NYC Landlords Sue Commie Mamdani for ‘Blatantly Illegal’ Rent Freeze

By The Geller Report

Good. The implementation of a rent freeze by the Communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an outrageous abuse of power. Mamdani’s rent freeze policy will crush landlords because it ignores rising operating expenses, inflation, taxes, etc. Thereby causing property owners to incur major losses or just go bankrupt.

The irony is that a rent freeze policy will actually increase rents in New York City. That is because no rational property owner will build or expand in a city with a rent freeze policy. And when the supply of property declines the rents will go up.

Lawyer for NYC landlords sues Zohran Mamdani for ‘blatantly illegal’ rent freeze

By Washington Examiner, July 23rd, 2026

Attorney Randy Mastro is representing a coalition of New York City landlords in a lawsuit challenging

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to impose a rent freeze.

The lawsuit comes after New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted last month to approve Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rent for nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. Mamdani, a socialist elected on a platform centered on housing affordability, argued the freeze would provide relief to tenants facing persistent high living costs.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED VIDEO: Mandami is an anti-Semite, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and Islamo-Nazi

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

House Racks Up Dramatic Wins before Recess while Senate Works to Catch Up

By Family Research Council

It wasn’t easy, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) managed to go three-for-three on some of the heaviest lifts the House GOP has faced this year: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the framework for reconciliation 3.0, and a short-term government funding bill. In just 48 hours, the Louisianan ran the table on bills that the media had written off as impossible. But, as Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) pointed out, “House Republicans, we almost always get our work done,” even, he added, if it isn’t always a “pretty journey.”

The trio of proposals adds to the mountain of business piling up in Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) Senate, where he’s trying to game out which pieces of the House’s legislation he’ll actually pursue and which he’ll either punt or switch out for his own chamber’s version. All the while, the president sits impatiently, wondering whether his agenda items will actually make it out of Congress alive. “It’s like the Senate is a place that you send things when you want them to die,” Donald Trump told reporters.

While the House and Senate leaders seem to have a good working relationship, there’s no mistaking the tension over the two chambers’ gameplans. Right now, most observers point out, “Johnson and Thune seem to be on completely different planets.” And while the Senate is in session a week longer than the House, it still might not be enough to tie up what are turning out to be very critical loose ends.

Stopping a Government Shutdown

To foil the Democrats’ plans to shut down the government before the elections, Johnson managed to muscle through a continuing resolution that would keep the agencies funded through December 4 — well after the midterms. Six Democrats and Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Calif.) joined the GOP in pushing the bill across the finish line (220-205). “This clean, short-term [CR] simply keeps the government open, protects the progress we’ve made, and preserves the path to full-year appropriations,” Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) explained on the floor.

His budget counterpart in the Senate, Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — the successor to the late Lindsey Graham — has no illusions about the lengths the Democrats will go to score political points. “They’ve completely blown up the appropriations process,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” this week. “I think by and large, most of them are spoiling for a shutdown, thinking that would give them an advantage in the election.” But he’s also heard that there might be enough support from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) caucus to pass a relatively clean CR in the hopes that Democrats take over the House and can press for big spending.

Regardless, he shook his head, “I definitely question their motives. It’s certainly not to be helpful, certainly not to be for the benefit of the American public. It’s for their own personal political power and for growing government. But it’s just possible we might get a CR because of those motivations.”

Whose CR is the better question. On Tuesday, Thune seemed to ignore the House version, opting instead to try to strike his own deal with Democrats, since he’ll need at least seven to reach the 60-vote threshold. “That is something I intend to bring to the floor for a vote before the August break,” he vowed.

The speaker seemed to give his partner latitude, telling reporters Wednesday, “I think Leader Thune believes he’ll have some reasonable Democrats in the Senate that will assist. I certainly hope that’s true and hopefully that’ll spark some in the House as well. So I think we’ll get it done.” If not, Thune has threatened to use budget reconciliation to force the government’s funding extension through on a simple majority vote.

At the end of the day, Senator Johnson wanted people to know, “Democrats are all about power. And to the extent that they can create chaos, [they will].”

Moving on Reconciliation 3.0

Speaking of reconciliation, despite a lot of hemming and hawing, House Republicans ultimately bowed to Trump’s wishes and agreed to unlock the process to a third reconciliation bill Wednesday — overcoming a lot of conservatives’ objections in the process. The budget resolution, which was an iffy prospect at best last week, squeaked through with two votes to spare after a group of hardline GOPers flipped to “yes” at the last minute.

The House’s latest gambit partially fulfills Trump’s wishes for more defense funding to fight Iran, agreeing to another $73 billion for the Pentagon, $12 billion in farm aid, and $10 billion to implement parts of the SAVE America Act. To help secure elections, Johnson’s plan would create a pot of money for states that agree to mandate voter ID and proof of citizenship at the polls.

Reflecting on the dim prospects for reconciliation earlier in the week, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) admitted that “part of what happens with these legislative journeys is at the beginning, everybody is comparing the proposal to perfect, what they want. As the week moves on, people generally understand that they need to be comparing the proposal with some other realistic option, and that perfect is never going to happen around here,” he said. “As that happens, people across the spectrum in the House understand that what’s been proposed isn’t that bad. That’s why we’ve generally won votes Wednesday, Thursday, Friday that looked pretty bleak on a Monday or a Tuesday.”

But the journey is far from over. The Senate GOP isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to launch the fraught process. Thune has already managed expectations, insisting that he won’t move the House’s blueprint until the government funding problem is solved. “That means reconciliation won’t move in the Senate anytime soon — and passing a bipartisan stopgap spending bill could still take weeks or months of additional work,” Punchbowl News cautioned.

“I think [Thune’s] looking at all contingencies,” the speaker agreed. “…[W]e’ll coordinate on strategy, but I think there’s a lot of game to be played between now and then, so we’ll see what happens.”

Part of the hesitation on the Senate’s part has to be the terrifying prospect of a vote-a-rama right before the midterm elections. As part of reconciliation, Democrats can force an unlimited number of amendment votes on any issue they want — forcing vulnerable Republicans to take positions on a number of politically dicey issues like the Iran war, for example. And, Punchbowl adds, with the narrow margins, “it’s naïve to believe that Senate GOP leaders would be able to defeat all of them.”

Look, Ron Johnson acknowledged to Perkins, “It’s never an easy task, reconciliation. I think this one will be made easier because President Trump and the White House are really taking a leading role here. It’s a more modest; it’s a skinnier version of what a lot of people want. … Everybody’s got their own ideas in terms of what they want to do in a third reconciliation package. So this one’s going to be focused on military spending. What can we do to help farmers? And what can we do to restore integrity to our elections? Those are things that most Republicans agree on,” he noted.

Yet, they’re also, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) observed, not exactly Schumer’s priorities. “Money for the military, and money for the farmers, and a fair chance of passing the SAVE Act — you’re not going to get it in regular order,” he argued. “And if you think otherwise, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I’ve got rocks in my driveway that are smarter.”

Another reason why Thune might hold his fire on reconciliation is that he could very well end up needing that tool to keep the government’s lights on. “I hope that’s not necessary,” he said. “We’ve had conversations, productive conversations, on both sides of the aisle on a funding resolution that would carry us past the November election.” But if not, having another reconciliation bill in his back pocket may be the only way to get the agencies the dollars they need.

Defunding Planned Parenthood

One of the major grudges pro-lifers continue to hold against Congress is its refusal to carry over the defunding of America’s biggest abortion business into a second year. After Republicans accomplished that long-awaited dream in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, stripping more than $800 million from Planned Parenthood in 2024, some corners of the party have abruptly walked away from that fight in the second and third reconciliation bills — to the dismay of grassroots conservatives. Making that sting even more, the floodgates reopened July 4, the same day America celebrated its 250th birthday.

The speaker hasn’t abandoned the idea, though, telling pro-life groups that a fourth reconciliation bill might be in play to rectify this wrong. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) echoed that thought, insisting that reconciliation 4.0 can “do the things that are left out of this one.” Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) agreed.

