Welcome back to the news summary where we look at the week that has passed. No, I will not be commenting on 60 Minutes other than to say that there are 11,492,640 minutes until I am 60. Do with that what you will, Puck. I’m Nellie Bowles, and this is TGIF.
→ Trump walking back his slush fund: We finally found a scam that’s too scammy even for the Trump administration, and it’s his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund, in which Trump planned to hand out cash to people who felt they’d been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration and IRS. Scam cell phones, scam crypto, scam crypto platform—that we could handle, that we could ignore, fine. But an actual bag of cash? It’s a little on the nose, even in 2026. “We are not moving forward with the fund. Period,” said acting attorney general Todd Blanche, trying to assuage House lawmakers. It was part of his IRS truth and reconciliation program.
Now, to back up a bit about Trump vs. IRS: It’s not great that the IRS leaks personal tax information about people its employees don’t like, which is what happened when an IRS contractor leaked Trump’s and thousands of other wealthy people’s returns, much to the joy of ProPublica and The New York Times. It’s been memory-holed, but as a reminder: IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, an alum of the St. Louis prep school Crossroads and UNC Chapel Hill, got his little paws on those documents and shared them with reporters. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and then I’m sure he’ll get an amazing sinecure somewhere.
