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Former Missouri Congressman Billy Long received $137,000 in campaign contributions — just enough to pay off a personal loan to his campaign — soon after he was tapped to lead the Internal Revenue Service.

Some of the donations are connected to companies that will be policed by the agency Long has been nominated to run.

According to recently filed financial disclosures, which were first reported on by the investigative journalism site The Lever, Long only raised roughly $36,000 in the last two years.

He was named as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the IRS in December, and in January received $137,000 in donations. He then paid back the remaining $130,000 in debt from a $250,000 loan he made to his unsuccessful 2022 U.S. Senate campaign.

The donations, and their timing, have renewed criticism of Long’s appointment, which still awaits Senate confirmation. Senate Democrats have already called for a criminal investigation of firms with ties to Long that they allege are involved in fraudulent tax credit schemes.

Among the donors to Long’s campaign are financial advisers from some of those firms.

“When they told Billy he’d be in charge of revenue collection, did they forget to tell him that meant for the American people, not his own bank account?” said Sean Nicholson, a longtime progressive activist and campaign consultant in Missouri.

Jordan Libowitz, vice president of communications for the liberal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the timing of the donations and the “explicit knowledge that they’d end up directly in Long’s bank account, it’s hard to see them as anything other than an attempt to curry favor with the future head of the IRS.”

Long did not respond to a request for comment.

Billy Long, Trump’s nominee to lead IRS, touts credential tax experts say is dubious

After a career as an auctioneer and conservative radio host, Long served six terms representing a Southwest Missouri congressional district. He gave up his seat to run for U.S. Senate in 2022, losing in the GOP primary to now-Sen. Eric Schmitt.

Long then worked for Lifetime Advisors and earned at least $5,000 in income from White River Energy. Both companies have drawn scorn from Senate Democrats, and intense media scrutiny, over their involvement in controversial tax credit programs.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a limit on the amount of post-election funds a candidate can use to pay back personal loans. The majority found the limit an unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech, while the dissenting justices argued removing it would pave the way for political corruption.

“Even if our broken campaign finance system allows this behavior,” Libowitz said, “it raises serious questions about future conflicts of interest and needs to be addressed in any hearings (Billy Long) has before Congress.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: [email protected].

— Is Trump Helping Putin Defeat Ukraine? ‘Lil Marco Rubio announced yesterday that the Trump administration is on the verge of simply handing Ukraine over to Russia, if Putin won’t go along with the so-called peace deal Trump has offered. Zelenskyy has agreed to it, even though the price is huge (no NATO, Russia keeps the land they have, no security guarantees from the US at all, possible mineral/oil deals), but Putin clearly doesn’t intend to stop until he’s subjugated the entire nation, setting up his next drive into Poland and the Baltic states. To make things even worse, Zelenskyy has been virtually begging the US to sell him Patriot anti-air missiles, as they’re about the only system available in the world that can stop Russian hypersonic glide missiles.

Phillips Obrien has a great summary of the situation over at his Substack newsletter.

Zelenskyy came over here with at least $30 billion out of the $50 billion European countries have given him as grants and loans for that bizarre Oval Office meeting, but Trump and Vance, beside behaving like schoolyard bullies, are simply refusing to sell him the systems. Even though that will be a $30 billion stimulus to the US economy, would help out GOP-donor defense companies, and would help defend a democratic ally who was promised security by the US in the Budapest Memorandum back in 1994 in exchange for giving up their nukes. It appears that Trump is totally, nakedly, openly dancing to Putin’s tune here.

Will Europe be able to fill in the gap left by Trump’s abandonment of our ally? And if Putin pushes harder or even tries to take part of Poland or Estonia, will Trump sabotage the Article 5 guarantee of NATO on Putin’s behalf? It’s looking like all of these are viable scenarios, and don’t bode well for world peace or the future of democracy in Europe or America. Trump is either the most stupid president we’ve ever had or he is, in fact, the oft-predicted Manchurian Candidate, eager to destroy America and hand our people and resources over to the world’s dictators.

— Our government used to keep track of lies and disinformation coming from Russia. Marco Rubio just shut that agency down. Most Russian and Chinese propaganda designed to get Americans hating each other or destroy our country from within first appears on rightwing websites and social media sites. They’ve been so successful at it that when YouGov polled Americans they found that roughly a third of us believe at least ten outright lies Russia has promoted via our media including things like “Ukraine President Zelensky's approval rating is down to 4%” and “Ukraine sold Hamas weapons that were donated to Ukraine by the United States.”

