Tag: taxes

Project ‘PROVIDENT’: NIAID Launched $70 Million Pandemic Program Targeting Hantaviruses Before Outbreak

A massive National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pandemic-preparedness program focused in part on hantaviruses was already actively underway—and had just achieved unprecedented structural and vaccine-platform mapping of Andes hantavirus—before the highly publicized 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak ordeal emerged.

The federally funded initiative, called PROVIDENT (“Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats”), officially began in September 2024 and remains active through June 2029, according to NIH RePORTER documents.

The project is run by Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.

Importantly, the project is not a small short-term grant.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine announced in September 2024 that the consortium received a:

“five-year, $14 million per year grant”

That places the total projected funding for the program at roughly $70 million over its active lifespan.

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“Completely Insane”: Federal Govt Withholds $1.3BN In Medicaid Reimbursements To California, Citing Fraud

The Trump administration will withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California due to potentially fraudulent billing patterns, Vice President JD Vance announced on May 13.

The action comes among a host of others taken recently to crack down on fraudulent activity in Medicare and Medicaid.

“We want to protect these programs for the kids and the families who need them. We want to ensure that the American taxpayer isn’t getting fleeced,” Vance told reporters.

Analysis of Medicaid billing patterns in California aroused suspicion, according to Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We’ve discovered $630 million in billing from folks who are egregiously the top 5 percent of outliers in billing. These numbers are so big you can’t imagine anyone billing for these [amounts],” Oz told reporters.

California itself is an outlier among states, Oz said.

“In California, the growth of spending on personal care services is twice the rate of the average of the rest of the country,” Oz said.

“We estimate there’s $500 million that could be a risk of being taken from federal taxpayers.”

Fewer than 20 of 800 Medicare providers recently removed from the program due to suspicious billing activity have called to complain, Oz said, offering that as evidence that they likely were not legitimate providers.

VP Vance responded with a double take after hearing that wild stat from Dr. Oz:

“You’re saying that we kicked off 800 fraudulent healthcare providers off of the Medicare system and not a single one of them called the government and said, ‘hey, you made a mistake?'”

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Vancouver spends $182K on ‘gender safety’ bureaucracy for FIFA World Cup

The City of Vancouver is preparing to spend more than $182,000 on so-called “gender safety” and “vulnerable resident initiatives” tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to a newly posted contracting notice.

Under a Notice of Intent to Contract posted to the procurement site MERX, the city says it plans to award multiple vendors funding for “additional community organizations event time capacity” connected to the city’s “Host City Human Rights Action Plan.”

The contract runs from May 26 to July 19, 2026, with a listed value of $182,184.

According to the notice, the money is specifically earmarked to “implement gender safety, accessibility and vulnerable resident initiatives” during the World Cup festivities.

The timing is raising eyebrows, especially in a city that has spent years aggressively promoting gender ideology policies while downplaying public concerns about women’s spaces, public disorder, and safety issues tied to addiction and homelessness.

Now, with the eyes of the world arriving for the FIFA tournament, city hall suddenly appears eager to showcase its commitment to “gender safety” — and is paying outside organizations to help manage the optics.

The procurement notice does not clearly define what “gender safety” initiatives will involve, which organizations are expected to receive funding, or how success will be measured.

Nor does it explain why existing city staff and public safety infrastructure are insufficient to handle these responsibilities during a six-week international sporting event.

The spending falls under Vancouver’s broader Human Rights Action Plan tied to its role as a FIFA host city, a framework that has increasingly blended public event management with activist-driven social programming.

Why does a soccer tournament now require taxpayer-funded “gender safety” consultants and advocacy programming, particularly at a time when Vancouver residents continue to grapple with rising living costs, public safety concerns, drug crises, and strained city services.

The original procurement notice can be viewed on MERX procurement listing.

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Watching Porn on California’s Death Row

Under Governor Gavin Newsom, California has sought to transform its massive prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program. Newsom has placed a moratorium on all executions, transferred condemned prisoners to facilities across the state, dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row, and turned the notorious prison into a therapeutic center, with art, classrooms, a café, and podcast studios.

