The Big Five

1. The $1.776 Billion Question: DOJ’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” Draws Republican Heat

Anonymous figures in suits and professional dress drag $-marked money bags down the U.S. Capitol steps to blacked-out SUVs as cash and coins spill across the marble
The people’s money carried down the Capitol steps and loaded into unmarked SUVs — $1.776 billion, drawn from the fund Congress set aside to pay its lost lawsuits.

This is the week’s actual story, and it is unusual because the loudest discomfort is coming from the President’s own party.

The Department of Justice has stood up a fund of $1.776 billion — the figure is a deliberate nod to 1776 — to compensate people who claim they were targeted by a “weaponized” federal government under the prior administration. The money traces back to an extraordinary chain of events: in January, Trump and his sons filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns (the first time a sitting president sued his own administration as a private citizen). DOJ then settled that suit, and the settlement is being financed out of the Judgment Fund — the permanent, indefinite appropriation Congress maintains to pay the government’s lost lawsuits and legal claims.

The fund would be run by five commissioners — four named by the Attorney General, the fifth in consultation with congressional leadership — and the President can remove any of them. They would write the eligibility rules, take claims, and decide who counts as a victim. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the President have defended it as an ordinary settlement. The MAGA universe has already started lining up: MyPillow’s Mike Lindell and former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio are reportedly among the early applicants.

What makes this different from a normal partisan fight is the Republican reaction. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) said he wants to understand the “legality” of creating the fund without Congress. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said he sees “no legal precedent.” Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was characteristically unfiltered: “stupid on stilts,” warning it could end with taxpayers compensating someone who “assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for that.” Even House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), who defended the concept, conceded it needs “accountability measures and safeguards so that it is not, quote, a slush fund.”

The legislative response is moving on both sides of the aisle. Ranking Member Jamie Raskin introduced the No Taxpayer-Funded Settlement Slush Funds Act; Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced a bipartisan bill barring federal money from paying any claim to the fund; Rep. John Larson has a measure to tax the payouts at 100%. And two lawsuits hit federal court Friday — the D.C. case landing in front of Judge Richard Leon, who has already crossed the President on the ballroom-construction delay and the WilmerHale executive order. And the fight is no longer abstract: this week the fund’s toxicity stalled the GOP’s own $72 billion ICE and Border Patrol funding bill in the Senate (more in §5).

“Stupid on stilts. … It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for that?” — Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), on the Anti-Weaponization Fund

The small business angle: Read past the politics and look at the plumbing. The Judgment Fund is not an abstraction to a federal contractor — it is the backstop that pays you when the government breaches a contract, loses a Contract Disputes Act claim, or eats an adverse Board of Contract Appeals or Court of Federal Claims judgment. It is a permanent appropriation precisely so that a small business that wins a claim against Uncle Sam does not have to wait for Congress to find the money. The precedent being set here — that the Judgment Fund can be tapped for a discretionary, politically administered settlement pool — is the kind of thing that seems remote until the pot is contested, capped, or subjected to new statutory guardrails that sweep in legitimate contract claims as collateral damage. If you have an open CDA claim or a pending appeal, watch the Raskin/Fitzpatrick bills’ definitions closely. The fight over a $1.78B political fund could quietly rewrite the rules of the fund that backstops your receivables.

2. Third in His Own Building: Bill Cassidy’s Historic Collapse in Louisiana

A man in a business suit airballs a three-pointer in an empty arena as the scoreboard lead melts away
He had it won, took the shot to ice it, and airballed a 22-point lead. The suit is the point — this is the establishment, not an athlete.

On Saturday, May 16, in the first cycle Louisiana ran under closed party primaries instead of its famous jungle system, two-term Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third in the Republican primary for his own seat. The numbers: Julia Letlow 44.8%, John Fleming 28.3%, Cassidy 24.8%. Because no one cleared 50%, Letlow and Fleming advance to a June 27 runoff. Cassidy advances to private life.

