Tag: taxes

Ilhan Omar Given May 5th Deadline to Produce Documents on Massive Feeding Our Future Fraud Scandal After Refusing to Appear at Minnesota House Hearing

The Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Oversight Committee has given Rep. Ilhan Omar a firm May 5th deadline to turn over all records and communications related to her possible involvement in the infamous Feeding Our Future scandal.

The demand follows Omar’s refusal to appear at a scheduled committee hearing earlier this week, despite being formally invited.

Committee Chair Rep. Kristin Robbins, a Republican, confirmed the congresswoman “ghosted” the panel and failed to respond to multiple outreach attempts.

“The fact that she ghosted us — she would not even respond to multiple inquiries to a state legislature where she used to serve,” Robbins said, according to a report from NewsNation. “I think it shows disdain for Minnesota taxpayers that she’s unwilling to even answer these questions.”

In a formal letter sent to Omar on April 22, Chair Robbins is now requiring:

  • All written and electronic communications between Omar’s office and the convicted owners/operators of Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis (a key Feeding Our Future site where Omar held multiple campaign events).
  • Communications with more than a dozen individuals who have already been convicted in the massive fraud case.
  • Records related to Omar’s sponsorship of the MEALS Act — the 2020 federal legislation that dramatically loosened eligibility rules for child nutrition programs during COVID, which prosecutors say directly enabled the fraud.

If Omar fails to comply, the committee has signaled it will explore further legislative and congressional options, though state lawmakers have limited direct enforcement power over a member of Congress.

The Feeding Our Future case involved the theft of more than $250 million in federal child nutrition funds meant for meals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prosecutors have described it as one of the largest fraud schemes in American history.

Much of the money went to luxury cars, jewelry, real estate, and even overseas accounts, primarily funneled through Minnesota-based nonprofit organizations tied to the local Somali community.

Safari Restaurant was identified as a major “meal site” that submitted millions in fraudulent claims. Omar has long had public ties to the restaurant, including holding campaign events there and appearing there to promote related programs.

The Minnesota House committee has repeatedly accused Omar of helping enable the fraud through her sponsorship of the MEALS Act, which removed key guardrails on reimbursements for meal providers.

“She created the conditions that allowed all these bad actors to come in and bill for thousands of meals a day,” Robbins said. “One little tiny restaurant serving 5,000 meals a day, seven days a week — it was incomprehensible numbers.”

Omar has not publicly responded to the committee’s deadline or her refusal to appear at the hearing.

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New York Times Portrays Fired USAID Staff as Victims — Reaction Is Not What They Expected

In July 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID would no longer send foreign assistance across the globe.

Rubio noted that USAID had, for decades, failed to ensure the programs it funded actually supported America’s interests.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio wrote in a blog post, according to Fox News.

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency,” Rubio said.

During the summer of 2025, the DOGE team announced they had eliminated another $14.3 billion in bogus contracts, including international contracts tied to USAID.

Following the funding cuts, the agency went from roughly 10,000–16,000 direct employees (plus hundreds of thousands of contractors and local staff overseas) to under 300 remaining staff. Over 90–97% of USAID’s workforce was eliminated.

Elisabeth Bumiller and Eileen Sullivan wrote A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss for The New York Times, bemoaning the struggles of the laid-off workers, something thousands of Americans face each day without fawning coverage from the outlet.

The authors share the example of a USAID-funded senior VP,making $272,000, or roughly five times more than the median income of the average American worker.

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Good News: Fifth Circuit Says Government’s Tax Power Is Not Designed to Control Behavior

A somewhat under-the-radar decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit earlier this month is, on its surface, focused on the issue of home alcohol distilling. But the appeals court’s reasoning could have a big impact on other businesses and various walks of life, including the energy industry.

In short, McNutt vs. U.S. Department of Justice focused on a federal law that banned – through the government’s taxation power – the private home distillation of alcohol. But the Fifth Circuit ruled that using the power to tax as a reason to ban something is an improper abuse of power. This line of constitutional thinking could have much larger implications.

