Over at her Substack, the cartoonist and writer Aubrey Hirsch took a look at Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization” slush-fund and did something that should make every Republican in Washington squirm. She started doing the math. What if, she asked, we put that money toward something other than enriching Trump, his family, and the mob he summoned to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021?
Her list is devastating. With that $1.776 billion we could, she writes, replace 150,000 lead pipes in hundreds of communities, build 10,000 new affordable housing units, establish hundreds of community-owned grocery stores in food deserts, fully fund 70 community mental health clinics for a decade, support tens of thousands of foster youth aging out of care, erase all the school lunch debt in this country for the next nine years, or pay the salaries of 2,500 new teachers for ten years.
Instead, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche blatantly refused to rule out paying chunks of this money to January 6 rioters who assaulted police officers or to Trump himself, and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to serve 22 years for seditious conspiracy until Trump pardoned him, told Reuters he’s planning to apply for between $2 and $5 million.
Two Capitol Police officers who defended the building that day have sued to block the payouts, describing the fund as a “taxpayer-funded slush fund” for Trump followers who engaged in violence against cops.
Aubrey’s framing got me researching what else $1.8 billion in actual public money could do. Let me extend her list, because the media is failing entirely to put this into a meaningful context.
— That $1.8 billion could cover the average cost of weatherizing and insulating roughly 200,000 low-income homes, dropping monthly heating and cooling bills for working families through the kind of winters Louise and I weathered up in Vermont, New Hampshire, Michigan, and now here in Oregon.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Jeff Bezos to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could fund a year of high-quality universal pre-K for roughly 144,000 three- and four-year-olds, the single most cost-effective investment we know of for closing achievement gaps and giving working parents a fighting chance.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Elon Musk to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could cap the out-of-pocket cost of insulin at zero for every Type 1 diabetic in America for years, ending the rationing that is killing young people whose parents can’t choose between rent and a vial.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Mark Zuckerberg to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could pay for a full course of trauma-informed counseling for every one of the roughly 400,000 American children currently in foster care, with money left over to pay the social workers who are quitting in droves because their caseloads have become unmanageable.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Miriam Adelson, the casino heiress who gave more than $100 million to put Trump back in the White House, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could fund the entire National School Lunch Program’s free-and-reduced shortfall for a generation of poor kids, ending the practice of stamping a child’s hand or throwing their tray in the trash because Mom is two weeks behind on the cafeteria bill.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Timothy Mellon, the reclusive railroad heir who gave $165 million to elect Donald Trump, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could let the EPA replace something on the order of 380,000 lead home water pipes at the agency’s $4,700 average cost, getting toxic plumbing out from under hundreds of thousands of homes whose kids are right now being poisoned every time they drink from the tap.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the Uline shipping magnates who poured over $133 million into MAGA-aligned causes in 2024, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could retrofit every elementary school in America that still has lead paint, asbestos tile, or a roof that leaks every time it rains, the buildings where we are right now sending kids to learn to read.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Ken Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire who spent $12 million just to kill a marijuana legalization initiative in Florida, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could let the VA hire enough mental-health professionals to clear the appointment backlog for every veteran in this country, the men and women we sent to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and then expected to wait six months for a counselor.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Peter Thiel, the PayPal and Palantir founder who personally manufactured the political career of J.D. Vance, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could buy enough domestic-violence shelter beds, hotline funding, and transitional housing to clear the wait list that every shelter in this country runs every single night, the battered women and abused children currently sleeping in cars because there’s no room and no money.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone CEO who has spent tens of millions propping up the Republican Party while his firm gobbles up American housing stock and rents it back to working families at extortionate rates, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
— It could extend rural broadband to every last farm, hollow, and reservation in America that still doesn’t have it, the kind of investment Dwight Eisenhower would have signed in a heartbeat and that today’s Republicans have repeatedly blocked.
But Republicans won’t do that, because it would require finally forcing Jeff Yass, the trading-firm co-founder who gave more than $100 million to Republican causes in 2024 and who happens to hold a major stake in TikTok’s parent company, to pay income taxes like the rest of us do.
That’s the choice in front of us, and it is not theoretical. A real $1.8 billion sits in a real account, taken from real taxpayers, and it’s going to be handed to people who tried to violently overthrow an American election.
It’s not being handed to the children currently drinking lead in Newark and Flint and Chicago, or the working mother in Louisville who skipped her insulin doses last month, or the veteran in Phoenix who hanged himself in March while waiting for a VA appointment.
The Trump regime and the GOP have made a choice, openly, brazenly, on camera, and the choice is to compensate the rioters and let the rest of us drink the lead.
The fix isn’t complicated, and the ProPublica reporting is now five years old and still ignored. When the twenty-five wealthiest Americans grew their wealth by $401 billion over five years and paid a true federal income tax rate of 3.4 percent, the money to do all of this exists.
It’s sitting in unrealized capital gains the IRS isn’t allowed to touch, in family trusts and step-up-in-basis loopholes, and offshore shell companies. It’s the money that built the slush fund (Lawrence O’Donnell calls it a “Thug Fund”) that Trump is about to hand to his rioters, and it’s the money our kids are not getting because the Mellons and Adelsons and Uihleins and Yasses paid for a Republican-controlled Congress that promised it would never come for them and their money bins.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your senators and representative that you do not want one penny of your tax money paid to the people who beat Officer Brian Sicknick and the four other cops who died as a result of the riot.
Tell them you want a billionaire wealth tax of the kind Bernie Sanders and economists Saez and Zucman have already costed out. Check your registration at vote.org, find your state lawmakers at openstates.org, and start showing up, because the 2026 midterms are coming and this is the fight.
And if this piece moved you, share it. Send it to the friend who tells you both parties are the same. Send it to the cousin who thinks Trump is “draining the swamp.” Consider subscribing to the Hartmann Report so Louise and I can keep doing this work the way it has to be done.
The billionaires already have their voice and their advocates. We have to be ours.
Louise’s Daily Song: “Found $1.8 Billion”
Comments on the Thursdays Daily Take:
Jeff Bezos’ Tax Scam: Why Billionaires Want Their Workers to Stop Paying Taxes
Bezos just wants to keep all his money and make even more - that’s the mantra of all these billionaires and Trump.
They now see the blowup coming from the working classes and the lower middle classes as even they see the comparisons.
“A plague on all their houses”
~Gordon Berry
I don’t understand the thinking of these billionaires. When is enough?
~ Chris Brodin
Read the article | See all comments
Your Daily Meme, suitable to copy and paste into social media or email:
My newest book, Who Killed the American Dream?: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told is now available for presale from bookstores nationwide. It’s a modern-day telling of the “murder mystery” of how, in 1886, a great crime was committed against America by a cynical court reporter and an on-the-take Supreme Court justice that changed the course of American politics and led straight to Citizens United. It also details the massive ongoing cover-up of this crime and what we can do to fight back.
This comment by Thom should be used in a campaign ad by Democrats, because it hammers away at the class divide. Voters instinctively sense the class war, and Democrats need to show they are going to come out fighting.
When Democrats fight, people vote, and when people vote, Democrats win. Here in Illinois, robber baron Richard Uihlein left the state in a huff when he couldn't keep J.B. Pritzker from getting reelected. Now he's Florida's problem.
What I would really like to know is how was this money "found". My impression was that money spent by the federal government had to be appropriated by congress. So, when was this money appropriated by congress?