The fact that it’s not a part of the current budget framework is “concerning,” Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) told Perkins earlier this week. “And we’re certainly continuing to add our voice to the fact that we’ve got to do something here. I was in a meeting with the speaker just yesterday, and I do believe that he is working with a number of pro-life groups [on] that and really moving strategically as we get into the fall,” he noted. There are also things on the table “that we possibly can do that would almost change the landscape of the way Planned Parenthood is viewed,” the former pastor said without revealing details.

In the meantime, Harris stressed, “This has got to happen. The fact that we passed out of the House a one-year ban in the One Big Beautiful Bill, it got to the Senate, they cut it back to one year, and that just expired on July 4th” should mean Congress can do it again, he said. “It is at the top of our list. We’re continuing to push toward that.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Administration Freezes Over $1 Billion in Medicaid Funds to California, Minnesota Over Fraud

By The Geller Report

Fox News: The Trump administration has paused more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota after audits uncovered systemic fraud, billing irregularities, and compliance failures at the state level—the latest escalation in the White House’s war on government waste. HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. threatened that states won’t get more funding until they prove the payments were legitimate. Fox News: “If Governor Gavin Newsom or Governor Tim Walz wants this funding released, all they have to do is provide basic documentation showing that these services are legitimate and not fraudulent. And that’s common sense,” Kennedy said Tuesday during a press conference on the announcement. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is withholding roughly $867 million from California and more than $200 million from Minnesota while federal officials review what they described as high-risk Medicaid claims and documentation deficiencies.

More from PJ Media: Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), also appeared. Oz explained why California in particular is raising so many questions. “Another $250 million, a quarter billion dollars, comes from claims tied to high-risk providers, as I explained earlier, those who are billing more than a year after the service is provided, those billing for four or more patients all at the same time — hard to juggle that many patients”.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

House GOP Defies Democrats, Advances Filibuster-Proof War Funding and SAVE Act Election Reforms

NEWSOM’S EMPIRE OF FRAUD: 25% of California Medicaid Looted as Billions Vanish Under Newsom

California: $3 Billion Pakistani Muslim Medical Fraud in 2 Years

RELATED VIDEO: Steve Hilton: Gavin Newsom is “completely pathetic” embracing the socialist wing of the party in California

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

One of the Biggest Fraud Rings You Never Heard of: Social Adult Daycares — Billions in NYC alone

By The Geller Report

As a taxpayer I am sickened at the abuse and contempt of hardworking Americans.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz joined investigative influencer Nick Shirley in New York City to confront operators of suspected Medicare and Medicaid fraud schemes. Visiting elderly daycare centers and medical equipment companies, there are major red flags,  including three medical supply companies allegedly operating out of a single apartment with no inventory. Calling the suspected scams a massive theft of taxpayer dollars, Oz said the government has failed to stop fraudsters who he claimed are making millions each month through bogus billing operations.

In NYC alone billions in fraud, sanctioned by Democrat politicians who are voting themselves massive raises, have been discovered.

‘Major Red Flags’: Dr. Oz Joins MAGA Influencer Nick Shirley to Confront Alleged Fraudsters

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz joined MAGA influencer Nick Shirley to confront alleged fraudsters in New York City, with Oz stressing that the experience showed “major red flags” in a video posted on Friday.

Oz, a member of President Donald Trump’s administration, accompanied Shirley to a variety of different elderly daycare centers and medical equipment companies across the city, confronting folks who they say are committing both Medicare and Medicaid fraud — many of whom either did not speak English or seemed hesitant to answer questions about the services they provide.

“One of the largest fraud schemes in America is taking place in New York City as billions of dollars are being defrauded by organized Korean and Chinese mafias, along with other foreigners operating and stealing taxpayer dollars,” Shirley claimed.

“It’s almost certainly fraud,” Oz said of an apartment they visited where three durable medical companies allegedly operate from, purporting that the benefactors make “$2 to $8 million a month.”

“These guys grow like vermin,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator continued. “There are twice as many durable medical suppliers in South Florida as McDonald’s, because it’s easier to open one than a bank account,” alleging that there, “the Cuban government is involved.”

His and Shirley’s conversation continued:

OZ: To open three in one apartment makes no sense, especially when there’s no product there. All you’re doing is gaming the system, and the fact that we didn’t audit it, didn’t catch it, didn’t stop it, and they’re probably out there making money infuriates me. It should bother folks out there, ’cause it’s your tax dollars paying for this

SHIRLEY: So, it’s literally impossible for someone to be operating a durable medical company outside — inside of an apartment?

OZ: Inside of an apartment with no goods and two other durable medical equipment suppliers? That’s a major red flag — the kind you walk into battle with.

In one NYC neighborhood, dozens of adult daycares bill millions to taxpayers. Now the feds have questions.

By Laura Geller, Rachel Gold, Tom Hanson, CBS News, July 1, 2026:

Dozens of Medicaid-funded social adult daycare centers are packed into one New York City neighborhood, a CBS News data analysis has found.

The proliferation of the facilities has caught the attention of federal authorities, who confirmed they are investigating across New York whether the rapid spread of centers catering to seniors is indicative of fraud.

“[It] begs the question: How many social adult daycare centers do you need?” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told CBS News.

Social daycare facilities offer meals, personal care, social activities and other assistance to seniors and people with disabilities. Those services are then billed to the state government and covered by federal and state tax dollars.

The costs have been rising — especially in New York state, a CBS News data analysis found. Medicaid paid adult daycare providers $3.35 billion nationwide in 2024, and 17% of that money went to the 375 facilities across New York state — more than any other state. New York spending on these adult daycares ballooned in recent years, with the bill to taxpayers nearly quadrupling from 2018 to 2024.

The facilities in Flushing bill Medicaid for the equivalent of more than 90% of local Medicaid-eligible seniors.

Those numbers have not gone unnoticed. Investigations are underway into some social adult daycare centers across New York with potential federal action against them anticipated, CBS News has learned.

The epicenter of the spike in spending is the bustling neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, the densest cluster of social adult daycare facilities in the country: 64 within a one-mile radius, according to a CBS News analysis of Medicaid data.

Dr Oz currently leads a sweeping federal crackdown on Medicare and Medicaid fraud in his role as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Here’s his latest:

And this:

Nick Shirley: Here is the full 53 minutes of my crew and I exposing New York fraud, we uncovered over $190,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters use the elderly and needy to commit fraud through adult and personal home care scams in NYC. Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and Chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi, while the fraudsters give $ kickbacks to those who enroll. Like it and share this video, the fraud must STOP.

We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for fraudsters to steal from our pockets. These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians. Time is up.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Your AI Spend Is Rising, But Where’s the ROI?

By A.I. Guys

What happens when AI adoption goes up, but business results do not? In this episode of The AI Guys Podcast, Lee and Rich break down why so many companies are pouring money into AI tools, burning through tokens, and still struggling to connect that spend to real outcomes. They unpack the shift from basic tool adoption to a more agentic, centralized approach that actually gives businesses visibility, control, and a path to ROI.

The conversation centers on four key lenses businesses should use to evaluate AI: dependency, cost, outcome, and scalability. Lee and Rich dig into vendor lock in, the rising reality of token spend as the new cloud bill, the danger of duplicated work across teams, and why centralized AI infrastructure beats letting disconnected tools run wild at the edge of the company. They also explore why faster coding does not automatically mean faster shipping, and why AI usage without accountability can quickly turn into expensive noise.

If your team is trying to become AI native without losing control of cost, workflow, or strategy, this episode is for you.

WATCH: Your AI Spend Is Rising, But Where’s the ROI?

Subscribe for more conversations that make artificial intelligence easy to understand, and check out the links below for more resources.

AI Guys substack: https://substack.aiguyspod.com/

RAIA AI website: https://www.raiaai.com/

All links: https://lnkd.in/eXDpww6V

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ee9h9GYB

Youtube: https://lnkd.in/etDvqQ7d

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©2026 . All rights reserved.

