WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump is dropping his $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Axios and other outlets reported Monday. However, the White House refused to confirm or deny the reports. Instead, the Justice Department said in a statement that it would comply with a court order issued last week, which temporarily barred the administration from establishing the fund or making any payouts. The Monday statement didn’t address whether the fund would be withdrawn. “The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling,” the statement said. The White House responded to queries by pointing reporters to the DOJ statement. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters he’d urged the White House to drop the fund amid opposition from Republican senators and a push by Democrats to ban the fund by law.“I do think that the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Thune said Monday. Asked if he’d been told the fund was dead, Thune said he hadn’t heard such an announcement. Trump created the fund last month as a result of a supposed “settlement” between the Justice Department and Trump, who’d sued his own administration demanding $10 billion in damages over a past leak of his tax information. The settlement also freed Trump, his family members and their businesses from any ongoing tax audits, potentially saving Trump millions of dollars in back taxes. The slush fund, an apparent fulfillment of demands by Jan. 6 rioters for restitution over their supposed mistreatment by the government, prompted an immediate backlash on Capitol Hill, with Republicans abandoning plans to pass an immigration enforcement bill. “If Trump and Republicans are truly abandoning this corrupt scheme, they should have zero problem banning it in law,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said online, adding Democrats would push legislation to ban the fund. “Trump’s word is nowhere near enough.”Last week’s court order, by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, enjoined the Trump administration “from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund” ― but only until a court hearing June 12. Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, the group that sued over the fund on behalf of several plaintiffs, noted that the administration hasn’t actually confirmed it’s killing the fund. “If these rumors are true, the administration abandoning its illegal slush fund would be a major victory for people in America,” Perryman said. “Until the administration fully abandons the scheme, it’s beyond dispute that it will not recur, and our clients’ harm is remedied, we will be in court challenging it.”Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, noted the ambiguity of the Justice Department’s statement and said Congress still needs to pass a law killing the settlement. “Nothing in DOJ’s statement dissolves this blatantly unconstitutional fund which was neither authorized nor appropriated by Congress and which somehow purports to exercise judicial powers to decide legal cases and controversies without anything resembling legal principles or standards to guide them,” Raskin said in a press release.