Our federal government set up an agency within the State Department, the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub (CFIMIH), which has been regularly documenting these thousands of daily efforts to damage America, but Trump and his buddies are outraged that the CFIMIH keeps pointing out lies, deepfakes, and outright propaganda appearing on rightwing media, websites, and Xitter. So, ‘Lil Marco deleted the agency this week. As The New York Times reported yesterday:

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aides shut down a State Department office on Wednesday that tracks and counters global disinformation from foreign actors, including the governments of China, Russia and Iran, U.S. officials said. …
“The office had been tracking disinformation campaigns by rival powers of the United States, as well as terrorist groups, and publishing reports on them. Some Republican lawmakers in recent years have accused federal employees and nongovernment experts working on tracking disinformation of trying to stifle the views of right-wing political groups around the world and trying to coordinate with social media companies to do so. Russian disinformation often circulates in far-right online channels.”

So, here we are. Both the GOP, the rightwing media ecosystem, and the Trump administration are all just fine with Russian efforts to influence our elections, foment hatred, and cause the collapse of America’s soft power around the world. Apparently, they all hate democracy as much as Putin does, and are committed to ending the rule of law — and any semblance of honest dialogue and debate — in our nation. In any other time and circumstance, the news media would be calling this out for what it is: treason.

— Can Trump really fire Fed chair Jerome Powell as he claimed yesterday? In fact, the law and Supreme Court precedent say he can’t but his lawyers are hard at work trying to overturn that. Back in 1935, President Roosevelt tried to fire the head of the FTC, but was blocked when the Supreme Court, in a case known as Humphrey’s Executor, said he lacked the power to do it. That precedent applies to the Fed, as well as other agencies like the Labor Department, where Trump just illegally fired a few Democrats from the NLRB. The case was accepted this week by SCOTUS and, if they rule to overturn their own precedent (as both Thomas and Gorsuch have already publicly called for) Jerome Powell’s job could vanish the next day.

Which, of course, could provoke a massive international crisis of confidence in the US financial system, further crashing markets, the dollar, and perhaps even beginning the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If that happens, hang onto everything you have as all bets are off; it’ll be the beginning of a major impoverishment of the United States at all levels and in dozens of different ways.

— Idaho Republicans gave families $50M for private schools — and scrapped $30M used for public education..say what?!? One eternal truth about the GOP going all the way back to the late 19th century (with the exception of the Teddy Roosevelt presidency) is that they hate public education. David Koch ran for VP in 1980 on a platform calling for not just the end of the Department of Education but also shutting down all the public schools in America and ending compulsory schooling altogether; his ideas have now become doctrine for the Trump administration.

So it should surprise nobody that the Republican-controlled Idaho legislature just coughed up $50 million to give $5000 a year to families wealthy enough to already be sending their kids to private schools (which invariably cost more than $5K) while partially paying for it by cutting $30 million out of public schools. The subsidies will be enough for 6,000 upper middle class and wealthy families to benefit, but means cutting support to 24,000 public school students.

As we learned from our experience with the GI Bill after WWII, the most productive investment a nation can make is in educating its young people; for every $1 we spent sending young returning soldiers to college, America got back $7 in lifetime tax revenue over and above what we would have gotten had they not had that college education. The numbers for primary school are even starker. But don’t try telling that to the GOP: There are campaign contributions to be collected from the for-profit private school industry!

— JD Vance says if Brits can’t use the N-word and slurs against gays in public venues, they can’t cut a trade deal with America. Seriously. The United Kingdom has the same sorts of hate speech laws that are extant in most of the rest of Europe and the developed world, and that’s really pissing off the straight white male supremacists who run the Trump administration. Echoing classic arguments made by the Klan over the years, Vance is referring to straight white European Christian men as the carriers of “western civilization” and, if they’re not allowed to publicly intimidate, harass, and hate on non-white, non-Christian, queer people and women he wants to withhold favorable trade terms.

As he recently said in a speech in Germany, “The threat that I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” From the 19th century KKK to today’s GOP, hate is a core “fundamental value.” Disgusting.

— Did your miscarriage tissue have a dignified funeral at a state approved facility? If not, get ready for jail if Republicans have their way. Remember last month when a young Georgia woman was arrested for disposing of a miscarriage in the trash behind her apartment? She was let out of jail and charges were dropped after a few days of outrage in the media, but this scenario may soon become far more common in Red state America. One in four pregnancies end in a miscarriage, and often they’re so early they just resemble a very hard menstrual period.