As part of this transformation, the Newsom administration approved a $189 million contract to provide new digital tablets—generic, flat-screen devices in a plastic shell—to every inmate in the state prison system, at “no cost” to offenders. The administration heralded the effort to replace inmates’ old tablets—which were piloted in 2018 and given to nearly all prisoners by 2023—as a step toward “digital equity” for “justice impacted” individuals, who could, in theory, use the devices to contact their families, consume “educational” content, and “learn new technology.”

In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations. Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection.

When reached for comment, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the tablets were “tightly controlled education tools” that provided inmates with “access to the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime.”

But inmates told us a different story. For some, the devices have become personal sex machines. In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately “horny” criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer.

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US war in Iran has cost $36.9 billion so far: Pentagon

The US’ war in Iran has cost US$29 billion (S$36.9 billion) so far, a senior Pentagon official said on May 12, an increase of US$4 billion from an estimate provided in late April.

With just six months before the mid-term elections, in which US President Donald Trump’s Republicans may face an uphill battle to keep their House majority, Democrats are riding high in public opinion polls as they attempt to link the war to cost-of-living issues.

On April 29, the Pentagon said the war at that point had cost US$25 billion.

Mr Jules Hurst, who is performing the duties of the comptroller, told lawmakers on May 12 that the new cost included updated repair and replacement of equipment and operational costs.

“The joint staff team and the comptroller team are constantly looking at that estimate,” he said.

He was speaking alongside Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine.

It is unclear how the Pentagon arrived at the US$29 billion figure. A source told Reuters in March that the Trump administration estimated that the first six days of the war had cost at least US$11.3 billion. REUTERS

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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years: CBO

President Donald Trump’s proposed missile defense system dubbed the “Golden Dome” is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over two decades, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. 

The nonpartisan office described the analysis as one that provides “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific administration proposal,” according to the Associated Press. 

Trump had ordered the system in an executive order during his first week of his second presidency, In a series of posts on X, the Department of War described it as a “layered, integrated shield” that will defend the U.S. against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles and next-generation aerial attacks.

“From a NORAD and NORTHCOM perspective, the requirement is clear. To defend North America and win tomorrow’s fight, we must maintain our war-fighting advantages and operate beyond stove-piped systems operating at human speed. Golden Dome is forging the integrated, automated battle management network needed to see every threat, make decisions in milliseconds, and keep America safe,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Piper, deputy director of operations at NORAD.

The CBO report notes that its estimate lacks many details from the Department of War about what and how many systems would be deployed. This makes it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the Golden Dome system, the report explains. 

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Tulsi Gabbard Launches Investigation on 120 US-Funded Biolabs – Dozens Located in Ukraine

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has launched an investigation of more than 120 biological laboratories overseas that have received U.S. tax dollars for decades.

Gabbard told the New York Post on Monday that her team is going to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard said. “Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”

In May of 2024, the National Institute of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress that tax dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, making viruses 10,000 times more infectious.

According to officials within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the laboratories under review are spread across more than 30 countries.

Many reportedly received support through a Pentagon program which was originally established after the Cold War to secure or dismantle weapons-related materials and prevent the spread of biological and chemical threats.

The report said that more than 40 of the facilities being reviewed are located in Ukraine. Intelligence officials cited concerns that laboratories in active conflict zones could face risks of compromise or disruption due to the war in the country.

Arguments have been made that lax oversight of research funding often flowing through federal agencies to grantees and subawardees creates a quagmire that prevents Americans from knowing whether potentially dangerous experiments are being conducted on their dime without their consent.

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U.S. Treasury pays $3 billion a day in interest on national debt nearing $39 trillion mark

The U.S. Treasury has paid $628 billion in net interest this year to service its borrowing, according to the the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The latest monthly budget update on the national debt and its interest burden, shared on May 8, breaks down the government’s income and outgoings for the fiscal year so far, which began in October.

The CBO breakdown shows the deficit so far this year is actually smaller than it was for the same period a year prior. However, every day the Treasury is still forking out billions of dollars to manage existing service payments to lenders.

