Tag: taxes

Is Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project Grift Drying Up?

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who stated that it would be an “honor” to have the riots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death named after her 1619 Project, and who has earned millions of dollars from taxpayers since then, seems to be angry that the cash cow is giving less and less milk.

Hannah-Jones, who is easily triggered by any challenge to her fabulist narrative about the “slavocracy” that she claims is this country, was further angered after states began passing legislation forbidding the use of curriculum materials based on the 1619 Project (and the Critical Race Theory which “informs” it). Charging Republicans with “whitewashing history,” she tried to get the left “mad enough” to organize by warning them about the “dark and scary times.”

Her rage has only grown since the 2024 election. Hannah-Jones has been accusing President Trump of “erasing black history” — a laughable charge, given that Hannah-Jones knowingly distorts history in The 1619 Project and spin-off products, such as her picture book, where she asserts that “mommies” and “daddies” were “kidnapped” from Africa by white men.

Plus, President Trump has not been good for her (designer) pocketbook. The gigs that funded a lavish lifestyle seem to be fewer in number and flatlining at the fee she was earning back in 2020, the year after The 1619 Project first came out as a special issue of the New York Times Magazine. As I recounted in my book, Debunking The 1619 Project, given that Hannah-Jones was speaking an average of once every two weeks at public universities and earning $25,000 per appearance (often remotely due to Covid), her earnings from taxpayers amounted to about $650,000 in 2020.

Additionally, the Pulitzer Prize-winner was speaking at public libraries, events funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, educational organizations, and commemorations like Juneteenth, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and the 1921 Tulsa “massacre.” In January 2022, she made $55,000 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is not to mention her salary at The New York Times (a largely no-show job) then also as professor (Knight Chair of Race and Journalism) at Howard University beginning in 2021, and royalties and fees from the 1619 Project hardcover books, films, and other spin-off products.

Her gig as commencement speaker was interrupted this year, however, by “new federal pressures” that prompted Harvard University, and other institutions, to stop funding and providing facilities for “affinity” graduations for groups based on such aspects as race, ethnicity, and disability.

Hannah-Jones was a commencement speaker, but not at her usual center-stage space. She addressed black graduates in a conference room of the Marriot Hotel in Cambridge (the location apparently not revealed publicly until after the May 27 ceremony, which was organized by black Harvard undergraduates and alumni).

According to Harvard Magazine, Hannah-Jones noted that the graduating class had “entered college in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, during a ‘so-called racial reckoning.’” They had witnessed the reversal of promises to confront “legacies of racism,” including the laying off of “the team behind the Harvard Slavery Remembrance program” (the work outsourced to an outside company) and the renaming of the diversity office to the Office for Community and Campus Life. (We should take note of such strategies.)

Hannah-Jones inspired graduates with the accusation, “The same administration that has been cast as heroic for standing up to Trump over academic freedom caved almost immediately on issues of diversity and inclusion, and in doing so — in not standing up for y’all — it didn’t do one thing to stop Trump’s attacks on this university.”

“They gave you up for cheap,” she charged. “And I hope one day you will make them pay for that.”

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US diverted military aid for Kiev to Middle East – Zelensky

US President Donald Trump’s administration has diverted a large military aid package his predecessor promised to Kiev to American forces in the Middle East, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has told ABC. The package included thousands of anti-drone missiles Ukraine desperately needs to fight Russia’s long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), he said.

The Ukrainian leader raised the issue in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz which aired on Sunday. When asked about the importance of US support, Zelensky admitted that the Ukrainian military was struggling to deal with Russian UAVs on its own.

“We have a lot of problems with these Shaheds,” he said, referring to Russian Geran-2 long-range drones, which Kiev claims to be Shahed-family UAVs allegedly supplied to Moscow by Tehran. Both Russia and Iran have previously denied the allegations.

The Ukrainian leader then revealed that Kiev had not received a major aid package it was “counting on.” Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised Ukraine 20,000 anti-drone missiles that were based on a “special technology,” Zelensky claimed. Austin served as the secretary of defense under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

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REPORT: Evidence Suggests LA “Riots” Over ICE Raids Could Be Government‑Funded

What began as a so-called “spontaneous protest” against ICE enforcement operations in Los Angeles has now been exposed as something far more insidious: a well-funded, coordinated riot, with ties to radical left-wing organizations, government-backed NGOs, and even a billionaire known for pushing Chinese Communist propaganda.

According to a damning exposé by investigative account @DataRepublican, several nonprofit organizations and shadowy political fronts played a pivotal role in igniting the chaos that saw federal officers attacked, flags burned, and city streets blocked.

But what’s more alarming: tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money may have indirectly fueled the unrest.

