Anti-Weaponization is Our Job Now

Here's what you can do before November 2026.

May 25, 2026

A full list of actions to take, with links, is below.

A behavioral pattern runs through this administration, one that markets a bizarro version of reality to an audience of its admirers. Since day one, it’s been easy to spot and verify.

On January 21, 2017, Press Secretary Sean Spicer stood at a White House podium and declared Trump’s inauguration crowd “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period.” DC Metro ridership that day was 570,557. Obama’s 2009 inauguration drew 1.1 million trips on the same system. Independent crowd scientist Keith Still estimated the 2017 crowd at 300,000 to 600,000 — roughly one-third of Obama’s 1.1 to 1.8 million. Aerial photographs confirmed it. The claim was not subjective. It was false.

That was the opening act.

Then we heard that reporters are the “Enemy of the State.” But in reality, they are a structural requirement of democracy.

A 2006 UNESCO paper by Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris found that press freedom was “the most consistent predictor of democracy” across all measured indicators, stronger even than national wealth. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked the U.S. 57th out of 180 countries on its 2025 World Press Freedom Index, down from 55th the year before, and dropped the U.S. to 64th on its 2026 index — the lowest ranking the United States has ever received. The Committee to Protect Journalists declared in April 2025 that press freedom is “no longer a given in the United States.” In the same period, the White House barred the Associated Press from press events for refusing to use the term “Gulf of America,” the State Department restricted press access, the Pentagon required Secretary Hegseth’s pre-approval for even unclassified reporting, and the administration sued the BBC for $10 billion. None of that is compatible with a free press. None of it is compatible with democracy.

The SAVE Act Is Not About Saving Anything

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (H.R. 22) requires every American to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in person to register to vote or update a registration for federal elections. Acceptable documents include a U.S. passport, a certified birth certificate, or a Certificate of Naturalization. There is no REAL ID card in any state that currently indicates citizenship — states issue REAL IDs to lawful non-citizens — so that option is functionally unavailable. The bill eliminates online and mail registration. It ends voter registration drives. It creates criminal penalties for election officials who register an applicant without the required documents.

The Brennan Center for Justice estimates 21.3 million U.S. citizens of voting age — about 9% — do not have ready access to documentary proof of citizenship. The Center for American Progress estimates 69 million American women who have changed their last name after marriage do not have a birth certificate matching their current legal name. The Bipartisan Policy Center studied Kansas’s version of this law (2011–2018) and found it blocked roughly 31,000 eligible U.S. citizens from registering while documented non-citizen registration was approximately 0.002% of the total voter rolls. A federal court struck down the Kansas law. The Supreme Court, in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013), held that states cannot impose documentary-citizenship requirements for federal voter registration forms, raising significant constitutional questions about this bill’s federal mandate.

The House passed the bill twice — April 2025 and February 2026. As of late May 2026, the bill remains stalled in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The advocacy work is ongoing and it matters.

The $1.776 Billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”

In January 2025, Donald Trump, along with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, filed suit against the IRS in the Southern District of Florida. The suit arose from the leak of Trump’s tax returns by IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn. A federal judge was preparing to question whether the case presented a genuine legal controversy. Before she could rule, Trump’s lawyers withdrew the suit — in exchange for a $1.776 billion settlement funded by the U.S. Treasury’s Judgment Fund, a formal apology from the IRS, and a bar on the IRS pursuing current tax claims against Trump, his family, or his businesses.

The number $1.776 billion is a reference to 1776. It has no actuarial basis. Reason magazine noted it “fits a pattern of fanciful figures.”

The fund is administered by five commissioners appointed by the Attorney General (Todd Blanche), serving at the President’s pleasure, with no judicial oversight, no specified criteria, and no cap on individual awards. Claims are evaluated case by case. Stated purpose: redress for people who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” motivated by “improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons.”

