The National Abortion Federation is suing to stop a new $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could write checks to extremists terrorizing abortion providers.
The numbers are staggering: Between 2024 and 2025, death threats against abortion providers more than doubled. Stalking incidents more than doubled. Clinic blockades surged by 500 percent. There were four arsons. A planned assassination attempt against a Montana provider. And in the background of all of it, a federal government that has made unmistakably clear whose side it’s on.
Now, in an unprecedented move, the Trump Administration may be about to start writing checks to fund violent extremists. As part of a settlement to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit against his own Department of the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The Fund is framed as compensation for people who claim they were targeted by politically motivated prosecutions under previous administrations, excluding Republican administrations.
The legal organization Democracy Forward filed suit to block the fund on Friday. Skye Perryman, President and CEO, represents four plaintiffs seeking to block it: the National Abortion Federation; Andrew Floyd, a former January 6th prosecutor; Professor John Caravello of the City of New Haven; and Common Cause, a government accountability group. “This latest attempt by the Trump-Vance administration to make grift great again is profoundly unlawful and will not withstand judicial scrutiny,” said Perryman in a statement. “The Constitution does not allow the executive branch to build its own corrupt billion-dollar slush fund.”
The DOJ’s announcement explicitly identified anti-abortion extremists convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act as presumptive recipients—the same FACE Act violators Donald Trump pardoned in January 2025. These are people who blockaded clinics, stole fetal tissue, physically assaulted healthcare workers, and terrorized patients are now potentially eligible for taxpayer-funded payouts.
President Trump is encouraging violence against healthcare workers by sending an unmistakable message: Not only will you face no consequences, but you could also be handsomely rewarded.
Rachana Desai Martin, Chief U.S. Program Officer, Center for Reproductive Rights
A government report attempting to justify the slush fund was released in April by the Weaponization Working Group at the DOJ. The 900-page report accuses federal prosecutors in Biden’s DOJ of unfairly using the FACE Act against anti-abortion protestors and the collaborating with NAF, Planned Parenthood and Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.) “to track pro-life activists” and compile “evidence and dossiers that ultimately gave rise to search warrants and charges.” Analysis of the report by a former DOJ civil rights attorney concluded it contains multiple inaccuracies and represents a stunning attempt to justify the purges of attorneys at the DOJ and defend anti-abortion extremists’ criminal activity while entirely ignoring the victims of those crimes.
Pardons, Then a Pass, Now a Payday
To understand how we got here, we have to go back to January 23, 2025. Three days into his second administration, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion extremists who had been convicted in federal court for violating the FACE Act. The following day, the DOJ issued guidance declaring it would no longer enforce the FACE Act except under what it called “extraordinary circumstances,” effectively giving a green light to clinic blockades, harassment, and intimidation across the country.
The individuals Trump pardoned were not “peaceful protesters” as right-wing media insisted. Lauren Handy, who has served jail time in Michigan and Virginia, led the 2020 blockade of Washington D.C.’s Surgi-Clinic, an invasion that injured a nurse and trapped patients inside a clinic while they were in medically fragile conditions. Jay Smith, present at the same clinic invasion, pushed a nurse and screamed in patients’ faces. Calvin Zastrow, convicted in clinic invasions in both Michigan and Tennessee, led an operation that court documents characterize as designed to “train and encourage others to carry out unlawful blockades.” Chester Gallagher, who received a 16-month sentence for the Tennessee invasion, live-streamed the blockade, deliberately violating patients’ privacy and prolonging the terror. Joan Andrews Bell, whom the right celebrates as a “sweet grandmother,” has been arrested more than 120 times and is a central figure in or obstructing and invading reproductive healthcare clinics. She has stated publicly that murdering abortion providers constitutes “justifiable homicide.”
These are the same individuals Trump said it was “a great honor” to grant pardons and that his DOJ declared should face no consequences for their actions. And now, Trump may send them government checks to continue their vigilantism.
A Slush Fund with No Oversight
Democracy Forward, on behalf of the plaintiffs, argues that the Anti-Weaponization Fund is unconstitutional on its face, that it violates Congress’s exclusive authority over federal appropriations, exceeds executive power, and tramples on the Administrative Procedure Act. The legal violations are only part of the problem.
For government watchdogs like Common Cause, the lack of transparency is the problem. The fund will operate in near-total secrecy. The claims and payments from the slush fund can remain confidential, with minimal public accountability for how nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars would be distributed.
Unprecedented Corruption
The scale of Trump’s corruption has already reached unparalleled heights, enriching Trump and his family by more than $4 billion according to some estimates. Trump is now seeking to reward and enrich his political allies, not with his own funds, but with taxpayer dollars. “President Trump wants to take your hard-earned tax dollars and hand them over to criminals, cronies, and insurrectionists,” said Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón. “It’s unconscionable, and more importantly, it’s illegal.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights put it more bluntly. “Twenty-three extremists were convicted by juries of their peers for attacking abortion clinics,” said Chief U.S. Program Officer Rachana Desai Martin in a statement. “President Trump pardoned them. Now, he may even write those same extremists a fat check. President Trump is encouraging violence against healthcare workers by sending an unmistakable message: Not only will you face no consequences, but you could also be handsomely rewarded. This is not law and order. This is weaponizing taxpayer dollars to reward lawbreakers.”
The Predictable Consequences of Impunity
The NAF’s 2025 Violence and Disruption Report, released last week, documents exactly what happens when the federal government signals impunity for criminal activity. Following the January 2025 pardons and the DOJ’s effective abandonment of FACE Act enforcement, clinic blockades went from one in 2024 to six in 2025. Stalking of providers climbed from 19 incidents to 40, and death threats nearly doubled, from 38 to 81. At extremist gatherings, groups like Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust chanted openly: “We are clinic invaders and yours is next.”
“The pardons sent a really clear and really dangerous message that people who harass, threaten, and intimidate abortion providers and patients may not face consequences for violating the law,” Fonteno said on a press call, per Politico. “And we’re seeing the impact play out across the country.” NAF’s data puts human stakes to those choices: Of the 300 clinics that responded to its survey, 200 reported violence or harassment. A Kansas clinic had its phone lines flooded with thousands of automated harassing calls. A Colorado clinic was deluged with tens of thousands of calls, emails, and messages after being targeted by far-right influencer Libs of TikTok, making it nearly impossible to identify patients calling for help. At a Pennsylvania clinic, two individuals Trump had pardoned made appointments, then stormed the facility, spread an unknown liquid and salt-like substance throughout, and refused to leave. A clinic staffer told MS NOW, “We live daily with the discomfort that they will return.”
Is the President Calling for More Violence?
Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges allege in a separate lawsuit against the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that Trump has “created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush
The president is making a series of deliberate choices, each one building on the last, each one making providers and patients less safe. An administration that pardons clinic attackers, refuses to protect clinics from future attacks, and then builds a mechanism to potentially pay those attackers is not a bystander to the violence against reproductive healthcare clinics. It is an active participant.