The report demonstrates the government’s largest outlays: $953 billion so far this year for Social Security benefits, $588 billion for Medicare, and $409 billion for Medicaid. Net interest on public debt is a larger figure than both Medicare and Medicaid, totaling $628 billion for the seven months between October and April.

On those numbers, for the 212 days since October, the Treasury’s interest payments have averaged at just shy of $3 billion a day—$2.96 billion to be precise.

The interest payment figure is rising with every budget update that passes, the CBO said: “Outlays for net interest on the public debt rose by $41 billion (or 7%) because the debt was larger than it was in the first seven months of fiscal year 2025 and because of higher long-term interest rates. Declines in short-term interest rates partially mitigated the overall rise in interest payments.”

The overall debt picture has marginally improved: The April update shows government income totaled $3.3 trillion for the fiscal year so far, up from $3.1 trillion for October to April of 2025. Outlays have also increased, from $4.2 trillion to $4.3 trillion, meaning the deficit for FY26 stands at $955 billion, which is $94 billion less than for the same period in FY25.

A significant driver in this change was the revenue generated by Trump’s tariff agenda, intended to rebalance trade deals with every nation on the planet.

While geopolitical fallout and a level of market volatility followed, the income generated by the policy was significant: A 220% uplift in duties revenue compared to the previous year. In FY25 (between October and April), customs duties totaled $59 billion, but for the same period this year, the government has raked in $190 billion.

It’s the reason Wharton Professor Joao Gomes previously argued that the initially unpopular tariffs are here to stay—even if the Democrats win the next election. “The truth is governments need revenues and once you see the amount of revenue the tariffs bring, I think Democrats will be addicted to them as Republicans—or are as likely to be,” he told Wharton Business Daily last year.

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Netanyahu Says Israel Plans to ‘Wean Ourselves Off’ U.S. Military Aid Over Next 10 Years 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he plans to reduce his country’s dependence on U.S. military aid.

During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Netanyahu said he wanted to reduce American aid down to zero over the next decade.

“I’ve said this to President Trump. I’ve said it to our own people.”

“Their jaws dropped, but I said I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have, because we receive 3.8 billion dollars a year.”

“I think that it’s time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support,” he continued. “I want to start now.”

Israel currently receives roughly $3.8 billion annually under a 10-year agreement signed in 2016 during the Obama administration.

The deal committed the United States to providing Israel with $38 billion in military assistance through 2028.

The funding has helped Israel purchase American-made weapons systems including F-35 fighter jets, precision-guided munitions, missile interceptorr and air defense technology.

The question of U.S. aid to Israel has become a political flashpoint following the Gaza war and the wider regional conflict involving Iran and Hezbollah.

Within the GOP, figures such as Rep. Thomas Massie and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have openly questioned why American taxpayers continue sending billions of dollars overseas while the U.S. faces soaring debt and domestic crises at home.

On the left, anti-Israel sentiment has surged inside the Democratic Party following their military campaign in Gaza.

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The Illusion of Tax Relief In Miami-Dade County

In Miami-Dade County, tax relief has become something to celebrate first and question later. Any reduction tied to homestead taxes is framed as a win, a sign that government is finally easing the burden on homeowners. But that celebration rests on a convenient omission. When revenue disappears, obligations do not.

Local governments still fund infrastructure, public safety, education and social services. Cutting one stream of revenue does not eliminate those responsibilities. It simply shifts the burden elsewhere, often in ways that are less visible and far more difficult for taxpayers to track. In Miami-Dade County, that shift is not hypothetical. It is already built into the system.

Florida has aggressively expanded charter schools while preserving the same local property tax structure that funds traditional government-operated public education. School boards continue to collect taxes from homeowners, including those with homestead protections. But those funds no longer support a single, locally-governed system. Under Florida law, public school districts are required to share certain capital outlay funds with charter schools (Fla. Stat. § 1013.62).

The result is a structural contradiction: taxation remains local and mandatory, while control over how those funds are used becomes increasingly fragmented.

For taxpayers, especially older homeowners on fixed incomes, the obligation does not change. They continue paying into a system that has evolved beyond what many originally understood it to be. This is not a reduction in taxation. It is a redistribution of taxation.

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