, it seems like the record in some ways has gotten worse for the government,” according to the Law & Crime network.

In May, Lin blasted the government for the “Orwellian” way that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to sever ties with the AI contractor after Anthropic refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted use of its AI bot, Claude, for military purposes.

At the time, the president and Hegseth claimed that Anthropic had gone “WOKE” for arguing that Claude could not safely or reliably be used for “autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.”

“Having reviewed the record that the parties have submitted on the cross motions for summary judgment, it appears to me to be largely the same as the record that I assessed at the preliminary injunction stage,” Lin said Thursday. “I don’t see additional evidence from the government really justifying what it did.”

She added that she found it “really troubling” that the Trump administration was taking a position that “seems at odds to me with the First Amendment,” in “threatening to take away contracts from anyone who might do business with them” by “labeling them as subversive.”

Lin even posed a hypothetical question: whether it would be constitutional for the government to terminate “every defense contract with anyone who’s ever publicly criticized President Trump.”

When DOJ lawyers hedged, Lin said, “I’m surprised that you can’t give a yes to what seems to be an easy question.”

The State Department has set a $20,000 bond for some tourists and business visitors who seek a visa to enter the U.S.

The finalized plan, published by the State Department on Friday, requires visitors from a select list of countries to put up a bond of $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000, which would be paid back when their B1 or B2 visa expires. The pilot program for the bonds was introduced last year, and affected 50 countries.

Most of the affected visas last about three months, but some of them are for 10 years, meaning that visa holders wouldn’t get their money back for a decade, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted. The move is guaranteed to further hurt the U.S. tourism industry at a time when it is already struggling thanks to Trump administration policies.

During the World Cup this summer, the Trump administration suspended the bonds for anyone who had a ticket to one of the games. But many fans still were unable to attend, including the relatives of some of the players, thanks to a separate travel ban and other visa restrictions.

Trump’s immigration policies have cost the country billions of dollars in tourism and also caused prices of goods and services to go up for Americans. U.S. visa policies have also hurt international student enrollment and in turn led to a big drop in revenue for universities and colleges. Now that this visa bond program is being finalized, the U.S. is set to only further suffer economically.

Senator Mitch McConnell has yet to show his face in the halls of Congress, and the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election is fast approaching.

The 84-year-old Republican senator has not made a public appearance in weeks, ever since he was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious at his Washington, D.C., home on June 14. Since then, McConnell’s office has refused to provide any meaningful updates on the exact state of the senator’s health, the reason for his extended hospitalization, or if and when he plans to return to Capitol Hill.

Beshear has until this Monday, August 3, to call a special election so Kentucky voters can choose a new senator in time for the midterms. Under Section 152 of the Kentucky state Constitution, a special election to fill a vacant seat must be called at least three months ahead of the vote—and since the midterm elections are set for November 3, Monday is exactly that three-month cutoff.

Kentucky’s law on Senate vacancies, House Bill 622, which was passed in 2024, is still legally untested. It eliminated the governor’s ability to appoint interim replacements for vacant U.S. Senate seats and mandated that any vacancy be filled by a special election, but as there are several competing legal provisions, it’s not yet clear what would happen in the courts.

Although Kentucky traditionally votes Republican at the federal level, Beshear, a Democrat, has been elected twice as the state’s top dog. A special election might just give Democrats a chance to send another one of their own to the Senate.

Beshear has repeatedly called on McConnell to justify his absence from Congress or to step down in time for Kentucky voters to choose a replacement. If the senator does not retire earlier, he will leave the Senate at the end of his term in December.

“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition. If the Senator is unable to respond for either of those or other conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky,” Beshear wrote Monday in a letter to McConnell obtained by CNN.

McConnell’s office has only released two unconvincing photos of the senator alongside his wife, Elaine Chao, since his hospitalization. The latest statement from the senator’s office, released on July 27, said that McConnell would not yet be returning to his legislative duties in Congress, but he was “looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky.”

McConnell’s ongoing absence has caused a stir among D.C. lawmakers and political commentators alike—from rumors that the Kentucky senator was brain-dead to pointed questions from MAGA-aligned allies, to a missing-person poster taped outside the Russell Senate Office Building.