taxes – Page 35 – Hellbound and Down

Sen. Bob Duff Pushes 100% Tax on Trump’s $1.776 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) announced Thursday that he wants to explore ways for Connecticut to seize any payouts Connecticut residents receive from President Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Duff said he plans to introduce legislation in the 2027 legislative session — after a legal review — that would impose a 100% state tax on any such payments, effectively confiscating every dollar.

The fund, created by the Department of Justice earlier this month as part of a settlement resolving Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS for illegally leaking his tax returns, aims to provide compensation and formal apologies to Americans who claim they were targeted by government weaponization and lawfare.

Claims are voluntary, with no explicit partisan restrictions. The $1.776 billion comes from the federal Judgment Fund.

While Democrats have blasted the fund as a “corrupt slush fund,” supporters view it as a long-overdue effort to hold the federal government accountable for years of political persecution.

It’s sparked lawsuits, GOP internal debate, and reactions like Connecticut’s proposed 100% state tax on any local payouts.

“The Trump regime just handed $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to the same people who beat police officers and stormed the United States Capitol,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk). “Connecticut is not going to let a single one of our residents profit from that corruption. If you filed a claim with Trump’s slush fund and collected a check, we are going to explore every legal option available to take every penny of it back. We will not allow this state to be a safe harbor for insurrectionist windfalls.”

“We are living in unprecedented times,” he continued. “This regime acts in ways that were previously unthinkable, and their lapdogs on the Supreme Court and in Congress hand them a stamp of approval every single time. Connecticut is going to fight back with every tool we have. We are doing the legal work now so that when the 2027 session begins, we are ready to act.”

Duff’s hysterical meltdown is nothing more than rank partisan hackery and deliberate misinformation.

Far from a “slush fund for insurrectionists,” Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund is open to any American who can demonstrate they were targeted by the federal government’s weaponized bureaucracy — including parents labeled “domestic terrorists” for speaking at school board meetings, pro-life activists raided by the FBI, and conservative organizations harassed by the IRS.

Instead of addressing Connecticut’s real problems, Duff is wasting time and political capital on a spiteful symbolic tax that will likely never survive legal scrutiny. His blind hatred for President Trump has once again exposed him as a petty, small-minded obstructionist more interested in grandstanding against Trump than serving the people of Connecticut.

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TOTAL CORRUPTION: Two Minnesota Muslim Women Arrested In Massive $21 Million Autism Program Scam — Taxpayer Cash Sent Overseas!

The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has arrested two Muslim women in Minnesota for defrauding American taxpayers of more than $21 million through a brazen scheme targeting the state’s autism services program.

Shamso Ahmed Hassan, 55, and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, 25, both of Brooklyn Park, were taken into custody by HSI agents. Federal prosecutors say the pair submitted $46.6 million in fraudulent claims to Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program — a Medicaid-funded service for children with autism — and pocketed approximately $21.1 million in taxpayer money for services that were never provided.

According to the DHS statement and indictment:

Hassan was a beneficial owner of Smart Therapy Center LLC and Star Autism Center LLC but hid her ownership interests from Minnesota regulators as required.
Yusuf worked as a provider and was heavily involved in operations and submitting claims.
They paid illegal kickbacks to parents to enroll children.
They billed for services that were never rendered, for children who didn’t qualify, and disguised the kickbacks by routing money through family members and employees — with some funds sent overseas.
The scheme ran from at least May 2020 through December 2024.

“These Minnesota residents have been accused of stealing more than $21 million from the American taxpayer,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis.

“They now face charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, EIGHT counts of health care fraud, and TWO counts of money laundering. Their Medicaid fraud scheme started during the COVID pandemic and lasted for four years. ICE continues to zero in on the rampant fraud in Minnesota. Under Secretary Mullin, we will end the defrauding of the American people.”

Both women are U.S. citizens (Hassan naturalized). They have pleaded not guilty and remain in federal custody.

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Five years after the ‘unmarked graves’ claim, Canada still has no bodies — but plenty of demands for silence

The fifth anniversary of the claim that the remains of 215 Indian residential school students had been discovered at Kamloops, BC, has come and gone. Despite the fact that millions of dollars have been spent, and not one body has been found, there have been no apologies from those who made the claim. Quite the contrary, Canada’s Indian chiefs are now demanding the criminal prosecution of anyone who even questions the claim. As they see it, anyone disputing their claim — or even claiming that former residential school students had positive experiences at the schools — should be found guilty of “residential school denialism,” and severely sanctioned — even jailed.

