Tag: taxes

Deal is Reportedly in the Works for the IRS to Share Addresses of Illegal Aliens with ICE

A deal is reportedly underway for the Internal Revenue Service to share tax data, including addresses, of illegal aliens with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the deal has been the subject of “weeks of negotiations,” citing four unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”

The newspaper also obtained leaked portions of a draft of the agreement.

The Post reports:

Under the agreement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement could submit names and addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants to the IRS to cross-reference with confidential taxpayer databases, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of professional reprisals.

Normally, personal tax information — even an individual’s name and address — is considered confidential and closely guarded within the IRS. Unlawfully disclosing tax data carries civil and criminal penalties.

However, tax information may be shared with other federal law enforcement under certain, limited conditions — and typically with approval from a court. It would be unusual, if not unprecedented, for taxpayer privacy law exceptions to be used to justify cooperation with immigration enforcement, the people said.

According to the draft, the data sharing would be limited to “confirming the addresses of known unlawful immigrants who already have been ordered to leave the country.” Additionally, the IRS will only comply with requests submitted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem or Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons directly.

The requests “must include the name and address of each taxpayer, the date of their order for removal and other identifying information that would allow the IRS to verify the taxpayer’s identity,” per the report.

In 1999, the IRS promised illegal aliens that it would not share their data with immigration officials while encouraging them to use the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) program, which had been established three years earlier. It was part of an effort to encourage tax compliance among those not eligible for Social Security numbers, including illegal aliens.

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Trump’s DOGE Uncovers Nearly $400K In Woke Agricultural Grants

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made a decisive move to refocus its efforts on its core mission by canceling a $397,000 grant that was earmarked for educating queer, trans, and BIPOC urban farmers in the San Francisco Bay Area. This decision underscores the administration’s commitment to eliminating identity-based policies and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used to strengthen the nation’s agricultural sector rather than fund ideological initiatives. The grant, which was justified under the banner of “food justice” and values-aligned markets, had drawn criticism for prioritizing leftist ideologies over practical, efficiency-driven agricultural practices. By cutting this funding, the USDA is taking a stand against wasteful spending and realigning itself with its original purpose: supporting American agriculture, livestock, and forestry.

Brooke Rollins, a key figure in the administration, emphasized the importance of this decision, stating, “The USDA was funding a $397,000 grant in the San Francisco Bay Area to educate queer, trans, and BIPOC urban farmers and consumers about ‘food justice’ and values-aligned markets. By cutting this wasteful spending, we are ending identity-based policies and realigning our agency with its core mission of supporting American agriculture, livestock, and forestry.” This statement reflects the administration’s broader goal of ensuring that public funds are used to benefit all Americans, rather than being diverted to niche ideological programs that do little to advance the nation’s agricultural productivity.

Conservative groups and agricultural producers have applauded the move, arguing that the USDA should focus on supporting all farmers, regardless of their identity or political beliefs. They contend that federal funds should be directed toward initiatives that enhance productivity, improve agricultural infrastructure, and ensure food security, rather than financing programs that impose specific ideological frameworks. This decision is seen as a step toward restoring neutrality in public policy and ensuring that agricultural funding serves the entire nation, not just select groups.

Progressive critics, however, have lambasted the decision, claiming that such grants are necessary to promote equity in agricultural education. They argue that programs like the one defunded by the USDA are essential for addressing historical disparities in access to agricultural resources and education. Yet, the administration has made it clear that its priority is to ensure that every dollar spent by the USDA contributes to the strength and sustainability of the American agricultural sector, free from political bias.

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Barack Obama Was Using USAID to Pretend to Send ‘Aid’ Overseas But Was Laundering It to Train “Rent-a-Riots” Instead

Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, recently joined Joe Rogan on his very popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience with over 19 million subscribers.

** The entire podcast is here.

The podcast was filmed several weeks ago but a clip from this discussion is making the rounds this week on social media.

During their conversation, Mike Benz shared how Barack Obama was using money to USAID to pretend to send “aid” overseas. In actuality, Obama was laundering the taxpayer dollars and using it to train “rent-a-mobs” instead!

