In the US, who gets compensated when the government wrongs them?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, who in America gets compensated when the government wrongs them?
Well, if you ask President Trump, he would say… People have been destroyed by crooked politicians, and they should be reimbursed for that.
Here he is speaking with NBC's Kristen Welker earlier this month. He's talking about the nearly $1.8 billion fund that was going to reimburse people who claim they were targets of politicized prosecutions, including people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. The DOJ now says it is not moving forward with the fund, but Trump personally hasn't ruled it out.
Well, look, it was up to me. I'd pay them the kind of money that they deserve.
Money that they deserve. By contrast, we'll note that while the Trump administration was pushing this anti-weaponization fund, a bill to study slavery reparations has failed to advance for decades. Consider this. Not every group that's been harmed by the government gets compensated. So who counts?
What question ties Juneteenth to government compensation?
From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
It's been almost a year since Congress eliminated over a billion dollars in funding for public media.
What was the Justice Department's ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ and who would it have paid?
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It's Consider This from NPR. It's Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. And our colleagues at NPR's Code Switch have been looking at a question tied to this day, which is who in America actually gets compensated when the government wrongs them? Gene Dimby is co-host of Code Switch. He spoke with my colleague, Elsa Chang.
I just want to start in a place that may feel kind of unexpected as it relates to this term reparations, and that is The Anti-Weaponization Fund. That's the fund that the Trump administration announced last month. It never happened. But can you tell us how that idea connects to what you've been reporting on?
Right. So back in May, the Justice Department announced this nearly $1.8 billion fund that was set aside to compensate people the administration, the White House says. were wronged by the federal government. And it was strongly implied that a lot of that money could go to people pardoned for their roles in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And also the number itself is telling because it's not around $1.8 billion, as Rebecca Nagel, who's a journalist and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, told me.
I believe the exact number of the fund is $1.776 billion. To me, I read that number as intentionally being $1,776 billion.
Ah. Yeah. So, you know, we're just weeks from the country's 250th birthday. And the administration picked this number that points right back to the founder.
OK. And so since the idea was announced last month, this fund, it's gotten a lot of heat from both Republicans and Democrats. Tell us the status of this fund right now.
I mean, it's in limbo. And that's the wild part. Like the acting attorney general, Todd Lynch, told Congress flat out we are not moving forward with the fund. But also he refused to put that in writing. I mean, I don't know what the purpose of putting something in writing. I'm telling you what we're doing. I'm not committing to doing anything in writing.
No. OK.
And then the president kept saying he still liked the idea. And he said, quote, if it was up to me, I'd pay them the kind of money they deserve, end quote. But then a federal judge stepped in and issued an injunction blocking this fund.
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