Tag: taxes

Multimillionaire Democrat Rep. Susie Lee Collected $81K in Taxpayer-Funded D.C. Lodging Reimbursements

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), whose estimated net worth reaches as high as $6.46 million based on her 2025 financial disclosure, received $81,615 in taxpayer-funded reimbursements for lodging in Washington, DC, dating back to 2023, according to House spending records.

An analysis of Lee’s 2025 personal financial disclosure provided to Breitbart News estimates her net worth at between $2,173,035 and $6,460,000. House Statements of Disbursements show that she received $81,615 in lodging reimbursements under budget object code 2107, covering expenses dating to January 2023, with payments reported through June 2026.

Among the largest individual reimbursements were $4,176 for October 2023, $3,354 for March 2023, and another $3,354 for May 2023. More recently, Lee received $2,744 for January 2025, $2,760 for June 2025, and $2,484 for April 2026, according to the records.

The House established a reimbursement program in late 2022 that allows lawmakers to recover qualifying lodging, meal, and incidental expenses incurred while conducting official business in Washington. The program was intended to help members offset the costs of maintaining residences in both Washington and their home districts, particularly those who could not afford accommodations in the capital. A June 2024 Pop Vox Foundation report noted that some lawmakers previously slept in their congressional offices because they could not afford accommodations in Washington.

Lee has previously faced scrutiny over her financial disclosures. In September 2021, Business Insider reported that she failed to properly disclose more than 200 stock transactions dating to early 2020, valued between approximately $267,000 and $3.3 million. Her office said the transactions had been executed by a third-party money manager without her input and that she worked with a financial adviser and the House Ethics Committee to submit the disclosures after becoming aware of them.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) subsequently filed an ethics complaint against Lee. In August 2022, Business Insider reported additional late disclosures involving eight transactions made by Lee and her husband during 2021, valued at up to $155,000. FACT filed another complaint the following month, arguing that lawmakers remain responsible for timely disclosures regardless of whether or not they personally execute their trades.

A September 2022 New York Times investigation also identified Lee among 97 members of Congress whose families had traded stocks in industries potentially affected by their committee assignments. The investigation identified six potential conflicts involving Lee’s transactions, including pharmaceutical and healthcare stocks, while she served on a committee examining drug pricing and surprise medical billing. Her spokesperson said a money manager executed the trades without her input.

Lee has also taken several international trips sponsored by Center Forward, a bipartisan dark-money group that has historically received funding from major corporations and the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA, according to the Detroit News. Her latest travel disclosure shows that the organization spent $13,765.13 on her June 2026 trip to Amsterdam, including $11,660.13 for transportation and $1,780 for lodging. Lee stayed at the W Amsterdam, which costs $450 per night and is marketed by Marriott as a luxury spa hotel.

In June 2025, Center Forward spent $23,868 for Lee and her adult son to attend an International Issues Conference in London, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. They stayed at the five-star InterContinental London Park Lane, where accommodations cost approximately $290 per night. The House Ethics Committee approved the trip.

The organization also paid $3,450 for Lee and her daughter to attend an ethics committee-approved conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2024. They stayed at The Ivens Hotel, where rooms cost approximately $300 per night. Altogether, the three disclosed trips accounted for more than $41,000 in Center Forward-sponsored travel expenses between 2024 and 2026, separate from the taxpayer-funded Washington lodging reimbursements.

House rules permit members to claim qualifying lodging expenses incurred while conducting official business in Washington. The reimbursement program was designed in part to help lawmakers who struggle to afford housing in both Washington and their home districts, although the information reviewed does not establish a personal-wealth restriction. Lee’s reported $81,615 in reimbursements does not, on its own, establish a violation of House rules.

Lee’s office did not respond to Breitbart News’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Lee, who is seeking reelection in Nevada’s Third Congressional District, drew criticism from Republican candidate Dr. Jeff Gunter in March, who claimed she “just wants to line her pockets,” said she had “aided and abetted Joe Biden in flooding our country with illegal aliens,” and called her “out of touch.” Despite touting her bipartisan record, Lee deleted a post about Trump’s planned Supreme Court visit in April in which she wrote, “I’ll pray they fuck him to his face.” She later said War Secretary Pete Hegseth made her want to “beat the shit out of him.” In July, Lee voted for legislation banning congressional purchases of individual stocks amid backlash of a trust tied to her that sold up to $1 million in casino shares in July 2025, approximately two weeks before the stock declined sharply. Her office said she was transferring holdings received in her divorce into diversified funds, “going above and beyond what’s required of her by law and ethics rules.”

