President Donald Trump coined the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" as the vehicle for a billion-dollar scheme to funnel taxpayer money to his allies, and one of his highest-profile targets is stealing the name and aiming it right back at him.
Miles Taylor, the former Trump homeland security official who anonymously blew the whistle on the first administration, announced this week that his group Defiance is launching "the real Anti-Weaponization Fund" to go to bat for Americans caught in the president's campaign of retribution.
"Trump used that term to describe a scheme to loot the Treasury for his allies. Thankfully, that fund is moribund because of congressional pressure and public outrage. But we’re taking the term away from him and using it to describe our effort to counter the weaponization of government. His weaponization of government," wrote Taylor.
Trump branded Taylor a "traitor" and, upon returning to office, signed an order directing federal agencies to investigate him for "treason" over constitutionally protected speech. Taylor said his small business paid the price, clients and friends fled, and daily life curdled into "a low, constant hum of dread."
The new fund attempts to flip the script on Trump.
When the president threatens or investigates someone — or strips them of a job, license, or clearance — for doing their job or exercising their rights, Taylor said his team will reach out to say "you are not alone," then help cover legal, security and support costs and connect them with pro-democracy groups.
It borrows from Trump's roughly $1.8 billion program critics dubbed a "slush fund," which has stalled amid congressional pressure and public outrage.
"Like autocrats before him, Trump's strategy depends on the cruel calculus of intimidation," Taylor wrote, arguing every capitulation makes the next abuse easier, and every act of defiance slows the machine. "In America, we don't submit to kings."