This is a huge development but maybe not so surprising considering how Democrats believe they can do anything they please. with other people’s money.

From the video, via Wall Street Apes:

Mike Benz on Joe Rogan: “This was a scandal during the Obama USAID era. We were running a number of rogue USAID operations in Cuba at the time. — I’m simply showing the American people where your tax dollars are going and how these things are structured in order to systematically fool you and to fool Congress and to fool the White House:

— USAID pumped $1.2 billion in, and we sponsored these activist groups and these civil society organizations to learn how to use Facebook, learn how to use Twitter, lose, learn how to use hashtags, learn how to coordinate street protests so that everyone knows where to go, what street to show up on, what kind of slogans to know, to use in order to create the pro-democracy predicate for it.”

He talks about how Obama funded a Twitter clone that would be used to push propaganda in Cuba to inspire these protests and overthrow the government (Mike Benz explains how Barack Obama overthrew many governments)

“So what they did is they took the exact same thing as Twitter, same user interface, same like, and retweet button Zunzuneo is, is the Cuban slang word for hummingbird. So just, it means it’s it’s bird, it was the Twitter bird, the whole thing. But the whole trick about it was you have to make it look like it’s coming from the Cubans if you’re going to do this operation. They started running this in 2010 which right during the Arab Spring.

They were using USAID funds that were designated to Pakistan.

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Burchett calls for government transparency on UAPs, spending: ‘We deserve to know’

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called for the government to reveal what it’s spending taxpayer money on relating to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) amid growing calls from lawmakers for increased transparency on the issue.

“They’re spending tens of millions of dollars on this subject. And then they turn around tell us they don’t exist,” the Tennessee Republican told NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill” Friday.

Burchett stressed the need for greater government transparency on extraterrestrial life while discussing the recent hiring of former intelligence officer and UFO whistleblower David Grusch by Rep. Burlison (R-Mo.).

“I think he can help us ask questions that need to be asked, that should be asked, that maybe we’re not asking the right questions because we’re not supposed experts on this,” Burchett said of Grusch.

“I want to know what they’re spending the money on,” he later added.

The topic of UAPs has received greater attention from Congress in recent years, with congressional hearings in 2024 and 2023 diving deeper into whether or not government sectors are withholding evidence from lawmakers.

“They need to they need to disclose everything and do it now,” Burchett said on Friday. “America needs to know. We need to demand that of our elected officials. Quit joking around about little green men and flying saucers. We’re spending tens of millions of dollars on something that, goddamnit, we deserve to know. Give us the information.”

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Peter Mandelson appears to have met Jeffrey Epstein at New York mansion on a taxpayer-funded trip – while billionaire paedophile was under house arrest, new documents show

Peter Mandelson appears to have met Jeffrey Epstein on a taxpayer-funded trip to America when the disgraced financier was under house arrest for sex offences, newly-uncovered documents indicate.

Epstein’s private schedule, unearthed by The Mail on Sunday, reveals Lord Mandelson was due to have two meetings with the convicted paedophile at his £60 million New York mansion on consecutive days in March, 2010, while on a trip that cost taxpayers more than £8,000.

At the time Lord Mandelson was Business Secretary and First Secretary of State – effectively the second most powerful politician in Gordon Brown’s government as de facto deputy prime minister.

Epstein, meanwhile, was under house arrest after being sentenced in 2008 to 18 months in jail by a Florida court for procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. 

Last night the Foreign Office refused to answer questions, including whether the Labour grandee’s two meetings with Epstein took place. 

Lord Mandelson, 71, now the UK’s ambassador to the US, has said he ‘deeply regrets’ both ever meeting Epstein and the hurt caused to his victims. 

He also claimed he never had any kind of professional or business relationship with him. But quizzed recently about his relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019, he told a senior Financial Times journalist to ‘f*** off’.

Lord Mandelson and the financier are believed to have been first introduced by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed in 2022 for 20 years for helping Epstein traffic under-age girls. 

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Cori Bush’s Husband Indicted for Wire Fraud, Allegedly Submitted False Applications To Obtain COVID Relief Funds

Former left-wing congresswoman Cori Bush’s husband was charged on Thursday with defrauding the federal government to illegally collect tens of thousands of dollars in loans under COVID-era small business relief programs.