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The Democrat Plan to Redistribute Wealth to the Wealthier

Two hypothetical college graduates who are married now have a combined annual income of $240,000; they each earn $120,000 per year.

Should an American who graduated from high school but never went to college—and who now works as a delivery truck driver, earning $43,950 per year (the median annual earnings for that job) be forced to help pay off the federal student loans of these two college graduates who make $240,000?

If former President Joe Biden had gotten his way, that truck driver and other hardworking American taxpayers would indeed have seen their tax dollars help pay off those loans.

When Biden was running for president in April 2020, he announced his plan for “forgiving student debt.”

“I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000,” Biden said.

His plan, he said, would also “[i]mmediately cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.”

After he was elected president, Biden did not get Congress to enact new legislation to implement this plan. Instead, he took unilateral executive action in an attempt to do so—and his administration claimed this action was justified under a law that had been enacted under former President George W. Bush.

In 2003, Bush signed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, aka the HEROES Act.

This act, said its official summary, “[a]uthorizes the Secretary of Education to waive or modify any requirement or regulation applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 as deemed necessary with respect to an affected individual who: (1) is serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency; (2) is performing National Guard duty during a war, operation, or emergency; (3) resides or is employed in an area that is declared a disaster area by any Federal, State, or local official in connection with a national emergency; or (4) suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

As the nation headed into the 2022 midterm elections, Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan. “On August 24, 2022,” explained the Congressional Research Service, “the Biden Administration announced it would invoke the Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to carry out a ‘one-time student loan debt relief policy’ to ‘address the financial harms of the [COVID-19] pandemic for low- and middle-income borrowers.’ Under the one-time student debt relief policy (HEROES Act policy), ED (Education Department) would have cancelled up to $10,000 in qualifying HEA Title IV federal student loan debt for borrowers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2020 or 2021 of less than $125,000 (for individuals or married borrowers who filed federal income taxes separately) or $250,000 (for married couples filing jointly and certain other individuals).”

So, under Biden’s plan, a law that had been designed to help individuals “serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency” or had “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency” could be used to grant general federal student loan forgiveness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Sept. 26, 2022, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., that estimated the cost of the Biden plan. “As of June 30, 2022, 43 million borrowers held $1.6 trillion in federal student loans,” said this letter. “About $430 billion of that debt will be canceled, CBO estimates.”

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‘Every Taxpayer… Should Be Outraged’: Anger Spreads Over ‘Illegal’ US-Funded Pro-Trump Ad

Outrage mounted Friday over a taxpayer-funded television advertisement glorifying President Donald Trump, with critics describing the 30-second spot as self-aggrandizing propaganda and questioning whether the administration violated federal law restricting the use of public money for partisan communications.

The ad—which aired this week on outlets including Fox News, Newsmax, and CBS—features a dizzying montage of Trump at rallies, White House events, sporting events, and alongside military personnel, captioned, “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY.”

The refrain of R&B singer JMSN’s “Love Me” plays over the rapid-fire images. The spot concludes with a voiceover from Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White praising Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.”

At the bottom of the screen, an alarming disclosure appears, reading, “Paid for by the US government.”

The White House dismissed criticism of the ad—which aired ahead of November’s midterm elections—by calling the spot a “public service announcement” intended to remind Americans “to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending.”

However, on Friday, US Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Jack Reed (D-RI), along with Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), excoriated the clip.

“This is the sort of government propaganda one might expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is an egregious and utterly illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” the four senior congressional appropriators said in a joint statement.

“The law is not complicated,” the lawmakers added. “You cannot use taxpayer dollars for political advertisements.”

Federal appropriations law—including the funding bill Trump signed earlier this year—prohibits the use of government funds for unauthorized “publicity or propaganda purposes,” while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has interpreted the prohibition to encompass communications whose obvious purpose is “self-aggrandizement” or “puffery,” as well as “purely partisan” communications.

The consumer advocacy watchdog group Public Citizen on Friday filed a complaint with the GAO alleging the ad “violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws.”

“Whether or not President Trump was personally involved in the ad, it was conceived, produced, and distributed by Trump’s White House staff,” Public Citizen said.

