Tag: taxes

Transportation Secretary Cancels $54 Million in University Grants Tied to DEI, Climate Agenda

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Friday announced the termination of seven federally funded university research grants totaling $54 million, saying the programs are wasteful and ideologically divisive projects that fall outside the scope of the Department of Transportation’s core mission.

“The previous administration turned the Department of Transportation into the Department of Woke,” Duffy said in a May 2 statement. “I’ve focused the Department on what matters; safety, making travel great again, and building big, beautiful infrastructure projects.”

The grants supported research projects that Duffy said were used to advance a “radical DEI and green agenda” that wasted taxpayer resources and were not aligned with the transportation priorities of Americans.

The seven canceled grants had been awarded to research centers at the University of California–Davis, City College of New York, University of Southern California, New York University, San Jose State University, University of New Orleans, and Johns Hopkins University.

He cited specific examples of what he called ideological misuse of funds, including a $12 million grant to UC Davis for research on “accelerating equitable decarbonization,” a $9 million grant to the City College of New York for studying “equitable transportation for the disadvantaged workforce,” and a $6 million grant to San Jose State University that examined infrastructure and safety issues facing women and gender non-conforming individuals.

“We’re taking out all the racist DEI and green new scam and injecting a dose of reality back into our higher education system,” Duffy said in a video statement.

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We Don’t Need an Executive Order to Bar Illegals from Social Security—We Need a Government That Obeys the Law

In what universe does it make sense that the President of the United States has to sign an executive order to stop illegal aliens from receiving Social Security benefits? That’s not just an absurd headline—it’s a tragic indictment of how far this nation has strayed from the rule of law, common sense, and constitutional integrity.

Let’s get one thing straight: illegal immigrants are already barred from receiving Social Security benefits. Full stop. It’s enshrined in federal law, constitutional precedent, and the very fabric of what it means to be a sovereign nation. Yet here we are, once again watching a president step in with a pen to “reaffirm” what is already carved into stone.

Under Section 1611 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. § 1382c), individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States are categorically ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) explicitly excludes most non-citizens from federal means-tested public benefits. And let’s not forget 8 U.S.C. § 1611, which states unequivocally, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law…an alien who is not a qualified alien…is not eligible for any Federal public benefit.”

Translation: They’re already prohibited.

So why does Trump need to sign an executive order? Because we are no longer a nation governed by laws—we are a nation governed by selective enforcement, political cowardice, and bureaucratic betrayal.

While illegals exploit the system through loopholes crafted by activist judges and globalist legislators, hardworking Americans who’ve paid into Social Security their entire lives are being told the well is running dry. They’re mocked with headlines about “entitlement reform” and threatened with benefit cuts, while watching their tax dollars fund services for people who have no legal right to be here.

Let me say this plainly: illegal aliens should not be here. That’s the real issue—not whether they’re tapping into Social Security. The fact that we have to publicly debate whether to let foreign nationals steal from a system built by and for American workers is the very definition of national rot.

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Acting US Attorney Ed Martin Claws Back $1 Million From Consulting Firm That Overbilled USAID

Acting US Attorney Ed Martin clawed back $1 million from a consulting firm that overbilled USAID by inflating its employee salary costs.

This is one of the reasons why the Democrats and RINOs are stonewalling his confirmation.

Per the US Attorney’s Office of DC:

Stax Inc., a private consulting based in Boston, Massachusetts, has agreed to pay $1 million to resolve allegations it overbilled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in claims for salary reimbursement in the implementation of the U.S. Government funded Sri Lanka@100 project.

This matter came to the U.S. Attorney’s Office from the USAID Office of the Inspector General which found that Stax overbilled USAID more than $850,000 by inflating its employee salary costs.

During an administrative audit, it was discovered that Stax put hidden profit in its proposed salary for its employees. This hidden profit violated the terms of the cooperative agreement entered into by USAID, and further was in direct contradiction to expressed statements to Stax informing them that they were not to get any profit from this cooperative agreement.

During the investigation, Stax was bought out by another company that immediately began to cooperate with the investigation and instituted remedial measures. The new company fired the official who directed that the profit be hidden in the salaries, revamped Stax’s compliance procedures, and placed new personnel with extensive compliance experience into leadership positions. As a result of the earned cooperation credit, the parties agreed to settle for 1.2 times the single damages for a settlement total of $1 million.

