On Monday morning, the Justice Department announced a settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and his own federal government that would create a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — by all appearances, a slush fund — to make payments to Trump allies who claim the federal government mistreated them. This proposed “settlement” stems from a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS, seeking $10 billion in damages over the 2017 leak about his personal income taxes.

The lawsuit and proposed settlement represent Trump’s most brazen attempt to date to co-opt the legal system for his own ends. They are also emblematic of an underappreciated dimension of Trump’s efforts to consolidate power during his second term. Trump has sought to exploit legal processes by using the courts to extort legal settlements and expand his own powers. Unlike previous settlements between Trump and private corporations, in this one, Trump’s allies will be enriched while taxpayers will foot the bill, which could be in the billions.

To be sure, Trump’s many lawsuits against media entities, ostensibly brought in his personal capacity to redress personal injuries, are part of a pattern. Most of the lawsuits have asserted claims that are unlikely to be availing under extant law. Nevertheless, some of the lawsuits have resulted in eye-popping settlements. The costs of these settlements are not simply monetary — they ratify the president’s unsupported account of the law, chill dissent and give the president substantial control over accountability institutions that might check his administration’s worst excesses. Indeed, some of the settlements have the stench of quid pro quo corruption, in which media entities fork over money in exchange for presidential access and the administration’s favor.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump insisted that a lawsuit he filed against Facebook for suspending his account “be resolved before” Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, could be “brought into the tent.” Referring to a similar settlement brokered between Trump and Twitter/X, the New York Times reported that the agreement “further cements the relationship between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump.”

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida is pushing back against assertions that the state’s new congressional map was drawn to help Republicans, arguing in a new legal filing that other states such as Virginia and Illinois have engaged in much more blatant partisan gerrymandering.

Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed multiple lawsuits challenging a new map pushed into law by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. They have argued that the map, which could result in Republicans picking up four seats, is a clear violation of voter approved anti-gerrymandering standards and “one of the most extreme congressional maps” enacted in the past 50 years.

A circuit court judge will hold a hearing Friday on whether to temporarily block the new map and instead let the state’s old congressional map — which was also recommended by the DeSantis administration back in 2022 — be used for the midterms. The 2022 map gave Republicans a 20-8 edge.

Lawyers representing the state filed their response Wednesday and made several arguments — some of them procedural — as to why the new map should be allowed to remain in place. They argue, for example, that it’s too close to the August primary to undo the map approved just two weeks ago.

But the 29-page filing also insists those challenging the map have produced “scant evidence” to back their claims.

“The claim of partisan favoritism is tethered only to maps showing the district lines overlayed onto the results of a few elections, hearsay from their supposed experts, thoughts about tweets, their perspective on Fox News coverage, and a single factual representation from the governor’s map drawer,” the lawyers for the governor and state wrote.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida is pushing back against assertions that the state’s new congressional map was drawn to help Republicans, arguing in a new legal filing that other states such as Virginia and Illinois have engaged in much more blatant partisan gerrymandering.

Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed multiple lawsuits challenging a new map pushed into law by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. They have argued that the map, which could result in Republicans picking up four seats, is a clear violation of voter approved anti-gerrymandering standards and “one of the most extreme congressional maps” enacted in the past 50 years.

A circuit court judge will hold a hearing Friday on whether to temporarily block the new map and instead let the state’s old congressional map — which was also recommended by the DeSantis administration back in 2022 — be used for the midterms. The 2022 map gave Republicans a 20-8 edge.

Lawyers representing the state filed their response Wednesday and made several arguments — some of them procedural — as to why the new map should be allowed to remain in place. They argue, for example, that it’s too close to the August primary to undo the map approved just two weeks ago.

But the 29-page filing also insists those challenging the map have produced “scant evidence” to back their claims.

“The claim of partisan favoritism is tethered only to maps showing the district lines overlayed onto the results of a few elections, hearsay from their supposed experts, thoughts about tweets, their perspective on Fox News coverage, and a single factual representation from the governor’s map drawer,” the lawyers for the governor and state wrote.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court belatedly blocked a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would have restricted telehealth prescriptions of the abortion and miscarriage management drug mifepristone nationwide.

The order came after the court initially failed to act by its own 5 p.m. deadline, which was set on Monday when Justice Samuel Alito extended a previous deadline. Mifepristone manufacturers Danco and GenBioPro had filed emergency appeals to the high court. These were handled by Alito, the justice assigned to all appeals from the Fifth Circuit. The lower court’s ruling is now paused at least until it reaches a decision in this case, filed by Louisiana, and any appeals of that decision return to the Supreme Court.

As is common with emergency orders, the vote count isn’t known, though Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas both wrote alarming dissents outlining why they would have let the restrictions take effect.

Thomas claimed that “it is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions” because of the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-vice law that conservatives argue should be used to ban mailing abortion pills, if not to ban abortion entirely. Both Thomas and Alito have shown interest in this legal theory in the past: During oral arguments in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—another mifepristone case that reached the Court in 2024—both justices asked questions about the Comstock Act. Thomas said Thursday that Danco and GenBioPro cannot be “irreparably harmed” by the lower court ruling because the companies are engaging in “criminal enterprise.” Nearly 115 Republican members of Congress filed a “friend of the court brief” on Louisiana’s side, arguing that mailing mifepristone violates the Comstock Act.

Thomas describes the mailing of mifepristone as a "criminal enterprise" and says providers should face federal felony charges rather than obtaining relief from SCOTUS. www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T21:30:19.455Z