President Donald Trump’s decision to defund the Justice Department’s planned anti-terrorist fund is a win for taxpayers — who don’t have to pay for the political machinery that makes that fund necessary.
Trump has faced endless, surprising attempts to destroy him outside of the usual political battle.
The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago for alleged mishandling of classified material despite its agents’ doubts about a possible motive.
Officials in Colorado, Maine and Illinois sought to exclude him from the 2024 election, using a Civil War-era constitutional clause, before the Supreme Court unanimously reversed itself.
Trump’s infamous firing is the result of Georgia State Attorney Fani Willis impeaching him in a botched fraud case.
And the civil case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, funded in part by a prominent Democratic donor, resulted in nearly $90 million in damages — despite Carroll not being able to remember what year the alleged collusion took place.
That’s the key thrust behind the debate that has dogged the now-cancelled Anti-Weaponization Fund, which was proposed to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over his tax evasion.
The fund would have provided money to victims of law enforcement who were wrongfully targeted by the Justice Department for participating in politically motivated prosecutions.
Critics of the president asked if this fund is legal since the beneficiaries had no standing in the first case.
They also asked if the commission that was established to issue these funds was really independent.
But they shied away from a broader uncomfortable truth: Donald Trump had no intention of doing anything his predecessors didn’t do.
He was simply, as was his style, doing it plainly, without apology or subtlety.
Consider what happened in the final weeks of the Biden administration.
With time running out, billions of dollars flowed out the door to Democratic-affiliated organizations that could finance, hire and support a political network designed to face the opposition for years in well-funded comfort until they are back in power.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, caught on camera in the final weeks of the Biden administration by undercover reporter Project Veritas, described the spending controversy before Trump’s inauguration as “dropping gold bars on the Titanic.”
What did that look like in practice?
The Democratic Party that Stacey Abrams advised received $2 billion in EPA funding by 2024 even though it reported $100 billion in revenue last year.
But don’t worry, taxpayer: the $2 billion comes with a requirement that grantees complete basic budget training within 90 days.
The real victims in all of this, whether we’re talking about Biden’s time allowances or Trump’s now-cancelled fund, are the American taxpayers.
It is the taxpayers who fund the political machine, and the taxpayers who are being asked to fund this cleanup.
And this comes with side effects in terms of fraud that should make the blood of all taxpayers run cold: systematic abuse throughout Medicare, defrauded children’s autism programs and a full non-profit environment – ostensibly dedicated to home health care, child care, learning centers and more – that treat public money as a source of private resources.
Working people and middle-class families pay for these scandals with every paycheck while worrying about rent, mortgages, college tuition, medical bills and whether they will be able to retire with any dignity.
No political party should have billions of dollars to distribute to its allies.
But the solution is less money that is entirely in the hands of the government.
The goal the Anti-Disarmament Fund aims to address is not unreasonable.
President Trump is not the only American to have been caught in the crossfire of political persecution — and people who were persecuted by an armed justice system should have some form of redress.
However Trump may sympathize with victims of political persecution, knowing what it feels like doesn’t make it any better to send taxpayers the bill to fix it.
The truth here is one neither party wants to admit, because both sides benefit from the status quo: The endless cycle of austerity that allows money to flow to the unions is costly to everyday Americans who foot the bill.
The Anti-Disarmament Fund may have been well-intentioned and may have righted some real wrongs – but that is not a good reason to perpetuate a cycle that must end.
The bill, as always, goes to the taxpayer.
Maud Maron is a New York attorney and education advocate. Taken from the Spectator.