The historical markers are stark. Cassidy is the first elected sitting U.S. Senator to lose renomination since Richard Lugar in 2012, and the first to finish no better than third since Hattie Caraway in 1944. The proximate cause is not mysterious: Cassidy was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump at the 2021 impeachment trial, the only one of them on the ballot this cycle, and — per reporting all spring — the one Republican incumbent Trump’s political operation actively wanted to beat. Trump endorsed Letlow in January. Rep. Clay Higgins, who had flirted with the race, stayed in the House and predicted Cassidy would lose anyway. He did.

The small business angle: Two things matter here beyond the morality play. First, the committee math. Cassidy chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — the panel that touches OSHA, labor standards, ERISA, and the health-coverage mandates that fall hardest on small employers. A new chair means new priorities for every small business with a payroll. Second, and more durably, the chilling signal. The lesson every Senator just absorbed is that one high-profile vote against the President’s interest can end a career that incumbency, fundraising, and a committee gavel could not save. If you are a contractor counting on oversight — on a Senator being willing to publicly challenge an executive-branch action that hurts your sector — the price of that courage just got marked, in public, in Louisiana. Model your expectations of independent oversight down accordingly.

3. The Sweep: Barr In, Massie Out, and the Trump Endorsement Goes 1.000

A golfer watches a long curving putt roll toward the cup at golden hour as the gallery rises
The longshot read the break and the putt drops. Take the backing, beat the odds — while the rest of the field three-putts.

Tuesday, May 19, was the cleanest demonstration of the President’s grip on Republican primaries this cycle. Two Kentucky results tell the story.

In the open Senate race to succeed retiring Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Rep. Andy Barr won the GOP primary with 60.5% over former Attorney General Daniel Cameron — the AP called it at 7 p.m. as the western polls closed. Trump’s endorsement, and Trump’s pressure on businessman Nate Morris to exit, decided it. Barr ran explicitly as an extension of the President’s agenda, touting his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He faces Democrat Charles Booker — who beat Amy McGrath for the nomination — in a seat rated safely Republican.

The more telling result was in KY-04, where Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Ed Gallrein unseated Rep. Thomas Massie. Massie is the House’s most committed fiscal libertarian and its most reliable “no” on continuing resolutions, omnibus packages, and leadership-whipped spending deals; Trump targeted him after Massie pushed to force release of the Epstein files. His defeat removes the single most predictable spoiler vote in House appropriations fights.

The small business angle: This is an appropriations story wearing a primary’s clothes. Massie’s “no” votes have repeatedly been the swing that forced leadership to renegotiate spending packages — which means schedule risk, CR risk, and shutdown risk for every contractor waiting on obligated funds. Subtract him from the math and the House majority’s whip count on must-pass spending bills gets more predictable, not less — modestly good news for program stability, if you net out the chaos. On the other side of the ledger, Barr is a senior House Financial Services member; a Barr Senate seat is a friendlier ear on SBA lending, capital access, and community-bank rules that small contractors depend on for working capital. Watch where he lands on committees if he wins in November.

4. Georgia Goes to Overtime: A GOP Senate Runoff, an Ethics Cloud, and a $31M Democrat

The marquee 2026 Senate battleground produced no Republican nominee on Tuesday — just a mess. Rep. Mike Collins and former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley advance to a June 16 runoff for the right to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Rep. Buddy Carter, the third major contender, conceded after finishing out of the money — warning on his way out, “if those two are our candidates, we lose.”

The two survivors carry baggage. Collins faces a House Ethics Committee inquiry over allegations he misused congressional funds (paying a former chief of staff for campaign work and employing the aide’s girlfriend, who allegedly did no work). Dooley, son of the legendary UGA coach Vince Dooley, is Gov. Brian Kemp’s pick and runs on “work with President Trump but for you” — but Trump stayed out of the primary and may stay out of the runoff. Meanwhile Ossoff, who ran unopposed, has banked roughly $31 million and is the kind of well-funded incumbent that a bruising, resource-draining GOP runoff is built to help. The governor’s race went to a runoff too: Burt Jones vs. Rick Jackson on the GOP side, with Keisha Lance Bottoms taking the Democratic nomination outright.

