Shelby Talcott

When we were talking to administration officials, they said, well, there's going to be this board, and the board is going to decide who qualifies for this fund.

And so this really raised concerns among...

even Republican members of Congress, too, for a variety of reasons.

One being, you know, the January 6th riot is still a very contentious issue within the Republican Party.

You know, the president has, I think, embraced the rioters, as you saw in his first day of office when he issued all of those pardons.

But a lot of Republican lawmakers are still very uncomfortable with that reality.

And so you saw kind of that tension within the Republican Party start to really explode.

And it really, it was blowing everything up on Capitol Hill.

There were, they couldn't get anything passed essentially because Republicans were so perturbed by this agreement.

But it was also over the fact that, you know, we're really close to the midterms, quite frankly, and this is a tough road for Republicans.

And so there were lawmakers who were just simply concerned because this is a nearly $1.8 billion fund that,

that is taxpayer funded, and it comes at a time when the economy is at the top of mind for voters.

And so there was an argument to be made from lawmakers of, is this really the right time to be pushing something like this when voters are asking, well, why is my gas so high?

Why are my grocery bills like this?

A little bit of both.

So there were lawsuits.

This was going through the courts.

Last Friday, a judge ruled, essentially paused the fund and said, you know, you can't move forward right now with distributing funds.

The money from this fund.

And I think lawmakers initially thought, well, this is great.