Nonetheless, Republican legislators in Nebraska are the first in the nation to demand that women give the tissue expelled in those miscarriages a $9,000 funeral, complete with coffins and burials; if they flush or otherwise dispose of the tissue they risk prison. Democratic State Senator Megan Hunt asked the bill’s sponsor “how much blood has to be on the pad?” before the law would kick in, but never got an answer; apparently the answer is, “Any amount.” If this passes and is implemented in Nebraska, expect it to come to a Red state near you next. The GOP’s war on women rolls along…

— Crazy Alert! The GOP has adopted new family values: you can now DM offering to inseminate women you don’t know! Has Elon sent you a DM on Xitter offering to inseminate you? If so, as Wonkette notes, you’d apparently be one of many. In what must qualify as one of the creepiest articles ever published by The Wall Street Journal, they chronicled his obsession with producing as many offspring as possible to, apparently, improve the gene pool of humanity. As the Journal’s piece notes about Musk’s interactions with social influencer Tiffany Fong:

“Musk’s interactions ramped up as Fong posted more political content in support of Trump, and Musk followed her last summer.
“That sort of attention from Musk on X, where he has 219 million followers, sent droves of followers to Fong, which was a financial boon. More engagement meant more earnings for her as part of a revenue-sharing program for creators on X.
“During the height of her interactions with the billionaire owner, Fong earned $21,000 on the platform in a two-week period in November, according to a screenshot she posted.
“That was about when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child, according to people familiar with the matter. The two had never met in person.

This takes adjectives like “bizarre” and “creepy” to a whole new level…

NOW READ: Behind the fatal Trump flaw MAGA can't even defend

In 2010, United States lawmakers passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which aimed to tackle both childhood obesity and hunger by making school meals more nutritious. Two years later, the Department of Agriculture updated its guidance for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, in accordance with the law. Whereas schools could previously serve fat-free, 1 percent, 2 percent, or whole milk and be eligible for federal reimbursement, now they could only recoup meal costs if they ditched 2 percent and whole milk, which were thought to be too high in saturated fat for kids.

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Representative Glenn “G.T.” Thompson has been on a mission to change that. The Republican legislator representing Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district believes the 2010 law sparked a decline in students drinking milk across the board. “We have lost a generation of milk drinkers since whole milk was demonized and removed from schools,” he told a local agribusiness group in 2021.

Between 2019 and 2023, Thompson introduced the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act — a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk again under the NSLP — three times without success.

In January of this year, he reintroduced the bill once again — and inspired a group of animal welfare, environmental, and public health organizations to push for a vegan countermeasure. This month, a bipartisan group of legislators put forward the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches, or FISCAL, Act, which would expand the definition of milk under the NSLP to include plant-based options. Currently, schools participating in the NSLP can offer milk substitutions to students with a note from a parent or doctor — but the FISCAL Act is promoting a world where vegan milks are offered freely, alongside cow’s milk.

If students end up replacing their daily cow’s milk with a plant-based alternative, this has the potential to bring down food-related greenhouse gas emissions. But you won’t hear supporters of the FISCAL Act talking up the climate benefits of plant-based milk in the halls of Congress. Instead, they’re focusing on the health benefits of soy, oat, and other vegan drinks for students who can’t digest or simply don’t want cow’s milk.

“Most of this nation’s children of color are lactose intolerant, and yet our school lunch program policy makes it difficult for these kids to access a nutritious fluid beverage that doesn’t make them sick,” said Senator Cory Booker, a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill. This focus on student health — and the absence of any environmental talking points — reflect the eternally tricky politics around milk in U.S. schools, which have become even more complicated in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Milk has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to other animal proteins, like beef, pork, poultry, and cheese. But dairy production still comes with considerable climate impacts — mainly from the food grown to feed cows, as well as methane emitted via cow burps and manure. In 2020, researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that a dairy cow can release 350 pounds of methane every year through their burps — meaning, all told, dairy cows are responsible for 2.7 percent of the U.S.’s total greenhouse gases.

Nondairy milks — fortified drinks like soy, almond, oat, and rice milk — have varying impacts on the environment and climate, but all of these plant-based alternatives use less land and water than cow’s milk to produce, and result in fewer emissions.