‘NATIONAL EMERGENCY’: Trump Cancels Housing Bill Signing Until Congress Passes Voter ID Law

By The Daily Signal

President Donald Trump said he will not move forward with a housing bill signing, which was scheduled for noon Wednesday, until Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The U.S. House voted Tuesday night 358-32 to pass a housing package aimed at lowering costs for homebuyers and increasing housing supply. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate in an 85-5 vote on Monday, and Trump was scheduled to sign it Wednesday in the Capitol. However, he canceled the ceremony Wednesday morning to push the SAVE America Act instead, which requires proof of ID and citizenship to vote.

Trump said in another post that the housing bill “pales in comparison” to the SAVE America Act.

“The Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he said. “That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about.”

“Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF,” he added. “The Dumocrats will do it in hour one, 100%. Republicans will feel very stupid if they don’t do it first. I’ll be watching with tears in my eyes!!!”

Trump is also set to join the Senate Steering Committee lunch on Wednesday to discuss strategies to pass the SAVE America Act.

“We have to pass the SAVE America Act, which is voter ID, which is proof of citizenship, etc.,” the president said Tuesday in response to a question from the Daily Signal about his luncheon agenda. “We have to pass it, so we’re going to have to talk about that, and many other things.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the housing bill is “full of big government garbage & spending,” such as a $200 million affordable housing pilot program to incentivize dense subsidized “affordable housing” units.

Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, stated Wednesday that “Republicans must fight for BOTH” the SAVE America Act and a reconciliation bill including the president’s policy priorities. “Show votes aren’t enough,” he stated in a post on X.

AUTHOR

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell 

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House correspondent for the Daily Signal. Follow on X TheElizMitchell.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Previews Closed-Door Senate Lunch on SAVE America Act

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AWED MEDIA BALANCED NEWS: We cover Energy to Education to Elections

By John Droz, Jr.

Welcome! We cover Energy to Education to Elections — and more!

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Checkout the 2026, 2025, & 2024 archives, plus asterisked items below.

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

Secondary Education Related:

*** Why Critical Thinking Is Still the Most Valuable Skill You Can Learn

*** Why Critical Thinking Is the Most Important Skill in Your Life

*** The Power of Critical Thinking: How Durable Skills Shaped My Career

*** Poll Underscores Need for Coalition’s Science Education

*** The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents

Texas state education adopts new standards, and leftists are not happy

Higher Education Related:

*** Citing ‘severe’ math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants

Why the Worst Get on Top in Academia

Why you shouldn’t go to Harvard

New Book Encapsulates Higher Ed’s Problems

Artificial Intelligence:

*** More Critical Thinking about AI

Google’s Gemini AI admits it is unfit for purpose: ‘You should not trust a single thing I say’

China Pours More Fuel On The AI Arms Race Fire

First-of-its-kind Stanford study says AI is starting to have a ‘significant and disproportionate impact’ on entry-level workers in the U.S.

Greed Energy Economics:

*** We’re Winning the War on the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)

*** Can solar and wind + batteries really provide 24/7/365 electricity?

What it really takes to meet the materialistic demands of the modern world

Unreliables Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:

*** Bonfires of the Batteries

Wyoming Rally: Save the Eagles, Stop Wind

When Wind Turbines Kill Wildlife, Environmentalists Look Away

Unreliables (General):

*** The Eastern Power Grid Will Run Out of Emergency Peak Power in June, 2027 – Here’s Why You Must Prepare for Blackouts NOW

Wind Energy — General:

The Garroting of Big Wind

Interior in $765M offshore wind buy-out deal with Invenergy

Nuclear Energy:

*** Small nuclear is advancing rapidly

*** Would You Rather Live Near a Battery Energy Storage System or a Nuclear Plant?

Fossil Fuel Energy:

*** US Natural Gas In A Dominant Position For Decades To Come

Oil Plummets After Tentative US-Iran Peace Deal Announced

Everyone Wants Affordable Energy. Nobody Wants to Cut the Ribbon.

Misc Energy:

*** Don’t Blame Data Centers for PJM’s Failures

*** Rare Earth Elements

Tribute to Travis Fisher: A Young Man to Whom Old Men Should Listen

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** The History of Greenpeace: The Evolution of Green Extremism

National Academy Persists in Fearmongering

Conservatives rattled by Trump DOJ’s Supreme Court climate brief

The World Health Organization and Their Specious “Health Care Crisis”

Politico’s Climate News Site Shutters a Year After Gov’t Turned Off Taxpayer Spigot

Net Zero is reversing the Industrial Revolution

US Election:

*** Matt Taibbi: American Elections Are a Joke

Is It Still Election Fraud When It’s Legal?

Dead Voters, Double Registrations, And The Law States Are Ignoring

US Federal Agencies:

*** Tulsi Gabbard Announces Release of ‘Never Before Seen’ Intelligence on Biolabs

Misc US Politics:

*** George Will: Graham Platner’s ‘journey’ evades accountability

*** Sharyl Attkisson: Silent Drain — An Ignored Emergency

*** US Conservatives Can Either Hang Together, or Hang Separately

Video: “Listen Like You Might Be Wrong” | Harvard Student’s Viral Speech

What is Socialism?

Data Show Freeing Economies Doesn’t Harm the Environment

Critically Thinking about Our Future

Societally US:

*** Will Western Civilization Survive?

*** The Illusion of Uniformity: Why the Modern Social Justice Paradigm Falters

*** Women Cannot Have It All—And That Is The Point

Banking agencies announce additional actions to remove reputational risk

Civilizations That Forget Themselves Invite Others In

The West is Losing Its Nerve

The Most Important Lesson Today’s Children Aren’t Learning

The History of Father’s Day

Globalism:

The Great Political Transition

Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive “Dialog Society”

Religion Related:

*** Young men are returning to church — and it could reshape America’s future

“Can We?” Or “Should We?”: Why Science Is Deadly Without Christ

Steven Spielberg says new ‘Disclosure Day’ film will raise theological questions

Mental Health:

*** The Psychology Fraud That Is Destroying Western Civilization

*** How Reading Promotes Longevity

*** The Federal Council That investigates Parkinson’s Spike Must Treat the Disease as Preventable

Health (Other):

*** Biolabs and a Legacy Media that Can’t Handle the Truth

*** “Silent Spring” Was the Death Knell for Hundreds of Millions of Africans

Legitimate New Loopholes in California’s Mandatory School Vaccine Scheme

“The Sunlight Solution” Argues More Time in the Sun Can Help Americans Heal

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** New Florida Lawsuit Targets Pfizer Over Alleged COVID Shot Harm

For Warner Mendenhall, A Letter to a Friend Who is Gone, But Not Gone

Humanity Cannot Afford to Forget the Dire Toll COVID Took Upon Us All

Ron Johnson Senate hearings: “Does mRNA vaccine cause cancer?”

Iran:

*** Victor Davis Hanson dissects how critics completely misread the Iran deal

*** Iran Deal Can Work If We Hit Them Every Time They Break It

Video: 1984 and Islam

Israel/Ukraine:

Latest Developments in Israel

Pray for the safety of the Israeli people

Latest Developments in Ukraine

Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…If you’d like to be added to (or unsubscribe from) the distribution of our popular, free, worldwide Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g., PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.

Note 2: For past Newsletter issues see the archives from 2023, 2024, 2025 & 2026. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over all fifteen plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put this together — where you can search ALL prior issues, by year. For a background about how the Newsletter is put together, etc., please read this.

Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or any of my websites) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.

Copyright © 2026; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

Trump Reveals Controversial Plan to Make Americans ‘Very Rich’

By The Daily Signal

President Donald Trump said the public will become “very rich” due to his plan for the government to have stakes in top artificial intelligence companies.

“We’re talking about giving back something to the public, and if we do that, the public will become very rich, the people in our country, because that’s the kind of money we’re talking about, and I think they’ll do that, and I think it’ll make it very popular,” he told the Daily Signal at the signing of the Secure America Act.

