The legislature gave a huge business property tax cut this year, battering local governments, forcing schools to run referanda and municipalities to raise income tax.
It’s useful to know how this came to pass.
This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.
Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.
IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.
The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.
The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.
Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.”
Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.
The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.
This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.
Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?
https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r
Whitehouse: "If you look at all the Court's elections decisions, every one has the effect of helping the GOP. If you look at all their regulatory decisions, every one has the effect of helping the fossil fuel industry that funds the GOP. You can predict with perfect certainty what happens. The Callais decision stood this Court naked before the country as a partisan institution."
Victoria Spartz lost a county of over 110,000 people in the GOP primary to a guy who failed to file a campaign finance report or set up any type of online presence. Incredible.
The FBI guy is on a paranoid bender and won’t leave his room.
The War guy quotes bible passages from Pulp Fiction.
The Health guy collects raccoon dicks.
It’s an Idiocracy on steroids.
I doubt Pope Leo XIV will lose any sleep over this, before he begins his pilgrimage to Africa tomorrow. But the rest of us should. Because it is unhinged, uncharitable and unchristian. Is there no bottom to this moral squalor?
Jesse Ventura: “I’m still not over January 6th. That was treason. All of the people should have been arrested and put in prison all the way to Trump because he and Giuliani and all of them orchestrated the whole thing. He tried to violate the Constitution”
Despite five weeks of war, last night's prime-time address from the White House failed to provide clarity or a defined strategy regarding its progress https://t.co/RK0TnGGWsm
Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive, recently paid an effective tax rate of less than 3.3%.
That is less than the average truck driver, nurse and teacher.
YES, we must demand the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share. https://t.co/XXHpVlxzNd
NEW: “The U.S. is funding a war against itself,” Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies.
U.S. eases Iranian oil sanctions in scramble to contain energy prices.
Story: https://t.co/rpIOyJO5vo
One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:
TikTok
CBS
CNN
HBO
Discovery Channel
BET
Cartoon Network
Comedy Central
DC Studios
Fandango
Miramax
MTV
Nickelodeon
Paramount
PlutoTV
Showtime
TBS
The CW
TNT
Warner Bros.
And more
This is oligarchy.
No "news" org would ever make this "mistake." This was clearly a deliberate choice to try to protect Trump from criticism they knew would rain down on him. Only serves as latest, and one of clearest, examples of Fox being in the full-on PROPAGANDA business, not the news business.
> Republican gets elected President.
> Cuts benefits for the poor.
> Cuts taxes for the rich.
> Starts a war in the Middle East.
It's crazy how it’s always the same thing every single time.