The New Republic

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2026-01-14 14:00:04 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Donald Trump has stepped up his rhetoric on Greenland hours before Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance will meet its foreign minister along with Denmark’s at the White House.Early Wednesday morning, the president posted on his Truth Social account, “The United States needs Greenland for the purposes of National Security.“It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building,” he added, referring to the massive boondoggle he seeks to build. “NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”The governments of Denmark and Greenland requested Wednesday’s meeting in an attempt to clarify Trump’s renewed push to seize the territory. NATO’s leading parties, Greenland’s political parties, and Denmark all oppose the move, but that has not dissuaded Trump, who is dead set on taking Greenland despite a complete lack of evidence that Russia or China have their own plans to conquer it. At a joint press conference on Tuesday, the premier of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said firmly that “if we have to choose between the USA and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the EU.”But Trump’s statement shows that his mind is made up, raising tensions ahead of Wednesday afternoon’s meeting. It will be interesting to see how Rubio and Vance treat the visiting Danish and Greenlandic officials, especially considering Vance’s past experiences with foreign leaders.
https://newrepublic.com/post/205270/trump-greenland-threat-white-house-meeting

2025-11-07 20:05:35 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The identities of the strike victims are much more complicated than Donald Trump has indicated.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202889/donald-trump-really-killed-drug-boat-strikes

2025-11-07 19:00:40 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Ziwe got New York City Mayor Eric Adams to sit down for an interview—and it went even worse than expected.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202884/eric-adams-exit-interview-ziwe

2025-11-07 19:00:40 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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JD Vance is admitting the Trump administration’s new tactic to ignore the courts entirely.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202892/jd-vance-trump-ignore-courts-shutdown-snap

2025-11-07 17:54:55 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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This makes sense when you pay attention to everything else Donald Trump has done as president.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202873/trump-pardons-republican-lawmaker-corruption

2025-11-07 12:15:44 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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At oral arguments in the tariffs case, the conservative justices seemed ready to hit the president with the legal rationale they used to bedevil Joe Biden.
https://newrepublic.com/article/202846/supreme-court-major-questions-tariffs

2025-11-06 18:34:24 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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If you look closely at local elections, the warnings signs for Republicans are everywhere.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202822/democrats-connecticut-elections-flip-towns-blue

2025-11-05 22:29:45 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Hours after his historic election win, Zohran Mamdani put Trump’s federal immigration agents on notice.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202750/zohran-mamdani-warns-ice-agents-new-york-election

2025-11-05 19:07:29 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The Democratic Party has the perfect case study for bringing young men back into the coalition.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202724/zohran-mamdani-democrats-young-men-election

2025-11-05 19:07:29 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Zohran Mamdani has named his transition team—and it’s amazing.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202726/zohran-mamdani-lina-khan-transition-team

2025-11-05 16:51:55 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Donald Trump also complained about how much Vice President JD Vance talks.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202715/donald-trump-describes-ideal-cabinet-xi-jinping

2025-11-05 15:49:49 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The Trump administration is already vowing to go after New York following Zohran’s election win.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202708/stephen-miller-warning-zohran-mamdani-election-win-new-york

2025-11-05 03:31:51 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The voters of Cincinnati roundly rejected Cory Bowman in favor of his Democratic opponent.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202697/jd-vance-half-brother-loss-cincinnati-mayor-race

2025-11-04 22:26:51 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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This is what happens when federal officers wearing masks just grab people off the streets.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202675/fbi-ice-agents-id-criminal-imposters

2025-11-04 20:13:51 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The vice president speaks fondly of the 1920s, a period when the Ku Klux Klan was resurgent and many groups of people—including Catholics—were deemed to be un-American invaders.
https://newrepublic.com/article/202625/jd-vance-1920s-immigration-nostalgia-ku-klux-klan-catholics

2025-11-04 20:13:51 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Donald Trump says he won’t fund the food aid program until the shutdown ends—leaving members of his own administration in the dark about what happens next.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202668/trump-shocks-team-defy-courts-stop-funding-snap

2025-11-04 17:58:50 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The trial of the D.C. man charged with throwing a sandwich at federal agents is already a complete joke.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202661/dc-sandwich-guy-trial-onions-mustard

