Deck: House Democrats launch a discharge petition to permanently kill the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, bypassing Speaker Mike Johnson and forcing a floor vote that tests whether Republican outrage was genuine or merely performative.
Lead:
The $1.8 billion question landed on the House floor Thursday. Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, announced he is filing a discharge petition on his NO CARTE BLANCHE Act, a legislative package designed to permanently outlaw the Trump administration’s anti-weaponization fund and block similar programs from ever being revived.
The move is a direct end run around Speaker Mike Johnson. Discharge petitions require 218 signatures to force a floor vote, and once that threshold is met, House rules compel leadership to schedule a vote within two legislative days. That means a showdown could come as early as next Tuesday.
“This is about whether the rule of law still means something in this country,” Raskin said in a statement announcing the petition. “The people’s representatives must decide whether to uphold the rule of law and protect taxpayer dollars, or stand aside as this unprecedented corruption spins out of control.”
The slush fund fight
The controversy began on May 18, when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund as part of a settlement in President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the 2019 leak of his tax returns. The fund was capitalized at $1.776 billion, drawn from the Justice Department’s permanent judgment fund, a perpetual Treasury appropriation used to pay legal settlements.
Under the fund’s structure, a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general would have the power to issue apologies and monetary relief to anyone who could demonstrate they had been a victim of “government weaponization” or “lawfare.” The president could remove any commissioner at will. Blanche testified before Congress that “anybody can apply” and that eligibility was limited only by the broad and undefined term “weaponization.”
Democrats immediately labeled the fund a slush fund. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, called it absurd. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said it was “pure theft of public funds” and “an outrageous and unprecedented slush fund.”
The backlash was not confined to Democrats. Republican senators including Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana raised alarms that the fund could be used to pay cash awards to people convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The controversy threatened to derail a $72 billion budget reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement agencies, forcing the White House into damage control.
On June 2, after a nearly three-hour White House meeting between Trump and Johnson, Blanche told lawmakers that the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund. “Period,” he said.
But critics were not satisfied. Blanche refused to issue a signed, written order formally rescinding the fund, and the Justice Department fought a federal judge’s demand for a sworn declaration that the program was dead, arguing the request was “unnecessary” and an overstep.
That refusal to put the fund’s death in writing fueled the push for a permanent legislative solution.
The NO CARTE BLANCHE Act
Raskin’s bill is formally titled the No Corrupt Agreements Requiring Taxpayer Expenditures Benefitting Lawbreakers and Assorted Non-Prosecution Covenants, Handouts and Emoluments Act. It would do three things: block any federal funds from being used to operate the anti-weaponization fund or any similar program; prohibit payments to the president, vice president, political appointees, or individuals convicted for crimes related to the January 6 Capitol riot; and require independent judicial review of any settlement agreement where a sitting president recovers damages from the United States government.
A companion bill in the package would also make it illegal for a sitting president to receive damages or other awards from a government settlement unless the deal undergoes judicial scrutiny and serves a legitimate legal purpose or the “interest of justice.”
Raskin framed the fund in stark terms. “They are determined to compensate Trump’s private street-fighting militia and create 1,600 MAGA millionaires with our money,” he said, referring to the roughly 1,600 January 6 defendants who received presidential pardons.
A pattern of bypassing Johnson
The discharge petition marks the latest instance of rank-and-file lawmakers wresting control of the House agenda from their own leadership. MSNBC reported this month that before Johnson became speaker, only two discharge petitions in the entire 21st century had reached the 218-signature threshold needed to force a vote. Under Johnson, eight have now succeeded in three years, covering issues from Ukraine aid and proxy voting for new parents to the Epstein Files Transparency Act and extended Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The pattern reflects a speaker with an increasingly tenuous grip on his caucus. Johnson’s refusal to bring the weaponization fund legislation to the floor himself left Democrats with little choice but to pursue the procedural nuclear option. The question now is whether enough Republicans who publicly criticized the fund will sign the discharge petition to put it over the top.
What happens next
Raskin plans to formally file the privileged motion on Friday. If Democrats secure all 213 of their own signatures, they would need just five Republicans to cross the 218-vote threshold. Given the bipartisan nature of the earlier backlash against the fund, and the fact that several House Republicans had previously expressed support for killing it, the number is within reach.
If the petition succeeds, the House floor could become the stage for one of the more uncomfortable votes the Republican conference has faced this session: a straight up-or-down choice on whether to permanently block a program created by their own party’s president. The outcome would send a signal not just about the weaponization fund itself, but about whether congressional Republicans are willing to assert their institutional authority over the executive branch.
For Democrats, the arithmetic is straightforward. For Johnson, the politics could not be more awkward.
The fund, which the administration claimed would compensate Americans harmed by political targeting, has become a symbol of executive overreach in the eyes of critics across the political spectrum. Its fate now rests on a procedural mechanism that has become the defining feature of Johnson’s speakership: the discharge petition.