The strategy hiding in plain sight

The $1.776 billion slush fund to reward those who break the law to aid Trump. The mid-cycle redistricting spree Southern states have embarked on to erase minority representation in the wake of the Supreme Court majority crushing the Voting Rights Act. The purging of dissent from the Republican Party. A throughline connects three developments dominating our politics this week: None of these moves are popular. None are smart politics. All of them are designed to hold power without winning public support — by overriding free and fair elections.

Jonathan Last at The Bulwark named it earlier this week: The president seems to have given up on popularity outside a narrow base within the GOP and is instead moving to lock in institutional power before voters can take it from him. And he's building the architecture to do that, piece by piece.

01 / THE SLUSH FUNDCreating an illegal slush fund for political loyalty

On Monday, the Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate people who say they were politically targeted by the federal government. The fund was created in a purported settlement of the president's collusive lawsuit against the IRS.

The slush fund appears blatantly illegal, for a host of reasons: There's no actual controversy to settle since Trump is on both sides; Congress didn't authorize funding for it; and the 14th Amendment prohibits payments in aid of insurrection. (Capitol Police officers who defended the building on January 6 have already sued to block it, calling it illegal and a sham.) The design of the fund is beyond alarming: The commissioners who decide who gets paid are appointed by the attorney general and can be fired by the president at will.

And at the same time, Trump has used the deal to declare himself, his family, and his businesses immune from audits by the IRS and off the hook if he didn't pay his taxes.

In 2020, the president called the Wayne County Board of Canvassers and asked them not to certify Michigan's results, but he had nothing material to offer them in exchange. When he encouraged the January 6 insurrectionists to go to the Capitol, it was only with his megaphone. He has something material to offer them now.

02 / THE VRATilting the field with a little help from Supreme Court allies

On April 29, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, removing the primary federal tool for challenging maps that dilute the political power of Black voters.

Corey Dukes and Alison Hirsh explained the consequences for 2026 earlier this week: Mid-cycle redistricting this close to an election is unprecedented, and partisan gain at the expense of fair minority representation is the point. Louisiana postponed its primary after voting had started. Tennessee and Florida enacted new maps. Alabama is using a 2023 map a federal panel found racially discriminatory. Candidates do not know which districts they are running in. Voters do not know where to cast their ballots.

For decades, both parties had supported the Voting Rights Act as a seminal achievement in the history of U.S. democracy. President George W. Bush signed the VRA reauthorization in 2006, after it was enacted by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress. The Trump administration, on the other hand, explicitly asked the Court to gut the VRA in Callais. Trump's allies on the Court did just that.

None of this is popular or follows any sort of political mandate. But put it all together and the strategy is clear: Tilt the playing field so that the president's party can hold onto power, even as his popularity shrinks.

03 / THE PURGEPurging those who have said no

On Tuesday night, after losing his Kentucky primary, Rep. Thomas Massie (a thorn in Trump's side on various issues) told his supporters: "If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king." Sen. Bill Cassidy was defeated in Louisiana after Trump sought to end his political career because Cassidy had voted to hold Trump accountable for January 6. Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State who refused to "find" 11,780 votes in 2020, lost his primary, too.

The same thing has happened inside the executive branch. Loyal civil servants and professional political appointees at the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and across the intelligence community have been replaced by election deniers and political loyalists. In 2020, the acting attorney general refused to send a fraudulent letter to the state of Georgia. The personnel decisions made in the second Trump administration have been designed to ensure that the person sitting in that chair next time will write the letter.

Trump has also retaliated through his Department of Justice. The Justice Department has tried three times to indict Letitia James: once successfully, before a federal judge threw out the indictment, then twice more before grand juries that refused to charge her. The administration does not need to win any particular case to make the cost of resisting high, and discourage the next official who is considering whether to say no.