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slavery
My Application for $30 Million From Trump’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund
A formal letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, faithfully submitted.
May 30, 2026
Dear Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,
I am writing to formally submit my application to your newly established federal “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for compensation in the form of a cash payment for damages incurred at the hands of the United States government.
As you stated while announcing President Trump’s new $1.776 billion fund, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”
Todd, if I may, I saw your former client — President Trump, for whom you previously provided legal representation — backed you up, saying, “This is reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”
Additionally, Todd, I read an Associated Press report noting that during congressional testimony you stated that you “wouldn’t rule out the possibility that rioters who assaulted police on Jan. 6 would be eligible for fund payouts.” After hearing your remarkably broad interpretation of governmental victimization, I felt compelled to share with you what the government has done to me and my family by writing the letter below — which reveals several forms of government abuse my family and I have endured which, while you may not find as severe as the temporary loss of access to the U.S. Capitol experienced by individuals convicted of felonies related to January 6, nonetheless caused considerable hardship for us.
I was initially reassured that my request was reasonable after learning that Adam Johnson — best known for carrying Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol during the January 6 attack — is reportedly considering a claim of up to $5 million himself.
However, after learning that Brandon Fellows — another January 6 defendant pardoned by President Trump — reportedly plans to seek $30 million from the fund, including $21.5 million for what he described as “wrongful imprisonment,” I realized that the harms experienced by my family and me may in fact fall closer to Mr. Fellows’s compensation range.
So, after reviewing your department’s stated principles, apparent standards, and anticipated applicant pool, I believe I am highly qualified for compensation and would like to make a modest request of $30 million.
In fact, Todd, I believe I possess two major qualifications that should place me among the strongest candidates for compensation, which I will detail below.
Claim One: Descendant of Enslaved People
First, since this appears to function as a reparations program for people harmed by state injustice, I should begin by saying that I come from a family with a long legacy of being brutalized by the United States. And if you think the January 6 defendants have a compelling claim for compensation due to governmental mistreatment, wait until you hear about this historical episode called slavery.
My great-great-grandparents, Laura and Thomas Lenoir, were enslaved in Marion County, Mississippi, and spent their lives laboring without compensation in a nation loudly proclaiming “liberty” while designating Black people as property. After decades spent tracing our family history, my father recently discovered the very plantation where they were enslaved— a breakthrough that finally allowed our family to identify the precise location where generations of uncompensated labor helped build this country’s wealth.
My ancestors worked this land they did not own, built wealth they could not keep, and endured violence they could not legally resist. No compensation was ever provided for the stolen labor, stolen children, stolen wages, stolen land, stolen futures, or the generations of poverty and discrimination that followed emancipation. Stories of Laura’s beatings and brutal treatment have been passed down through my family for generations.
In explaining why she believed January 6 defendants deserved compensation, Rachel Powell — who prosecutors identified as one of the first rioters to breach Capitol grounds and who was filmed using a battering ram to smash a Capitol window — recently stated: “We endured a lot. Our lives are still not the same. I don’t know what kind of price you can put on that.”
Todd, I must admit I found Ms. Powell’s reflections unexpectedly relatable. Indeed, many descendants of slavery have similarly struggled to determine what monetary figure might adequately compensate for generations of forced labor and legally sanctioned terror.
For many years, I was informed that reparations for descendants of slavery were unrealistic, unaffordable, divisive, or simply impossible. Republican and Democratic leaders alike repeatedly explained that while slavery was unfortunate, there was no practical mechanism for compensating descendants in the present day. However, your department’s new fund has helped me understand that no sum of money is too large for the government to produce once it decides that a great injustice has been perpetrated.
And then there is the symbolism of the fund’s exact amount — $1.776 billion — which is especially moving. President Trump, with his trademark subtlety and keen sense of gravitas, must have chosen this specific figure for providing reparations to people claiming mistreatment by the government as a fitting tribute to a nation founded by those who declared liberty for all in 1776 while simultaneously enslaving and brutalizing Black people.