Ed Martin is currently the Acting US Attorney for DC and Trump recently announced he nominated him for a permanent position as one of the country’s top cops.

If Ed Martin is not confirmed by May 20, federal court in DC will appoint an interim US Attorney until he is confirmed. There is currently no vote scheduled to confirm Ed Martin.

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Gavin Newsom Awards Antiterrorism Grant to Mosque Linked to 9/11 Hijackers, Pro-Hamas Cleric

California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) recently awarded taxpayer funds under a state antiterrorism program to a San Diego mosque that has been linked to 9/11 hijackers and whose imam defended the Hamas attack on Israel.

Newsom, considered a top 2028 presidential contender, awarded nearly $200,000 to the Islamic Center of San Diego in March as part of a program to help religious institutions and nonprofits beef up security to protect against potential terrorist attacks, according to state records.

“Today more than ever, our state stands together to support our communities. Californians deserve the right to worship, love, and gather safely, without fear of violence,” said Newsom, whose administration has given another $500,000 to the San Diego mosque in previous years.

The Islamic Center of San Diego, led by Imam Taha Hassane, has condoned anti-Israel violence over the years. Hassane, who joined the center in 2004, defended Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, saying in a sermon weeks later that “resistance [against Israel] is justified,” the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.

“We cannot accuse somebody who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist. The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself,” said Hassane, whose remarks prompted his removal from San Diego’s Human Relations Commission.

Hassane’s wife, Lallia Allali, resigned from her job with the San Diego school district after she posted a cartoon following the Oct. 7 attacks that showed a Star of David beheading five children. She currently teaches courses on “Islamophobia” at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

The Islamic Center of San Diego gained notoriety in the wake of 9/11 after revelations that two of the al Qaeda operatives who flew the plane that hit the Pentagon—Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar—prayed regularly at the mosque. An official at the mosque also allegedly helped the terrorists receive a $5,000 wire transfer from the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. Other mosque leaders hosted a welcoming party for the hijackers when they arrived in San Diego in 2000, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

Newsom awarded the grant as California faces a steep budget shortfall. State leaders acknowledged in a press release regarding the antiterrorism program that it comes amid “significant budget challenges” for the state.

The office that oversees the grant program—the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services—is the same one that oversees the state’s wildfire mitigation program. Newsom faced criticism following a Free Beacon report that he shut down a highly trained volunteer firefighting force called Team Blaze a year before the Los Angeles wildfires devastated the city in January.

Newsom has awarded grants to other mosques that preach anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate, the Free Beacon previously reported.

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Judge Orders Trump Admin To Disburse $12 Million In Funding To Radio Free Europe

A federal judge ruled on April 29 that the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) must disburse the funding appropriated by Congress to the nonprofit news organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order sought by the media group, directing USAGM to immediately disburse over $12 million in funding for the month of April to Radio Free Europe.

Lamberth said the plaintiff had shown it would suffer irreparable harm absent a restraining order, noting that USAGM’s actions to terminate the grants agreement “threaten the very existence” of the group.

The judge also stated that Radio Free Europe is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that USAGM had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by terminating the grants agreement.

Lamberth said the Trump administration must seek congressional approval to take such action, noting that it “has no residual constitutional power to refuse” to spend appropriations by Congress.

“It is, after all, Congress that makes the laws in this country. In this case, for example, it was Congress who ordained that the monies at issue should be allocated to RFE/RL,” Lamberth stated, referring to the acronym for Radio Free Europe.

The judge also determined that USAGM’s decision to change the grant agreement after the start of the fiscal year was “arbitrary and capricious.”

According to the court order, USAGM presented “a radically different grant agreement” in mid-April, leaving little time for a meaningful negotiation as Radio Free Europe was running out of funding.

“If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders,” Lamberth stated.

USAGM moved to terminate Radio Free Europe’s grant agreement following President Donald Trump’s order directing officials to eliminate non-statutory components of the agency. USAGM has an annual budget of around $900 million and operates networks broadcasting in more than 60 languages and around 100 countries.

