Tag: democrats

The Left’s Secret Repeal of No Taxes on Tips

What began as a campaign promise in Nevada became law this summer with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: “No taxes on tips” is now nationwide. But even as pundits debate its merits, progressive cities are quietly undoing the tax cut—and few are noticing.

Progressive cities such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago have recently eliminated the tipped-wage credit, which lets employers pay tipped employees below minimum wage as long as tips filled the gap. Now, New York City is the next battleground in a push to mandate a one-size-fits-all minimum wage.

The campaign against the tipped-wage credit began before then-candidate Donald Trump floated “no taxes on tips,” but few have considered how these ideas play out together. To see the consequences, look at what happened when D.C. scrapped the tipped-wage credit.

After D.C. repealed the credit—causing such a backlash that the city council has already voted to partially reverse the decision—servers reported tips falling from roughly 23 percent to 25 percent to 18 percent to 20 percent. Research from the Census Bureau shows that for every $1 increase in the mandated minimum wage for tipped workers, tips drop by about the same amount. 

Prior to the repeal, the minimum wage for D.C. servers was $5.35 an hour; the rate was scheduled to increase to $16.10 by 2027—a $10.75 jump. The back-of-the-envelope math shows the potential tax implications.

On an average night, a D.C. server at a quality establishment might turn over four to five tables during the two-hour dinner rush, and the total gross sales from those tables may be modestly estimated at $500. If that server was tipped at 23 percent prior to D.C.’s elimination of the tipped-wage credit, they would have made $115 in tips, vs. an estimated $95 after the repeal—a $20 expected decline in tips. But that is before the “no taxes on tips” landscape.

At first glance, higher base pay seems to offset smaller tips ($16.10 per hour over that two-hour period versus $5.35 per hour would work out to $21.50 total in extra wages). But those new wages are taxable. For a server in the 12 percent tax bracket—typical for D.C.—a $21.50 raise nets only about $19 after taxes, less than the $20 in tax-free tips they lost. The gap widens the more tips a worker earns. 

If every extra dollar in required wages replaces a dollar in lost tips, as Census Bureau data suggest, then repealing the tipped-wage credit effectively swaps tax-free income for taxable income. The same could soon hit gig workers and hotel staff.

Eliminating the tipped-wage credit now shifts earnings from tax-free to taxed—a de facto tax increase on these workers that could also lead to lower take-home pay in many scenarios.

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“That Is a World-Class Pivot” — Kamala Harris Gets Absolutely Grilled and Called Out for Dodging Biden’s Obvious Mental Decline in Cringe-Worthy Word Salad Interview

In yet another painfully awkward public moment, Kamala Harris got absolutely torched during an exclusive interview with ABC’s Sarah Ferguson when pressed about Joe Biden’s mental decline

The interview, aired Wednesday night, was meant to be a softball promo for Harris’s memoir, which ABC hyped as an inside look at “the shortest and most consequential Presidential campaign in modern history.”

What viewers got instead was a masterclass in liberal denial. Ferguson, to her credit, didn’t let Harris off the hook, repeatedly pressing her on Biden’s refusal to step aside despite his obvious frailties, frailties that were on full display during that disastrous debate where he could barely string a coherent sentence together.

“Wasn’t Joe Biden then to put it on him? Wasn’t his refusal to recognize his own frailties, the reason that you faced a nearly impossible task?” Ferguson asked pointedly.

Harris launched into a convoluted rant that had nothing to do with the question:

“I ran against Donald Trump for president, and Donald Trump ran on a platform that was, in large part, I believe, misrepresenting his intentions to the American people.

I do believe that there are a fair number of people who voted for Donald Trump who believed him when he told them that his first priority on day one was going to be to bring down prices—and he didn’t.

And you combine that misrepresentation of intention with what was at play in terms of massive amounts of mis- and disinformation—forgive me—and a calendar in terms of the clock.”

Ferguson quickly cut through the nonsense:

“I want to interrupt you because that is a world-class pivot, but it is not the question that I asked you, which is about Joe Biden’s failure to recognize his own frailties and what that did to you. The question is about Joe Biden.”