Trump said Friday he planned to meet with top tech executives to discuss equity stakes in AI companies. However, subsequent reports indicated that the executives had not yet received invitations from the White House. Trump confirmed that the meeting is still going to occur.

He said he will meet with “the top 12 or 15 executives very shortly.”

“We’re having a meeting with them,” Trump said in response to a question from the Daily Signal. “It’s an amazing industry. It’s bigger than any industry anyone’s ever seen. We are leading China by a lot, and you know, whoever leads that is going to really lead the world to a large extent. That’s how big it is.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described “democratic socialist,” has made a similar proposal with legislation requiring top AI companies to pay a one-time 50% tax in stock.

Senate Republicans have expressed skepticism at the proposal.

“I don’t think the federal government should be in the business of being an equity holder in private companies,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told NOTUS.

“I’m not a huge fan of the government owning industry, and I think with this you’d combine the worst of the big bureaucrats with the Big Tech monopolist,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said.

AUTHOR

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell 

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House correspondent for the Daily Signal. Follow on X TheElizMitchell.

RELATED ARTICLE: Counting the Cost of America’s AI Future

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VP Vance Refers Tim Walz, Keith Ellison to DOJ for Criminal Fraud Investigation

By The Geller Report

Washington Times: Vice President JD Vance has formally referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Department of Justice Monday for criminal investigation after a new House Oversight report documented years of ignored fraud warnings. “The evidence is overwhelming that state officials knew about systemic fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs and chose to look the other way,” Vance said in a statement. Washington Times: Mr. Vance, the administration’s fraud czar, said he was making the referral after reviewing the findings from the House Oversight Committee. The committee’s report, published Monday, alleges that Walz and Ellison were “aware of widespread taxpayer fraud in federally funded social programs for years” and did not take steps to stop it. An estimated $300 million in federal child nutrition funds and potentially $9 billion in Medicaid-related funds were “lost” or placed at “serious risk,” according to the report. “As a result, potentially billions of American taxpayer dollars were allowed to flow to fraudulent actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined and retaliated against,” the report says.

Jeff Charles at Townhall: Walz and Ellison had the authority to cut off payments to fraudulent operations, but they allowed taxpayer funds to continue flowing to these entities even after the red flags emerged in the Feeding Our Future case. The report highlights how the Department of Education continued paying Feeding Our Future and other fraudsters out of fear of political repercussions.

Confirmed: Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison Knew FOR 6 YEARS of Rampant Minnesota Fraud But Said Nothing in Order to ‘Keep Somali Votes’

By: Gateway, June 10, 2026:

The scandal that has rocked Minnesota politics just got even worse.

A bombshell report released Monday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Majority Staff concludes that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were repeatedly warned about widespread fraud in Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs for years, yet failed to take meaningful action while billions of dollars were allegedly siphoned from government programs.

The 205-page report, titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” paints a devastating picture of political negligence, bureaucratic paralysis, and what investigators describe as a pattern of looking the other way while fraudsters looted public funds.

According to the report, senior officials in the Walz administration and Ellison’s office were aware of credible fraud concerns as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services and by 2020 within the Minnesota Department of Education.

Yet despite possessing the authority to suspend payments and remove fraudulent providers from government programs, state officials repeatedly failed to act.

According to the report:

  • Senior officials in Walz’s office and Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud in DHS programs as early as 2019 and in the Department of Education’s child nutrition programs by April 2020.
  • In the Feeding Our Future case, MDE officials identified serious deficiencies yet voluntarily continued payments for another eight months until the FBI finally raided. This was NOT required by any court order.
  • State agencies had clear authority to suspend or stop payments to suspected fraudsters without waiting for courts, FBI direction, or federal orders — but they refused to use it.
  • Officials repeatedly cited litigation threats and fear of racism accusations as the real reason they kept cutting checks. Not law. Not regulations. Politics.

The report states bluntly: “Litigation threats and fear of accusations of discrimination, not legal or regulatory barriers, were repeatedly cited by state officials as the reason for continued funding of entities suspected of fraud.”

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

SMASHING RECORDS: Huge May Jobs Report DEMOLISHED All Expectations

By The Geller Report

Wages outplaced inflation.

Yahoo Finance: The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May, blowing past expectations, according to the government’s closely watched jobs report. The unemployment rate remained flat at 4.3%.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had anticipated payroll growth of 88,000 for the month.

April’s jobs report — which itself was a massive beat — was also revised to show an even better 179,000 jobs gained, compared to the 115,000 reported earlier. March’s payroll growth was similarly updated to show 214,000, bringing the first monthly gain above 200,000.

Construction up 17K jobs, manufacturing up 7K, leisure and hospitality up 70K (!)

The Jobs Report Delivered a Big Surprise

Heading into today’s release, economists surveyed by major financial outlets expected the U.S. economy to add approximately 85,000 jobs in May while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%. Instead, BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 172,000 jobs while unemployment matched expectations.

That is not a small beat. The economy generated more than double the expected number of jobs at a time when many investors believed higher interest rates, rising prices, and geopolitical uncertainty would finally begin weighing on hiring. Instead, employers kept adding workers at a pace that suggests the labor market remains remarkably resilient

A lot of different industries are hiring

Even CNN:

“This is the best jobs report in Trump’s second administration,” says Acting Labor Secretary Acting Secretary Keith Sonderling

“The jobs reports continue to demolish expectations… we saw 172,000 jobs. The experts, 75/75 ‘experts’ at Bloomberg surveyed predicted 85,000 — so it DOUBLED it.”

The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than double the 85,000 forecast, eliminating the case for near-term Fed rate cuts.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Amid War in Iran and Funding Ukraine, Rubio Tells Congress the State Department Is ‘America First’

By The Daily Signal

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday to testify about his 2027 “America First” State Department budget request.

While most department budgets increase significantly, this is the second consecutive year the State Department continues to make significant cuts, no longer operating as “the world’s ATM.”

“Our foreign policy is one that is solely focused on the interests of the United States of America,” Rubio told the committee. Rubio’s request for a $35.6 billion budget is a 30% decrease from the $51.1 billion enacted in fiscal year 2026.

This effort reflects the Trump administration’s efforts to limit unnecessary global spending and a “bloated bureaucracy.” Most of the spending cuts have been in the U.S. Agency for International Development and grants to nongovernmental organizations, as well as shrinking the department workforce significantly.

Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho, began the hearing by congratulating Rubio for implementing this agenda “quite well.” The senator supported the cuts and said the United States is no longer “the world’s ATM.”

Rubio agreed, saying, “The United States government is not a charity.”

The secretary is familiar with this committee, last appearing before members prior to the war in Iran. Rubio is also a former senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The secretary will continue his budget justification tour and will appear before three more committees this week.

On Tuesday, members began challenging him on nearly every issue, including the war in Iran, funding for Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa, artificial intelligence, actions against drug cartels in the South Pacific, and his cuts to the department.

U.S. operations in Iran are still underway. The ceasefire continues, but the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global oil exports, remains closed. The Department of War has increased its budget request 44% to $1.5 trillion, breaking records as the largest increase since the Korean War. It will also likely need supplemental funding to support the war in Iran.

In late April, the Pentagon told the House Armed Services Committee that it had spent $25 billion on the war. Since then, however, reports indicate it could have reached nearly $35 billion.

While the administration is operating by putting America first, Rubio said the United States government needs to be involved in strategic actions abroad “on behalf of American interests.”

“Sometimes in foreign policy the choices are not between a good choice and a bad choice—it’s between two less-than-ideal choices,” Rubio said, standing by decisions he has made as secretary.

Congress is set to vote on, and will likely pass, another funding authorization bill to loan Ukraine an additional $8 billion this week. This would bring the total U.S. aid to Ukraine to nearly $200 billion since 2022.