The cutbacks affect the organizations and agencies under its umbrella, including Voice of America (VOA); the Office of Cuba Broadcasting; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other organizations such as Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

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Making Sense of Trump’s Tariffs

Trump’s entire political history is a cautionary tale against confusing elite and media fury for heartland sentiment. A certain strategic coherence and a common tactic unite Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in pursuit of the overarching goal of making America great again. The bigger concern is not that there’s no method to his apparent madness, but that the implementation of his ambitious national and international agenda could be imperilled by incompetence and bumbling, as with the amateurish use of Signal chat groups for highly sensitive discussions.

There are three components to each of Trump’s domestic and foreign policies that he is pursuing with a sense of urgency with wounds still raw from how the DC swamp-dwellers derailed his first term. Domestically, he is dismantling Net Zero, DEI and gender self-ID policies that have imposed exorbitant tax, regulatory and compliance costs on American consumers, producers and institutions. They have also deepened identitarian divisions and conflicts that threaten to destroy social cohesion and unleash an orgy of national self-abasement. Internationally, he wants to step back from forever wars that have taken a heavy toll on American blood and treasure, distribute the burden of defending Western interests and values more equitably among allies – J.D. Vance is surely right to say that being a ‘permanent security vassal’ of the US is neither in its nor their interest – and reverse the decades-long drift into globalisation and globalism that have deindustrialised America and ‘Gulliverised’ its freedom of action in world affairs with normative restraints. Mass immigration is a seventh on-border pathology that straddles domestic and foreign policy. Between them, the suite of domestic and international policies will, he believes, restore national pride and identity, stop America being ripped off by security and trade partners, re-shore manufacturing capacity and re-establish America as the word’s most powerful industrial and military power.

This is where the paradigm-shifting tariffs come in. Benjamin Brewster is credited with having written in the Yale Literary Magazine way back in February 1882 that “in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is”. In orthodox economic theory, free trade and globalisation create winners all round. In practice, they’ve created winners and losers, widening inequality both within and among nations. ‘Free’ trade has rewarded ‘everywhere’ elites even while its prescriptions have immiserated the ‘nowhere’ folks and denuded America’s manufacturing strengths. The inequitable distribution of the burdens of globalisation has shredded the social contracts between governments and citizens. People are citizens of nations, not of economies. Nationalism requires the prioritisation of citizens over business. Policies that enrich Chinese while impoverishing Americans, that make China stronger while hollowing out America’s industrial-cum-military might, are the antithesis of this foundational social compact.

Trump’s instinct may well be right that globalisation had shifted the trading balance to America’s net disadvantage and the new equilibrium that eventually settles after his rupture of the existing world trading order will reposition the US to recover lost ground. The WTO, for example, has proven to be not fit for purpose in enforcing fair-trade rules on a predatory non-market economy of China’s size and a mercantilist bloc like the EU. Time will tell if the punitive tariffs are a ‘shock and awe’ negotiating tactic to recalibrate the trading order or an attempt to compel trading partners to capitulate to arbitrary US demands. Trump is taking an audacious gamble that efforts by others to threaten American financial primacy as they de-risk from the US by diversifying to other markets and suppliers will quickly run into hard limits. Besides, how many countries will, if pushed to the choice, opt for long-term strategic dependence on China rather than the US? Will we? The scramble for bilateral deals with Washington, by countries that hold weaker trade cards than the US and are rushing to placate Trump, may prove a harbinger. For example, hit with 18% tariffs, Zimbabwe has suspended tariffs on US goods in order to build a ‘positive relationship’ with the Trump Administration. And the administration has worked the miracle of converting British PM Keir Starmer into a champion of free speech and increased defence spending while cutting health and foreign aid spending.

Michael Pettis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in Foreign Affairs on April 21st, notes that the world trading order became increasingly cumbersome as countries externalised domestic economic imbalances into trading imbalances through a complex maze of tariffs, non-tariff barriers and subsidies. Trump’s policies aim at the transformation of this global trade and capital regime that subordinated the needs of individual economies to the demands of the global system. A new equilibrium of individual and global needs could result in better-balanced economic growth, higher wages and trade parity.