The look on Harris’s face said it all — deer-in-the-headlights panic followed by another evasive deflection.

Ferguson, to her credit, didn’t back down, probing why Harris “won’t go to that prolonged frailty question.”

Harris’s response was more deflection, claiming she’d addressed it in her book while dismissing the debate as a one-off due to “travel schedule” and “timing.”

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Nancy Pelosi Sparks Fury After She Debuts a Faux Southern Accent to Mock Christians for Their Faith

Nancy Pelosi may no longer possess the power or mental sharpness she once had, but her bitterness toward conservatives and faithful followers of Christ remains strong.

The former Speaker of the House attended a discussion hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School earlier this week. While being interviewed by journalist Alison King, she discussed her career in politics, her perspective on the political environment, her views on the Democratic Party’s current status, and more.

However, an otherwise uninteresting event turned nasty when Pelosi decided to get overly cruel. She decided to pull a Hillary Clinton and fake a southern accent while mocking faithful Christians for supposed hypocrisy.

How wicked.

PELOSI (faking Southern accent): You’re people of faith!? You go to church on Sunday and pray in church on Sunday and prey on people the rest of the week!?

What is this? (laughing)

One could say Pelosi, who is Catholic, is a terrible representative of Catholicism, considering she has long supported abortion with no limits whatsoever.

Not only that, she wants taxpayers to fund this demonic practice.

Social media users responded to Pelosi’s remarks with anger.

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Leftists Are Pushing for Global Speech Censorship

The Democratic Party, and the global Left in general, spent the last five years crying about “mis/disinformation” and the need for more oversight of social media platforms and the Internet in general. It is anathema to the people who think they are our moral and intellectual superiors that we might say, write, or think things with which they disagree.

In moves that would make George Orwell turn over in his grave, the Biden administration tried to force the “Disinformation Governance Board” on America. Turns out that board was born after a 2022 speech given by former President Barack Obama at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center — a speech that pushed for broad censorship of the Internet.

Michael Shellenberger is now sounding the alarm that global censorship is coming unless we stop it.

The entire post is long, but we’ll highlight the most salient (and alarming) points:

But now, foreign governments, including Europe, the UK, Brazil, Australia, and others are demanding censorship, including of the American people. The risk is that US tech companies will find it significantly less expensive to have a single global censorship regime and just go along with foreign censorship requests. Facebook complied with Biden administration demands to censor because it needed Biden’s help in dealing with European censorship officials. And the Brazilian government forced Elon Musk to continue censoring the Brazilian people after it froze Starlink’s assets.

And Public has discovered that the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, which is led by Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, is at the heart of a new, secretive, and possibly illegal censorship initiative that appears even more ambitious than the one Obama proposed in 2022.

On September 24, the Cyber Policy Center hosted a secret dinner between its leaders and top censorship officials from Europe, UK, Brazil, California and Australia. The meeting was titled “Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.” Frank McCourt, the same person behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, financed the gathering through his “Project Liberty Institute,” (PLI), toward which he gave $500 million to “strengthen democracy” and “foster responsible technology.”

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Don Lemon Attacks “MAGA Ladies” Over Looks, Uses ‘Trans’ as an Insult Against Megyn Kelly

Don Lemon is under fire for attacking conservative media personality Megyn Kelly by using ‘trans’ as an insult.

During a recent episode of his “Clip Farmers” podcast, he and his co-hosts, in a segment that looks like a frat-house reject reunion, discussed the appearance of “MAGA ladies” and began attacking conservative women for their looks rather than their character and substance.

Lemon’s co-host John Cotter asked, “Is Megyn Kelly ‘chopped’?”

Lemon replied, “I don’t know what that means.  I’ve heard it, but I don’t know what that means.  What does ‘chopped’ mean?”

Cotter answered, “She’s gonna get mad at me, dude, I don’t know if I want this heat.”

Lemon asked again, “What does ‘chopped’ mean?”

Cotter responded, “‘Chopped’ means not hot.”

Lemon answered with a cruel smirk, “Yeah. She’s chopped,” after which the three men cackled over insulting women for their looks.