Pardoned Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio told PBS NewsHour he expects “somewhere in the mid-tens of millions of dollars” from the fund. Two Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6 sued to block it, calling it “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.” Ninety-three House Democrats filed a motion citing “glaring constitutional defects.” Republican senators including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune went on record opposing it in May 2026, with Tillis calling it “a payout pot for punks.” Their revolt delayed a $72 billion reconciliation package.

Why the Names Work for Authoritarianism

Yale philosopher Jason Stanley, in How Fascism Works (2018), identifies propaganda that “twists the language of democratic ideals against itself” as a core pillar of authoritarian politics. UC Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff documented in Don’t Think of an Elephant! (2004) that Orwellian policy naming — “Clear Skies,” “Healthy Forests,” “No Child Left Behind” — is deliberate strategy: “the use of Orwellian language — language that means the opposite of what it says.”

The names are a feature, not a bug, of a totalitarian toolkit.

The current pattern includes: the SAVE Act (blocks citizens, not non-citizens, from voting), DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency has been estimated by the Partnership for Public Service to have cost taxpayers $135 billion in productivity losses, paid leave, and rehiring in FY2025 alone, against DOGE’s own claimed savings of $160 billion), and the Anti-Weaponization Fund (settled a presidential lawsuit against the IRS with taxpayer money, with no judicial oversight, now expected to pay pardoned insurrectionists).

What We Do About It

Democracy does not run on its own. It runs on participation. Here is the full list of actions available to every citizen right now.

Register and Verify

Confirm your voter registration is current at vote.org or your state election website.
Check your registration status after any move, name change, or extended absence — registration can be purged.
If the SAVE Act passes, gather and secure your documentary proof of citizenship now: passport, certified birth certificate, naturalization certificate. Help family members do the same.

Vote and Help Others Vote

Vote in every election — federal, state, local, and primary. School board and county commission races shape voting infrastructure.
Volunteer as a poll worker. Understaffed precincts create the conditions for suppression.
Offer rides to the polls on Election Day. Transportation is a documented barrier.
Host a voter registration drive or help staff one through organizations like vote.org, the League of Women Voters, or your local chapter of the NAACP.

Know Your Rights

Read the Brennan Center’s Voters’ Guide at brennancenter.org.
Understand your state’s ID requirements before Election Day.
Know the ACLU’s voter protection hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683). Save it in your phone before November.
Report voter intimidation or suppression to your state attorney general’s office, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, and the ACLU.

Track the Legislation

Monitor the SAVE Act’s progress at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7296
Sign up for alerts from the Brennan Center (brennancenter.org), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (naacpldf.org), and Protect Democracy (protectdemocracy.org).
Contact your U.S. senators — both of them, regardless of party — and state your position on the SAVE Act by name.

Support the Free Press

Subscribe to local and independent news outlets. Ad revenue and subscriptions are how journalism stays funded.
Share credible reporting. Disinformation spreads faster when reliable information doesn’t.
Do not amplify stories you haven’t verified. Slow down.

Engage Locally

Attend city council, school board, and county commission meetings. These bodies control polling locations, election budgets, and local law enforcement priorities.
Run for local office, or recruit someone who should.
Join or support local chapters of the League of Women Voters, NAACP, ACLU, or Common Cause.

Support Election Defense Organizations

Brennan Center for Justice — brennancenter.org
NAACP Legal Defense Fund — naacpldf.org
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Election Protection) — lawyerscommittee.org
Common Cause — commoncause.org
Protect Democracy — protectdemocracy.org
States United Democracy Center — statesuniteddemocracy.org
All Voting Is Local — allvotingislocal.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation (digital rights/election security) — eff.org

Talk to People

Have a kitchen table conversation. Not the argument — the conversation. The research is detailed: peer-to-peer civic engagement changes minds and increases turnout more reliably than media alone.
Share this article. Share the video. Point people to dadbriefs.com for the full breakdown.

The SAVE Act has been stalled, not stopped. The anti-weaponization fund has Republican opposition, not a court order. The pardoned defendants are in public life, running for office, marching on the Capitol, and claiming taxpayer money as compensation for what they did.

Democracy doesn’t need spectators. It needs participants.

Be kind, and wash your behind.