AUTHOR

Virginia Grace McKinnon 

Virginia Grace McKinnon is a journalism fellow for the Daily Signal. Follow on X virginiagmck

RELATED VIDEO: Secretary of Stare Marco Rubio shuts down the leftist Democrats in Congress

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CFACT joins the Fix the EPA Veto Coalition

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

CFACT has officially joined the newly formed Fix the EPA Veto Coalition, a broad alliance pressing the Trump administration to issue a strong executive order reining in the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to retroactively sabotage major energy, mining, and infrastructure projects.

At the heart of the issue is Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act — a little-known provision that gives the EPA power to veto dredge-and-fill permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, even years after projects have been approved, funded, and built. While used sparingly in the past, this authority has become a potent political weapon capable of destroying billions in investment and thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen.

A History of Weaponized Regulation

The precedent that alarms industry most came during the Obama years, when the EPA retroactively revoked a lawfully issued permit for the Spruce No. 1 coal mine in West Virginia — four years after approval. The Biden administration later took the tactic even further, using 404(c) preemptively to kill Alaska’s massive Pebble Mine project before it could even break ground.

This regulatory whiplash creates devastating uncertainty for developers who spend years and hundreds of millions navigating the federal permitting maze, only to have the rug pulled out once they’ve finally secured approval.

Billions at Stake

The stakes could hardly be higher. Under the Trump administration, critical projects now moving forward — including the Alaska natural gas pipeline, Arctic energy development, new LNG terminals, Minnesota’s Duluth Mining Complex, and strategic critical mineral mines across the country — all remain vulnerable to future EPA vetoes.

Every year, the Army Corps of Engineers issues between 60,000 and 75,000 Section 404 permits, supporting roughly $200 billion in economic activity. The looming threat of a retroactive veto hangs like a sword over all of them.

A Clear Solution

The Fix the EPA Veto Coalition is urging the White House to issue an executive order modeled on the Reducing Permitting Uncertainty Act, legislation sponsored by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) that has twice passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

The proposed order would:

  • Establish clear timelines for when veto authority can be used
  • Prohibit retroactive and preemptive vetoes
  • Restore consistency and predictability to the review process
  • Protect projects that already hold permits or are actively moving through permitting

Melanie Collette, CFACT Senior Policy Analyst, emphasized why her organization is proud to join the fight:

“This is exactly the kind of regulatory fix CFACT exists to fight for. The 404(c) veto has been used as a political weapon to kill projects long after investors, workers, and communities have already committed. That uncertainty is a real drag on domestic energy and mineral development, and we want to see the administration close this loophole before the next administration has the chance to exploit it.”

Myron Ebell, Coalition Senior Advisor and leader of Trump’s first EPA transition team, put it more bluntly:

“Going through years of permitting only to have the permit pulled after the fact is a massive obstacle to investing in America. It’s not the kind of regulatory environment a country serious about energy dominance can afford.”

The coalition is calling on the Trump administration to act decisively and deliver the regulatory certainty American industry needs to build, produce, and lead.

AUTHOR

For more information or to join the effort, visit fixtheepaveto.org or email info@fixtheepaveto.org.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Team Trump Says Welfare Fraud Is So Vast It Could Wipe Out The Federal Deficit

By The Geller Report

Stephen Miller says the scale of welfare fraud is so massive that eliminating it alone could balance the entire federal budget

“The amount that has been fleeced from us is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

“We could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them.”

This should infuriate EVERY taxpayer.

Vice President JD Vance tells reporters that in “just two months” the anti-fraud task force he has led for the Trump administration has “exposed billions of dollars in benefits that have been stolen from the American people.” During the roundtable, Vance claims the task force has deferred funds from fraudsters seeking small business loans and Medicaid reimbursements and recovered funds “stolen” from COVID relief programs. Vance says, “We’re protecting the American taxpayers who shouldn’t have their money stolen by fraudsters and of course we’re protecting the people who need these services.”

C-SPAN: The vice president was joined by Andrew Ferguson (the task force chair), Stephen Miller and some 15 state attorneys general. Vance: In just two months, we exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people. We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the treasury for collection. We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California…. We recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were open in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts, which were mostly awarded during the last administration and that has stopped. Finally, we blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead we’re going to fraudsters.

From The White House: This is a direct offensive against every fraudulent scheme preying on hardworking Americans — and the results are already staggering.

Red State: More from Ward Clark at Red State: So, the question is this: Why has this been allowed to go on this long? It staggers belief that there wasn’t some indication as to how bad things were before now.

WATCH: Vice President JD Vance Holds a State Attorneys General Roundtable on Anti-Fraud Initiatives on May 26, 2026

Vice President JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force just dropped the HARD NUMBERS from the first 50 days.

  • $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans referred for collection.
  • $1.3 billion in bogus Medicaid payments deferred.
  • $6.3 billion in shady government contracts stopped.
  • $60 million in student aid scams blocked.

Those all don’t even include in the SIX MONTH hold on fraudulent hospice providers, recovery from the $135 billion post-COVID theft, and 450 charges, convictions, and sentences nationwide including major Medicaid busts in Minnesota, Arizona, and California.

This is REAL ACCOUNTABILITY. Watch the full roundtable to see the complete picture.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

215,000 Federal Civilian Employees Were Tax-Delinquent in 2024: IG Report

By Family Research Council

Some 215,000 federal civilian employees owed the government money in unpaid taxes in Fiscal Year 2024, according to a May 6 report by the Treasury Inspector General (IG) for Tax Administration. The number grew by more than 40% since Fiscal Year 2021, despite a growth of only 4% in the federal civilian workforce, marking yet another unsung failure of the Biden administration. While the IG proposes partial policy solutions, the extent of tax delinquency among federal workers suggests a deeper, moral crisis.

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 (which ran from October 2020 to September 2021), some 149,000 federal civilian taxpayers (4.9% of the workforce) were behind on their taxes. This could possibly be related to the COVID pandemic, but government employees were paid regularly throughout that period.

However, since then, the delinquency rate only skyrocketed. In FY2022, 180,000 federal civilian employees (6.0%) were delinquent. In FY2023, delinquency reached 191,000 employees (6.2%); and in FY2024, the number hit 215,000, or 6.9% of the workforce. Over this period, the federal civilian workforce only grew by 4%, from 3.0 million in FY2021 to 3.1 million in FY2022.

As the delinquency rate increased, so did the amount of money owed by federal employees in federal taxes. In FY2021, delinquent federal civilian taxpayers owed $1.5 billion. But, in FY2024, they owed $2.1 billion.

When the IG expanded the scope of its review from federal civilian employees to include both employees and retirees, it found that the problem only increased in scale, though at a slightly lower rate. In FY2021, some 401,000 federal civilian employees and retirees (4.0%) owed $4.8 billion in unpaid taxes. By FY2024, 572,000 employees and retirees (5.7%) owed $6.3 billion.

The IG anticipated a question many readers would ask themselves: which federal departments have the highest rates of employee noncompliance? The U.S. Postal Service topped the list, with 10.1% of its employees owing $570 million in unpaid taxes. Next was the Veterans Administration, where 7.3% owed $379 million in taxes. After that, the order becomes jumbled, with between 5.4% and 7.1% of civilian employees in various military and security departments (including each of the Army, Navy, Defense, and DHS) owing between $145 million and $115 million.

The IG report implied that one reason for the high delinquency rates in some departments is a legal information barrier that hampers accountability. “Delinquency rates among employees are partially dependent on whether agencies can hold employees accountable for their lack of tax compliance,” it stated. “The Treasury Department is permitted to hold employees accountable for tax delinquencies. As a result, the Treasury Department’s 2.4 percent delinquency rate is relatively low compared to other federal agencies.”

However, “Due to privacy restrictions under Internal Revenue Code Section 6103, the IRS cannot share specific employee related tax information with the delinquent employee’s federal agency,” it added.