Ottawa appears to be ready to oblige. Bill C-413 would make me a criminal for writing this article — and perhaps you for reading it and passing it on.

But if they get their way, they had better build a very big jail. And they will have to be prepared to throw many former residential school students in that jail. Because it is not hard to find positive residential school experiences described by former students.

Here is an example of a man heaping praise on his residential school and the dedicated people there who gave him a first-class education. According to him, if not for the years he spent at his residential school, he would have died as a drunk on skid row, like so many of his reserve friends. Instead, he went on to become a successful lawyer. He credited the 14 years he spent at a residential school for making that success possible.

That fellow is Wilton Littlechild, who happens to be one of the three Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Commissioners. He certainly changed his tune later, but for most of his life, he and his family considered themselves very fortunate for his education at the school. Every year, the family and community held a picnic at their rural home, with the chiefs in attendance, to honour the teachers and staff who gave their son and friends the education so many Indians didn’t receive.

Littleton shared this revelation during a 2011 interview with University of New Brunswick students and at a TRC hearing. You can read the full interview at Speak Truth to Power Canada.

Will Mr. Littlechild be jailed for making these comments about his overwhelmingly positive experience at his residential school?

And while we are on the subject of TRC commissioners, here is what the late Commissioner Murray Sinclair had to say about residential schools.

“While the TRC heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse, we have been heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care. These experiences must also be heard.”

Would Sinclair have been prosecuted for that?

Sinclair’s grandmother — the grandmother who raised him, and who Sinclair credited for his success — received her education at a residential school. Would the chiefs have her jailed for repeatedly declaring how lucky she had been to have had a residential school education?

Then there is the famous Indian playwright and musician, Tomson Highway, who wrote a book about his experiences at the Guy Hill Residential School near The Pas, Manitoba. He described his experience there as overwhelmingly positive.

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The Big Apple’s Woes Are Not Just the Result of One Election

The destruction of New York is the logic of decades of history and long-forgotten pols addicted to outrageous spending and taxation.

Today’s successors of these big taxers are as myopic as the Bourbon kings who “learned nothing and forgot nothing.”

It didn’t start with the election of socialist/communist Mayor Zorain Mamdani, who followed in their footsteps and said the government should control “the means of production.”

Mamdani is the logical outcome of generations of New York City’s drift toward bigger and bigger government along with destroying the private sector. This leads the most productive citizens and businesses to head for the exits. It’s been going on for generations.

These problems happened as, little by little, the city’s Democrats trended radical left. Even some Republicans moved left. An example of the latter was liberal Republican mayor John Lindsay, elected in 1965 and the author of the city’s first income tax. He later turned Democrat. New York’s popular Republican governor, Nelson “Rocky” Rockefeller—elected four times from the late 1950s to the early 1970s—nearly spent the state into bankruptcy. It was all in the stars. Before winning the statehouse in 1958, a predecessor Republican governor, Thomas Dewey, told a young Rockefeller, “Nelson, I like you but I can’t afford you.” Dewey was prescient.

In some 15 years as governor, he quadrupled the state budget and quintupled the state debt, including substantial authority debt, practices continued by his successors, including governor Andrew Cuomo. “Rocky” raised taxes many times and initiated a state sales tax. These taxes accelerated the departure of industry, with New York state losing some 500,000 manufacturing jobs between 1969 and 1975.

In 1961, two-term New York City mayor Robert Wagner, who successfully sought a third term, faced the same overspending problems as today’s state and city leaders. Like today’s pols, he whined as the bills piled up. Wagner blamed the bankers selling city bonds.

Wagner—in a statement that could have been made by several succeeding mayors—said he was going ahead with this welfare program expansion: “I do not propose to permit our fiscal problem to set the limits of our commitments to meet the essential needs of the people of the city.” About a decade later, the spending bomb he lit blew up. Lindsay’s successor, Abe Beame, campaigned for mayor in 1973 as the man “who knew the buck.”

Yet a 1975 New York Magazine profile described his budgetary practices as “lies and a sham.” William Simon, US Treasury Secretary in his book, A Time for Truth, said New York governor Hugh Carey “ping ponged from position to position,” and demanded a federal bailout.

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Blue States Starting to Curb ‘Free’ Healthcare to Migrants as Budgets Spin Out of Control

A host of deep blue states are quietly pulling back from their generous programs of “free” healthcare to migrants as federal dollars dry up and their budgets continue to spiral into the red.