Cortney Merritts, who secretly married Bush in 2023, falsified details about his purported businesses in order to obtain more than $20,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration in 2020 and 2021 under the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Bush represented St. Louis before suffering a primary loss last year that she blamed on the Jews. She was a member of the far-left “Squad” that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). She refused to call Hamas a terrorist group and was one of two House members to vote against a resolution to ban Hamas terrorists from entering the United States.

The indictment comes roughly one year after the DOJ launched an investigation into Bush over a separate ordeal: Bush’s campaign payments to Merritts.

Bush used her congressional campaign budget to pay for more than $812,000 on questionable private security services. She paid more than $150,000 to her husband.

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Trump Administration Weighs Sanctions on Foreign Funders of Pro-Hamas Campus Protests

The Trump administration is mulling plans to sanction the international funders behind pro-Hamas protests, including prominent Qatari nationals who have vast financial holdings inside the United States, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the internal discussions told the Washington Free Beacon.

The effort seeks to build upon President Donald Trump’s January executive order authorizing the deportation of foreign students engaged in often illegal anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Instead of targeting the protests’ participants, it would target their funders. The administration could, for example, slap sanctions on foreign individuals who provide groups like Students for Justice in Palestine with significant funding. In cases where those individuals enjoy U.S. visas, it could revoke them.

“President Trump has made it a priority to ensure that Jewish students, indeed all students, feel safe and free from harassment on college campuses,” one senior U.S. official, who spoke on background to discuss the ongoing deliberations, told the Free Beacon. “To that end, his administration is taking a comprehensive approach, not just looking at the visas and green cards of student instigators, but also, for example, going after the people funding the protests, wherever they may be.”

The plans reflect a growing appetite inside the administration to hamstring Hamas’s allies in the United States by penalizing their most prolific funders, including several former Qatari officials known to maintain relations with the Iran-backed group. Iranian government actors have also funded anti-Israel protests in the United States, former director of national intelligence Avril Haines revealed last summer.

Some officials within the Biden administration discussed similar plans to cut off foreign funding or the protests, according to a former U.S. diplomat involved in the efforts both then and now, who said the administration shelved the plans so as not to upset Doha’s government as it mediated peace talks between Israel and Hamas.

“This was on the menu when I was there, but the previous administration was a bit squeamish about taking extreme measures, like revoking visas,” said the diplomat. “But that’s not a problem in this administration, and we’re hearing they’re looking at all options—from sanctions on individuals to the revocation of visas.”

“You can’t get rid of anti-Semitism on campus without getting rid of the funding, and the funders are Qatar.”

The Trump administration has already taken similar action when it comes to America’s southern border. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on “foreign government officials, including immigration and customs officials, airport and port authority officials, and others believed to be responsible for knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.” Less than two weeks later, Rubio restricted visas for current and former government officials complicit in China’s genocide of the Uyghur minority population.

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Taxpayer-Funded Immigration Group Chaired by DOJ Employee Wants To Abolish ICE, Defund Police

A left-wing group battling the Trump administration to maintain lucrative taxpayer-funded immigration contracts has called to defund police departments and abolish the federal agency that deports illegal aliens.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), a nonprofit chaired by Department of Justice employee Marisa Arrona, has received $17 million in federal funding since last year to provide legal services to illegal aliens facing deportation, according to federal records. ImmDef is a subcontractor for a $769 million program to provide services to minors apprehended at the border without parents.

ImmDef and its allies are desperately fighting against the Trump administration in an attempt to maintain funding for that program and others that provide services to illegal immigrants. ImmDef has accused the Trump administration of “playing games with children’s rights and their safety” and says the program is needed to “protect due process” rights for illegal immigrants facing deportation.

But ImmDef has gone far beyond merely providing legal services to illegal immigrants facing deportation. The group, founded in 2015, has called for the government to “dismantle the systems that seek to deport our clients.” During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, ImmDef called for dismantling “the police state by defunding and decreasing police budgets.”