Beyond this long-term, systemic issue, the IG report suggested that the recent rise in federal employees not paying taxes was due to the suspension of collection programs during COVID. “IRS Collection management attributed the year-to-year increase to the temporary pauses of levy programs, the Automated Substitute for Return program (an enforcement tool to address nonfilers), and collection notice issuance during the pandemic and recovery years,” the report concluded. “The IRS began a phased-in resumption of the levy program in August 2024 and anticipates that the delinquency rates will decrease in the coming years.”

Effectively, the IRS simply suspended its tax collection enforcement mechanisms for the pandemic and didn’t bother restarting them until around four years later — months from the next presidential election.

The IG report included some data suggesting these measures were successful. For instance, the IG got the IRS to mass-issue one-time notices to the delinquent federal employees. After issuing the notice, the IRS collected $58 million, the report said. Fifty-nine thousand employees made a payment, and 4,700 paid their full balance.

But that still only offers a partial solution. Less than half of the federal employees who owed taxes responded to the notice. The problem goes deeper than COVID-era enforcement suspension, and thus it requires a deeper solution.

This point is also evident from the IG’s finding that “approximately 50,000 federal civilian employees failed to file a tax return for multiple years.” There were 25,438 employees with two “unresolved” years, 13,687 with three, 6,209 with four, 2,761 with five, 1,020 with six, 381 with seven, 102 with eight, and 20 employees who had not filed a tax return in nine or more years.

For the 122 employees with eight or more unfiled tax returns, the IG “referred these taxpayers to Criminal Investigation for review because the IRS’s Collection function had not.”

Such a revelation is shocking. Amid the busyness of life, the possibility of exigent circumstances, and natural human limits, it is conceivable that someone may innocently forget to file his or her taxes once, perhaps even twice in a row (failing to file in non-consecutive years is unlikely due to needing to provide your past years’ AGI on your current year’s return.) Even still, it is nearly impossible for the ordinary American to avoid the omnipresent tax service ads that appear each spring, making it nearly impossible for anyone to forget to file taxes at all.

But for a person to not file taxes at all for the better part of a decade, no explanation presents itself except that the person refused to file taxes as a deliberate choice. That is, well-paid employees who persistently fail to file tax returns seem to be operating under the belief that the rules apply to everyone else, just not to them.

Furthermore, these are not just ordinary citizens, going about their lives with so little interaction with the federal government that they forget it even exists (as blissful and utopian as that may be). These are federal employees. They think about the federal government every working day of their lives because it is literally their boss. They also have a greater understanding than the ordinary citizen about the importance of federal funding and what it achieves.

Federal employees love to bear the title, “civil servant.” And there are many conscientious, hardworking federal employees for which this label is true. But the term “civil servant” implies a person who serves the public. Those who take a salary from Uncle Sam but refuse to return his cut to the common pot are better describing as “leeching off of” the public than “serving” it.

“Federal employees are held to a higher standard to file and pay their taxes since their compensation is primarily from federal taxes,” the IG report concluded. “As the agency responsible for administering federal tax law, the IRS must ensure that federal employees comply with the tax law to maintain the public’s confidence.”

As one negative side-effect, the report suggested, “If taxpayers are aware that federal employees are not tax compliant, it may impact their willingness to comply with their own tax matters.”

In other words, if private citizens notice and imitate the bad example of federal employees, it could result in fewer taxes paid all around. “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

Perhaps that explains how federal employees started down the road to not paying their taxes in the first place. Federal employees are primarily overseen by politicians. Perhaps, over decades of selfish rule, America’s federal workforce has gradually learned from their political bosses the art of believing the rules do not apply to them.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: EPIC: Mild Reforms Save Nearly $1 Trillion for Social Security, Add 7 Months to Program’s Solvency

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Mamdani Uses Taxpayer Money to Build a City-Funded Activist Army

By The Daily Signal

New York City may be broker than a barista with a college degree but that isn’t stopping socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani from funding his activist army.

On Wednesday, the mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement rolled out a program called “Organize NYC” that’s billed asopens in a new tab a “long-term initiative to bring mass public participation into the work of governing.”

The first thing these paid activists will do is to get people to participate in the Rent Guidelines Board hearing in June.

Volunteers will canvass across the city to encourage tenants and landlords to testify ahead of the board’s June vote, which will determine whether rents increase or remain the same for more than 2 million New Yorkers.

This vote mainly has to do with a potential further rent freeze in the city.

The mayor’s office said in a statement that these publicly paid community organizers “will not advocate for any specific outcome,” but you can bet that critics of the program aren’t buying itopens in a new tab.

If you have any doubts about what that totally, absolutely neutral program is about, just watch a few minutes of the ad pumping this grift.

Yes, “Mohammed” in the commercial here is wearing a keffiyeh, which has become a symbol of Palestinian “resistance” to Israel and is often worn by members of Hamas.

Even some Democrats weren’t too pleased with this sartorial choice.

“It’s all intentionally divisive and hateful,” former Democrat state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said to the New York Post on Saturdayopens in a new tab. “This man is representing the administration. If someone came to my door with a keffiyeh, I’d immediately be nervous.”

But that’s only a small part of the issue with Organize NYC.

In a separate New York Post editorialopens in a new tab on Sunday, John Ketcham and Christian Browne—two Manhattan Institute scholars—called out Organize NYC as an attempt to create a thinly veiled, “taxpayer-funded effort to embed campaign-style political organizing inside city government, dress it up as civic virtue, and deliver Mamdani’s campaign promise under a veneer of official neutrality.”

That certainly seems to be the case.

As the authors noted, Mamdani’s office has been vague about how much money the utterly broke city government facing a “historic” budget crisisopens in a new tab will be sending Organize NYC’s way.

It’s clear what Mamdani is doing. He’s funding his activist class and making sure that public money is going to his people while using them to bolster numbers for their pet causes. As I wrote when he wonopens in a new tab the election in November, Mamdani will “provide an ample training ground for his socialist comrades to gain experience wielding power.”

This is a small but critical part of that larger goal. And you can be sure this model will be copied elsewhere.

The leftist Dissent Magazine celebratedopens in a new tab Mamdani’s initiative to keep activists activated. Though even it had to acknowledge that “pushing against the limits of what is perceived as acceptably ‘political’ within the confines of city government will be one continuing challenge for the Office of Mass Engagement.”

You can be sure that not only will Mamdani lean heavily on this organization in New York City, but the Left will launch similar efforts elsewhere.

That’s why what happens in New York, unfortunately, matters beyond the limits of the five boroughs. Mamdani’s revolution is a pilot program for a socialist government that the Left hopes to scale up and spread elsewhere. Never mind that the previous pilot programs didn’t turn out too good. Surely, True Socialism will work this time, right?

Right now, Mamdani and company are focused on consolidating, ensuring they keep control long after their popularity plummets.

Once Democrats and the Left gain power, they focus immediately on cementing itopens in a new tab, ensuring that their people get the fruits of patronage, and that public money flows toward their pet projects, their people, and away from their enemies.

Whether their policies or other activities serve the broader public matters a lot less than ensuring their own people are taken care of.

You can see why the Left’s activist class, their NGO network, and their hordes of government bureaucrats remain so committed to the cause despite obvious governing failures.

Those failures are your problem, not theirs.

From their perspective, the government doesn’t really have to provide clean streets, efficient services, law and order, or anything like that. It’s about spoils and special benefits, with a little redistribution and social engineering on the side.

This is one of the many reasons so many of our big, blue cities seem utterly dysfunctional despite so many economic advantages.

Unfortunately for New York, Mamdani is doing everything his predecessors did wrong and making things worse. But he’s doing this while cleverly ensuring that even if his socialist experiments fail, there will be nothing anyone can do about it.

Dark times in the Big Apple.

AUTHOR

Jarrett Stepman

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Mamdani, Hochul Agree to Tax on Luxury Second Homes in New York City

By The Geller Report

Fox News:

Anyone who thought that Governor Hochul. Hochul, the organ grinder’s monkey, would perhaps moderate Zohran Mamdani was sorely mistaken. Hochul is all in on Mamdani’s taxation policies. What wealthy individual would want to invest or live in New York City at this point? The message is unmistakable: they won’t keep bankrolling a city that treats them like suspects and shakes them down at every turn.Expect the once Big Apple to go bankrupt before Mamdani is done.