The small business angle: Georgia is wall-to-wall defense economy — Fort Moore, Robins AFB, Kings Bay, Hunter Army Airfield, Dobbins — and the Senate seat in play here is one of only two Democratic-held seats up in a state Trump won in 2024. Control of the chamber that confirms every DoD nominee and writes every NDAA mark runs partly through this race. A primary that drags to June 16 (and possibly bleeds money and oxygen all summer) means Georgia’s defense-installation delegation is distracted and the eventual nominee enters the general underfunded against a $31M incumbent. If your business depends on a Georgia installation’s FY27 work, the political instability is now a planning variable, not background noise.

5. The Slush Fund Stalls the ICE Funding Bill — and the June 1 Deadline With It

Here is what makes the $1.776B fund more than a messaging fight: this week it derailed the one must-pass funding vehicle actually moving in the Senate.

A quick realignment of the facts, because they moved fast. The record 76-day DHS shutdown that began February 14 ended April 30, when the President signed H.R. 7147 — funding most of the department (TSA, FEMA, CISA, Coast Guard, Secret Service) through May 22, but pointedly excluding ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Those two agencies have been running on leftover One Big Beautiful Bill Act cash while Republicans move their funding — roughly $72 billion (about $31B for ICE, $23B for CBP, plus related lines) — through budget reconciliation, which needs only 51 votes and bypasses a filibuster.

That bill stalled Thursday. Republicans were sprinting toward a vote when the $1.776B anti-weaponization fund went radioactive inside their own conference. Acting AG Todd Blanche was dispatched to the Hill to calm members; it didn’t hold. Majority Leader John Thune said the White House should have consulted Congress and that the settlement “made everything way harder than it should be.” The Senate then adjourned for a week’s recess — all but guaranteeing the GOP misses the President’s June 1 deadline. Trump responded by publicly urging Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she ruled parts of the package didn’t qualify for reconciliation.

The mechanism Democrats are exploiting: reconciliation opens the floor to a long series of amendment votes, and they are queuing ones designed to be unsurvivable on tape — barring fund money from anyone convicted of assaulting a police officer (Van Hollen), from January 6 assault convicts, or from convicted rapists. Any one that passes sends the package back to committee and the GOP back to square one.

The small business angle: Know which pot funds your program — the two halves of DHS are behaving very differently right now. ICE, CBP, or border-technology work: the dedicated appropriation is stuck in the stalled reconciliation bill with no vote scheduled, so those agencies are running on leftover One Big Beautiful Bill Act money rather than a clean FY26 appropriation — plan for that carryover to be the bridge through the summer. TSA, FEMA, CISA, Coast Guard, or Secret Service work: the H.R. 7147 CR that reopened these agencies expired May 22, so as of this writing they’re leaning on that same OBBBA cushion while Congress — now in recess — sorts the next bill; confirm your task order’s actual funding line before you bank on Q3 obligations. And watch the parliamentarian fight: if the reconciliation guardrails get stripped to force the ICE/CBP bill through, the scope of what’s fundable could move under you mid-cycle.

■ Weekly Awards ■
🏆 The Rubber Stamp Award
Most self-certifying institution of the week
The Five-Commissioner “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” any one of whom the President can fire. A $1.776 billion pot, financed from the fund Congress set aside to pay the government’s lost lawsuits, to be distributed by a panel the Attorney General appoints four-fifths of and the President can dismiss at will, under eligibility rules the panel writes for itself. The design is the award. When the people who decide who gets the money serve at the pleasure of the person the money is meant to vindicate, “independent commission” is doing a great deal of unpaid labor. Judge Richard Leon now holds the whistle.
🌫️ The Fog Machine
Clearest sentence of the week (this time, from inside the tent)
“Stupid on stilts.” Credit where due: this one goes to a Republican, not at one. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), describing the slush fund, cut through more fog in four words than most of his colleagues managed in four days of “I’d want to learn more about the legality.” The Fog Machine Award usually honors a sentence engineered to obscure. This week it honors the opposite — a sentence that named the thing plainly, from a man who has announced he is leaving and therefore, apparently, has nothing left to lose by saying what up-22-with-seven-to-play looks like from the inside. Enjoy the freedom of the exit interview, Senator.
■ Quick Hits ■