At the center of the funding web is CHIRLA—the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights. Documents reveal the group saw a shocking jump from $12 million to $34 million in government grants in just one year.

While most of that is believed to come from the State of California, the group has received federal funding as well.

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Some LA migrant protests fueled by taxpayer-funded group with Dem ties — another with CCP link

One of the groups leading anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles is a taxpayer-funded activist organization with ties to the Democratic Party, while another has links to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) — which received tens of millions of dollars in government grants during the Biden administration — staged a rally last week to denounce Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting illegal migrants across the city, including those convicted of heinous crimes.

Protests against ICE have escalated since then, with more than 1,000 rioters taking to the streets, assaulting immigration officers, slashing tires and defacing public buildings, the Department of Homeland Security said, prompting President Trump to call in around 2,000 National Guard troops Sunday to quell the violence.

According to financial records obtained by DataRepublican, CHIRLA received nearly $34 million in government grants, mostly from the state of California, in the fiscal year ending June 2023, a jump from the $12 million it received the previous year.

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Trump administration to pull $4 billion from California high-speed rail funding

The U.S. Department of Transportation says it plans to revoke $4 billion in federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project, citing what it calls “no viable path forward.”

The announcement came Wednesday in a 310-page report that outlines concerns about the project’s ballooning costs and delays, claiming the California High-Speed Rail Authority does not have the capacity to deliver the early operating segment by 2033 as planned. The DOT gave California 37 days to respond and correct the issues before the funding termination becomes final.

Voters initially signed off on California’s ambitious plans for a bullet train in 2008, with promises to connect the greater Los Angeles area to the Bay Area by 2033. It was originally expected to cost $33 billion, but now, estimates range between $89 billion and $128 billion.

Construction began in the Central Valley in 2015 but has incrementally progressed.

“Fifteen years, $16 billion, not one high-speed rail track has been laid. the waste, the abuse and the mismanagement of this project has called for this investigation,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an online video.

Transit policy experts acknowledge the project faces major financial hurdles. Sebastian Petty, a senior advisor at SPUR, said the project is struggling to deliver on promises made to voters, largely due to limited funding.

“It puts pressure on what are already fairly scarce state dollars for transportation. So if, California is going to continue to invest heavily in the high-speed rail system, it puts pressure on the availability of that funding for transit operations uses potentially for other transit capital projects in the Bay Area,” Petty said.

Supporters, including state lawmakers, argue the delays are frustrating – but cutting federal funding would worsen the situation. Gov. Gavin Newsom has previously vowed to fight back, insisting the project will move forward and federal dollars will be recovered.

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Belated Republican Objections to the One Big Beautiful Bill Glide Over Its Blatant Fiscal Irresponsibility

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the House of Representatives narrowly approved early in the morning on Thursday, May 22, lives up to its name in at least one respect: It is big, weighing in at 1,037 pages and nearly 200,000 words. Since the bill’s final text was not available until 10:40 p.m. on Wednesday, about eight hours before it passed by a single-vote margin shortly before 7 a.m. the next day, it would not be surprising if bleary-eyed legislators overlooked some of its nuances in their hurry to deliver the package that President Donald Trump demanded. As Reason‘s Liz Wolfe notes, at least two Republicans—Reps. Mike Flood (R–Neb.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.)—have publicly admitted as much, saying they missed objectionable parts of the bill when they voted for it.

If Flood and Greene had voted no, it would have been enough to change the outcome. Furthermore, it seems safe to assume that at least some of their colleagues had similar regrets but are too embarrassed to admit that they failed to exercise the minimum diligence that should be expected from members of Congress. But the complaints from Flood and Greene are notable for another reason: They have nothing to do with the bill’s blatant fiscal irresponsibility, the main flaw highlighted by critics such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), and Elon Musk, who on Tuesday condemned “this massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill” as “a disgusting abomination.”

That much was clear prior to the House vote. As Reason‘s Eric Boehm noted the day before Flood and Greene gave their crucial assent to the bill, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that it would add $2.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years—an estimate that the CBO upped to $2.4 trillion this week. Boehm added that “other assessments of the bill” by the Yale Budget Lab (originally published on May 16) and the Penn Wharton Budget Project (published three days later) estimated that it would add “more than $3 trillion” to the debt.

Those are low-ball estimates, based on the unrealistic assumption that Congress will allow Trump-favored tax cuts to lapse toward the end of that period. If “temporary provisions in the bill are made permanent,” Boehm reported, the Yale Budget Lab estimated that it would trigger $5 trillion in new borrowing.

The national debt currently exceeds $35 trillion, including about $29 trillion in debt held by the public, which is about the size of the entire U.S. economy. In January, the CBO projected that publicly held debt would hit 119 percent of GDP by 2035. Two months later, Trump promised to do something about that. “In the near future,” he told Congress, “I want to do what has not been done in 24 years—balance the federal budget. We’re gonna balance it.” But the glaring gap between that promise and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act did not faze Flood or Greene, whose concerns are much narrower.