New York isn’t just losing residents—it’s bleeding the very people who pay the bills. The exodus of wage earners is at record highs, and the old hedge—keeping a pied-à-terre while earning elsewhere—is collapsing. The message is unmistakable: they won’t support a city that treats them like suspects and robs them blind. Close the second home, cut the ties, and move on. What was once a world capital risks becoming a monument to a once great city.

Celebrating: “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we’re taxing the rich.” The plan will allow New York to tax second homes that are not the owners primary residents. It will certainly be one more reason to encourage the wealthy to wash their hands and find another market for their real estate investments. Fox News: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated a proposal to tax luxury second homes owned by the ultra-wealthy, a plan expected to generate at least $500 million annually. Earlier in the day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes in New York City valued at $5 million or more, allowing the city to impose an annual surcharge on ultra-wealthy nonresidents. The proposal is projected to generate at least $500 million annually, according to Hochul.

New York Times:

Mamdani is celebrating because he effectively pushed Hochul two or three steps further left, yielding to socialist mayor’s agenda. New York Times: Another factor in the proposal’s favor is that it is not being considered as a stand-alone bill; Ms. Hochul intends to include it in the state budget. Under that scenario, the tax proposal will not be voted on separately. It will instead be largely hashed out in closed-door negotiations between the governor and the leaders of the Senate and Assembly. That will make it harder for the tax’s opponents, including the Real Estate Board of New York, a powerful industry group, to lobby effectively against the proposal.

Hochul, Mamdani reach deal for tax on luxury second homes in New York City

By NY1, April 15th, 2026

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani have reached a deal that will add a new tax on luxury second homes in New York City in an effort to reduce part of the city’s budget gap.

The tax would apply to one – to three-family homes, condominiums and co-ops worth $5 million or more and owned by homeowners with a primary residence outside the five boroughs, City Hall said in a press release.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED ARTICLE: Mamdani’s ‘Free’ Grocery Stores Will Charge New Yorkers Twice Over

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Real Wage Growth and Bigger Refunds: GOP Touts ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ on Tax Day

By The Daily Signal

President Donald Trump and Republicans are hoping to cash in politically on the extra amount of cash in Americans’ wallets this Tax Day.

Across the country, Americans are cashing in on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax provisions and receiving a boost from real wage growth in the Trump economy.

“This tax season, nearly half of all filers have claimed tax cuts that every single congressional Democrat voted against,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told The Daily Signal.

The financial relief from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now commonly referred to as the Working Families Tax Cuts by Republicans in Congress, has become a major talking point for the GOP in recent months, as the party argues that strong economic fundamentals have helped soften the economic impact of the war in Iran.

Key Provisions Target Workers, Families, and Seniors

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced that “nearly half of all filers” have benefited from at least one of the benefits included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax cuts. More than 4.6 million have claimed no tax on tips; nearly 20 million have claimed no tax on overtime.

The largest provisions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act include the child tax credit, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, senior deductions, and deductions on car loan interest.

Daniel Kowalski, director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, noted to The Daily Signal other provisions that are making an economic impact. “OBBB provisions, such as permanent full expensing of business equipment, stimulate business investment and drive increased productivity, which leads to higher real wages for workers,” Kowalski said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, even though inflation is rising, wages are also increasing. From February 2025 to February 2026, average wages increased faster than inflation, resulting in higher real wages.

The IRS reported that cumulative refunds reached $221.7 billion at the start of March, a 13.6% increase from 2025, and almost a 20% increase since Joe Biden was in office in 2024. The average refund is set to be over $3,500, an 11% increase from last year.

“The Working Families Tax Cuts show, once again, that Republicans are putting hardworking Americans first, while Democrats obstruct and make life harder for the American people,” Emmer continued.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Daily Signal he thinks the rebrand of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to the Working Families Tax Cuts is worthwhile. “People are very pleasantly surprised at the amount of refunds they are getting, and it’s made a big difference,” Johnson said.

“What’s been made pretty obvious is Republicans now are the party of working Americans and Democrats the party of illegal immigrants,” Johnson claimed.

Iran War and Energy Costs Cloud Economic Outlook

The war in Iran, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, and increasing oil costs will “probably have a pretty big impact” on the economy, Johnson also claimed.

But Johnson believes the tax cuts “will certainly counteract any of the negatives of the war in Iran.”

Johnson reiterated that without the tax cuts, there would have been “a massive automatic tax increase” because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was set to expire. The staved-off tax hike was expected to cost Americans trillions of dollars in taxes.

“Whether it’s no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the increased child tax credit, or the Social Security tax deduction, everyday Americans are the real winners of Republicans’ historic tax cuts,” Emmer concluded.

AUTHOR

Virginia Grace McKinnon

Virginia Grace McKinnon is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal. Send an email to Virginia Grace. Virginia on X: @virginiagmck.

President Trump’s War on Fraud

By The Daily Signal

According to federal government data, the government loses more taxpayer dollars every year to fraud than it spends on the entire budgets of several Cabinet agencies. Thank goodness President Donald Trump has launched the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and directed Vice President JD Vance to lead the effort.

The Government Accountability Office recently conducted a government-wide study to get an idea of just how much fraud costs taxpayers. That study estimated annual fraud losses to be between $233 billion and $521 billion. On the low end, that would pay for the entire budgets of the departments of State, Commerce, and Labor, and there would still be enough left over to pay for NASA; on the high end, you could add to the budgets of those departments the budgets of the departments of Education, Energy, Justice, and Interior.

That’s an awful lot of money to lose to deliberate theft every year. Keep in mind, we’re talking solely about fraud, not its siblings, waste and abuse.

The Trump administration is determined to address the fraud problem. He chose his highest-profile public address of the year (and the biggest audience of the year, which goes with it) to make the announcement; during his State of the Union address in late February, Trump announced a War on Fraud.

The very next day, Vance announced a pause on $260 million in federal government payments to the government of the state of Minnesota, home to a massive social services fraud that’s been unfolding over the last several years, and which could end up costing taxpayers as much as $9 billion. Vance announced the payments would be frozen until the state government put systems in place to show that the money was going to its intended recipients.

The implementation of the Trump administration’s “war on fraud” began with the announcement of the creation of a White House task force. It was followed by the vice president’s announcement of the pause on the cash flow to Minnesota. Those two steps were only the start.

In addition, the administration created a new senior position at the Department of Justice to focus on the problem. That position, the assistant attorney general for national fraud enforcement, has been filled by Colin McDonald. McDonald is a veteran federal prosecutor who has most recently been serving as associate deputy attorney general, the right-hand man to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

McDonald has the right kind of experience. In one particular case, when he was working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Southern California, he prosecuted the Honolulu police chief and his wife, along with two Honolulu police officers, for conspiracy and obstruction of justice for their roles in a public corruption scandal.

Demonstrating the White House’s commitment to the effort, Vance explained that the new assistant attorney general for national fraud enforcement will take direction from the president and the vice president.

Creating new positions and task forces and appointing people to fill out the org chart are important moves, but they’re only first and second steps on the road. The real test of the Trump administration’s commitment to its war on fraud will be what it does with those people and with others it’s already had working on the problem.

Early signals are encouraging.

For instance, the focus on Minnesota right out of the gate is important because the fraud there is centered on the state’s generous social services programs. Medicaid in particular is vulnerable to scammers. Its federal-state match, in which federal dollars heavily outweigh the states’ contributions, provides all the incentive needed for state-level welfare state bureaucrats to look the other way and fail to police their systems properly.

