Judge Freezes Trump's $1.8 Billion Fund Before a Single Dollar Is Spent

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Well, hey everybody. It's Friday. Happy Friday. So, today marks one month since we started this daily show. I've had a lot of fun with it. I hope you're having fun with it, too. Thank you for all of the support so far. Certainly, it's been successful, which is why we're going to continue this. We have some good news heading into the weekend as a federal judge just hit the brakes on Donald Trump's plan to use your tax dollars to pay his closest friends and strongest supporters. It's a very nice move. We're also going to get into the CDC begging its own staff to volunteer and help with Ebola screenings at the airport. Wall Street analysts warning that the next surge in energy prices is on the way. A cabinet secretary bragging about kicking more than 4 million Americans off food stamps. and Trump's so-called Board of Peace routing its money through a private bank account in promises to open it up and I quote when appropriate.

[00:00:58]He'll open it up when appropriate. Quick reminder though before we dive in, please hit like, share, and subscribe to support this work. So, let's get to it.

[00:01:07]We start with the courts freezing Trump's slush fund before a single check could go out the door. A judge in Virginia ordered the administration to stop all work on what it calls the anti-weaponization fund. This is the reparations for J6ers.

[00:01:23]No money in, no claims taken, no payouts. The commission that was supposed to hand the money out was never even seened and seated and now it cannot be seated. But here's a catch. There is a catch, of course.

[00:01:36]The judge set a hearing for June 12th and gave the Justice Department until next Friday to put its legal case on paper. Nobody has won anything. We just have frozen the clock. The part we're sitting with is who's stepping in here, who stepped in here and who didn't.

[00:01:52]Deciding how the government spends your money is supposed to be Congress's job.

[00:01:57]It is right there in the Constitution.

[00:01:59]And Congress had this fund sitting right in front of it. We told you last week what they did with it. They ran. Rather than take a vote, the House and the Senate both skipped town for Memorial Day break, and they were willing to blow up Trump's own immigration funding bill on the way out just to avoid going on the record for it. This is not some partisan ambush either. Some of the loudest objectives are actually coming from Republicans. They know it's bad policy. They know it's bad politics.

[00:02:31]They just won't say so with a vote yet and probably not even out loud because Yeah. So, the branch bill built to control this kind of thing took the week off and left a judge in Virginia as the only thing standing between you and your tax dollars and the people who attacked police officers. The recess ends Monday and Congress will be back in session right up to that June 12th hearing. So, we're about to find out whether lawmakers finally act or pass again and leave it in the hands of the courts.

[00:03:02]Probably they will do that. And while the White House works out how to pay its friends, the CDC is asking its own workers to volunteer to catch Ebola at the airport. Not really to catch it, but to catch it. You know what I mean? The acting director of the CDC emailed staff this week seeking volunteers to screen travelers arriving from central Africa.

[00:03:22]He's sending people from across the agency to airports to check arriving passengers for fever and flag anyone who looks sick. The reason is an outbreak the International Rescue Committee warns could become the deadliest on record.

[00:03:38]More than 900 suspected cases, over 220 deaths, and it's now spreading to major cities in central Africa, not just the countryside. The strain is a brutal one.

[00:03:48]The usual tests struggle to catch it and there is no approved vaccine. And in past outbreaks, it's killed between a third and half of the people that it infected. When your plan for a virus that kills up to half the people it touches is to email the staff and hope enough of them raise their hands, you're not running a response. You are desperate. We didn't stumble into this.

[00:04:12]Over the past year, the administration has gutted the workers and programs who specialize in catching outbreaks at the border. In January, we walked out the we walked out of the World Health Organization, the very body leading the global response. So, we're chasing this virus from the outside with less data and fewer partners than we had a year ago. And let's not forget that the people left in charge were picked for loyalty and not expertise.

[00:04:40]It's kind of the story everywhere.

[00:04:42]Speaking of things getting worse, Wall Street is warning the next jump in energy prices is coming. What do you mean it's not here? Nope. Since the war with Iran started in late February, the straighta hormuz obviously has been pretty much shut. More than a fifth of the world's oil moves through that one narrow waterway. And when it closed, prices took off. The International Energy Agency compared it to living through both oil shocks of the 1970s at the same time. Now analysts are raising their forecast again. They are not betting on more war. They're betting on a slow recovery. And the next wave of price shocks could be two to three weeks away. Even if the ceasefire holds, even if a deal reopens the straight, the oil doesn't the oil doesn't just come roaring back. Shut in wells take time to restart. Tankers take time to return.

[00:05:30]The fear premium gets baked into the price and lingers for months, maybe even years. We talked yesterday about the Iran deal. Trump keeps promising it's almost done. You know, the one that would reopen the straight and let Iran sell its oil again. That's the part that nobody puts on the poster. Even in the best case scenario, it's a slow partial climb back and you pay for the weight at the pump. And it's not just what it costs to fill your tank. Diesel is what moves freights. The trucks hauling your groceries to the to the shelf and you know, and they've been hit even harder.

[00:06:04]So this leaks into the price of nearly everything while families are already stretched thin. The president can announce a deal any day he likes. The relief at the gas station will show up on its own schedule. And experts are telling us that the recovery is not going to be quick. And as costs continue to climb, the administration is bragging about kicking millions of Americans off food stamps. While they give themselves tax cuts, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has been busy celebrating that more than 4 million people have been kicked off SNAP in about a year. She says it proves the economy is booming and people are trading welfare for the American dream. Then someone asked her how she actually knows that.

[00:06:45]>> So, as we have moved about four million people off of SNAP, we don't have the exact data. How much of that is fraud?

[00:06:50]how much of that is people just moving into the American dream and off of the welfare programs, but we think it's it's probably pretty significant.

[00:06:58]>> So, basically, she doesn't know. She's moved four million people off the rolls and in the same breath, she admits she has no idea why. The numbers, there's no numbers. There's no proof. It's just a hunch. That's it. As she puts it, probably significant. Here's what we do know. Real fraud and SNAP runs under 1% which is nowhere near enough to push millions off the rolls. What actually did, experts say, is the law Trump signed last summer, the one that piled new work requirements uh on people who used to qualify, and it cut $186 billion from the program, the largest cut in its history. So, here we are. The same government that's trying to hand nearly $2 billion to the president's friends is taking food off the table for four million families and calling it a victory. And Rollins says this is only the beginning. And finally, another thing this White House would rather not talk about, where the money for Trump's Board of Peace is going.

[00:07:56]You may remember the Board of Peace as Trump's big plan for post-war Gaza.

[00:08:00]There's an official fund for it set up through the World Bank and built to be transparent, but four months in, according to the Financial Times, has taken in exactly 0. So where's the money going? into a private JP Morgan account the board set up on its own with none of the official reporting rules that it would carry. A board official waved it off saying donors just quote chose other options and promised the board would show its financials to its own executive board, the one packed with Trump insiders at a time deemed appropriate.

[00:08:34]They said translation just trust us. But this isn't some private charity. Trump has floated $10 billion of taxpayer money for this thing. So Americans could be bankrolling a fund whose books are controlled by the president's friend run through a private account with no oversight. Every day there is something new and even more insane. Meanwhile, the real money trickles in around the edges.

[00:08:58]Morocco put up $20 million. The UAE pledged 100 million. When the transparent account sits empty and the private one fills up when appropriate is just a different way of saying never.

[00:09:12]Once again, never. Okay. Well, that's show for May 29th. Thank you for being here. If any of this hits home, like it, share it, send it to someone who needs to see it. Let's grow this thing. Hope everyone has a great weekend and we will catch you back here on Monday. Take care.