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Trump terminates NPR, PBS federal funding with sweeping executive order

President Trump signed an executive order late Thursday terminating federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

NPR and PBS, which have long been targeted for cuts by conservatives, both receive partial funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which the president argued is unnecessary in the current media environment.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump wrote in the order.

“The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage,” he added. “The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

Trump further directed the CPB to end indirect funding to NPR and PBS, including by “ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.” 

The president gave the CPB until June 30 to effectuate his directive. 

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President Trump Announces He’s Stripping Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status After Woke College Defied Five Key Demands From Trump and Sued Instead

One of the nation’s premier colleges is about to learn that defying President Trump is a grave mistake.

This morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be taking away far-left Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to comply with five key demands from his administration and sued instead.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote. “It’s what they deserve!”

As The New York Post notes, Harvard’s tax exemptions have played a key role in helping the school amass the largest university endowment in the entire country. It currently stands at roughly $53 billion, with $2.4 billion ‘earned’ in the 2024 fiscal year.

As ABC notes, Trump had previously demanded Harvard lose its tax-exempt status after the university refused to comply with the administration’s commonsense demands, including actions on antisemitism and the use of DEI on campus.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Department of Health and Human Services on April 11, along with other federal agencies, issued Harvard a letter demanding five key reforms if it wished to continue receiving federal research funding.

The demands were:

  • Shuttering of all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs;
  • A university-wide “viewpoint audit” to eliminate leftist ideological monocultures;
  • Forced hiring and admissions practices to ensure conservative representation;
  • Defunding and disbanding of radical pro-Hamas student groups;
  • And complete transparency on foreign funding sources.

After Harvard refused, the Trump administration on April 15 froze $2.2 billion</> in federal grants to Harvard due to its coddling of antisemitism and bigotry on campus.

Harvard sued the Trump Administration a week later to restore the funding.

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HHS to reexamine massive $89 billion contract awarded to California nonprofit: Report

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is reportedly reconsidering a massive contract the National Cancer Institute awarded to a California nonprofit in January to operate a cancer research lab in Maryland.

The $89 billion award was given to the Alliance for Advancing Biomedical Research on January 17, just three days before former President Joe Biden left office. The nonprofit is also considered untested because it has not received or spent a penny since its inception in 2022, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.

The HHS notified the Government Accountability Office earlier this month that it is reevaluating all the original bids for the contract, which means it could give the money to another company.

The organization is also tied to the University of California system, which Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has accused of using 40% of its federal funding for administrative purposes, and criticized for allegedly being vulnerable to China.

“It’s outrageous Biden’s NIH shoved a nearly $90 billion contract out the door just days before President Trump returned to office,” Grassley told the Free Beacon. “Even worse, the money would have flowed to an organization that can’t clearly protect itself from adversaries like China. 

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Former USDA Program Director Pleads Guilty in $400,000 Kickback Scheme — Faces Prison for Corruption and Abuse of Public Office

In yet another disgraceful case of federal corruption, a former United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) official has pleaded guilty to a years-long kickback scheme that bilked taxpayers out of nearly $400,000.

Kirk Perry, 60, of Lorain, Ohio, who once held a position of trust as a USDA Program Director, admitted in court to conspiring with his nephew, Jamarea Grant, 31, to defraud the federal government by submitting fraudulent invoices for work that was never done.

The scam ran unchecked from 2015 through 2022, even as Perry enjoyed the benefits of his federal post, quietly funneling money into his own pockets and betraying the public trust.

According to Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin and Special Agent in Charge Jeldrys Lowry of the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, Perry orchestrated a scheme in which his nephew was placed in a no-show job through USDA contractors, reporting directly to Perry himself. Grant received nearly $400,000 for work he never performed — with Perry signing off on it all.

Even more brazen, Perry had direct access to his nephew’s bank account and siphoned off about $125,000 of the stolen funds into his own pocket.

Perry pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to conspiracy to commit money, property, and honest services wire fraud. Grant had already pleaded guilty to the same charge last November. Perry now awaits sentencing on December 4, 2025, while Grant’s sentence is pending.

The Department of Justice confirmed that both men face up to 20 years in federal prison for their crimes.

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