Claim Two: My Arrest at a Capitol Building During Political Protest
My second major qualification is that, like many of the fund’s anticipated beneficiaries who stormed the capitol building on January 6, I was also arrested at a capitol building during a political protest.
In 2012, Washington state announced a special legislative session to determine how to slash education and healthcare budgets by some $2 Billion during the aftermath of the Great Recession. At the time, I was helping organize with the Social Equity Educators (SEE), a group of educators fighting against austerity and for educational justice.
We joined a much larger mass protest at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia to oppose billions of dollars in cuts to public services. Just before lawmakers gaveled in the special budget cutting session inside the House Ways and Means Committee meeting room, several of us managed to enter the chamber before they locked the door to the many protestors surrounding the building. The moment the session began, we mic-checked the room and read aloud the Washington State Constitution language that explicitly specifies funding education is the “paramount duty” of the state, and we declared therefore the state not only had a moral obligation but also a legal obligation to fully fund public education.
After finishing the statement, I produced a pair of plastic handcuffs I got at the dollar store and invited the legislators into my custody for what I announced was citizen’s arrest.
As I approached the legislators’ benches carrying self-made citizen’s arrest warrants to issue to each member, a police officer apparently arrived at a somewhat different interpretation of the law than I had. In an astonishing twist, he arrested me instead of the legislators.
He grabbed my arm, forced it behind my back, and cinched the handcuffs tightly around my wrists. Officers then moved me into a back room while they attempted to figure out how to remove me from the building as hundreds of protesters outside chanted, “Let the teacher go!”
Eventually, police whisked me out and pushed me into the back of a squad car and repeatedly questioned me about my actions even after I informed them that I wished to speak only in the presence of legal counsel. I was transported to a nearby jail, had my mugshot taken, ordered to exchange my clothes for a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, and placed in a jail cell with several other people for the evening.
While I was in jail, unbeknownst to me, my students at Garfield High School created a Facebook page titled “Free Mr. Hagopian.” When I returned to school the next day, students had changed the page into “Seattle Student Walkout for Education.”
Within twenty-four hours of my arrest, more than 500 Garfield students organized a mass walkout protesting the education cuts, carrying signs reading “Fund Our Future” and chanting, “We’re the future of our nation, no more cuts to education!” Students later formed a coalition called Students of Washington for Change to pressure the legislature through protests and letter-writing campaigns.
Importantly, Todd, not long afterward the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the legislature actually was violating the constitution in what became known as the McCleary decision, so I trust that my legal vindication strengthens my application considerably. And if generations of slavery fall short in qualifying me for compensation, I trust my arrest at a capitol while protesting government lawbreaking will place me in strong standing under your department’s standards.
A Possible Weakness in My Application
Now Todd, in the interest of full transparency, I should acknowledge one possible weakness in my case. The Department of Justice fact sheet explaining your fund notes that “Claims are awarded on a case-by-case basis, and the Commissioners must consider a claimant’s personal conduct and character when making a determination.”
I must admit, Todd, this language gave me some pause.
While I was arrested at a capitol building during a large political protest — something I understand may weigh heavily in my favor given your department’s apparent sympathy for January 6 defendants — I did not use a battering ram to breach the Capitol building, assault police officers, carry Confederate flags through the halls of government, or attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election.
In retrospect, I recognize this may complicate my claim.
Still, I would respectfully submit that my application remains highly competitive. Unlike many January 6 defendants, when I protested at a capitol, the court later ruled that the government I was protesting had actually broken the law.
Instructions for Disbursement of Funds
Todd, thank you for taking the time to read and consider my formal application for compensation from the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
Once my claim has been approved, you may issue a direct payment in the form of a contribution to Where I Got My Name: Down in Mississippi — a documentary film project about my father discovering the plantation where our family had been enslaved and our journey to Mississippi to recover our family’s history — or to Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project, organizations that have spent decades supporting honest education about the history of this country and the people who were truly “horribly treated” by their government (as President Trump put it).