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Missouri Officials Will Begin Unannounced Marijuana Dispensary Visits For New Product Testing Initiative Next Month

State cannabis regulators will begin their first attempt next month to double check the work of licensed testing labs tasked with ensuring the safety of Missouri marijuana products.

Starting July 1, staff with the Division of Cannabis Regulation will arrive unannounced at dispensaries and collect about 50 products a month off the shelves. They’ll take them to the Missouri State Public Health Reference Laboratory to be tested for things like mold, pesticides and a whole range of other things.

Ryan Bernard, the division’s testing and research unit manager, said the unannounced sampling has been in the works for a while as a way to add an extra level of compliance. The division, Bernard said, isn’t expecting to find problems.

“We won’t know until we see the data,” Bernard said. “I have full faith and confidence in our testing licensees that they’re testing according to rule as it’s been outlined.”

However, national testing lab experts told The Independent that Missouri’s regulators might be shocked at the results.

“Shelf testing has not gone well in any state that I know of, especially if it’s just starting,” said Josh Swider, vice chair of the cannabis working group for American Council of Independent Laboratories. “It will be very telling very fast.”

Swider pointed to a citation in Arizona in April of a cannabis lab, where the state found more than a dozen alleged “deficiencies” including problems with the lab’s potency testing and pesticide and microbial detection methods.

Swider called the levels of pesticides on the Arizona products “sickening.”

“But this is what you’re seeing around the country,” said Swider, co-founder and CEO of Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs in San Diego. “Regulators are starting to enforce. They’re realizing an issue that’s been systemic for a long time.”

Other common issue Missouri regulars might also find, he said, are inflated levels of THC on products.

Regulators previously talked about conducting a “round robin” testing, where the state’s certified testing labs would double check each other’s work under the state’s instruction. Amy Moore, director of the Division of Cannabis Regulation (DCR), told lawmakers in 2023 that this additional testing rule was “critical.”

“The challenges in regulating and relying on for-profit cannabis testing labs,” Moore told lawmakers at a 2023 committee hearing, “is one of the most discussed challenges in the national cannabis regulatory community.”

However, the state never ended up getting the process going for a variety of factors, Bernard said, so the unannounced samples will be the regulators first attempt at a testing backstop.

Lawmakers began allocating money for this kind of sampling to be tested at the state laboratory in the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2024 with $3.8 million. Most of it went unspent because the cannabis testing methods were “still in the process of being implemented,” according to state budget documents. Another $2.4 million was allocated for this fiscal year ending on June 30, and it’s unclear how much of it has been spent.

Bernard couldn’t speak on the budget for testing, he said, because the division and state lab budgets are “totally separate.”

“Our operating budget is DCR only,” he said. “State public health labs is theirs.”

The lab will receive another $2.4 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

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Catholics fight government surveillance in confession after wins against abortion mandate, tax

Catholic physicians and social service workers won over the Trump administration and Supreme Court, respectively, last week against their compelled participation in emergency room abortions and a state unemployment compensation program that costs more than their own church’s.

Bishops hope to make it a trifecta against a Washington state law that violates the seal of confession, threatening priests with imprisonment and fines if they don’t report suspected child abuse or neglect when “penitents” confess, but not lawyers who learn the same from clients.

Diocesan leaders filed a motion for preliminary injunction Thursday against Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nicholas Brown and county prosecutors in federal court in Tacoma to block SB 5375 at least 10 days before it takes effect July 27.

The Justice Department also quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the law as a prima facie First Amendment violation after Ferguson signed it, expanding the category of mandatory reporter to “member of the clergy,” defined as any regularly licensed, accredited or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.

Denial of an injunction would likely fast-track the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if also rejected by the historically most liberal appeals court, to SCOTUS, which has rarely struggled to reach lopsided rulings upholding religious liberty.

The high court Thursday unanimously overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court‘s ruling that found that a local Catholic Charities bureau’s work is primarily secular and hence it can’t get a religious exemption from paying into the state unemployment compensation system.

Justices unanimously ruled for Gerald Groff two years ago after the U.S. Postal Service threatened to fire the evangelical Christian for refusing to work Sundays under an Amazon delivery agreement, junking the “de minimis cost” standard that let employers easily deny religious exemptions but only appeared in a footnote in a 1977 ruling.

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Top U.S. General in Africa Paints Grim Picture of U.S. Military Failures in Africa

President George W. Bush created a new command to oversee all military operations in Africa 18 years ago. U.S. Africa Command was meant to help “bring peace and security to the people of Africa.”

