What a difference a word makes. Two weeks ago, upon the announcement by the Trump administration of a $1.8 billion compensatory fund for those harmed by the weaponization of government, the shrill-seekers at The New York Times sounded the alarm. “The arrangement,” they claimed, “was denounced by critics as a slush fund for supporters of President Trump, possibly including Jan. 6 rioters.”

Now then: Replace the word “slush” with the word “compensatory,” and you’ve got yourself an honest sentence. As our Nate Jackson noted at the time, the victims of government weaponization during the previous two administrations were almost exclusively supporters of Donald Trump. The Democrats all but declared war on our half of the country during the Biden years, and the victims of this onslaught weren’t limited to the president’s well-heeled associates.

Yes, a handful of them assaulted cops on January 6, 2021, but the overwhelming majority of them didn’t. Rather, they were little more than Capitol tourists who were exercising their First Amendment rights against what they rightly believed was a rigged election. And they had their lives wrecked because of it by a vicious and retributive Biden Justice Department.

This fund wasn’t meant just to repair Donald Trump for the vile and unlawful leaking of his tax returns, nor was it meant solely for the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort. It was, more vitally, for otherwise anonymous Americans like Matthew Perna and Rebecca Lavrenz and Michael Houck.

Alas, the word “slush” has a historically slimy connotation, and words like “compensation” and “restitution” got lost amid all the noise. (The Trump administration didn’t do itself any favors by settling on the hackneyed sum of $1.776 billion for the compensatory fund. That precise number, however well-intentioned, sounds gimmicky and unserious.)

So the Leftmedia and the Democrats — but I repeat myself — quickly and decisively won the framing argument, and the Trump administration did something it rarely does — it retreated. As the Trump DOJ posted yesterday in response to an injunction issued last week by Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema:

The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.

This is deeply unfortunate because, as former Nebraska Congressman Jeff Fortenberry argues at The Federalist, the fund “acknowledges and repairs harm done to Americans. It puts consequence-free prosecutorial abuse on notice. And it provides resources for people who have no real way to fight back against the most powerful litigation operation on Earth.”

Exactly that. And Fortenberry ought to know. He himself was victimized by a partisan prosecution — a prosecution that was ultimately thrown out, but not before it caused him to resign from Congress.

As Fortenberry adds, this fund isn’t unprecedented, despite the mainstream media’s efforts to make it seem so: “President Obama established a settlement fund. And President Biden’s DOJ compensated supporters for what they termed injustices committed against them.” Fortenberry then reminds us that there are “haves” and “have nots” in this world — and that we regular schlubs belong in that latter category. “The United States Senate,” he writes, “recently voted itself access to $500,000 for members secretly surveilled by the government. American citizens deserve at least the same consideration as the senators who represent them.”

It’s interesting, but not at all surprising, that those same Republican senators were so quick to call for the killing of the fund. As weak-kneed establishment Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, the Trump administration needs to make “clear they’re not proceeding” with the fund. “But you know, obviously, whether or not that’s sufficient to satisfy a number of our members is something we’re still sorting through.” With irresolute “leaders” like Thune, who needs a Democrat opposition?

If there’s a bright side to all this, it’s that Congress can now get back to work on funding the nation’s immigration agencies. As CBS News reports, “Senate Republicans were preparing to begin a marathon vote series to fund the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement agencies last month through the budget reconciliation process.”

Still, there’s a stench of Beltway establishment elitism in all this, and an important question remains: Where’s the everyday citizens’ check against a weaponized federal government?