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For the past several years, anti-Muslim rhetoric has moved from the margins of American political life toward its center. Members of Congress have founded the Sharia-Free America Caucus, explicitly targeting Islamic religious practice. The director of national intelligence has claimed that Muslim organizations are trying to use American legal and political systems to implement “Sharia law.” Elected officials have said, in plain language, that Muslims “don’t belong in American society” and that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” These are not isolated outbursts. According to a report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, the monthly volume of anti-Muslim extremist posts by 46 Republican federal and state officials the group analyzed increased by 1,450% from February 2025 through March of this year.

Words like these do not exist in a vacuum. They circulate. They normalize. They give permission.

On Monday morning, the Justice Department announced a settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and his own federal government that would create a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — by all appearances, a slush fund — to make payments to Trump allies who claim the federal government mistreated them. This proposed “settlement” stems from a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS, seeking $10 billion in damages over the 2017 leak about his personal income taxes.

The lawsuit and proposed settlement represent Trump’s most brazen attempt to date to co-opt the legal system for his own ends. They are also emblematic of an underappreciated dimension of Trump’s efforts to consolidate power during his second term. Trump has sought to exploit legal processes by using the courts to extort legal settlements and expand his own powers. Unlike previous settlements between Trump and private corporations, in this one, Trump’s allies will be enriched while taxpayers will foot the bill, which could be in the billions.

To be sure, Trump’s many lawsuits against media entities, ostensibly brought in his personal capacity to redress personal injuries, are part of a pattern. Most of the lawsuits have asserted claims that are unlikely to be availing under extant law. Nevertheless, some of the lawsuits have resulted in eye-popping settlements. The costs of these settlements are not simply monetary — they ratify the president’s unsupported account of the law, chill dissent and give the president substantial control over accountability institutions that might check his administration’s worst excesses. Indeed, some of the settlements have the stench of quid pro quo corruption, in which media entities fork over money in exchange for presidential access and the administration’s favor...