President Trump settled his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS on Monday in exchange for a $1.776 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were targets of government “weaponization”. The fund creates an unprecedented, taxpayer-backed mechanism to compensate people who claim they were wrongfully targeted. And many are worried that group could include the Jan. 6th insurrectionists.

Democrats and former government officials criticized it as a vast political “slush fund” to compensate the president’s allies. Multiple news outlets had reported earlier that Trump was considering launching the fund as part of the talks to resolve his lawsuit. The president, his sons and the Trump organization will receive a formal apology but no payment under the settlement’s terms.

A quick catchup: Trump sued the IRS after a former contractor leaked his confidential tax returns to The New York Times and ProPublica during his first term. The contractor pleaded guilty and was sentenced to federal prison. It was unusual for many reason, not the least of which is the fact that Trump was demanding pay from the very agencies he oversees as president.

The Justice Department is modeling the program, in part, on a landmark $760 million settlement fund the Obama administration created to compensate Native American farmers and ranchers who were deprived access to federal subsidies for decades. Payments in that settlement came from the Judgment Fund, an uncapped pot of money that does not require congressional approval to make payments and is maintained by the Treasury Department.

The settlement was signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who served as Trump's criminal defense lawyer before joining the Justice Department. And it came just two days before a court-imposed deadline to explain why the case should proceed. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams had questioned whether Trump and the agencies he controls were “sufficiently adverse” to justify the lawsuit.

We didn’t need data to know this, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest consumer price report confirms that most grocery staples are trending upward, electric costs are now at all-time highs and gas prices are inching above $4 per gallon nationally for the first time since 2022.

And roughly three-quarters of Americans say their incomes are lagging behind inflation, according to a CBS News poll. That sense of slipping backward, particularly driven by surging fuel prices, is worsening the affordability challenges facing many people: 76% of survey respondents reported concern about their personal finances. “People are looking at higher prices across the board, and their dollar is not carrying them as far as it previously was,” says Angela Hanks, a former Department of Labor official and currently chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

Four of America’s largest retailers will report their quarterly earnings this week as well, and the most pressing question the reports will answer is whether Americans are finally starting to buckle under the weight of rising prices. Are shoppers trading down to cheaper products? Delaying home improvement projects? Or pulling back on discretionary purchases to prioritize essentials?

Chinese e-commerce giant Shein is acquiring Everlane, according to several media reports. The brand, you’ll recall, launched back in 2011 and has always prided itself on “radical transparency” in fashion production and manufacturing.

Puck reports that Everlane’s majority owner L Catterton (a private equity firm backed by LVMH and Groupe Arnault) and Everlane CEO Alfred Chang (who joined in 2024 and tried to rebrand Everlane as a “Clean Luxury” destination) were searching for an investor to address the company’s $90 million in debt. “This is like if SeaWorld bought PETA,” fashion designer Camille Witt was quoted in WWD. Laura Norkin, a former longtime InStyle editor, was more succinct on social media: “Haha gross.”

The irony is almost too on the nose: Everlane was a pioneer of 2010s do-gooder marketing, billing itself as an eco-friendly, sustainable fashion pioneer with ethical labor practices. Shein is basically the opposite of that. It makes mountains of cheap clothes out of synthetic material, under at times allegedly abusive labor practices. But this is just the latest in a long line of acquisitions that essentially squander any good will in a brand.