The Trump administration now has AFRICOM on the chopping block as part of its sweeping reorganization of the military. According to the general leading the command, its mission is far from accomplished.

Gen. Michael Langley, the head of AFRICOM, offered a grim assessment of security on the African continent during a recent press conference. The West African Sahel, he said last Friday, was now the “epicenter of terrorism” and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were “unfortunately right here on the African continent.”

The embattled four-star general — who noted his days were numbered as AFRICOM’s chief — was speaking from a conference of African defense chiefs in Kenya, where he had been imploring ministers and heads of state to help save his faltering command. “I said: ‘OK, if we’re that important to [you], you need to communicate that,’” he explained, asking them to have their U.S. ambassadors make entreaties on behalf of AFRICOM.

Current and former defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide candid assessments, were divided on whether Langley deserves a measure of blame for the dire straits the command finds itself in.

One former defense official spoke highly of Langley, calling him “an effective and transformational leader” who “rapidly grew into the job and developed strong, fruitful relationships with members of Congress.”

A current official, however, said almost the opposite, calling the four-star general a “marble mouth” who did a poor job of making a case for his command, “fumbled” relations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and diminished AFRICOM’s standing with legislators. Asked by messaging app if the latter assessment was accurate, a former Africa Command official sent a laughing emoji and replied “no comment” followed by “but yes.” (The official said he could be quoted as such.)

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The 5 Worst Green Energy Projects Funded by Biden

Despite the Department of Government Efficiency’s failures to cut spending and the president’s support for a bill that will add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, some wasteful government projects have been cut under the Trump administration. 

Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently canceled 24 grants approved by the Energy Department under former President Joe Biden. The action netted over $3 billion in savings. Earlier in May, Wright axed an additional $7 billion of green energy loans approved by Biden. 

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the savings that Wright has identified are only a drop in the bucket of the wasteful spending that the Biden Energy Department approved. Here are five of the most egregious examples:

1. $10 Billion for Ford’s Electric Vehicle Push and Eminent Domain Abuses 

In December 2024, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) closed a $9.63 billion direct loan to BlueOval SK LLC, a joint venture between Ford and South Korean conglomerate SK On. The loan was approved to fund “the construction of three manufacturing plants, to produce batteries for Ford Motor Company’s future Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles [E.V.s],” according to the award announcement. 

BlueOval has begun or completed construction for these facilities—one in western Tennessee called BlueOval City—and two in Hardin County, Kentucky, known as Kentucky 1 and 2. 

In addition to allocating millions of dollars in tax credits for the rights to house BlueOval City, the Tennessee Legislature also created the Megasite Authority of West Tennessee, reports Reason‘s Joe Lancaster. The board was granted the authority to execute contracts on behalf of development, which includes the power to seize private property through eminent domain. In most cases, the board lowballed local property owners, including Ray Jones, who was offered “a measly $8,165” for his acre of land, even though the going rate was $200,000 per acre. There is no set date for when the plant will open. 

Kentucky 1 has faced numerous occupational safety and health complaints from its workers. A review from The Courier-Journal found “dozens of workplace injuries; hospitalizations related to respiratory issues; unshakeable mold contamination; a bat-infested training facility; blocked emergency exit doors; and chemical exposure risks.” The state has opened investigations into the plant, which is scheduled to begin production later this year. Kentucky 2’s opening has been indefinitely delayed. Michael Adams, CEO of BlueOval SK, recently told WDRB, that the plant’s opening date will be a market decision, but “the market is telling us that Kentucky 2 is not ready.”

2. Facility Upgrades for ExxonMobil

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021 created a new office within the Energy Department called the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), whose goal is to finance first-of-a-kind clean energy projects through private-public partnerships. One of the largest beneficiaries of the program has been Exxon Mobil. 

The oil major was awarded a $332 million grant from OCED to “enable the use of hydrogen in place of natural gas” at a textile and plastics facility in Baytown, Texas. At the time of the announcement, the Biden administration said the project would prevent 2.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year. While an interesting technology, the project did not need taxpayer support. In the same year that Exxon received this disbursement (2024), the company reported annual earnings of $33.7 billion. The project’s funding was canceled on May 30 by Wright. 

3. Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Ketchup 

No industry was spared from corporate welfare under the Biden administration, including condiments. In October 2024, Kraft Heinz was awarded a grant of up to $170.9 million from OCED. The award was intended to fund energy efficiency upgrades, the installation of heat pumps and electric boilers, and renewable energy technologies at 10 of the company’s facilities. 

The grant was also rescinded on May 30. Kraft Heinz says it will continue to invest in upgrading 30 of its manufacturing facilities and will invest $3 billion over the next five years “to modernize” its domestic supply chain infrastructure.

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