Todd, I appreciate your department’s newfound commitment to reparative justice, and I look forward to receiving confirmation of my $30 million award soon.
Sincerely,
Jesse Hagopian
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America Reads the Bible: the Horror of Trump Invoking John Winthrop
When the eyes of all people were upon Winthrop's 'city upon a hill,' what they saw was a community established by genocide and based on slavery. Winthrop advocated for, and participated in, both.
Apr 23, 2026
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump participated in America Reads the Bible, in which hundreds of political, faith, business, and entertainment leaders will each read a passage until the entire bible has been read.
Trump read from II Chronicles 7:11-22, including the passage, “If My people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
According to many media outlets, the passage is “a hallmark of the religious right” that implies a covenant between God and the United States and advances the belief “that America has been and should be a Christian nation.”
In his “Message Commemorating 250 Years of the Bible in America,” Trump praised the marathon event and said, “The Bible has been indelibly woven into our national identity and way of life.” He said that throughout the history of the United States, “The truths of Holy Scripture remained deeply embedded in our culture—not only within the walls of our churches but in our homes, schools, courtrooms, and public square.” Continuing a theme that challenges the spirit of the separation of church and state, Trump added that “the Bible has enduringly illuminated our system of Government.”
And Winthrop participated in that slavery too. In his will, he left his slaves—he called them “my Indians”—to his son.
But the most offensive and appalling part of Trump’s Presidential Message was his invocation of John Winthrop to provide a historical foundation for America Reads the Bible and his participation in it. Trump said: “Nearly 400 years ago, a decade after the arrival of the Mayflower, the legendary John Winthrop powerfully invoked Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us,’ Winthrop said, imploring his fellow Christian settlers to stand as a beacon of faith for all the world to see.”
The horror of invoking John Winthrop as a foundation for America as a city upon a hill and a Christian land, is that when the eyes of all people were upon us what they saw was a community established by genocide and based on slavery. Winthrop advocated for, and participated in, both.
In 1620, the Mayflower landed in America. Most of the Indigenous people had died in an epidemic brought, unintentionally, by the British. The few Indigenous people who survived the epidemic helped the English survive that first harsh winter. But, because of the epidemic, the English found many once thriving villages empty.
The Puritans used the emptying results of the epidemic to justify the stealing of the land. They sanctioned their crime by appealing to divine providence. One of the leading spokesmen for divine justification for stealing Indigenous land was Winthrop: “God hath consumed the natives with a miraculous plague, whereby the greater part of the country is left void of inhabitants.”
Winthrop would go on to become one of the vanguards of a movement that defended the legal right to take any land that was not currently inhabited or developed without purchase or deed, ignoring the rights of Indigenous people if they were not currently or permanently on the land or if they were not developing it (or even if they were).
And he was not at all above helping the land to become empty. As Greg Grandin, history professor at Yale University told me, “Winthrop presided over the 1637 Pequot War, the first New World Anglo-American massacre, of hundreds of Pequot women and children who were burned alive in their village.” Grandin quotes Winthrop saying it was a “fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fier, and the streams of blood quenching the same.” Those who survived were taken as legal slaves having been captured in a just war.
And Winthrop participated in that slavery too. In his will, he left his slaves—he called them “my Indians”—to his son. In America, América: A New History of the New World, Grandin says that Winthrop’s “Indians” were taken in the Pequot War and made his property.
It is to this appalling history that Trump appeals in explaining his participation in America Reads the Bible.
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The Trump Administration’s Anti-Blackness is Showing on the Global Stage
The United States’ actions are not just a betrayal of the rest of the world; they are the latest examples of the Trump administration's betrayal of its own people—and in particular, of the 45 million Americans who are of African descent.