2025-11-04 12:25:53 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The court will hear arguments Wednesday in a challenge to the president’s tariffs. Will the conservative justices once again twist themselves in knots to give him what he wants?
https://newrepublic.com/article/202627/supreme-court-tariffs-ruling-upend-trump-presidency

2025-11-03 18:33:48 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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The Trump administration is warning grocery stores and local businesses trying to help people this shutdown.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202604/usda-threatens-grocery-stores-discounts-people-food-stamps

2025-10-31 20:20:36 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Donald Trump gleefully posted photos of the all-marble bathroom, the day before food stamp funding is set to run out.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202555/donald-trump-bathroom-kennedy-center-renovation-shutdown-snap

2025-10-31 18:24:25 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Republican Representative Kevin Kiley, who hails from a blue state, isn’t a fan of the gerrymandering war his party instigated.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202548/republican-congressman-blue-state-pissed-gerrymandering-wars

2025-10-31 14:53:25 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Donald Trump is considering a serious escalation in his attacks.
https://newrepublic.com/post/202515/donald-trump-goal-boat-strikes-war-venezuela

2025-07-16 21:36:30 UTC

@nprofile…pyzj
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Elected representatives say they aren’t interested if their constituents are detained by federal immigration officials.On Capitol Hill Wednesday, South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman, Texas Representative Troy Nehls, and Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville brushed off reports that American citizens were being targeted by ICE agents in overzealous raids.“Congressman, do you care if U.S. citizens accidentally get detained in ICE raids?” Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez asked each of them.“No, I’m not concerned about that,” confessed Norman, underscoring that he was “so appreciative” of border czar Tom Homan’s actions to force undocumented immigrants out of the country en masse.“I’m concerned about law and order in America. If you’re an illegal, you don’t need to be here,” Norman said, apparently forgetting that ICE has no authority to arrest, detain, or deport U.S. citizens.“But what if you’re a citizen?... It just seems to be happening a lot,” pressed Manríquez.But Norman said he doesn’t “believe that,” highlighting concerns about alleged undocumented gang members in the country when Manríquez cited reports that U.S. veterans are getting dragged into ICE’s deportation machine. Congressman, do you care if U.S. citizens accidentally get detained in ICE raids? RALPH NORMAN: "No, I'm not concerned about that." pic.twitter.com/SuEh44nIRf— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) July 16, 2025At least one veteran has so far been detained by the aggressive agency: George Retes, a 25-year-old disabled veteran, was detained on July 10 while at work on a California farm. He was held for three days by ICE officials without access to legal representation and without any charges against him, according to Representative Pramila Jayapal’s office.Jayapal introduced legislation Wednesday—the “Stop ICE from Kidnapping US Citizens Act”—to make ICE’s illegal actions even more blatant. The measure would prevent ICE from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens following reports that the agency had been harassing the country’s Latino population, requesting on-demand proof of citizenship. But Norman isn’t the only lawmaker to disregard the alarming cases. Nehls attempted to undermine the traumatizing nature of detention when asked if he cared about the arrested citizens, telling Manríquez that the media shouldn’t “spin” detention for “more than it really is.”“Are you detained for more than three days?” Nehls asked rhetorically, waving his cigar.“In some cases, yeah,” responded Manríquez.“Well, maybe people can’t prove that they’re American citizens, either, have the documentation,” Nehls said, apparently at a loss for words, though he did mention that he believed Homan was doing a “hell of a job.”“It’s not a big problem. It really, really isn’t,” Nehls added.Congressman, do you care of U.S. citizens are accidentally detained by ICE?TROY NEHLS: pic.twitter.com/RkpN5fk41w— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) July 16, 2025Tuberville’s sensitive advice to Americans concerned about being illegally detained by plainclothed undercover ICE agents was simple: “First of all, don’t put yourself in a situation where that happens.”“I’m sure with the illegals we have in this country, some mistakes happen, that always—that’s gone happen,” Tuberville said, before directing Americans to disengage from undocumented communities. “But if you are gonna be hanging around people who are not citizens of this country, some things like that are going to probably happen.”“Don’t hang around illegals,” he warned.Tuberville had no advice for mixed-status families.Senator, do you care if US citizens accidentally get detained in ICE raids?TOMMY TUBBERVILLE: pic.twitter.com/SmvjFd0UQa— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) July 16, 2025
https://newrepublic.com/post/198045/maga-republicans-ice-detains-us-citizens