ICYMI

  • Idaho: Gov. Brad Little held the GOP nomination at roughly 59% — a quiet, un-upset incumbent night in a week defined by the opposite.
  • Alabama: Tommy Tuberville rolled to the Republican gubernatorial nomination at about 85.5%, leaving his Senate seat open and the Alabama down-ballot scramble for later.
  • Pennsylvania: The governor’s general election is set — Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) vs. state Treasurer Stacy Garrity (R).
  • Georgia turnout: Democrats cast roughly 53% of primary ballots to Republicans’ 45% — a number both parties are reading into for November.
  • Golf — the week’s best closing act: Aaron Rai holed a 68-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th at Aronimink — outside Philadelphia, in primary-season Pennsylvania — to seal the PGA Championship by three strokes over Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley. A final-round 65 out of a chaotic, wide-open field that had two dozen players within four shots of the lead, the 31-year-old going low while everyone around him couldn’t. He’s the first English winner of the PGA since Jim Barnes in 1919. A man making the putt while the rest of the field three-putts is, this week, also a metaphor — see Louisiana.
  • NBA: Knicks lead the Cavaliers 2–0 in the ECF after the 22-point Game 1 collapse and a wire-to-wire Game 2; the Thunder remain the betting favorite to win the title regardless.
  • MLB: The Cubs — the early-May darlings who became the first team since the 1955 Dodgers to post two 10-game win streaks inside their first 40 games — cooled this week, shut out 5–0 by the Brewers on May 20 and slipping to 29–21, 1.5 games back in the NL Central. Even historic streaks regress to the mean. Ask the Cavs.
■ The Briefcase ■
This Week's Pour
This week's chaos level: UP 22 WITH SEVEN TO PLAY, AND THE OTHER TEAM JUST CALLED TIMEOUT
The Bottle Sazerac Rye — the workhorse rye out of New Orleans, appropriate for the week Louisiana wrote the biggest political headline. 90 proof, peppery, dry, a little anise on the back end. The Sazerac is the official cocktail of New Orleans by act of the Louisiana Legislature — the most Louisiana sentence in this newsletter.
Serve Old-fashioned glass, no ice in the serving glass (stir over ice, then strain), a Herbsaint rinse swirled and dumped, a lemon peel expressed over the top and not dropped in. Too much ceremony for a Saturday? Two ounces over one big cube and a dash of bitters gets you 90% there.
If You Can’t Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-in-Bond — 100 proof, a touch more aggressive, and a bonded whiskey feels right for a week about the limits of federal funds.
The week ran four playoff games: a Game 1 collapse (Cassidy, third in his own building), a road sweep (the Trump endorsement, 1.000 on the night), an overtime that spilled into June (Georgia, twice), and an undercard that held serve (Tuberville, Little, Shapiro–Garrity). The favorites won most of it. The institution lost the one game it could not afford. And the biggest number on the scoreboard — $1.776 billion — is the one the referees are still reviewing at the table. Pour the Sazerac, express the peel, and remember: a 22-point lead is real right up until the moment it is gone. The Senate just adjourned for a week with the ICE bill stuck on the floor. They took the timeout. So can you.
■ Your Turn ■
Question of the Week

The Louisiana runoff is June 27. The Georgia runoffs are June 16. Judge Leon has the slush-fund case. Which of these happens FIRST?

A) A federal court (Leon or the E.D. Va. judge) issues an injunction pausing payouts from the Anti-Weaponization Fund
B) The Fitzpatrick–Suozzi bipartisan bill to bar payments gets a House floor vote
C) Trump endorses in the Georgia GOP Senate runoff (Collins or Dooley)
D) The Senate passes the ~$72B ICE/CBP reconciliation bill (slush-fund amendment or not) before Trump’s June 1 deadline
E) The Knicks close out the Cavaliers and reach their first NBA Finals since 1999

Hit reply and tell us. Best answers featured next week. (Smart money is on E — the Knicks are up 2–0 and the team that wins Game 1 of a conference final takes the series about 78% of the time. A is the one that would actually change the story. C is the tell on whether the President wants to own Georgia or keep his distance from a messy runoff. D looks unlikely now that the Senate left town with no vote scheduled and June 1 days away. B is a long shot in this House — but so was finishing third in your own primary, and look how that worked out.)

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