Apr 22, 2026
On March 25, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a historic resolution marking an extraordinary step forward for global racial justice. Spearheaded by Ghana and co-sponsored by more than 65 countries largely from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, a declaration designating slavery as the gravest crime against humanity passed the General Assembly. Through this, the majority of the world aligned on one key message: The enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendants for over 400 years is the gravest crime against humanity, we are still dealing with the consequences, and there must be reparatory justice to address the lingering impacts.
In a shameful moment for Americans and the world, the Trump administration voted against this resolution on behalf of the United States—only 1 of 3 countries to do so. This decision comes just months after the US withdrew from the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, falsely claiming it was “racist.” These two actions show that the Trump administration’s anti-Blackness is not limited to its domestic policy—it’s on full display on the global stage, too.
The history bears repeating: The slave trade ignited 400 years of racialized chattel slavery, representing the longest running system of organized human exploitation in history. This period marked the first time in human history when race defined the global political, economic, and social hierarchy. The United States was a driver in creating and perpetuating this unprecedented form of slavery. Across the globe, countries mimicked the United States’ policies to deprive an entire race of its humanity. The centuries-long system impacted millions upon millions of people of African descent, and even after this inhumane system of trafficking, selling, and enslaving human beings was abolished, its legacy continues to be felt today.
The resolution spearheaded by Ghana represents the worldwide atonement for chattel slavery that continues to have immeasurable consequences on the world. Because it is not legally binding, the only rationale for a country like the US to vote against it is that its leaders believe in erasing our world's greatest atrocity. It signals to the international community that the United States refuses to recognize the ugly parts of our past and how it impacts current realities.
The Trump administration’s actions to undermine forums at the UN designed to promote the rights and equality of people of African descent will be a stain on our nation’s history.
In his opposition to the resolution, the US representative characterized it as a scheme for developing (read: African) countries to gain leverage for the future allocation of resources. Additionally, he accused the resolution of being an attempt to establish a hierarchy of crimes against humanity (note: This was the same justification that the UK, Canada, and EU countries cited as explanation for their abstentions). Yet, this narrow-minded mischaracterization fails to recognize that the transatlantic slave trade and racialized slavery comprised all crimes against humanity: trafficking, forced labor, sexual assault, disease, famine, and the dehumanization of an entire race.
And yet, this is not the only instance of the Trump administration displaying its anti-Blackness on the world stage. When the administration made the decision in January 2026 to withdraw from the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) because it was “contrary to the interests of the United States,” it was saying the quiet part out loud: This administration does not care about or represent the interests of Black Americans.
The UN PFPAD was created in 2021 as a space for people of African descent to discuss ways to improve the quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent and share recommendations with member states. Its mandate includes promoting “the full political, economic, and social inclusion of people of African descent in societies in which they live as equal citizens without discrimination of any kind” and “ensuring equal enjoyment of all human rights.” The forum’s annual meeting represents the largest UN gathering of Black civil society from around the world. Its fifth session just concluded in Geneva, Switzerland, where the US government’s absence was noticed, but overshadowed by the energy and momentum behind Ghana’s historic resolution.
Civil society from around the world noted the fact that the world’s “superpower” was 1 of 3 countries to vote against the resolution, but the sheer number and diversity of Black American civil society leaders present at the forum made it clear that this shameful vote does not reflect our unwavering commitment to and solidarity in the global struggle for reparatory justice.
The United States’ actions are not just a betrayal of the rest of the world; they are the latest examples of the Trump administration's betrayal of its own people—and in particular, of the 45 million Americans who are of African descent. This is why the video message from Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) in the PFPAD closing ceremony was so important: When the federal government fails to represent our interests or even be present in rooms where our issues are being discussed, Black civil society and congressional leaders have always stepped up to fill the void.
The Trump administration’s actions to undermine forums at the UN designed to promote the rights and equality of people of African descent will be a stain on our nation’s history. The administration is telling us loud and clear that it does not view ensuring Black people’s equal human rights as a priority. So, while this administration falsely claims that “President Trump has done more for Black Americans than any other president,” we must remember the words of our great James Baldwin, “I cannot believe what you say because I see what you do.”
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