Under the NSLP, schools cannot be reimbursed for the cost of meals unless they offer students milk. The Center for a Humane Economy, an animal welfare and environmental group backing the FISCAL Act, calls this America’s “milk mandate.” In 2023, student Marielle Williamson sued her Los Angeles high school for not allowing her to set up an informational table about plant-based milk unless she also promoted dairy. Subsidized school lunches have been described as “a guaranteed market” for farmers’ products; this is all but acknowledged when legislators like Thompson blame school lunch for the decline of the dairy industry. Indeed, in a recent Senate agricultural committee hearing over the whole milk bill, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said, “Not only do school meal programs reduce hunger and promote learning, they also support our local farmers and ranchers at a time when it’s probably the very worst time I’ve seen in decades” for farmers.

The animal welfare groups backing the FISCAL Act argue schools need more flexibility to meet the needs of students with lactose intolerance. Consumption of milk has fallen consistently since the 1970s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. That change is thought to be the result of shifting diets, as well as perhaps a reflection of America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity. It is estimated that half of American adults have difficulty digesting lactose, the protein found in milk and many other dairy products. These rates are higher in Black, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American, and Jewish communities.

“We’ve had so much marketing to tell us that the milk of a cow is, you know, nature’s perfect food, and it clearly is not,” said Wayne Pacelle, the head of Animal Wellness Action, an advocacy group that opposes animal cruelty and supports the FISCAL Act.

Pacelle acknowledged the climate impact of the dairy industry: “It’s just a truth that cows are big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.” But he noted that arguments related to the climate are unlikely to sway the debate over school lunch beverages. “The Republican Congress is not really so attuned to that,” he said.

As a result, his group and the others pushing for the FISCAL Act aren’t talking much about the environmental considerations of drinking cow’s milk. This aligns with a shift happening in the broader food industry under the second Trump administration, as producers and manufacturers figure out which talking points are most appealing to leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has called for schools to start offering whole milk again.

The Republicans pushing for whole milk in schools are talking up the health and economic benefits of whole milk, an argument that came into sharp relief during a Senate agricultural committee hearing in early April. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, who drank from a tall glass of milk before addressing the committee, referenced the term “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, when making his case. The movement, popularized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taps into wellness, environmental, and food safety concerns in the general public and offers solutions based in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Marshall, a co-sponsor of the whole milk bill in the Senate, said MAHA is “about whole foods, and I think we could categorize whole milk as part of” that framework.

While Republicans and Democrats alike may be sidestepping the dairy industry’s environmental impact and spending more time talking about student health, there is one environmental consideration that’s caught the attention of advocates of both whole milk and plant-based milk. That’s food waste, a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. Forty-five percent of the milk cartons offered at breakfast in schools are thrown out annually because students don’t take them. When students do grab milk at breakfast, a fourth of those cartons still wind up unopened in the trash.

Krista Byler, a food service director for the Union City Area School District in northwestern Pennsylvania, spoke at the Senate agricultural committee hearing and said serving whole milk in her schools helped milk consumption go up, ultimately reducing the amount of milk wasted.

“I hated seeing such an exorbitant amount of milk wasted daily in our small district and was hearing stories of even bigger waste ratios in larger districts,” Byler said in her written testimony.

A similar case has been made by Pacelle and other supporters of the FISCAL Act, who argue students will be more likely to drink — and finish — their beverage at school if they have the option to go plant-based.

Recently, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids bill passed a House agriculture committee vote. If it passes a full House vote, it could then move on to the Senate. Meanwhile, the FISCAL Act is still in committee in both houses of Congress.

Pacelle said the best chance the FISCAL Act has of passing is if its provisions are included as an amendment to the whole milk bill — framing it not as a rival measure, but as a complementary effort to create more choice for students. “Moving it independently is unlikely because of the power of the dairy lobby,” said Pacelle, “and the G.T. Thompsons of the world.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/milk-school-lunch-plant-based-vegan-whole-dairy-lobby-congress/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere famously rode through the streets of Massachusetts to warn residents about the approach of British troops, which culminated in the Battle of Lexington and Concord that kicked off America’s war for independence.

Now, 250 years later, U.S. Sen. Angus King is giving his own warning over what he sees as the imminent collapse of American democracy under President Donald Trump.

In an interview with writer, historian and Lincoln County resident Heather Cox Richardson, Maine’s independent senator discussed why this inflection point in American history is so resonant today.

“I believe we are in one of the most dangerous places our country has been in since the founding, because what is happening before our eyes is the collapse of the constitutional structure that the framers designed to protect us from the inevitable abuse that comes from the concentration of power,” King said, explaining that the U.S. Constitution purposefully divided power between the Legislature — or Congress — the President and the courts.