ImmDef says it is “high time we abolish the immigration prison system and abolish ICE” and sold “Abolish ICE” face masks during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. In September 2020, ImmDef circulated the since-debunked MSNBC report that a doctor at an ICE facility in Georgia performed unnecessary hysterectomies on female detainees. “#AbolishICE,” ImmDef wrote on a social media post at the time.

According to former federal immigration judge Matt O’Brien, funding for groups like ImmDef highlights Democrats’ efforts to “funnel taxpayer funds into the coffers of these radical groups” in support of an “anti-borders agenda.”

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Democrats in Congress Drive Luxury Cars on Taxpayer Dime

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas) declared in February that the government is “not in the business of giving out money” to taxpayers. But when it comes to the simple luxuries in her own life, the firebrand lawmaker is happy to let the public foot the bill.

That includes her taxpayer-funded car. Crockett has billed the public $999.96 every month since she assumed office in January 2023 to pay for a “vehicle lease,” according to House disbursement records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. It’s unclear the make and model of Crockett’s publicly financed whip—lawmakers are not required to disclose that information and her office did not return a request for comment—but it’s enough to pay for a Tesla Model S, Elon Musk’s luxury sports sedan, which leases for $998 per month.

Crockett obtained her taxpayer-funded vehicle through a little-known fringe benefit that allows representatives to bill the public for a fresh set of EPA-approved wheels to traverse their congressional districts. Some 42 lawmakers participated in the program in 2024, including 15 Republican participants who represent geographically expansive districts that average 18,100 square miles each. The Republican participants primarily leased economy vehicles from American manufacturers, with several of their offices telling the Free Beacon that leasing a vehicle is a far more cost-effective way for the lawmakers to traverse their massive districts as opposed to paying for airfare or using their personal vehicle at the IRS reimbursement rate of 67 cents per mile.

But the same can’t be said for many of the 27 Democratic participants in the program, several of whom used taxpayer funds to lease vehicles from luxury brands including Tesla, Lexus, and Volvo. And 15 of those Democrats, including Crockett, represent dense urban districts that are smaller than 500 square miles.

Crockett’s district in Dallas, Texas, for example, is only 335 square miles in total. The firebrand Democrat could have used public transportation or her personal vehicle to traverse her district in 2024, but she instead billed taxpayers $11,996 for “vehicle lease” payments to Credit Union Services. Crockett didn’t have to worry about paying for her Washington, D.C., living expenses either, thanks to another little-known fringe benefit available to members of the House. Crockett billed taxpayers $20,301 in 2024 to cover her “lodging” expenses, and an additional $2,670 to pay for her meals when Congress was in session, House disbursement records show.

Crockett’s reliance on the taxpayer to finance her everyday living expenses could come back to bite her as Democrats maneuver to make her a leading figure in the party. In February, Crockett scoffed at Musk’s proposal to redistribute a portion of DOGE savings to American taxpayers, saying: “We are not in the business of giving out money, and honestly, I don’t know what $5,000 will do for you.”

Details about the make and model of the vehicles leased by members of the House in 2024 are hazy at best, and the offices of most participating members did not respond to Free Beacon requests for comment. Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of the ethics watchdog Americans for Public Trust, said it was “disturbing” that members of Congress chose not to disclose details of their publicly financed leases.

“Riding around in a taxpayer-funded Lexus and not being forthcoming with constituents raises ethical questions and is unacceptable, particularly in our current era of rising accountability over government spending,” Sutherland told the Free Beacon. “Taxpayers have the right to know what type of vehicle they’re subsidizing to ensure this program is not being abused.”

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Trump Admin Chooses Boeing To Construct the ‘Most Lethal Aircraft Ever Built’

The Pentagon has awarded Boeing a billion-dollar contract to build the Air Force’s most advanced fighter jet, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

The Next Generation Air Dominance program will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor with Boeing’s F-47, a sixth-generation jet designed to operate alongside drones in combat. While details of the new jet remain classified, the aircraft is expected to feature stealth capabilities, advanced sensors, and new engines, Reuters reported.

“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump said at the White House. “An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers capabilities of any other nation.”

The new plane comes as part of a “family of systems” intended to “counter adversaries such as China and Russia,” according to Reuters. The contract is valued at more than $20 billion, with Boeing expected to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders.

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