US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday on social media that “every taxpayer, no matter your party, should be outraged by this.”

“Your money is being used to fund campaign ads for Trump,” the senator added. “It’s totally, completely [illegal]. He’s stealing your money for his campaign.”

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Federal appeals court orders Trump admin to release Los Angeles homeless funds

federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release federal funding that has already been allocated to homeless service organizations in Los Angeles but was not distributed. 

The court order was in response to the Trump administration’s attempt to oversee how homeless service organizations in Los Angeles can seek millions of dollars in federal funding, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angles Homeless Services Authority was seeking up to $239 million on behalf of dozens of organizations, but HUD suspended LAHSA in June, citing a record of mismanagement, and directed the groups to apply directly through the federal government.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday largely upheld a district court ruling in a 2-1 split, which restored LAHSA as the applicant for the organizations.

The court determined that HUD “chose to suspend LAHSA at a time when it would leave the Los Angeles region particularly vulnerable” with ill effects on “vulnerable populations, critical programs and ongoing services.” 

“It is likely that its plan is unworkable and, at this late stage, extremely difficult if not virtually impossible to implement,” the decision added.

The new deadline for LAHSA to apply for HUD funding is Oct. 14. The original deadline was the end of August.

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California Has Highest Personal Income Tax Rate, 8 States Have None…

Where you live can make a major difference in the state income tax rate applied to your earnings, with systems ranging from no individual income tax to top marginal rates above 10%.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, compares U.S. states based on their top marginal individual income tax rate in 2026 using Tax Foundation data. Both local and federal income tax rates are excluded.

Which States Have No Individual Income Tax?

Eight states levy no individual income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

New Hampshire is a relatively recent addition to the list, having repealed its tax on interest and dividends in 2025.

The table below lists all U.S. states and Washington, D.C., alongside their top marginal income tax rate and tax system.

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IRS Probing $100 Billion In Potential COVID-19 Loan Fraud

Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) referred more than $200 billion in suspected COVID loan fraud to the IRS.

The tax agency then compared the information that the borrowers submitted to the SBA when applying for the loans with the information they declared to the IRS.

Analysis identified discrepancies associated with approximately $100 billion in loans, the SBA said in a Sept. 23 statement.

The IRS will determine whether additional taxes and penalties apply, including penalties for committing fraud, according to the SBA.

The suspected fraud pertains to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) initiatives.

PPP was aimed at helping businesses keep their workforce during the pandemic, while EIDL provided loans and advances to help businesses recover from the economic impacts of the crisis.

In 2023, the SBA judged that 20 percent of the $1.2 trillion pandemic relief program could have been obtained by fraud.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said:

“The IRS’s identification of approximately $100 billion in suspected tax fraud sends a clear message: fraudsters who stole from SBA’s COVID-relief programs will … face accountability at the SBA.

“If they inflated payroll, fabricated employee counts, falsified business records, or otherwise lied to obtain taxpayer-funded loans, they will also face scrutiny from the IRS.“

The federal government is estimated to lose $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud, the Government Accountability Office said in an April 2024 report.

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Boston Is Paying Illegal Aliens to Become Community Organizers

Boston is offering immigrants—including people in the country illegally—$575 to complete a city-sponsored course in community organizing and advocacy.

The eligibility language on Boston’s own website is explicit:

“Interested applicants are encouraged to apply regardless of their immigration status.”

Run through Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, Immigrants Lead Boston teaches participants how to organize their communities, engage government officials and advocate for change. Its fall 2026 course runs from September 21 through December 5.

Boston calls the $575 completion payment a scholarship to make participation more accessible.

Participants must attend the sessions and complete outside civic activities. The city also promises introductions to key officials.

The published rules establish that undocumented immigrants can apply. They do not disclose how many have received payments.

The program’s political ambitions become clearer in a published profile of its approach, which describes teaching the “art of politics.”

Its power-analysis instruction includes:

“Networking with people in positions of power for community advancement.”

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PETA Appears to Run Cover for Brutal Monkey Torturer After Obama-Appointed Judge Reverses Trump’s Harvard Funding Freeze

PETA has spent three years telling its donors that the “lights are out” on Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone’s cruel infant-monkey lab, but federal records say otherwise.

A new notice of funding, thanks at least in part to an Obama-appointed judge reversing President Donald Trump’s Harvard funding freeze, came just sixteen months after PETA toasted “the end of Margaret Livingstone’s career as tormenter of baby monkeys.”