Why? Because the ruling would erect new guardrails on how the government can use its authority to impose a tax in such a way that does not raise revenue but instead bans otherwise legal activity. When we consider all the ways the government has done this over the years, it’s clear that the energy industry has been a prime target for just such an abuse of power — especially in cases where the government used its taxing authority and “necessary and proper” constitutional reasoning to regulate activities.

As a Liskow law blog summarized it, “The case originated when a group of hobby distillers challenged an 1868 federal law that effectively criminalized the distillation of spirits in or near a private residence, even for personal use. The plaintiffs, including members of the Hobby Distillers Association, argued that the prohibition exceeded Congress’s constitutional powers, particularly where the activity was noncommercial and confined to the home.”

The analysis added, “The case underscores that the federal government’s broad federal taxing authority does have limits, particularly when it intersects with private, noncommercial conduct. As challenges to federal regulatory regimes continue, McNutt may serve as an important reference point in defining the boundary between taxation and regulation.”

For energy development, the McNutt decision provides a new avenue to challenge federal prohibition of development when such prohibition has been primarily based on the government’s taxing authority. In other words, is the ban really about taxation (raising revenue), or is it about using the power of taxation to achieve regulation? The Fifth Circuit determined that the latter avenue as a sole motivator is improper.

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Trump Floats Taxpayer-Funded Takeover of Spirit Airlines, Selling for Profit

President Donald Trump said on April 23 that a taxpayer-funded takeover of Spirit Airlines could be an option, with the intention of reselling it when oil prices fall.

The Florida-based airline is undergoing restructuring after filing for bankruptcy protection in August 2025.

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he was interested in the U.S. government bailing out Spirit, or buying it outright.

“We’d be getting it debt-free. They have some good aircraft and good assets, and when the prices of oil goes down, we’ll sell it for a profit,” Trump said.

“I’d love to be able to save those jobs. I’d love to be able to save an airline,” Trump said, adding that more airlines improves competition in the market.

Spirit said in March that it had been working to sell some planes and scale back operations to focus on its “strongest routes and markets,” including Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; and the New York metropolitan area.

Marshall Huebner, a lawyer with Davis Polk who is representing Spirit, told a U.S. bankruptcy court hearing in New York this week that government financing would make Spirit more competitive.

Creditors Notified of Deal

Huebner said details of a potential deal had been shared with all three of the company’s primary creditor groups.

The airline that became Spirit was launched in the 1980s, but rebranded in 1992.

“It all started with our launch as Charter One, flying Guests from Detroit to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and the Bahamas,” the company says on its website. “When we rebranded as Spirit Airlines, we doubled down on our mission: bringing more guests to more places for more fun.”

Ultra-low-cost airlines have been under pressure for years as they traditionally attract budget-conscious travelers with low base fares, but the rise in oil prices is eroding margins and increasing losses.

Earlier this week, for example, German airline Lufthansa announced that 20,000 short-haul flights would be canceled this summer because of the ongoing fuel crisis sparked by the Iran war and subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global oil shipments.

On April 21, Trump urged for someone to buy Spirit and said federal assistance may be available.

“I’d love somebody to buy Spirit—it’s 14,000 jobs,“ he said. ”Maybe the federal government should help that one out.”

In 2024, the Biden administration, citing antitrust laws, prevented JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit for $3.8 billion.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CBS News this week he had concerns about a Spirit Airlines bailout.

“The question will be does the federal government step in and bail out an airline that for a very long time hasn’t been run well,” Duffy said.

He said he was unsure whether Spirit could be saved and “made viable” and was concerned that taxpayers’ money could end up in a company that would eventually be liquidated.

But Trump said he had “a smart person” in mind who could potentially run Spirit and get it back on solid a financial footing.

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Read the Shocking Story of A Obama and Hillary Criminal Scandal, Conspiracy and Coverup- That Until Now No One Knew About. I Have the American Hero and Whistleblower Who is a Witness to the Crime and is Willing to Testify.