Lemon continued, “I don’t know, the whole ‘MAGA’ look….”

Co-host Chris Miglioranzi gleefully joined the attack on conservative women, adding, “It’s all the MAGA ladies!”

“It’s too much,” Lemon added.

Cotter continued, “Kinda looks like a Barbie doll covered in WD40.”

And then Lemon dropped a very un-PC, and arguably transphobic, insult, “I think she looks trans.”

After an awkward moment that left his two co-hosts in stunned silence, Cotter said quickly, “Let’s end on that note.”

Lemon, instead, doubled down, adding, “I think she looks clockable.”

‘Clockable,’ when referring to a trans person, means that someone can “clock” (recognize or identify) their biological sex rather than the gender they present.

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Report: Far-left Dem Crockett Didn’t Report Stocks As Required

U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, the far-left, foul-mouthed Democrat from Texas, might have violated House rules by not disclosing her stock portfolio.

The Washington Free Beacon disclosed the possible violation today. Crockett “owned stocks in at least 25 companies that she did not disclose to the public during her first congressional run in 2022, even though she’d quietly admitted to the holdings the previous year as a Texas state legislator,” the website reported. Nor did she disclose the holdings when she landed in Congress in 2023.

The records reveal Crockett to be something of a hypocrite. She doesn’t believe the sinistral nonsense she spews like a firehose.

The Stocks

Indeed, Crockett is quite the Wall Street tycoon, the report shows.

“The records obtained by the Free Beacon open a window into the personal financial life of Crockett, 44, who says she supports herself,” the website reported:

“I have no husband, y’all. Never been married, never been engaged” she told an interviewer in February, holding up her hands to emphasize the absence of a ring.

She holds stocks in companies that can gain from her position in Congress, and “and others that stand in opposition to the image she’s cultivated as a champion of green energy.”

Crockett’s holdings during 2021 were “sizable,” the website reported. She owned shares in Big Tech, Energy, and Pharma, along with shares in the auto and marijuana sectors. She “did not disclose owning any of those same stocks in her first congressional financial disclosure, which also covered her financial holdings during the 2021 calendar year.”

Crockett’s array of blue-chip and other stocks is impressive. They include “Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, General Motors, Uber, DuPont, ExxonMobil, American Airlines, AT&T, Aurora Cannabis, Ford, and ‘Corporate Cannabis’ and ‘Stocks Worldwide.’”

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Newsom’s and Weiner’s vile law ties cops’ hands on child sex-trafficking

California’s statehouse Democrats called their 2022 law the “Safer Streets for All Act.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom gladly signed Senate Bill 357 sponsored by radical state Sen. Scott Wiener, and his ACLU pals hailed it as a bill that “will move California one step closer to acknowledging sex workers as deserving of full dignity and respect.”

But its effect has been the opposite for vulnerable children without functioning families  — who end up coerced into lives of prostitution by sex-traffickers and the pimp trade is flourishing.

The law prohibits any enforcement action against loitering with intent of commiting prostitution, supposedly because cops are racist and like to target black and trans people.

The real effect is that cops can’t catch sex-traffickers of children anymore. Eleven-year old girls just line the streets of Los Angeles openly now, waiting to be bought and sold like meat for perverts, and cops can’t do a thing to stop them.

That’s what was found by New York Times reporter Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, in a long investigative report about child sex-trafficking on Los Angeles’s Figueroa Street, in a stretch appropriately called ‘The Blade.’

She writes of a pitiful young teenage prostitute she calls ‘Ana’ whose mother was a drunk, who got bounced around foster care homes, who ran away, and who was picked up by a pimp she met on Instagram, at the tender age of 13.

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Insult to Injury: Far-Left Illinois Congressional Candidate Who Got Wrecked by ICE Agent During Rowdy Protest Is Indicted by the Department of Justice

A far-left Illinois Democrat candidate has now received a double-dose of FAFO after trying to foolishly stop ICE agents from deporting illegal aliens.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Katherine Abughazaleh, who is running for Congress in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, joined other anti-ICE protesters in Broadview last month to block a processing facility used by the agency.

