“That tells Black America exactly whose pain the government is willing to recognize, how and why,” Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, a reparations scholar, author, and UCLA professor, tells theGrio.
The U.S. Justice Department’s establishment of a $1.7 billion fund, likely to go to pro-Trump protesters charged for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is facing scrutiny and criticism for the use of taxpayer dollars to reward President Donald Trump‘s political allies who say they were unfairly prosecuted by the federal government.
But while the optics don’t bode well during an affordability crisis, civil rights leaders and racial justice advocates say Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund is also an insult to Black Americans and the decades-long political battle to pass federal reparations legislation.
“When this nation can create billion dollar funds for political allies and supporters, but still will not address reparations for the descendants of slaves, that is not incapacity. That is choice. America is capable of repair. It has yet to choose justice,” said Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center.
Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, a reparations scholar, author, and professor of sociology and African-American studies at UCLA, tells theGrio, “What makes this offensive is not only the money; it’s the moral inversion.”
The author of “Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation” explains, “Black Americans have spent generations demanding repair for real around state-backed harm, and we’re often told to wait, prove, study, and justify our pain, but when Trump’s allies claimed they were wronged, the federal government suddenly finds nearly $1.8 billion. That tells Black America exactly whose pain the government is willing to recognize, how and why.”
Trump and his allies have long accused the Biden Justice Department of politically motivated prosecutions in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack that killed and injured police officers. The violent pro-Trump mob, believing the president’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, attempted to stop Congress from certifying the election. Those convicted were charged with various crimes, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, obstruction of an official proceeding, and seditious conspiracy. After being pardoned by Trump, many J6ers have reoffended for crimes, including sexual abuse and threatening to murder Democratic U.S. House Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
“It’s just pure hypocrisy,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) told theGrio of the DOJ weaponization fund while hosting a press conference on Capitol Hill about the state of the Black economy under the second Trump administration.
On the day the fund was announced, the congresswoman called it a “slap in the face to Black people who’ve been fighting for reparations after centuries of enslavement, segregation, [and] ongoing discrimination by the government.”
Pressley is the lead sponsor of H.R. 40, the historic bill introduced in Congress since 1989 that would create a federal commission to study the impacts of U.S. chattel slavery and recommend policy remedies to address the harms caused to Black Americans spanning centuries.
“Not one promise has been kept to Black Americans in this country when every bit of prosperity you enjoy was built on our backs,” said the progressive lawmaker. “400 years of labor for free, and we never got our 40 acres and a mule, and we are still harmed by practices like redlining and appraisal bias. And so we are long overdue for reparations.”
Pressley said, “We cannot let the hypocrisy stand of this taxpayer-funded slush fund without calling on everyone to, in this moment, become co-sponsors and to support H. R. 40 and moving that bill from Congress and getting it to a vote.”
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) similarly said, “Trump can create a $1.7 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund to reward Jan. 6 insurrectionists [and] white supremacists with your tax dollars but Congress won’t pass H.R. 40 to even study reparations. This corrupt government doesn’t value Black life the way it values white rage.”
Dreisen Heath, a reparations researcher and policymaker who has worked alongside Pressley and other members of Congress on racial justice legislation, tells theGrio that many may not know that Trump’s $1.7B fund is based on an uncapped Treasury judgment fund previously used to pay Black and Native American farmers who were racially discriminated against by the federal government.
“Most claimants had to wait years for those payments,” said Heath, who is the founder of the Why We Can’t Wait Reparations Network. “The president suing himself and settling with himself using the same fund with no court ever ruling that the government owed anyone anything…is an abuse of taxpayer money.”
What’s more, says Heath, is that who receives the funds is based on “politically motivated” commission and “no detailed eligibility criteria that can be publicly released or accessible.” She added, “They can put their claims in until December 15, 2028, which is conveniently just over a month before the next presidential inauguration.”
Heath called out some who characterized the Trump fund as “reparations,” saying, “I understand the itch to do that, but it completely undermines and weaponizes what real reparations are.” However, she said, the swiftness of the fund does show what is possible for Black Americans and the fight for reparations.
“If we had an executive branch that actually believed in Black people’s humanity, it shows that almost $2 billion can be transferred within a week to then fund actual remedies,” Heath noted.
Richard Brookshire, CEO and co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, says the Trump fund is also an insult to Black veterans who have also been systematically discriminated against by the government and have long been fighting for justice.
He told theGrio, “For years, Black Veterans Project has gathered irrefutable evidence to prove how the U.S. government systematically denies billions in disability pay to Black veterans and their families. While the administration dodges accountability and repair for decades of weaponized racial discrimination against Black troops who suffer injuries at war, Trump has created a multi-billion dollar slush fund to give treasonous rioters ‘reparations.’”
Brookshire added, “His actions are irredeemably hypocritical, and add insult to those already suffering injury.“
The “anti-weaponization” is already facing a legal challenge from two former Capitol and D.C. police officers, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, who were injured while defending the U.S. Capitol against the pro-Trump mob.
Dr. Hunter said, among many actions taken by the Trump administration, opening the door to compensate the president’s allies “while Black reparations remain stalled” is “morally grotesque.”
The professor and reparations expert also called out the very clear differences between what the Trump administration is attempting to do in this moment versus the years-long fight to secure reparations for Black America.
“On the J6er side is a demand to not be held accountable and to receive funds based on your grievances around that accountability, where reparations, especially in the case around American slavery, are to make the government and the state accountable for institutionalizing, sanctioning, and constitutionalizing the enslavement of other human beings,” Hunter told theGrio.
“It undermines reparations by cheapening the concept of repair. Reparations are not a slush fund for people upset that they face consequences. Reparations are a justice claim rooted in stolen labor, stolen land, exclusion from wealth building, and government-backed racial violence.”