This is a shocking story that every American needs to read.

More importantly, this is a story that President Trump and whoever is his new Attorney General of the United States needs to study.

This is a massive Obama and Hillary criminal conspiracy case we’re handing you, wrapped in a bow, ready for prosecution.

I’ve got the whistleblower and witness for you. His name is Bradley Birkenfeld. And he’s not just any whistleblower.

Brad is single-handedly responsible for uncovering the largest and longest-running tax evasion in IRS history.

He’s also the only whistleblower in the history of America to recover $40 billion for the US Treasury and US taxpayers.

That’s more than all the IRS whistleblowers in American history COMBINED.

And because of that, President Trump, my great friend Brad Birkenfeld, is the most deserving candidate for a pardon in the history of presidential pardons. Hint, hint.

Get ready. Here’s his remarkable story.

Brad was a successful Swiss private banker with many of the wealthiest American businessmen and women as his clients. These wealthy Americans were hiding their money offshore, in Swiss banks, to evade U.S. taxes.

After resigning from his comfortable job at UBS in Switzerland, Brad made the decision to voluntarily walk into the DOJ in Washington, DC, to reveal the secret numbered bank accounts of 19,000 Americans hiding tens of billions of dollars at UBS in Switzerland.

It turns out that most of them were large donors to Obama, Hillary, and the Democrat Party.

In one remarkable act, Brad brought down the entire veil of hundreds of years of Swiss banking secrecy.

Do you remember who the leaders of America were back in 2009 when Brad was negotiating with the DOJ? President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Brad naturally assumed he would be celebrated, thanked, and protected by the U.S. government for risking his life and giving up his lucrative banking career to help the US government collect tens of billions of dollars in stolen tax money.

Instead, the Obama Department of Justice persecuted and prosecuted Brad, putting him in prison for thirty months. Why would they do that?

To protect thousands of Democrat donors in these files of tax cheats. They didn’t want the files. They wanted to protect their big Democrat donors. They wanted to shut Brad up.

As a result of Brad’s testimony and evidence handed to the DOJ, not only was $40 billion recovered by the IRS, but 130 Swiss banks signed formal agreements and were fined by the US government to end their decades-long criminal conduct.

Three IRS amnesty programs were implemented, resulting in over 100,000 (and counting) US citizens now in tax compliance.

UBS agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement, paid a $780 million fine to the U.S. Treasury Dept. (a slap on the wrist to them), and agreed to release the names of only 4,700 American tax evaders. That’s out of 19,000 tax cheats on Brad’s file.

So, where did the other 14,300 names of tax cheats go? Obama sent Hillary Clinton to Switzerland to negotiate a deal with UBS to erase those names- and in return, Obama and Hillary gave UBS a sweetheart deal.

How evil and criminal was the Obama/Hillary cabal in Washington DC? On the very day my friend Brad was sent to prison (and remember, he is the hero who handed in these names of tax cheats), Obama was playing golf with the Chairman of UBS.

This is how crimes are covered up among friends in Washington DC.

Instead of making Brad a national hero, Obama’s DOJ forced Brad to accept one charge of conspiracy to commit tax fraud and put him in prison for 30 months. This was their way of shutting him up.

In all these years since my friend Brad exposed this massive criminal conspiracy and 19,000 tax cheats, the only person to go to prison is Brad Birkenfeld.

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Leftists Excited to Begin Cannibalizing the Elderly

Did you live a self-reliant, constructive life? Did you play by the rules, work hard, raise your kids to be productive members of society, save up, and arrive in seniority well-provisioned for your well-earned golden years?

Sucker!

If you simply reverse the direction of each of the Ten Commandments, you arrive at the leftist version. Among these is the Marxist tenet of weaponized envy — Thou shalt covet — and its corollary, Thou shalt steal.

Socialist-communists are always on the lookout for ways to play the many against the few so they can pillage the minority, enriching themselves while throwing crumbs to their useful-idiot foot soldiers. And right now, they are taking aim at senior citizens who saved their pennies so they might enjoy their retirements.