2025-07-15 18:50:00 UTC

@nprofile…6kn7
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Tucked away in the Supreme Court’s flurry of end-of-term decisions earlier this month was a seemingly innocuous one on redistricting and race in Louisiana. The justices announced, in an unsigned order, that the court would rehear Louisiana v. Callais when the court reconvenes in the fall.“These cases are restored to the calendar for reargument,” the court said. “In due course, the court will issue an order scheduling argument and specifying any additional questions to be addressed in supplemental briefing.”The court did not tip its hand on how the individual justices voted, nor did it explain why it would rehear the case this fall. It also has yet to announce “any additional questions” for the litigants to address, though it almost certainly will before the court reconvenes in October.By not deciding the case at hand, however, the justices took a momentous step that will alter the nation’s political geography. The Supreme Court appears poised to use Callais as a vehicle to rule that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 cannot be used to remedy racial gerrymandering by state legislatures.Callais began as every redistricting case does: with the most recent census. While Louisiana neither gained nor lost a congressional seat after the 2020 Census, state lawmakers still redrew their legislative maps to account for population shifts within the previous boundaries. The Republican-led legislature enacted a visibly gerrymandered map with five reasonably safe GOP seats and one extremely safe Democratic seat centered on New Orleans.Shortly after the map was signed into law, a coalition of voting-rights groups sued the state via Section 2, arguing that the revised congressional districts amounted to racial gerrymandering. The plaintiffs alleged that the legislature had packed as many of the state’s Black voters into a single majority-minority district as they could to dilute their overall political power. One-third of Louisiana residents are Black.A federal district court agreed with the plaintiffs in 2023 and ordered the state legislature to draw new maps with a second majority-minority district by a certain deadline or else it would draw them itself. After the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, the state legislature approved a new map that redrew Louisiana’s sixth congressional district to be majority-minority in January 2024. That would normally be the endpoint for a racial gerrymandering dispute. After the new maps were approved, however, a new group of plaintiffs who described themselves as “non-African American voters” filed a new racial gerrymandering challenge to the redrawn sixth district. A different federal district court agreed with those claims, concluding that the state legislature had impermissibly used race to redraw the map in 2023. Both the state and the civil-rights groups in the initial case then urged the justices to overturn the second court’s ruling.In theory, this should have been an easy decision for the Supreme Court. The state and the original plaintiffs argued that the 2023 redistricting could not itself amount to racial gerrymandering because it was compelled by a court order to remedy racial gerrymandering. “The [Supreme] Court has long assumed that compliance with the [Voting Rights Act] is a compelling interest—and that assumption is particularly apt here given the Legislature’s efforts to comply with court decisions that themselves articulated what VRA compliance requires,” the original plaintiffs told the court in their brief.Complicating matters is the conservative majority’s growing hostility to racial gerrymandering cases. In 2023, while Louisiana’s first legal battle over adding a second majority-minority district was underway, the Supreme Court issued a surprise ruling in Allen v. Milligan that upheld a similar ruling to create one in Alabama. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s three liberal justices to form the majority.Even in victory, there was an ominous sign for future voting-rights cases. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion where he suggested that he might be willing to roll back the courts’ power to remedy racial-gerrymandering claims through Section 2. Congress bolstered that power by amending the provision in 1982 to prohibit states from enacting voting laws that had a racially discriminatory effect. This included claims of vote dilution, where states would draw legislative maps or create electoral methods that reduced the efficacy of a racial minority’s voting power.In the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, for example, the justices struck down a congressional map in North Carolina that used an unusual combination of single-member districts and multi-member districts in some counties. The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs and the lower courts that the legislature’s effect was to dilute Black voters’ electoral power. Along the way, the court laid out the factors that could be used to determine future vote-dilution cases.In Milligan, one of Alabama’s arguments was that this framework, which allows courts to remedy racial-gerrymandering claims by ordering or drawing new maps, itself amounts to race-based redistricting and therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause. Roberts noted in his majority opinion that the Supreme Court had held otherwise for the last four decades, and Kavanaugh observed that “the constitutional argument presented by Alabama is not persuasive in light of the Court’s precedents.”Kavanaugh then opened the door to another avenue of attack. “Justice Thomas notes [in a dissenting opinion], however, that even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under Section 2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” he added. “But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.” By highlighting this argument and implicitly agreeing with it, he invited litigants to bring it before the court in future cases.The temporal argument, as Kavanaugh phrased it, is telling. In the mid-20th century, the federal government dismantled nearly all of the legal architecture of Jim Crow racial apartheid in the American South and elsewhere. Congress enacted powerful laws like the Voting Rights Act that created new tools to challenge specific laws and practices. The Supreme Court’s liberal majority overturned past errors like Plessy v. Ferguson, which entrenched de jure racial segregation, and breathed new life into the Reconstruction-era amendments.The Roberts Court is apparently unwilling to strike down those laws or overturn those rulings on the merits—that is to say, they have yet to rule that those civil-rights efforts were unconstitutional in the 1950s or 1960s. Doing so would be tantamount to embracing Jim Crow again. Instead, they have argued that the laws and rulings are no longer permissible because they solved the problem, or at least have done so sufficiently to render them unnecessary.In the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, for example, Roberts led the conservative majority in gutting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a persistent history of racial discrimination to seek preclearance when changing their election laws or policies. His “equal sovereignty of the states” theory was gloss for the court’s actual rationale, which could be boiled down to “things have changed.” Southern states, once freed from preclearance, soon drifted back into old habits.Two years ago, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, the justices struck down affirmative-action programs in college admissions for violating the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court had initially allowed such programs as a remedy for generations of racial discrimination, though Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested in a 2003 case that they might not be permissible forever. “Twenty years later, no end is in sight,” Roberts wrote for the majority as he swung the axe.Kavanaugh’s reference to Thomas’s thinking on racial gerrymandering was also revealing. The court’s seniormost justice has long argued that the courts have no power to remedy racial gerrymandering at all, and that Section 2 is unconstitutional to the extent it grants courts that power. Thomas’s insistence on an absolutely colorblind Constitution would effectively treat the cure—a court ruling that orders a state to redraw its discriminatory and dilutive legislative maps—as worse than the disease that the ruling sought to treat in the first place. That brings us back to Callais. The court heard multiple questions in the case; none of them were about the constitutionality of Section 2 or the Gingles framework. Kavanaugh asked the state of Louisiana and the “non-African American” plaintiffs about their positions on what he called the “durational limit on the authority of Section 2” during oral arguments. The plaintiffs happily agreed with it. The lawyer arguing on behalf of Louisiana noted that while the state had taken that position in briefs before the court and had adopted it in other ongoing redistricting-related cases. But, he noted, it had not done so in the lower courts in Callais, so it was not squarely before the justices.The court’s internal deliberations are secret and the justices do not publicly discuss them, so it is impossible to say with certainty why they punted Callais to the next term. From all of this context, however, we can venture an educated guess: There are likely enough votes to rule on the constitutionality of Section 2 itself in racial-gerrymandering cases, but a critical mass of justices in that majority wanted to have that question briefed and argued before rendering a decision. The justices did something similar in Citizens United in the spring of 2009, where they punted the case to the following term so they could more squarely decide the constitutional question that arose during the first round of oral arguments.Thomas’s dissent from the court’s move in Callais gives strong credence to this theory. It is already rare for the court to punt cases for the next term; it is even more rare for a justice to publicly dissent from reargument. (I am not aware of a previous instance where it has happened.) The only logical reason to dissent from reargument is if one thinks the court could properly decide the case without further delay. And the only reason for Thomas to be unhappy with that delay is if he thinks he’s already won.Part of Thomas’s argument is that voting-rights cases are inherently different: they are heard by special three-member panels of federal district-court judges, and the Supreme Court is required by law to hear an appeal of those panels’ ruling if asked. “We should have decided these cases this term,” Thomas wrote. “These are the only cases argued this term in which our jurisdiction is mandatory. That an Act of Congress requires that we decide these cases should have prompted us to resolve them expeditiously.”That is a reasonable position to take and it does not tip off anything about the court’s internal deliberations to argue it. But Thomas did not stop there. He instead delved into the likely merits of the upcoming reargument. “These cases put the court to a choice: It may permit patent racial gerrymandering under the auspices of Section 2 compliance, or it may admit that, as the court has construed the statute, a violation of Section 2 is insufficient to justify a race-based remedy,” he wrote. “That decision should be straightforward. Nevertheless, the court demurs.”There is a palpable sense of frustration in Thomas’s dissent, one that might be explained by watching his conservative colleagues come around to his position on racial gerrymandering, only to see them delay it until the next term. Perhaps he fears that some of them might waver in the interim—Roberts and Kavanaugh could pull a Milligan again, after all—and the opportunity will be lost. In any event, his dissent makes no sense if the court is not going to consider Section 2’s constitutionality next term.If the court guts Section 2’s remedial power in racial-gerrymandering cases, it will have immediate consequences for the nation’s political landscape. Republican-led state legislatures would be free to redraw their maps to eliminate any court-ordered majority-minority districts. They would also face far fewer constraints when drawing maps that dilute Black and Hispanic voting power to bolster the GOP’s electoral chances.Texas, for example, has eleven majority-minority districts. The New York Times reported last month that the White House, apparently fearing the loss of its narrow House majority next year, pressured that state’s congressional delegation to support redrawing the state’s legislative maps. (While the Constitution requires that states redraw their maps after each census, there is technically no reason why they can’t do it more often than that.) To that end, Governor Greg Abbott announced earlier this month that he would call a special session where redistricting would be on the agenda. That strategy isn’t without risks: As Politico noted last week, moving enough “blue” voters into “red” districts to dilute their overall strength could ultimately backfire by making those districts more competitive, and thus more vulnerable in a wave election. But it is apparently one that the GOP thinks is worth taking to consolidate what it hopes will be a permanent hold on American governance. The only question now is whether the Supreme Court will play along.
https://newrepublic.com/article/197974/supreme-court-racial-gerrymandering-thomas

2025-07-14 22:43:29 UTC

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Andrew Cuomo just doesn’t know when to quit.The former New York governor officially reupped his flailing bid for New York City mayor Monday, weeks after losing the Democratic primary by double-digits to New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the Democratic primary did not go the way I had hoped,” Cuomo said in a video posted to social media, thanking the voters who’d ranked him and apologizing for his tremendous loss.“But as my grandfather used to say: When you get knocked down, learn your lesson and pick yourself back up and get in the game,” he said. “And that is what I am going to do. The fight to save our city isn’t over.”In it to win it. pic.twitter.com/1pr5obsVAu— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) July 14, 2025Cuomo’s video appeared eerily similar to many of Mamdani’s viral campaign videos, which show the young politician encountering New Yorkers around the city. But Cuomo failed to capture the voters’ excitement seen in Mamdani’s, performing a stilted stump speech over footage of him gladhanding people on the street, with no background music. One might say it lacked any Cuo-mentum. Mamdani replied to Cuomo’s video by simply posting a link to contribute to his own campaign in the comments—which immediately ratio’d the original post. Mamdani’s link had 38,000 likes and 3,000 reposts within hours of the original post, while Cuomo’s video had 1,500 reposts and only 1,100 likes.In another post, Mamdani joked that Cuomo’s video was a blatant attempt to copy him. “We got him making man on the street videos with a guy in carhartt. By next week, he’ll be sipping adeni chai and eating khaliat al nahl,” he wrote. People online couldn’t help but notice how off-putting Cuomo’s video was. “If you watch this, in 7 days you’ll start to cough,” New York City Councilperson Chi Ossé wrote on X. Ossé, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant, has been a vocal critic of Cuomo’s mayoral run. “Nothing more energizing than a video of a politician saying ‘I’m sorry I let you down’ in a voice that sounds like aphasic Christopher Walken,” wrote Erik Baker, senior editor at The Drift. “No means no, Andrew,” wrote an X account for Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor, a group that had organized to prevent people from ranking Cuomo in the Democratic primary, referring to the more than a dozen women that Cuomo sexually harassed. And many, many people remarked on the most obvious gaffe: that Cuomo still can’t seem to pronounce “Mamdani.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/197939/andrew-cuomo-new-york-mayor-weird-video

2025-07-14 22:43:29 UTC

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Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia are suing Donald Trump’s administration for withholding $7 billion in federal funding for education, The Washington Post reported. A lawsuit filed Monday against Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and Office of Budgement Management Director Russell Vought claimed that the Trump administration had “caused chaos” for K-12 school districts by refusing to distribute funding to six long-standing grant programs.Those grants provide funding for after-school care for children of working parents, English classes for non-native speakers, bullying and suicide prevention, and expanding science and arts curricula. The funding also goes toward recruitment and training for teachers, which is particularly crucial as 79 percent of public schools nationwide have reported difficulties with hiring in the last year. When the funds were expected to roll in at the beginning of July, the Department of Education notified states that the money was under review for compliance with Trump’s agenda, and OMB stated that it was investigating if the funds had been used for a “radical leftwing agenda.”The plaintiffs, who sought relief for their own states, alleged that by freezing the funds, the Trump administration had overstepped Congress’s power of purse, violating the Impoundment Control Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. “The federal government cannot use our children’s classrooms to advance its assault on immigrant and working families,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “This illegal and unjustified funding freeze will be devastating for students and families nationwide, especially for those who rely on these programs for childcare or to learn English. Congress allocated these funds, and the law requires that they be delivered. We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn’t like.”The lawsuit was joined by attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, as well as the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
https://newrepublic.com/post/197945/donald-trump-states-massive-lawsuit-education-funding

2025-07-13 12:03:17 UTC

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Several of President Donald Trump’s key campaign promises were written into the new Republican law which slashes federal benefits and implements tax breaks for primarily higher-income Americans. One of the more touted provisions, the elimination of federal income taxes on tips for certain workers, is intended as a fulfillment of a pledge that he adopted in part to win the swing state of Nevada—which has the highest proportion of workers in the service and hospitality industries of any state.But Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” may not deliver the goods. As it stands, the newly enacted law would benefit only a small percentage of American workers overall, and exclude the lowest-income tipped workers. Workers will be able to deduct up to $25,000 annually from their taxable income, although it begins phasing out for individuals earning $150,000 per year, or $300,000 for joint filers.“Tipped workers loom larger in our imagination, because they’re often the interface that we have with the service sector. But behind them are just a vast majority of workers that are not tipped at all, and so regardless of how much they make, they’re not going to see any benefit from this,” said Ernie Tedeschi, the director of the Yale Budget Lab. Only around 4 million American workers are in tipped occupations, roughly 2 and a half percent of all employment. Moreover, of the lowest-earning workers in the country, only about 5 percent worked in tipped occupations, according to research by the Yale Budget Lab.The provision is emblematic of one the law’s defining characteristics: An emphasis on providing relief for middle- and higher-income Americans, while low-income families bear the brunt of dramatic cuts to food stamps and Medicaid, and are unable to fully benefit from key tax provisions. The legislation modestly expanded the child tax credit and indexed it to inflation, but it is not fully refundable, and thus the lowest-income Americans will be unable to receive the whole credit. Similarly, provisions ending taxes on overtime pay and a reduction to standard tax deduction for seniors would provide limited benefits to the lowest-income Americans who do not have sufficient tax liability to claim the deductions.“If your desire was to reach the very lowest income earners, then you would want to pursue something that’s structured more like a refundable tax credit or a payroll tax credit, versus an income tax deduction,” said Joseph Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Rosenberg continued that the new tax deduction on tips would largely benefit tipped workers that “fall more in the upper half of the income distribution rather than the bottom half.”The idea is rooted in political considerations. Both Trump and his Democratic rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris, had expressed support for such a policy in an effort to win over swing voters in Nevada. Democratic lawmakers in Nevada have also embraced this policy; in 2024, Senators Jackie Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto co-sponsored legislation to end federal taxes on tips. A bill by Nevada Democratic Representative Steven Horsford would eliminate taxes on tips, but also require restaurants to pay their tipped workers the current federal minimum wage for untipped workers, which is $7.25 an hour.But Democratic politicians and labor groups that are otherwise supportive of eliminating taxes on tips opposed the new law. Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union in Las Vegas, expressed frustration that the tax deduction is not permanent—it is set to sunset in 2028—while other tax provisions that benefit higher-income Americans were made permanent.“Massive corporations and the super wealthy came out the big winners, and workers are getting scraps,” Pappageorge argued.He also noted that the law pushes the burden onto the Treasury Department to determine the specifics of implementation of the provision, which is applicable for the current fiscal year and set to go into effect during the next tax filing season.“If you talk to the average tipped worker, the idea of getting some relief is welcome. But we’re not sure what that’s going to look like,” Pappageorge said.Moreover, given the $25,000 cap, even middle-income tipped workers will still need to pay some taxes on their tips. The average tipped worker gets 40 percent of their wages from tips; if someone is making $35,000 in tips each year, they would still need to pay taxes on $10,000 of their tips.Certain low-income service industry workers might also be affected by both cuts to benefits programs and being unable to access the deduction on tipped wages. The law dramatically cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Medicaid, potentially resulting in millions of people seeing reduced benefits—or losing them entirely.“You may have a lot of low-income tipped workers that have read the news, and think they’re getting this big benefit from not paying taxes on their tips—and all of a sudden, not only are they not benefiting, they’re actually losing benefits on other things,” said Rosenberg.There is also uncertainty about how this change will affect the behavior of tippers, particularly as Americans are growing fatigued with tipping in general. Customers may not tip as much if they believe that their server will not need to pay income taxes on their tips, without necessarily differentiating between the different incomes of a waiter at a cheaper restaurant and one who works at an expensive one.“It’s an example of how workers at the bottom could get doubly impacted by this. A lot of them are not going to get the benefit from the deduction in the first place, and … they may be subject to a blowback from the backlash against tips generally,” said Tedeschi. “That’s not fair to them.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/197883/trump-no-taxes-tips-promise-unfulfilled

2025-07-11 22:08:55 UTC

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Before Tuesday, a district court had barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees en masse as his executive order calling for “large-scale reductions in force” undergoes legal challenges. Then, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to lift the injunction. In the Trump administration’s first batch of firings since getting the Supreme Court’s green light, Marco Rubio’s State Department axed more than 1,300 employees—1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service personnel—as part of a reduction in force affecting 3,000 employees. (The other 1,600 personnel apparently already made incentivized voluntary departures.)This is seemingly just the beginning for the State Department, as Rubio aims to shrink the department’s domestic workforce of 18,000 by 18 percent.The American Foreign Service Association issued a statement skewering the cuts as misguided and ill-timed. “At a moment of great global instability—with war raging in Ukraine, conflict between Israel and Iran, and authoritarian regimes testing the boundaries of international order—the United States has chosen to gut its frontline diplomatic workforce. We oppose this decision in the strongest terms,” the statement said. “In less than six months, the U.S. has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations. Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday filed a dissent slamming the Supreme Court decision for helping Trump unleash a “wrecking ball.” That wrecking ball has now made its first impact, but many more are on the way, as the president continues his demolition job on the federal government, imperiling hundreds of thousands of government workers’ livelihoods, not to mention the countless Americans who rely on them.
https://newrepublic.com/post/197887/trump-layoffs-supreme-court-victory-state-department

2025-07-11 16:34:25 UTC

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For the low price of $45, New Yorkers can proudly display their racist attitudes against New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.Despite establishment opposition, Mamdani clinched the city’s primary in June with 56 percent of the vote. The Ugandan-born Queens lawmaker’s rise in the Big Apple has not been without intense opposition: many Democratic leaders in New York politics have still refused to endorse him, with some outright attacking him. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand baselessly claimed that Mamdani condoned “global jihad,” a statement that her communication director quickly had to walk back.But it’s been Republicans who have proven especially venomous in the wake of Mamdani’s surprise win. On Friday, the New York Young Republican Club unveiled its newest merchandise: a blue shirt plastered with the text “Deport Zohran.”“A new era is coming to New York City,” the item description reads. “With a dash of Che Guevera and modern populist overtones, our tee flips the script on socialism as we take back the city we love. Don’t just cast your vote, rep it too!”(The website misspells the last name of Cuban Revolution figure Che Guevara.)The shirt’s manufacturing details explain that it’s 100 percent cotton, side-seamed construction with shoulder-to-shoulder taping, and is “made in the USA, unlike Zohran.”The unabashed xenophobia is no doubt thanks, in part, to Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric. The president has recently directed his attention towards the Democratic Socialist, threatening to arrest Mamdani and initiate a federal takeover of New York City if the 33-year-old is elected to Gracie Mansion.“If a Communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places where we have to,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to straighten out New York. It’s going to—maybe we’re going to have to straighten it out from Washington.”Trump did not specify by which authority he planned to intervene in New York’s democratic processes.
https://newrepublic.com/post/197866/new-york-republicans-zohran-mamdani-merch

2025-07-11 11:00:14 UTC

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In the days since flash floods killed more than 100 people in Central Texas, various conspiracy theories have circulated on the right arguing that the storms were in fact the result of clandestine weather manipulation efforts. According to some—including former national security adviser Mike Flynn—those deadly rains were cooked up as a means to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. “I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS,” far-right former special forces commander Pete Chambers posted on X. “WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?” (Cloud seeding—a long-held object of fascination on the right, not to be confused with cloudbusting—refers to the experimental practice of scattering dust particles through clouds to trigger rain and snow, the effects of which in the United States are currently much too limited to produce the scale of deluge that happened over the July 4 weekend.)Perhaps in response to these sorts of conspiratorial MAGA-world concerns, Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin on Thursday morning announced an effort to “compile everything we know about contrails and geoengineering” and release it to the public. Contrails are cloud-like trails of condensation left behind by aircraft, known as “chemtrails” to those who believe they’re signs of the government clandestinely drugging the population with dangerous chemicals for the purposes of population control. Geoengineering is something of a catchall term that often refers to various controversial methods for deflecting solar radiation so as to cool the earth’s surface temperature. Zeldin is certainly giving chemtrail theorists more credence than they’ve enjoyed in previous administrations, and arguably elevating some crackpot theories as legitimate lines of inquiry. But the resources EPA links to largely debunk the fringe theories.The real scandal, though, isn’t that Zeldin is talking about chemtrails, or even that the EPA seems to have devoted some amount of state resources to disproving the more conspiratorial beliefs of the MAGA coalition. Out in the open, Zeldin’s EPA has been dismantling protections against precisely the sorts of dangers that right-wingers warn are coming from alleged deep-state conspiracies: toxic, cancer-causing chemicals that corporations have lobbied to freely inject into our air, water, food, and bodies.Earlier this week, for instance, the EPA withdrew a Biden-era proposal that would require plastics produced by Chevron and other major Republican donors to be free of 18 chemical contaminants. The rule was proposed in response to warnings about the so-called “chemical recycling” of plastics, pushed by the petrochemicals industry as a means to allay mounting concerns about plastic waste and its effects on human health. Among those was a substance intended to be used as “climate-friendly” jet fuel, the production of which—as The Guardian and ProPublica reported in 2022—would cause cancer in one out of four people exposed to it over the course of their lifetimes. Another plastic-based chemical that Zeldin’s EPA has just moved to greenlight is so risky that everyone exposed over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer, according to a document obtained via a public records request by ProPublica’s Sharon Lerner. The EPA has further terminated grants for research into the dangers of microplastics, including to a team of researchers at the University of Oregon that found they were present in 99 percent of seafood scientists sampled. Despite pledging in 2019 to tackle “forever chemicals” known as PFAS and PFOS, certain types of which have been linked to cancer, the EPA announced in May that it would delay enforcing limits on their presence in drinking water until 2031. Among the broader suite of regulations Zeldin’s EPA has promised to roll back is one that would require coal-fired power plant operators to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities, limiting their ability to freely discharge toxins like mercury, arsenic, selenium, lead, and bromide and to threaten local drinking water supplies.The above are just a few of the ways that Zeldin and the rest of the Trump administration are putting the public’s health and well-being at risk. Meanwhile, the White House’s wider attacks on the administrative state are threatening state capacities essential to protecting more people from disasters like the Hill Country rainstorms. Texas Senator Ted Cruz—who was on vacation in Greece over the holiday weekend—joined his party in voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will slash funding to weather forecasting operations, as well as a $50 million grant program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems, and coastal ecosystems. The Trump administration has targeted NOAA—including the National Weather Service—for a 20 percent staffing cut.Whether the theories are about Jeffrey Epstein or environmental threats, the Trump administration is willing to entertain speculation about government conspiracies so long as it doesn’t implicate it or its corporate donors. The most dangerous conspiracies, meanwhile, are broadcast proudly as White House achievements.
https://newrepublic.com/article/197827/lee-zeldin-epa-chemtrails-chemical-nightmare