NIH RePORTER still lists Livingstone as the contact principal investigator on a National Eye Institute award at Harvard Medical School with an award notice dated September 11, 2026, fiscal year 2026 funding of $850,148; a budget period running September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027; and a project end date of August 31, 2028.

Livingstone was also awarded a new grant on April 17, 2025, with fiscal year 2025 funding of $576,474; a project start date of May 1, 2025; a subsequent award notice dated June 1, 2026, for fiscal year 2026 funding of $576,201; and a project end date of April 30, 2029.

PETA’s May 27, 2025, release claimed a “massive victory” and said funding for the baby-monkey experiments “has been terminated.”

A PETA news post updated May 28, 2025, said “the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys” and that the work was on Harvard’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA2 told younger readers the same week, “the lights are finally out” and “NIH just pulled the plug.

NIH itself posted on May 29, 2025, that it had “terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.”

Then, a Boston judge gave the money back.

On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted Harvard summary judgment, vacated the administration’s freeze orders and termination letters, and barred the government from giving those letters any force.

The NIH termination letter dated May 6, 2025, was among the letters she set aside. The judgment vacated “all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025.”

The Daily Caller reported this week that taxpayer money is still moving through multiple Livingstone grants, including the new $850,000 award posted this month and a multi-year grant running through 2029.

PETA’s own description of the “maternal deprivation” horrors in Livingstone’s lab includes infant macaques taken from their mothers, some raised with only a cloth surrogate, some fitted with vision-distorting goggles or strobe-like conditions for months, some with eyelids sewn shut, some implanted with electrode arrays, and many later killed and dissected.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called related maternal-deprivation work “third-rate,” according to the Daily Caller.

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New Mexico’s “Free” Childcare Program Is Another Costly Disaster

National media outlets which rarely report on any news from New Mexico were eager to report on the big news this past November that the Land of Enchantment had become the first state to have a “free” universal childcare program.

Other states may head down the same path, but before they do they need to know exactly what was done in New Mexico, why so many other similar programs created in New Mexico have failed over the years, and what unique circumstances have enabled the state’s politicians to create a massive new entitlement program without legislative approval.

Many progressives see these programs as a way to help the urban poor in particular, but they often crowd out private alternatives and leave lower-income residents with fewer childcare options. They deplete budgets that would provide necessary public services, and keep states from embracing policies that improve their overall economies and business climate.

For starters, this childcare program came out of left field. In New Mexico’s 2025 legislative session, the hot topic for my organization, the Rio Grande Foundation, and the business community was stopping an onerous paid family leave program. We won that battle.

No lawmaker introduced a single bill that year in the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature for taxpayer-funded daycare, but in September 2025 Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham outlined her own plans for a brand-new taxpayer-funded entitlement program: universal free childcare. According to legislative analysts, the program is estimated to cost $850 million annually to start.

The governor changed New Mexico’s childcare program from one that covered families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($132,000 in 2026) to a universal benefit. The Legislature finally ratified the program in the following year’s 2026 session, but the big political problem was having the governor unilaterally create a new government entitlement. That creates a dangerous precedent.

As an aside, the reason New Mexico can pay for this program – at least for now – is the unprecedented oil and gas boom in Southeastern New Mexico’s Permian Basin, which it shares with Texas. The boom, which has lasted nearly a decade, has not done much for New Mexico’s economy because lawmakers have either spent the largesse on universal pre-K, K-12, free college, and now free daycare – or they have stuffed it into the state’s massive sovereign wealth fund, valued at $75 billion and growing fast.

Politics aside, the measure raises serious policy questions. Will this improve New Mexico’s dismal outcomes for children? The state routinely ranks at the very bottom in terms of child outcomes nationally. Yet no evidence has been presented to that effect by the governor or legislators when they finally did get around to debating the program.

Barring improved conditions for children, will it lead to an increase in women in the workforce? So far, that is hard to see as New Mexico’s already dismal workforce participation rate has actually dropped from 57.6% in November 2026 when free childcare started, to 56.9% as of June 2026.

Minnesota may have received the biggest national headlines with its “learning centers,” but, unlike New Mexico’s childcare program, Minnesota’s program is not free to the user. It is also limited to low-income families and only 22,000 children participate. New Mexico’s program is free to all participants, and it already serves 33,000 children before it became universal.