An opinion-setting column appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday. Entitled “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” it was penned by Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale who has a book coming out called Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It (emphasis added, because that’s the scary part).

In his column, Moyn makes perfunctory efforts to calm readers’ fears about his intentions. “‘Ageism’ identifies an enduring phenomenon: the mistreatment of older people for no reason other than being older,” he soothes. “Americans in middle age and beyond are routinely passed over for opportunities because of the irrelevant fact of a number on paper or how they act and look after getting older.”

And yet, “In today’s world, the unfair discrimination they cite coexists with a different kind of unfairness: a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.”

That’s right: It’s unfair to keep what you earned and to exercise your civic duty to vote and be engaged.

Naturally, that leads Moyn to conclude: “It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities — it is critical to the future of our democracy and society. America needs to confront gerontocracy before the system collapses under the weight of its inequality and injustice.”

No, it’s not “ageist” to ask that — it’s Marxist.

“Older Americans deserve a say over the future even when they might not live to see it,” Moyn placates, before ratcheting up his rhetoric: “But they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices.”

A second column, in the May 2026 issue of The Atlantic, is an even more direct attack. It’s titled “An Oligarchy of Old People.” Recall that socialist stars AOC and Bernie Sanders just completed their so-called Fighting Oligarchy Tour, and author Idrees Kahloon could not make it much clearer that “Old People” are the enemy. The opening salvo is an ugly comparison of elderly people who lived successful lives to dictators: “Gerontocracy has always thrived in undemocratic places—Communist people’s republics, Gulf monarchies—where only death could pry power from the ruling elders.” Well, then, I guess we know where Kahloon stands on the subject.

Kahloon points out that high-level politicians and the most engaged voters tend to be over 50. This seems only natural to me, and generally desirable, as leaders ought to have some life experience and wisdom.

But Moyn gives away the game when he complains that these powerful old people have the wrong political preferences:

Some of the excessive power that the aging have amassed harms society, as they enjoy advantages to the detriment of others. That power hurts a large number of elderly Americans themselves. Crucial priorities for the future, like creativity and dynamism, environmental remediation, immigration policies and tax fairness also suffer under gerontocracy. Older Americans favor restrictions on immigration most, even when they need immigrant caregivers most. Likewise, there is a correlation between age and resistance to policies to halt the overheating of the planet or raise funds for education and other civic purposes.

Both authors lay on the envy-mongering. Here’s Kahloon:

Although political gerontocracy has operated overtly, the rising economic power of the elderly has escaped much notice. Over the past 40 or so years, American wealth has grown ever more concentrated among the oldest generations. In 1989, Americans over age 55 held 56 percent of it; today they hold 74 percent. During that same period, the share of wealth held by Americans under 40 has shrunk by nearly half, from 12 to 6.6 percent. The color of money is now gray.

Both authors bemoan the fact that 55-and-up-year-olds own the most expensive real estate and hold the most powerful jobs. Except for the ones who don’t, who are thus also harmed by the greedy successful elderly hoarding their “accumulated housing, jobs and wealth,” as Moyn describes it. So much for passing down one’s legacy to one’s children or favorite charities, I suppose. Whatever — the elderly have-nots are simply more bodies to add to the push to loot the elderly haves.

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New HUD rules will stop sheltering illegals in public housing. Here’s who really benefits

This week the Trump administration moved toward a dramatic change in policy governing public and subsidized housing. The public comment period closed on the rule proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reserve housing assistance to American citizens — to “prohibit…making financial assistance available to persons other than United States citizens…in HUD’s public and specified assisted housing programs.”

It could lead to the eviction of an estimated more than 20,000 public and subsidized housing residents who took advantage of a loophole in the law restricting public assistance to citizens. Sparks could fly, à la ICE in Minneapolis, if illegal immigrants and their possessions are thrown into the street.

HUD is not wrong that lax enforcement has opened the apartment door for the undocumented. But cracking down on illegals, given their small number, is far less important than another new HUD initiative that could change the character of “the projects” for citizens who have been trapped there in poverty.

