A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday refused to immediately block the Justice Department’s nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, leaving the plan in place for now while the larger fight stays alive in court. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have stopped the department from taking steps to create the fund.
The ruling matters because the Justice Department had already told the court it was not moving forward with the fund, and that posture is what made the dispute land in Leon’s courtroom this week. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified on June 2 that the administration was “not moving forward” with plans to create the fund, but the judge said he was not persuaded there was an issue for him to decide on the fund’s creation at that stage.
Leon pressed the government hard during a 30-minute hearing, asking twice why it would not simply rescind the order that established the fund. He warned the department, “Don’t play possum with this court!” and said, “This whole case is highly unusual to say the least.” The exchange captured the narrow but important gap at the center of the case: the department says it is not advancing the fund, while the plaintiffs say that is not the same as an official rescission and should not stop a court from acting.
Nikhel Sus said Blanche “refused to memorialize that rescission,” a point that kept the dispute from dissolving into a paperwork exercise. Andrew Block later told the court, “I don’t know,” when asked why the government would not rescind the order, adding that it “can still be an important issue and also not moving forward” and that “that isn’t a direction to move forward with the fund.”
CREW’s request reached Leon as Trump continued to publicly defend the fund, which is designed to compensate people who say they were politically targeted or victimized by the Justice Department. The judge’s ruling does not end the case. He is still considering CREW’s request for a longer-term block, and a separate federal judge in Virginia has already entered a block order that remains in effect until at least Friday. For now, the fund is not barred in Washington, but the court has left open the question of whether the administration must formally undo what it says it is not pursuing.