From an urban-policy perspective, California’s similar experiment with free transitional kindergarten (TK), which often serves as a replacement for childcare, might be instructive. “Many advocates hoped the move would ease childcare shortages and close learning gaps between rich and poor,” according to a 2025 article in the Hechinger Report. Instead, a UC Berkeley study looking at results in Los Angeles found that more than 150 private childcare centers subsequently shuttered.

These mostly served lower-income residents, whereas the “biggest beneficiaries” of the publicly funded program were children in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. The best theory is the new program “siphoned 4-year-olds away from community childcare centers and private preschools” and existing “centers lost revenue when children left, and it wasn’t easy to pivot to serving younger toddlers or infants,” per the article. The taxpayer-funded program destroyed the economics of childcare centers, thus leaving the urban poor with fewer options.

Broadly speaking, these costly state-funded programs put an enormous strain on the state’s budget, thus precluding lawmakers from passing tax cuts and economic reforms that are geared towards growing and diversifying New Mexico’s economy and funding basic services. Between Nov. 1, 2025 and the end of New Mexico’s fiscal year in July, the program was running a deficit of approximately $83 million.

Two whistleblowers have come forward claiming they were retaliated against for calling out these deficits. The Early Childhood Education and Care Department’s chief financial officer, Carmel Pacheco-Aragon, filed suit, alleging she was placed on administrative leave after reporting on the shortfall and warning about improper fund transfers without legislative approval.

The department’s former budget director, Kimberly Gonzales, filed a subsequent lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated for publicly reporting that the department as a whole was facing a $258 million shortfall, driven by the state’s new universal childcare program. Nevertheless, in July New Mexico’s Supreme Court ratified the program without so much as a hearing.

While other blue states will undoubtedly look at the idea, I don’t expect many of them to follow through with it due to the steep cost. Will New Mexico’s program be a beacon for other states to shoot for in the future or yet another costly disaster by one of the most poorly run states in America? My money is on the latter, but only time will tell.

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Energy Secretary Announces $2 Billion For Improving Electric Grid With Smart Technology

The U.S. Department of Energy has committed $2 billion for smart technology improvements to the nation’s electric grid, aiming to address concerns about artificial intelligence power usage, blackouts, and higher utility bills heading into the colder seasons.

During a press conference on Sept. 24, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the investment would affect around 100 million Americans. Nationally, the spending would be distributed across 31 projects in 26 states and is expected to produce more than 23 gigawatts of electricity annually, enough to power about 16 million homes.

“This is a quick way to lower electricity prices and increase reliability: using fibers that are already in the transmission lines to analyze what’s the temperature out, what’s the wind out, how can we use this transmission line to distribute more power, but safely and only in the right conditions,” Wright said, speaking at a PPL Corp. facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

As Jeremy Lott reports further for The Epoch Times, PPL owns one of those projects at the local level. It’s a $71.5 million effort to modernize an existing high-voltage transmission line across roughly 30 miles in northern Pennsylvania.

The state has a few data centers now online and a half-dozen more under construction, with grid improvements that could help facilitate them.

Future data center construction in the state has been slowed by an executive order issued by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in August, which affects the construction of all data centers that will use 25 megawatts or more, or enough energy to power about 18,000 homes.

Shapiro said the order was about “implementing the strictest standards in the nation for AI data centers – because I will not allow Pennsylvanians to be bullied by greedy developers and bulldozed by the lawyers working for these big tech companies.”

Manufacturing Grid Components

AI has been in the spotlight in much of the recent electricity news, from the latest grid upgrades to a recent executive order by President Donald Trump.

The “bulk-power system” executive order, issued in late August, aimed to ensure that key components of the grid are not manufactured in nations under arms embargoes or other U.S. sanctions, particularly China, but are instead manufactured domestically whenever possible.

The text of the order said that the new restrictions were necessary because AI and AI-related production, including defense technology, has increased America’s “dependence on abundant, reliable electricity.”

Smart technology improvements to the grid can help reduce electricity waste and thereby free up more supply, but those improvements also increase vulnerability to hackers.

America’s energy needs have heightened the consequences of a “successful attack or supply disruption on the bulk-power system,” the order warned.

The concern is that components manufactured in regimes hostile to certain U.S. interests might contain “backdoors” or other features that make it easier to sabotage the grid, the order stated.

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