There’s no doubt that a legal loophole has allowed illegal immigrants to enter public housing, notwithstanding long waiting lists. Here’s how it worked: A legal immigrant can advance off a long waiting list to get into public housing and then invite undocumented family members to join him or her in a “mixed household,” so long as they pay rent based on their income — which they must, in theory, report.

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SAY WHAT? Los Angeles Proposes New TAX to Pay to Fix Street Lights Broken by Copper Wire Thieves

The city of Los Angeles has a major street light problem. Thousands of the lights are out because thieves strip them of copper wire which they then turn around and sell for cash.

To deal with this problem and fix the lights, the city government is proposing a new TAX on the law abiding citizens who did not steal the copper wire. Can you even believe this?

The city wants to punish the people who didn’t ruin the street lights and make them pay to fix it. Unreal.

FOX 11 in Los Angeles reports:

Los Angeles voters to weigh fee increase for streetlight repairs amid copper theft concerns

A citywide plan to replace thousands of broken streetlights across Los Angeles could come with a cost increase for property owners under a proposed Proposition 218 assessment.

Mayor Karen Bass is urging voters to approve the measure, which would raise property-owner fees by an estimated 120% to help fund a $125 million program aimed at replacing more than 200,000 streetlights citywide. City officials say the current system generates roughly $45 million and has not been significantly updated since the 1990s, when Proposition 218 was adopted by California voters to require property-owner approval for new or increased local assessments.

Under the law, the city cannot raise streetlighting fees without a majority vote from affected property owners, a process that has kept much of the funding system largely unchanged for decades.

Ballots are expected to be mailed this week.

Across Los Angeles, officials say copper theft continues to worsen infrastructure problems, with thieves stripping wire from underground fiber lines and disabling streetlights in neighborhoods across the city. More than 32,000 streetlight repair requests remain pending.

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ICE Is on a $45 Billion Building Spree. Can Small Towns Support These New Migrant Warehouses?

In his second inaugural address, President Donald Trump pledged to crack down on illegal immigration: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” The administration set a minimum goal of 3,000 deportations per day.

There was a problem. At the time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operated or contracted with more than 200 disparate facilities across the country, from federal detention centers to county jails, and it had the resources to detain only about 41,000 people at a time. To reach its daily deportation goal, the government would have to scale up its capacity. So this year the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone on a real estate shopping spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on warehouses across the country. The plan: to transform them into detention centers for undocumented migrants.

It is inhumane to store human beings—people who in many cases have not been convicted or even accused of anything more serious than civil immigration violations—in warehouses like so much freight. It is also far too costly, both in tax dollars spent and in harms imposed on the communities where these holding centers are being built.

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MoD splashes millions of your cash on luxuries – insulting taxpayer and failing on defence

Britain’s defence is becoming more exposed by the day. Global threats are rising, alliances are under strain, and the nature of warfare is evolving faster than ever. Yet instead of urgency, discipline and focus, but what we see from defence secretary and within the Ministry of Defence is complacency – and worse, a culture of indulgence. In recent days it was revealed that Ministry of Defence staff racked up £16.3 million on taxpayer-funded procurement cards in a single month.

These cards are meant for “low risk, low complexity” purchases – capped at £12,000. Yet dozens of transactions blew straight past that limit. One payment hit nearly £50,000. Another hotel bill came in at over £37,000. This is not an administrative oversight. It is a systemic failure and an insult to every taxpayer.

The details are staggering. Over £133,000 spent on restaurants and bars. Fourteen separate transactions at pubs and nightclubs. One evening alone costing nearly £4,000. Thousands more spent at a snooker hall, a cosmetics shop, even a florist.

And then there are the hotels. £1.4 million in a single month, spread across more than 700 transactions. The Ritz-Carlton. The Four Seasons. Hyatt. Hilton. Five-star luxury, all funded by the British taxpayer.

All of this within the month of March…

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