The vice president’s task force might also want to keep an eye on New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an admitted democratic socialist, recently appointed Julie Su to serve as deputy mayor for economic justice. Su, who served as President Joe Biden’s acting secretary of labor, famously oversaw between $30 billion and $40 billion in fraudulent payments in her previous position as director of California’s Employment Development Department. Letting the new mayor know folks in Washington are keeping an eye on his administration might be a good preemptive strategy to help reduce or even prevent fraud before it ever occurs.

Theft of taxpayer funds is a cancer on the body politic. It’s long past time that the federal government took action to eliminate it. Thank goodness Trump and Vance are on the job.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Jenny Beth Martin

Jenny Beth Martin is honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Jenny on X: @jennybethm,

The Laffer Curve Is Even Better Than We Thought

By The Daily Signal

The field of economics fully developed scientifically in the 20th century. The names John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek come to mind. However, one additional man became the one most referenced in the last part of the 20th century and continues as such today. That man is Arthur Laffer. The Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress recently released a report telling us Laffer is even more accurate than previously thought.

Laffer became famous upon his recognition as adviser to President Ronald Reagan before and after the 1980 election. Laffer has a top-notch pedigree, including degrees from Yale and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford. He then spent time at the University of Chicago. He was a colleague of Friedman, among others, while at Chicago.

Most people associate Laffer with Reagan, but he became notable in 1974 when presenting his thoughts to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as part of the Ford administration. It was then that he drew his famous thought on a napkin to illustrate his beliefs about government’s raising tax rates.

The bell curve drawing was named the “Laffer curve” by Jude Wanniski, who was sitting in on the meeting. The legend was thus born, and the Laffer curve has become one of the most discussed economic ideas related to government levels of taxation. Ronald Reagan used it as his basis for the Reagan tax cuts in 1981 and 1986.

The simple idea of the proposal is that higher tax rates are ineffective in creating revenue. Lowering marginal tax rates increases government revenues. If tax rates are raised, revenues will decrease.

I have had vivid debates with people on the left about this economic concept. They instinctively think the idea is counterintuitive. As is often the case, these folks have ideas of how government works in theory, but when reality is different they choose to ignore reality. I encourage them to look at the four major periods where rates were cut during the Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, and Trump administrations.

Review the records of federal government revenues after the tax rates are adjusted down, and anyone can see that revenues escalate significantly during all four periods. The political left wants to spend oodles on government programs that largely waste money. If reduced tax rates produced more revenue, they should get behind the idea. Empirical evidence does count for something.

If a policy produces more tax revenue, can someone characterize it as a “tax cut”? It is a rate adjustment, not a tax cut.

A recent study from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, authored by Rachel Moore, Brandon Pecoraro, and David Splinter, examined previous studies of the Laffer curve. It found that Laffer’s theory was even better than was previously suggested by those studies. Many previous studies used tax bases either too broad or too narrow, and the new study draws attention to those flaws.

“Prior studies, however, largely overlook the Laffer curve’s shape, rely on simplified tax functions, and often omit shifting across business types and tax interactions,” the authors write. “We show that modeling distinct tax bases more accurately and incorporating these interactions lowers the revenue-maximizing top tax rate and the associated revenue gains, yielding ‘flat’ Laffer curves.”

When I asked Laffer about the new paper, he stated, “This paper is a huge step in the right direction, and the research is very impressive. But, in the long-term context of settling the academic debate, there is much further to go.”

“It’s long been true that the U.S. government could collect all of the revenue it currently collects with two flat rate taxes of approximately 12% each: one on unadjusted gross personal income and the other on value added at the corporate level—no deductions, no credits,” he continued. “Any tax rates beyond this level are, based on research, in the prohibitive range of the so-called Laffer curve.”

“When looking at the world, incentive rates should always be used when deriving behavioral issues, not tax rates per se. The question always to ask is: Where is the tradeoff between giving money to people who don’t work and cutting tax rates on people who do work?”

Simply put, the prior studies of the Laffer curve used imprecise tax assumptions. Using more accurate current tax information produces even surer results that benefits decrease when income tax rates are raised. Increased tax rates are less beneficial for creation of tax revenues than previously thought.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Bruce Bialosky

Bruce Bialosky is a former presidential appointee, a practicing CPA with a specialty on tax law and founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition of California.

EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Says Congressional Budget Office’s Calculations Have More Holes Than Swiss Cheese thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Says Congressional Budget Office’s Calculations Have More Holes Than Swiss Cheese

By The Daily Caller

A report from a government watchdog organization released Thursday highlights inaccurate projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The report released by Open the Books spotlights decades of CBO projections and finds that while routine estimates were normally reliable, projections tied to larger legislation missed the mark. According to the report, the CBO’s scoring is generally accurate, although projections for major legislation frequently are missed by wide margins, with revenue estimates showing larger deviations over time.

The report notes that CBO’s miscalculations have continued to grow over the years. From 1983 to 2024, the average error in CBO projections was 6%, according to the report.

In February 2009, the CBO projected that a $25 weekly unemployment insurance bonus would cost taxpayers $39.2 billion over a ten-year period. After six years, the CBO issued a revised estimate showing it would actually cost $64 billion, a 63% increase over initial projections.

Notably, the Affordable Care Act, passed under the Obama administration, became one of the largest federal expenditures and was more expensive than the initial CBO cost estimate in 2010, which projected $788 billion. When the CBO conducted another estimate two years later, it ballooned to $1.76 trillion, a 123% jump.

Michael Solon, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the issue may extend beyond legislative scoring alone, arguing that broader economic forces often outweigh policy changes.

“The economic factors are far more important than the legislative factors,” Solon said, noting that shifts in economic growth can have a significantly larger impact on federal revenues than individual pieces of legislation.

Solon noted that legislative estimates draw the most attention, but they represent only a small slice of what drives budget outcomes.

“Scoring is not forecasting.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the CBO, told the DCNF. Holtz-Eakin argued that the process guarantees to make the CBO marginally inaccurate.

When asked about the large miscalculation with the ACA, Holtz-Eakin noted, “The baseline they were scoring off was more than a year and a half old. Of course it was going to be wrong.”

“The ACA looks different in 2012 than it did when it was first passed,” Holtz-Eakin said “There’s no way CBO can anticipate that,” he further stated.

The CBO didn’t immediately respond to questions from the DCNF about the report.

The report also noted that the CBO plays a significant role in shaping legislation, as the office works directly with legislators during the bill-writing process.

The costs for running the CBO ballooned to $75.8 billion in fiscal year 2026, an 8.2% jump from the previous year. The CBO is also exempt from complying with the Freedom of Information Act; information such as salaries remain hidden from the public according to the report.

The CBO’s primary focus on budgetary projections has shifted slightly since the early 2000s, as it has become involved in climate-related policy. Over the years the budget has become inflated with climate-related funds, and currently nears $1 trillion.

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 13: An aerial view of wind turbines at the Altamont Pass wind farm on January 13, 2026 in Livermore, California.  (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The report highlights the CBO’s flaws in analyzing climate data. In 2021, the CBO released “Budgetary Effects of Climate Change and of Potential Legislative Responses to It.” In the report, the CBO flagged climate change as a risk to budget deficits, adding that mitigation or adaptation could reduce climate change costs, but that the “benefits of successful investments would generally accrue gradually over many years and might be only partially reflected in future savings to the federal budget.”

As the rising national debt approaches $40 trillion, unfunded liabilities including Social Security and Medicare will increase as baby boomers continue to retire, further straining the federal budget. These mandatory spending programs account for approximately 60% of federal spending.

A decline in the U.S. Labor force participation rate is expected to further strain the already bloated federal budget, with the rate dropping to its lowest level since 1977, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

The report calls for greater transparency, higher accuracy and reduced reliance on the CBO as the sole authority for budgetary and economic information in Congress.

Republican Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr introduced legislation in 2025 to strengthen budget accountability, requiring the CBO to publish supplemental analyses of major legislation before major legislation receives a vote. “Washington’s budget process is broken, and part of the problem is that there’s no accountability when reality doesn’t match the promises made to get legislation passed,” Barr said in a statement.

AUTHOR

Nick Naulty

Contributor

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