Two things happened on Friday, May 14th and 15th, that individually would dominate news cycles for weeks in a functioning political environment. Together, they form a picture of where this administration is heading that every American needs to understand before November.

The first: ABC News and the New York Times broke the story of a proposed $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund that Trump controls, designed to financially reward the people who attacked the United States Capitol on January 6th and anyone else Trump decides was "wrongfully targeted" by the Biden administration — potentially including Trump’s own companies.

The second: On Air Force One returning from Beijing, with cameras rolling and reporters within arm’s reach, Trump looked directly at New York Times White House and National Security Correspondent David Sanger and called his journalism "treasonous." Then said it again. "I actually think it’s treason."

These two events, on consecutive days, are not separate stories. They are the same story.

The Slush Fund

Let’s start with what ABC News reported, because the details are extraordinary.

In February 2026, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The lawsuit was filed by Trump personally, along with Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization. The defendants — the Treasury Department and the IRS — are agencies Trump controls as president. A federal judge, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, had already raised serious questions about whether the lawsuit could legally proceed, noting in a ruling that the parties might not be "sufficiently adverse" since Trump is suing entities "whose decisions are subject to his direction." She ordered both sides to respond by May 20th.

With that deadline approaching and the lawsuit facing potential dismissal, the administration moved to settle — with itself.

Under the proposed arrangement, Trump would drop his $10 billion lawsuit in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund drawn from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund — a permanent Congressional appropriation that exists to pay legitimate court judgments against the United States government. The fund would also settle $230 million in additional Trump legal claims, including those related to the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and the Russia investigation he faced during his first term. The settlement would also include a public apology from the IRS.

The commission controlling the $1.7 billion would have five members. Trump could remove any of them without cause. The commission would not be required to disclose its procedures, its decision-making process, or the identities of anyone receiving payments. There would be no congressional vote on individual payouts. There would be no public record of where the money went.

The money would be available to anyone who claims they were harmed by the Biden administration’s "weaponization" of the legal system — including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with January 6th. And, in ABC News’s own words, "entities associated with President Trump himself."

Trump himself acknowledged last October that the arrangement "sort of looks bad." "It’s interesting because I’m the one that makes a decision, right," he told reporters. "It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself."

He was right. It is awfully strange. He is doing it anyway.

What This Actually Is

Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, spoke to the New Republic about what the fund represents structurally. "The President has no authority to conjure up billion-dollar compensation schemes or raid the Judgment Fund, which exists to settle valid lawsuits," Raskin said. "Trump is systematically converting neutral government mechanisms into a presidential slush fund to build his army of political dependents."

Senator Elizabeth Warren called it "an insane level of corruption — even for Trump."

To understand why Raskin’s framing matters, consider what the fund actually does beyond the dollar amount. It sends a message to every person in this country who has been deciding whether to break the law for Donald Trump. Whether to take an order that crosses a line. Whether to commit acts of political violence on his behalf.

The message is: if you do it for me, I will not just pardon you. I will pay you. With taxpayer money. In amounts no one will ever know, through a commission I control, from a list of recipients I can keep secret.

This is not a new pattern for this administration. In March 2026, the DOJ settled a lawsuit with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump — for over $1 million, after Flynn claimed wrongful prosecution. In April 2026, the DOJ settled with former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page over surveillance claims. The proposed $1.7 billion fund is the industrial-scale version of that pattern.

The Proud Boys filed a $100 million lawsuit against the DOJ in June 2025, alleging their prosecutions were politically motivated. Hundreds of other January 6 defendants have been seeking payouts since receiving Trump’s pardons. The fund being proposed would transform all of those demands into a single, opaque, presidential-controlled mechanism for compensating the people who have already broken the law on his behalf.

Raskin said that if Democrats retake Congress in November, they will move to shut the fund down and compel disclosure of every payment made between now and 2027. That is the right response. It is also a response that requires winning in November. And the existence of this fund — a mechanism to financially reward political violence with secret taxpayer payments — is itself designed to make winning in November harder.

Because what this fund does is tell the next group of people thinking about interfering with elections, intimidating voters, assaulting police, or committing any other act of political violence in Trump’s name that the calculation has changed. You will not just be pardoned. You will be compensated. With our money.

