Tag: taxes

Bill Would Stop Giving Federal Handouts To Cities That Obstruct Immigration Law Enforcement

As the leftists running Los Angeles fail to get the leftists destroying Los Angeles under control, two Republican lawmakers aim to hold sanctuary governments accountable for impeding federal law enforcement officials from enforcing immigration law. 

Reps. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, and Sheri Biggs, R-S.C., on Tuesday introduced the Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act, which “blocks federal financial assistance for one year to any city or state that refuses to honor ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detainers.” The legislation also prohibits state and local governments restricting communications with the Department of Homeland Security. 

“If any city refuses to comply with the laws of our nation, blatantly works against the Department of Homeland Security, and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars shielding illegal aliens at the risk of American citizens, then they should be cut off from receiving even a penny of federal funding,” Gill said in a joint press release. 

A similar Republican-led bill introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina died in the last session of Congress. 

Flouting the Law

Sanctuary cities, such as Los Angeles, bar local police from helping ICE and other federal law enforcement officials with immigration-related operations. In November, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to officially designate the nation’s second-largest city a sanctuary city, “prohibiting city resources or personnel from being used to help federal enforcement of immigration laws,” NBC4 Los Angeles reported. The vote came two weeks after President Donald Trump was elected. 

“We have been a pro-immigrant city for a number of years, we know that there is a target on our back from this president-elect, and what we are doing here is we are hardening our defenses,” Councilman Bob Blumenfield said at the time, as reported by NBC4. “We are codifying our good policies on protecting immigrants.”

Keep reading

Tax Comparisons Show ‘Free’ Stuff is Very Expensive

People who want a larger, more active state frequently point to their favorite European country (usually a small Scandinavian nation) and ask why America doesn’t provide lots of “free” services like that alleged utopia. The answer is that it could but that wouldn’t necessarily make people happier. The U.S. is a large and diverse country where people don’t nearly agree with each other on what they want, and it’s difficult for government to provide more services without fueling arguments over what and how much should be provided. Importantly, too, those services aren’t free—they carry a very high price tag.

Paying Half Your Salary for Government Services

“Governments with higher taxes generally tout that they provide more services, and while this is often true, the cost of these services can be more than half of an average worker’s salary, and for most, at least a third of their salary,” Cristina Enache wrote last week for the Tax Foundation. “Belgium has the highest tax burden on labor at 52.6 percent (also the highest of all OECD countries), followed by Germany and France at 47.9 percent and 47.2 percent, respectively. Switzerland had the lowest tax burden at 22.9 percent.”

The U.S. government’s tax bite comes in at 29.9 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The average across the OECD as of 2023 was 34.8 percent.

That cited tax percentage isn’t a formal rate set by any government, but a “tax wedge” created for the purpose of comparisons across diverse tax systems. The OECD defines the tax wedge “as the ratio between the amount of taxes paid by an average single worker (a single person at 100% of average earnings) without children and the corresponding total labour cost for the employer.” It doesn’t account for adjustments such as tax breaks offered to families with children. It also doesn’t allow for wild variations in tax compliance that can turn nominal tax rates into suggestions when you’re discussing the difference between 83 percent compliance in the U.S., 62 percent compliance in Italy, and 70 percent in Belgium, where tax evasion is something of a national sport. But the tax wedge allows us to roughly contrast the cost of government in Belgium with that in Spain or the U.S.

It turns out governments offering lots of “free” stuff to the public, like health care and higher education, charge dearly for such services. You won’t have to pay for that appointment or a degree, but you’ll also never see somewhere between one-third and half of what you should be taking home in pay.

And the price keeps going up.

Keep reading

Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Would Boost Subsidies for Rich Farmers

It should be clear by now that, despite the assurances from President Donald Trump and his allies in government, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—which passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month—not only won’t reduce the federal budget deficit but will in fact increase the nation’s debt load by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

Given that Trump came into office promising to cut federal spending, it’s worth looking at how Trump’s bill does the opposite of what he and other Republicans say it does. And one of the more egregious things it does is boost corporate welfare for wealthy farmers.

“The government provides agricultural subsidies—monetary payments and other types of support—to farmers or agribusinesses,” says the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “While some subsidies are given to promote specific farming practices, others focus on research and development, conservation practices, disaster aid, marketing, nutrition assistance, risk mitigation, and more.”

“In reality, this support is highly skewed toward the five major ‘program’ commodities of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice,” according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental advocacy organization. “Despite the rhetoric of ‘preserving the family farm,’ the vast majority of farmers do not benefit from federal farm subsidy programs and most of the subsidies go to the largest and most financially secure farm operations.”

The new bill will only make the problem worse: According to an analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the bill “would increase agriculture-facing programs spending by $56.6 billion over the next decade,” of which “$52.3 billion is tied to enhancements in the farm safety net.”

That “farm safety net” comprises most agricultural subsidy spending in any given year. It includes price and revenue guarantees for certain crops, ensuring farmers earn a set minimum on staples like corn and soybeans, as well as crop insurance assistance, covering up to 60 percent of farmers’ insurance premiums in the event of price declines or poor harvests.