With the Trump administration beginning to close the spigot of billions in federal aid that many states lavishly spent caring for illegal migrants, sates including California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon Washington, and the District of Columbia are finding that they cannot afford to replace the chocked off federal dollars with their own state budget dollars. This reality setting in has caused state officials to begin scaling back their freebies to illegals, which all come at the expense of American citizens.

According to the Washington Examiner, 14 states have had been devoting untold millions to migrants, for their children, and for pregnant, non-citizen women.

But after President Donald Trump signed his “Big Beautiful” spending bill, cutting billions in federal aid with cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare, and Obamacare insurance subsidies, many states have been forced to make decisions about their migrant programs.

The cutbacks also reflect the Democrats’ difficulty in funding their hugely expensive urban political machines. Those “Sanctuary City Ponzi scheme” political machines need poor migrants to help conduit federal funds back to local city and state politicians, partly because many productive Americans move away to low-migration cities and states that have lower taxes, less diversity, better schools, higher wages, and cheaper housing.

Thus far, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington the District of Columbia have already begun cutting free migrant healthcare budgets. And several others are in the process of evaluating similar measures.

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Hegseth outlines record-breaking defense budget featuring largest military pay raise in decades

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has unveiled a historic, generational investment aimed at modernizing America’s warfighters, transforming the Pentagon’s business model and revitalizing the domestic defense manufacturing sector.

On Thursday, Hegseth highlighted that of the proposed $1.5 trillion military investment for Fiscal Year 2027, $90 billion would be allocated toward revitalizing barracks and facilities. In the video, Hegseth said the funding “will get rid of all substandard and failing barracks.”

Under the proposed framework, military personnel would also receive a targeted, tiered pay increase: a 7% raise for those in grades E-5 and below, a 6% increase for grades E-6 to O-3, and a 5% bump for O-4 and above.

Beyond direct compensation, the budget channels $35 million into robust family support systems. This includes fully funding military healthcare — with the strategic goal of making Tricare a more desirable option than Medicare — while simultaneously investing in base childcare, youth programs, upgraded commissaries, and enhanced military schools. Additionally, permanent change of station (PCS) task forces and spousal employment initiatives will receive dedicated capital to ensure smoother transitions during relocations.

“Taking care of our troops isn’t just about doing the right thing; it’s about military readiness,” Hegseth asserted. “When our warfighters know their families are safe, secure, and provided for, they can maintain total focus on the mission.”

According to Hegseth, the massive funding injection is designed to simultaneously address service member quality of life, remediate substandard military barracks, and rapidly put the defense industrial base back onto a wartime footing. The secretary framed the historic top-line request as the definitive execution of President Donald Trump’s America First agenda.

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MASSIVE FRAUD PROBE: HHS Auditing All 50 States Following Shocking, Nationwide Explosion in Medicaid Autism Billing — Taxpayer Dollars Drained by ‘Bad Actors’

In a massive, long-overdue crackdown on government waste and rampant abuse, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has officially put all 50 states on notice.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, a federal HHS Office of Inspector General audit found Colorado made at least $77.8 million in improper fee-for-service Medicaid payments for Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy for children diagnosed with autism in 2022-2023 alone.

Every single one of the 100 sampled enrollee-months contained at least one improper or potentially improper claim. Auditors flagged another $207+ million in potentially improper payments.

Similar horror shows hit Wisconsin ($18.5 million improper), Indiana, and Maine, with confirmed improper payments across audited states totaling around $198 million (roughly 31% of the spending reviewed in those samples).

Now the feds are going nationwide.

CMS has issued a direct call to all 50 states to re-evaluate high-risk ABA providers, remove illegitimate ones, and report back with plans to clean house. States have tight deadlines — 10 business days to respond and 30 days for a full strategy.

This comes alongside the new AERO initiative (Audit Enforcement and Risk Oversight), which is using AI and aggressive follow-up to finally hold states accountable for years of ignored audit failures and chronic noncompliance across HHS programs.

The spending numbers are insane and demand scrutiny:

In North Carolina, Medicaid ABA spending surged from roughly $1.9 million just five years ago to over $505 million in 2025 — with projections blasting past $1 billion soon. Some reports flag increases in the thousands of percent.
Across eight states with available data, combined Medicaid autism therapy spending exploded from $347 million to over $2.2 billion in recent years — a 561% increase.
Minnesota saw one of the most grotesque spikes: from under $700,000 in 2018 to $342+ million by 2024 in its EIDBI autism program.