The Treason Accusation

On the same Air Force One flight home from Beijing, Trump walked into the press cabin and took questions for nearly half an hour. When David Sanger — the Times’s chief Washington correspondent, one of the most respected national security journalists in the country — asked what the purpose would be of repeating bombing campaigns against Iran when 38 days of strikes had not produced the political change Trump said he wanted, Trump’s response was immediate.

"I got a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy."

Then: "I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write."

And then, moments later: "I actually think it’s treason."

The full context of what Sanger was reporting is worth understanding. The Times had recently published findings, based on U.S. intelligence assessments, that more than half of Iran’s missiles and launchers had survived American and Israeli strikes. That Iran’s nuclear stockpile remained untouched. That despite Trump’s repeated declarations of "total military victory," Iran retained significant military capability and the ceasefire remained disputed. Sanger was asking the president, on camera, in public, to reconcile his claims of total victory with the documented reality.

That is what journalism is. That is what the First Amendment was written to protect.

Treason, by contrast, is defined in Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution — the only crime the Founders thought important enough to write directly into the Constitution. They defined it narrowly on purpose, because they understood how often kings and tyrants used treason accusations to destroy political enemies. Under the Constitution, treason means levying war against the United States, or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. Under federal law, it carries the possibility of the death penalty.

That is the word the President of the United States used against a reporter for asking a factual question about a war. Twice. On camera. Inches from the reporter’s face.

The New York Times responded the same day: "Reporting isn’t treason. It’s foundational to a free press and the work that America’s founders wrote the First Amendment to protect. That includes making clear when the claims of government officials and the reality of their actions don’t line up. Our reporters, in this case, have been working carefully to provide the public with the fullest possible understanding of the reality of the military action in Iran. We will continue this important, constitutionally protected work."

They are right. And the fact that they had to say it — formally, publicly, in 2026 — tells you exactly where we are.

This was not the first time Trump had used this word about press coverage of the Iran war. Earlier in May, he said at a Florida event that it was "treasonous" for people to suggest the U.S. was not winning. He posted on Truth Social that it was "virtual treason" when reporters wrote that Iran was doing well militarily. The Sanger confrontation on Air Force One was not an outburst. It was the escalation of a sustained campaign to establish a legal and rhetorical framework in which accurate journalism about the Iran war constitutes a capital crime.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has already threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for networks he claims are "running hoaxes." ABC News filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the administration weeks ago. The administration has systematically restricted press pool access for outlets whose coverage it dislikes. Trump called the BBC a "fake outfit" on the same Air Force One flight.

The pattern is the same one documented in every country where press freedom has been dismantled: name the press as the enemy, then treat the press as the enemy, then replace the press with state-controlled messaging. Putin’s Russia, Erdogan’s Turkey, Orbán’s Hungary all followed this sequence. The American version is being built in real time, one "treasonous" accusation at a time.

What These Two Things Together Mean

A $1.7 billion secret fund to financially reward political violence, controlled by one man with no oversight and no public record. And a presidential accusation of treason against a reporter for accurately documenting what that man’s war has and has not achieved.

These are not separate stories. They are the same story.

The fund tells potential participants in the next act of political violence that they will be taken care of. The treason accusation tells the people documenting that potential violence that doing so makes them criminals. One rewards the loyalty. The other criminalizes the witness.

Both of them happen simultaneously, on the same two days, while the president returns from a summit with Xi Jinping during which he reportedly declined to address Taiwan’s security.

Raskin put the stakes plainly: this is "a shocking new betrayal of the Constitution." Warren called it corruption beyond anything she had seen. But the language we have for what we are watching does not yet match the scale of it.

Trump himself said the arrangement "looks bad" and is "awfully strange." He knows. He is doing it anyway.

Because he has calculated — correctly, based on the evidence so far — that there will be no consequence. That Congress will not act. That the courts will move slowly. That the noise of the daily news cycle will bury each new escalation under the weight of the next one.

The only thing that changes that calculation is November.

And the only thing that makes November count the way it needs to count is people who understand what is at stake — and who refuse to let any of it become normal.

This is not normal. Name it. Share it. Remember it.

And vote like the republic depends on it. Because at this point, the evidence suggests it does.