Trump's $1.8 Billion Retreat: DOJ Kills the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" as the Pentagon Locks Out the Press
Two moves in the same week reveal an administration fighting battles on two fronts — one over money for allies, the other over who gets to watch.
In the span of a few days, the Trump administration found itself walking back one of its most controversial financial proposals while simultaneously tightening its grip on press access at the Pentagon. The two stories are unrelated on their surface, but together they sketch a picture of an administration under pressure — retreating where the resistance came from its own party, and pressing forward where it could act alone.
The Fund That Couldn't Survive Its Own Party
For weeks, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had defended a roughly $1.8 billion program with an unwieldy name and an even more contentious purpose: the "Anti-Weaponization Fund." On Tuesday, June 2, testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, he abandoned it.
"We are not moving forward with the fund, period," Blanche told lawmakers, according to reporting on the hearing. When a Democratic member pressed him — "Not moving forward, ever?" — the moment marked the clearest public confirmation yet that the program was finished.
What the fund actually was
The $1.776 billion fund traced back to a settlement of Trump's own lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The Justice Department framed it as redress for what officials describe as the Biden-era "weaponization" of federal law enforcement — the period during which Trump faced criminal charges and several of his allies were investigated or prosecuted. In theory, anyone who felt they'd been unfairly targeted could apply for compensation, regardless of political affiliation.
That framing did not survive scrutiny. A five-member commission was supposed to decide who got paid, but no commissioners were ever named, and the eligibility criteria were never made clear. Critics across the political spectrum began calling it a "slush fund" for the president's allies.
Why it collapsed
The fatal problem for the fund wasn't Democratic opposition — it was Republican resistance. Senate Republicans signaled they did not have the votes to advance a Homeland Security funding bill unless the White House scaled back or scrapped the program entirely. The fund had become an anchor dragging down a roughly $70 billion package to fund the administration's immigration enforcement priorities.
A particular flashpoint: Blanche had repeatedly refused to rule out that people convicted of violent crimes in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack could collect payouts. That refusal alarmed lawmakers on both sides. Legal experts separately noted the fund lacked any clear legal basis — no judicial review, no congressional oversight, no statutory grounding. Courts had already temporarily paused its creation, and the DOJ said it would comply with a Virginia court order blocking it.
The catch nobody should miss
Killing the fund did not unwind the underlying deal. Blanche made clear that the agreement barring the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses for returns filed before the settlement remains in place. Asked whether that protection was also going away, he said "nothing has changed with that." The administration walked away from the payout mechanism — not from the audit shield that benefits the president directly.
And Blanche refused to put the reversal in writing. When pressed, he asked why a written commitment was necessary if he was simply stating what the department was doing. That refusal carries weight: the DOJ still faces multiple lawsuits over the fund, and getting those cases dismissed will likely require exactly the kind of written commitment Blanche declined to give. Notably, while he was testifying to Congress, he was not under oath — though lying to Congress remains a crime regardless.
Is it really dead?
Maybe not entirely. The day after Blanche's testimony, Trump injected fresh uncertainty. Asked in the Oval Office whether the fund was dead or merely paused, the president said he'd "have to ask the lawyers" and that he didn't know. He added that the fund, "as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing." That gap — between the acting attorney general saying "period" and the president saying he'd have to check — is the space where this story is still being written.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon Goes Dark
While the fund was unraveling, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a quieter but arguably more consequential move on the transparency front. The Pentagon designated its press office a classified space, physically barring journalists from a room they had been able to walk into freely across multiple administrations.
The Defense Department's public affairs office — historically a place where reporters could approach military public affairs officials directly, without an escort, and simply ask questions — has been redesignated a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, the secure designation reserved for handling classified material.
The stated reason
Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez confirmed the change, calling it "necessary" and insisting there was nothing "controversial" about it. The official rationale: speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War will now use the space, and those staffers handle classified material and require SIPRNet access — the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network used to share classified information. Because of that, Valdez said, journalists will no longer be permitted inside. Access to the press secretary and the public affairs office is now by appointment only.
A pattern, not an isolated decision
This did not happen in a vacuum. It is the latest in a months-long campaign to restrict media access at the Pentagon:
In March, the department shut down the "Correspondents' Corridor," a long-standing workspace where reporters covering the military had been allowed to work.
The Pentagon also began requiring journalists to be escorted to access press conferences and interviews.
Going back to last fall, Hegseth — a former Fox News host — told news organizations that reporters could not cover the department unless they agreed to publish only information authorized for release by the administration, including unclassified material.
Reporters are already largely barred from the building while litigation over the agency's press rules continues. Courts have generally sided with the press in those challenges, yet the restrictions have only intensified. The practical effect of the new SCIF designation is that even if journalists win the right to re-enter the Pentagon, the space where they'd actually interact with spokespeople would remain off-limits.
The reaction
Press freedom advocates were blunt. Reporters Without Borders responded that "no matter how petulant Pete gets," journalists would keep reporting and holding the Pentagon accountable for the money, operations, and lives it affects. The move arrived alongside other Hegseth controversies — including a federal court temporarily blocking the Pentagon from discharging transgender service members, and reporting that a disproportionate share of senior officers he has removed are female or Black.
The Through-Line
Read side by side, these two stories say something about where the administration's leverage lies. On the fund, the White House could be forced into retreat because the obstacle was inside its own coalition — Senate Republicans with the power to stall a funding bill. On press access, where no such internal check exists, the administration simply acted, unilaterally narrowing the public's window into one of the most powerful institutions in the country.
One fight was about $1.8 billion. The other is about something harder to price: whether the people covering the Pentagon can do their jobs at all.
Reporting compiled from coverage by CNN, the Associated Press, PBS NewsHour, NBC News, The Washington Post, The Hill, TIME, Fortune, and Democracy Now! as of June 4, 2026.