Things quickly got out of control when an ICE agent lost a tear gas canister, which a protester picked up and threw in the direction of NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley.

Chaos continued to unfold when Abughazaleh decided to mess around with ICE. But one brave ICE agent stepped in and promptly took care of Abughazaleh.

As the video below shows, he forcibly dragged her away and proceeded to body slam her onto the ground. She ends up landing hard on her rear.

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Letters Confirm Liz Cheney Secretly Worked ‘Hand-In-Hand’ With Jack Smith

Two newly released congressional letters confirm years-long reporting that the anti-Trump Jan. 6 committee had quietly colluded with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. 

The letters, from Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and disgraced former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., reveal the lawmakers’ rush to hand over evidence before Republicans took control of Congress in 2023. 

In those exchanges, they produced at least 16 interviews, deposition transcripts, exhibits, phone numbers and spreadsheets as part of their investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. 

One letter, dated Dec. 5, 2022, shows Thompson and Cheney informing Smith that while the body was concluding its work, they wanted to make the evidence they gathered “available to the Department of Justice.” 

In that letter, the anti-Trump politicians told Smith he would receive “16 transcripts of interviews and depositions taken by” the committee, including “exhibits associated with those transcripts.” They even promised to facilitate “additional evidence as soon as possible.” 

Just four days later, Thompson and Cheney wrote again to Smith, announcing the production of documents obtained from John Eastman and text messages from Mark Meadows, then Trump’s White House chief of staff. 

“Along with the latter, we are producing a staff-created spreadsheet of the Meadows texts that contain additional information from privilege logs that Mr. Meadows provided to the Select Committee,” they added. 

Even after those documents, they vowed to produce more materials to Smith “on a rolling basis.” 

Now, the never-before-seen letters confirm what many suspected: the controversial committee worked “hand-in-hand” with Smith, the House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday. 

Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to target Trump after the 2020 election. Smith later used those materials to indict Trump, first over a document dispute between Trump and the Biden-led National Archives, and later over his objections to the certification of the 2020 election results. 

The origins of that collusion trace back to the Jan. 6 committee itself, which was created in 2022 by then–Speaker Nancy Pelosi and excluded pro-Trump lawmakers. 

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CNN Drops a Bombshell: The Shutdown Is Backfiring on the Democrats Big Time

The Schumer Shutdown has taken a surprising turn that should have Democrats in a panic. CNN has analyzed the polling data, and situation looks really bad for the Democrats. It turns out the Republican Party is actually gaining ground with voters during the shutdown, creating a nightmare scenario for Chuck Schumer and his caucus. The numbers tell a remarkable story of political miscalculation by Democrats, who seem to have badly misread the public mood.

When CNN’s John Berman asked data analyst Harry Enten about how the shutdown has affected Republican political standing, he didn’t sugarcoat it for the left. “You might think, given that the Republicans are in charge of both the House and the Senate, that a government shutdown might actually hurt the Republican brand. But, in fact, it hasn’t. If anything, it’s been helped a little bit,” Enten explained. He pointed to the hard data showing the Republican Party’s overall brand up two points. Meanwhile, the net approval ratings for Republicans in Congress have jumped five points since before the shutdown began.

Democrats were really counting on the “Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House” talking point to work… but it clearly hasn’t. And the implications are staggering for Senate Democrats, who have now blocked Republican attempts to reopen the government 13 times. Rather than inflicting political damage on the GOP, Schumer’s obstruction strategy appears to be backfiring spectacularly. Enten drove home the point, noting what Republican leaders John Thune and Mike Johnson must be thinking: “Why should we give, electorally speaking, when our brand has actually improved a little bit?”

Even more problematic for Democrats is where Republicans are gaining support. The shutdown isn’t just rallying the GOP base, as one might expect during partisan battles. “Change in the Republican Congress’ net approval rating versus pre-shutdown. It’s rallying the base for sure. Look at this, the net approval rating up 12 points versus pre-shutdown,” Enten observed. But then came the real kicker: “But it’s not just with the base. It’s also with the middle of the electorate. Look at this. Among independents, it’s up eight points as well.”

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