The programs are a bad deal for taxpayers—indeed, for anybody but the very wealthiest agribusinesses. “Just in the last 10 years, crop insurance agents and the 14 companies the USDA allows to sell and service crop insurance policies…received almost $33.3 billion from the federal Crop Insurance Program,” EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger wrote in 2023. “In some years, up to one-third of crop insurance payments are made to companies and agents, not farmers.”

Keep reading

Marijuana Companies Are Blocked From COVID-Era Employee Retention Tax Credits Under 280E Penalty, Federal Court Says

In yet another wrinkle stemming from the ongoing federal prohibition on marijuana, a U.S. district court has ruled that an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax rule prevents state-legal cannabis companies from being eligible for refunds of employee retention credits (ERCs), which helped businesses continue to pay workers during early COVID-era shutdowns.

In the decision, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that “nothing in the plain text of [IRS code] Section 280E limits its application to income tax credits,” rejecting arguments from plaintiffs.

The government, meanwhile, contended that the Section 280E prohibits any and all tax credits, including refunds of the COVID-era ERCs, which are typically refundable for other businesses.

On May 9, the court granted the government’s motion to dismiss the the case, Solstice Holdings v. U.S.

Section 280E disallows standard tax deductions and tax credits for businesses that traffic in Schedule I or II substances. It applies even in cases where businesses are operating in compliance with state law.

The law firm Holland & Hart said in a post about the new ruling that it appears to be “the first case where a court has addressed the application of IRC § 280E to ERC.”

Another law firm, GreenspoonMarder, noted in post about the district court opinion that many cannabis businesses applied for the ERC during the pandemic—and many received it.

“Some were deemed ‘essential’ and had to stay open during the pandemic despite the higher costs associated with continued operations during the pandemic and various restrictions that rendered it much more difficult to visit their stores,” attorneys Nick Richards and Sabrina Strand wrote recently.

“When the ERC first came out, there was a question as to whether it was available to cannabis companies because it creates a tax credit that Section 280E may disallow,” the post points out. “There was also an argument that it didn’t apply to the ERC, because Section 280E is part of Section A of the [Internal Revenue Code], which concerns income rather than employment taxes. At least one court now disagrees.”

Both law firms suggest the case out of Washington State creates a standard across all states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. GreenspoonMarder, for example, says the ruling “technically only applies to companies located in the 9th Circuit.”

“That said, as the only opinion on this subject,” lawyers wrote, “the IRS may look to it as authority regardless of whether taxpayers are in one of the nine states located in the Circuit.”

Keep reading

Trump’s Federal Budget Cuts Could Boost Marijuana Legalization Efforts As States Seek New Revenue, Congresswoman Says

A Democratic congresswoman says the Trump administration’s push to make states pay a larger share for public services such as food assistance and health care amid his efforts to cut federal spending might ultimately “push them in the direction of legalizing marijuana” so they can offset those costs with cannabis tax revenue.

In an interview on the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) Voice of Cannabis podcast that was released on Thursday, Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) commented on a wide range of marijuana policy issues—including bipartisan legalization legislation, stalled action on federal reform and the destigmatization of cannabis use in her state after enacting an adult-use marijuana market.

One of the “only good things that comes out of the policy of the White House is that they are pushing more things to the states to pay for—like [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)] and like Medicaid—and so states may be looking for additional sources of revenue,” Titus said. “That may push them in the direction of legalizing marijuana, to some extent, so they can get that tax revenue generated.”

Titus said the lawmakers who back reform were initially “optimistic” about the prospects of a federal policy change under President Donald Trump because of comments he made on the campaign trail in favor of rescheduling, industry banking access and a Florida adult-use legalization ballot initiative left the impression “he was going to be supportive.”

“Now we’ve seen that kind of stall, and we have this crazy secretary of [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)] that I think is on drugs,” the congresswoman said, referencing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I don’t know where he’s coming from, and so it’s hard to read what the administration is going to do and if they’re going to make it a priority and if they’re going to weigh in. So that’s another element of the politics that we have to keep in mind.”

Keep reading

State Department Weighing $500 Million Grant to Controversial Gaza Aid Group: Report

According to The New Arab, the State Department is considering a massive distribution to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The new Israeli and US-backed agency has been accused by human rights groups of being a tool of Tel Aviv to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza rather than an organization attempting to feed the starving people of the Strip.

Citing two current and two former officials, the outlet reported that the State Department is considering a $500 million transfer to the GHF. The money would fund the organization for about six months.

Responding to an inquiry by the Libertarian Institute, the State Department press office declined to confirm the report, only stating that the GHF is “an independent organization” that “currently does not receive [US government] funding.” It directed further questions to the organization itself, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some US officials have opposed the large grant, raising concerns related to incidents when Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians near GHF aid sites.

The GHF has met intense criticism for being unprepared to provide food and other desperately needed supplies in Gaza. UN and other aid agencies previously used established distribution networks to feed the millions of people languishing under the Israeli blockade. However, since the GHF was established in February, Israel has refused to allow UN and international agencies to bring aid into Gaza in favor of the new organization.

In the first weeks of the GHF operations in Gaza, Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians attempting to get food, prompting top officials and firms to cut ties with the agency. GHF’s previous executive director, Jake Wood, resigned just hours before the organization began operating in the Strip, arguing the group’s plans were not in line with “humanitarian principles.”

Reverend Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical Christian leader and staunch Zionist, took over Wood’s role last week.

Keep reading

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.”

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading