House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith on Friday defended the provision, called Section 899, which calls for increasing income tax rates on foreign individuals and companies from countries whose tax policies the US deems “discriminatory.
A key House Republican tax negotiator said he hopes the so-called “revenge” measure in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill targeting foreign investors will be a deterrent that is never deployed.
Tag Archives: President Donald Trump
Raw Story: ‘This is my show!’ CNN host fires back at a furious Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller in interview
“Am I going to sit here today and engage in radical hypotheticals?” [“Goebbels”] Miller asked when talking about the executive powers of the president. “This administration has religiously complied with even the most unlawful court orders, but it completely upends the constitutional system to have a single judge in Boston assert the same powers of the president of the United States — is such an offense to democracy.”
Whatever you say, Herr Goebbels.
[“Goebbels”] Miller’s voice continued to grow louder as he accused the Biden administration of “trying to throw President Trump in jail, claiming somehow that was what democracy required, when, in fact, the Democrat Party has been waging war against democracy. They should be renamed the Communist Party, and district court judges that are trying to keep millions of illegal aliens here, to steal our, jobs, to steal, our livelihood, to steal our benefits —”
Last time I checked, Biden’s been out of office for 4 months and 10 days, Herr Goebbels. If you’re displeased with the current state of affairs in American government, it’s high time you and your grifter-in-chief stepped up and started owning what you’ve been f*ck*ng up for 130 days and counting.
‘This is my show!’ CNN host fires back at a furious Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller in interview
You’re going to die anyway, so who cares about your Medicaid?
Republican Senator Tells Constituents Worried About Medicaid Cuts: “You’re Going to Die Anyways”
The Hill: Musk drug use on campaign trail sparked concerns: Report
Alleged drug use by tech billionaire and close President Trump ally Elon Musk on the campaign trail during the 2024 presidential election has sparked concerns, according to an explosive New York Times report published Friday morning.
The article comes as Musk is exiting the Trump administration after a whirlwind several months in which he led efforts to cut down on the government’s size.
Musk told people he was using ketamine so often that it was impacting his bladder, along with utilizing psychedelic mushrooms and taking ecstasy, the Times reported.
Musk drug use on campaign trail sparked concerns: Report
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5325589-elon-musk-drug-use-reports
Esquire: Trump Has a New Scapegoat for His Inability to Enact Tariffs: Conservative Legal Puppeteer Leonard Leo
President mad again. President big mad again. President big mad on social media platform. President big mad at judges and at guy who recommended them. Very big mad, indeed.
“Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’”’ What other reason could it be? I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions. He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court—I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is! In any event, Leo left The Federalist Society to do his own ‘thing.’ I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations. This is something that cannot be forgotten!”
Trump Has a New Scapegoat for His Inability to Enact Tariffs: Conservative Legal Puppeteer Leonard Leo
Another article:

Donald Trump calls Leonard Leo “sleazebag,” regrets judge picks
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-calls-leonard-leo-sleazebag-judge-picks-tariff-ruling-2078800
New York Times: Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
Be very afraid! If you value your privacy, an all-knowing, all-seeing government database is the last thing you want.
Daily Beast: Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who Is American Citizen
Manu’s parents were undocumented, but she was born in the United States.
A 2-year-old American girl has been left stateless after the Trump administration deported her alongside her family.
Emanuelly Borges Santos, known to her family as Manu, was born in a Florida hospital in 2022. She has an American passport and a Social Security card. Nevertheless, Manu and her parents, who are both undocumented, were packed onto a plane with 94 others and shipped to Brazil in February, according to a report from The Washington Post.
When they arrived, Brazilian officials were shocked to find the American toddler among the deportees.
“We’d never seen another case like this,” federal police officer Alexsandra Oliveira Medeiros Reis told the Post.
Manu is currently living in Brazil on a tourist visa as the government tries to resolve the bureaucratic predicament of the girl’s citizenship. In the meantime, she’s living with no right to healthcare or schooling in Brazil. Her visa is set to expire within weeks.

Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who Is American Citizen
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-deports-2-year-old-girl-who-is-american-citizen
Raw Story: Trump has a ‘verbal tic’ that is causing ‘a worldview problem’ in US: analysis
President Donald Trump’s “verbal tic” is creating “cognitive dissonance in America,” according to a Washington Post column.
“The verbal tic of President Donald Trump that has always most fascinated me is his predilection for the word ‘beautiful,’” Monica Hesse wrote.
Giving several examples of the usage, she said, “On Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order titled ‘Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.’ Golf courses are beautiful, but so are White House telephones, farming, fighter jets, notes from the Chinese president, chocolate cake, the Supreme Court, Harambe the gorilla, and Christians.”.
…
“The Big Beautiful Bill works for Donald Trump because it uses a common, euphonious word to sell a tantalizing concept: that the federal government is simple instead of being a giant, complicated mess,” she said.
Hesse believes Trump is using the phrase because “The Big Beautiful Bill is the One Ring of legislation, the only bill you’ll ever need. ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is a phrase that could lull you into believing it contained only good things. And it does not.”
Trump has a ‘verbal tic’ that is causing ‘a worldview problem’ in US: analysis
Newsweek: Mom in US for 22 years detained by ICE despite ongoing visa application
A Georgia mother of three who has lived in the United States for more than two decades was taken into custody by federal agents on April 13, just a few blocks from her family’s home.
“She was a major part of our family, she did a lot for all of us, and it feels like our world has been thrown off its axle,” Guillermo Chavarria, 25, the oldest son of Jessica Flores Marin, 44, told Newsweek.
…
Flores Marin entered the U.S. with Guillermo in 2003 through Texas. While Guillermo qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which granted him temporary protection from deportation, his mother remained undocumented. Despite this, she built a life in the U.S., paying taxes and eventually buying the family’s first home in 2014.
In December, she began the application process for a T visa, which protects victims of certain crimes who cooperate with law enforcement. Her unexpected detention occurred while the family was gathering paperwork for her case.

Mom in US for 22 years detained by ICE despite ongoing visa application
https://www.newsweek.com/jessica-flores-marin-detained-ice-visa-immigration-2078460
Raw Story: ‘He has some issue’: Trump biographer reveals depths of the president’s racism
The first time Donald Trump appeared in the New York Times, back in 1973, was an article on a Department of Justice lawsuit accusing him and his father of anti-Black bias, and one of his biographers says he’s seen the president’s racism up close.
The president has appeared in the pages of his hometown paper thousands of times since then, including numerous articles accusing him of being racist – such as one from February titled, “As Trump Attacks Diversity, a Racist Undercurrent Surfaces” – and author Michael Wolff provided some new insight on that bigotry to The Daily Beast Podcast.
“Clearly, he has some issue with Black people,” Wolff told the podcast on Thursday. “The world is a better place to him without Black people, or without having to be aware of Black people, without Black people somehow in what he considers a zero sum game with white people.”
The president made his entrance into national politics with racist “birther” conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and has for decades maintained the mostly Black teenagers known as the “Central Park Five” were responsible for the rape of a white woman in 1989, although all five were exonerated in 2002, and slurred Latin American immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists” and referred to Haiti and African nations as “s—hole countries,” according to reports.
“Trump certainly regards Black people as profoundly different from white people,” Wolff said. “I mean the word racist now becomes in the Trump world a kind of high praise, because it’s meant to suggest the liberal overreach and the liberals call anybody racist.”