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Gavin Newsom Vows To ‘Seize’ Money From California Republicans

Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for California to slap a 100% tax on anyone in the state who collects money from President Donald Trump’s new Anti-Weaponization Fund, framing it as a way to block what Democrats say could become a payday for Trump allies.

“Anyone from California that receives any of those funds,” Newsom said at a Wednesday news conference. “We want to tax 100% of those proceeds and that’s an action the state of California can take. It’s an action we look forward to taking.”

Newsom’s move targets the $1.776 billion fund the Justice Department announced as part of a settlement tied to Trump and the Internal Revenue Service. Supporters say it is open to any claimant who can show the government unfairly targeted them. Critics call it a boondoggle and warn it could be used to compensate people convicted or indicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Newsom leaned into that argument in a post on X, tying the fund to Trump’s sweeping pardons and commutations.

“He pardoned all of those folks that were beating up cops and absolved them, providing them 1.776 billion dollars. So not only do you get a pardon, you get rewarded,” Newsom wrote. “That’s why this is needed.”

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Mamdani’s Housing Program Follows the Socialist Playbook: Create the Crisis, Seize the Property

“When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards,” said New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, explaining how the city plans to seize private property and transfer it to “stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants themselves.”

The good news is he will not be taking property from all landlords, only the ones he decides are bad. “Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City.”

Mamdani does not seem troubled by the fact that his proposal appears to violate the Fifth Amendment, which states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Even before being elected, he announced that he would be seizing private property. As a candidate, Mamdani declared: “We will use every single tool at our disposal, including seizing buildings from slumlords, to ensure that each and every New Yorker is given what is their right, a safe place to call their home.”

Now, as mayor, he is moving to act on it. On May 27, Mamdani unveiled his 112-page “Block by Block” housing plan in Gowanus. The enforcement mechanism involves the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development will launch a “Fix the City” initiative to conduct roof-to-cellar inspections in targeted buildings and aggressively use the 7A Program, through which the city can initiate legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers from day-to-day management.

The plan also has Housing Preservation and Development collaborating with other agencies and borough district attorneys to pursue criminal charges against property owners.

What Mamdani is proposing is a textbook Austrian economics interventionism cascade. Austrian economics, the discipline in which the author of this article is educated, holds that rather than solving problems and making life better for citizens, government intervention generally exacerbates problems, making them worse, more widespread, and increasingly difficult to resolve. Each resulting distortion is used to justify the next intervention, which in turn causes the problem to get worse, necessitating more government intervention, making things worse…until all properties fall under state control.

The landlord crisis Mamdani claims to be solving was created by the very rent control policies his administration is now doubling down on.

The methodology for creating a crisis that allows the state to seize property begins with artificial rent controls such as freezes and rent ceilings. Below-market rates destroy the landlord’s incentive to maintain and invest in property. When rents fall below a certain level, the landlord may not even be able to afford repairs and maintenance.

The rational economic response for a landlord who is forced to rent at rates below operating costs is to defer maintenance. The building deteriorates. The landlord becomes, by definition, a “bad landlord,” not from malice but from economic necessity created by the policy itself.

The city then uses the deterioration it caused as the legal and moral pretext to seize or transfer the property. The government manufactured the problem and now presents itself as the solution.

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Meet the Prominent Police Officer Who Carried Out a Steamy, Two-Year Sexual Affair with Married Obama Judge in Her Chambers

The individual who carried out a loud, steam >affair with an Obama federal judge has been unmasked as a prominent Atlanta policeman, causing the scandal to take another turn for the worse.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, a special committee for the Eleventh Circuit discovered that a judge nominated by former President Barack Obama carried out a two-year sexual affair in her “chambers and during business hours” with a police commander.

According to Bloomberg Law, the incidents all occurred within “earshot” of law clerks.

On Thursday, Bloomberg Law identified the judge as Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia. She is married to a DeKalb County judge and former prosecutor.

Ross was also found by the committee to have attended a partisan political event hosted by a district attorney’s campaign and to have lied to judges investigating her conduct.

Now, Bloomberg Law has identified the person who carried out this graphic affair with the Obama judge: 55-year-old Kelley Collier, a deputy chief in the Atlanta Police Department (APD).

Collier has worked for the APD since 1998.

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