“But here’s what’s happening right now,” he said, “is that the executive branch is seizing more and more power.

“There are two levels of things going on here: one is bad and the other is dangerous,” he said. “There are bad things like what [the Department of Government Efficiency] is doing and messing around with Social Security and this sending people to El Salvador. That’s really bad, but what’s dangerous is the way it’s being done, by essentially violating the plain intent of the Constitution, by having the President be the legislator and the executive at the same time, that’s a recipe for the loss of our freedom.”

And for people who are “cheering on his agenda” and saying, “Well, we don’t care that he’s doing all this unconstitutional stuff,” King said, “They’re going to care because eventually the Eye of Sauron is going to turn on them,” referencing the evil, all-powerful symbol in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”

And while the courts are “doing pretty well so far” in pushing back, King repeatedly expressed alarm over what he sees as Congress’ abdication of its duty and the complicity of his Republican colleagues.

“What we have is a test between institutional loyalty, constitutional loyalty, and party loyalty. And so my Republican colleagues — who I’m doing everything I can to sort of peel off to say, ‘Enough is enough’ — so far, haven’t been willing to take that step,” he said. “They’re in control of the Senate, they’re in control of the House, and they’re looking at getting their tax bill through and getting their budget bill through, rather than what’s happening to the structure of our government in the process.”

He also said that he believes many Republicans are not speaking up because of Trump’s threat to challenge dissenters in upcoming elections by running primary opponents financed by billionaire advisor Elon Musk.

King also spoke about the frustration among voters, acknowledging the most frequent question he hears is, “I’m mad as hell. What can I do?’”

“They can get together, they can talk to each other, they can reach out to their neighbors,” King said. “They can participate in peaceful demonstrations that indicate to people like me that people want change, that they’re concerned…They also can communicate to our offices.”

He said American people actually have a lot of power and that members of Congress are influenced when they hear stories from constituents about how Trump’s actions are having a real negative impact on their lives — such as someone whose Social Security check didn’t come or a veteran unable to get a medical appointment.

“Believe it or not, anecdotes matter,” King said, “and so when people are in touch with us, if they are specific about what’s going on and what’s affecting them in their real life, that’s the kind of thing that breaks through with members of Congress — that their constituents are being hurt — and that’s one of the reasons I think we may see some progress on this over the next two or three weeks, because the damage that’s being done is just starting to manifest itself out in the communities.”

But King acknowledged he is “an optimist.”

As for Paul Revere, Maine is celebrating his midnight ride with a series of events that will feature the lighting of lanterns and lighthouses throughout the state. Organized by the Maine Semiquincentennial Commission, several of the ceremonies will include the reading of the famous 1861 poem by Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which concludes:

Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: [email protected].

Would you want a psychopath looking after your pension? Or what about your shares? In a recent talk at the Cambridge Festival of Science, I spoke about the latest research relating to a psychopath’s love of money, greed for power, and willingness to harm other people financially for personal gain.

Since I began researching corporate psychopaths and the global financial crisis, the idea of the financial psychopath, an employee in the financial sector acting ruthlessly, recklessly, greedily and selfishly with other people’s money, has gained traction.

The theory won support because psychopaths are more commonly found in financial services than in other sectors. It has even been argued that up to 10% of employees in financial services could be psychopathic. That is to say they have no empathy, care for other people, conscience or regrets for any damage they do.

These traits make them ruthless in pursuit of their own agendas and entirely focused on self-promotion and self-advancement.

But my ongoing research goes even further. It has found that psychopaths are willing to knowingly cause financial harm to the entire global community, in order to receive a financial bonus for themselves. Personal greed outweighs the immense social and community costs of implementing that greed.

This aligns with earlier perceptions of some captains of finance or leading politicians as psychopaths. Previous research found they are freed by their selfish philosophy of life and their trivialising of other people from the restraints of being evenhanded, truthful or generous.

This new research also shows that a majority of psychopaths would even be willing to cause a global financial crisis – if they personally would profit from, for example, falling stock prices. This willingness holds true even when they could be personally identified as being the source of the crisis. Only a tiny minority of non-psychopaths would be willing to do this.

Race to the top

Financial insiders appear to agree with the assumption that psychopaths have always been prevalent in the sector. Many psychologists and other management commentators have come to the same conclusion.

Researchers have also found that interpersonal-affective psychopathic traits – such as deceitfulness, superficial charm and a lack of remorse – were associated with success in the finance sector.

Employees at financial institutions in New York scored significantly higher on these traits than people in the wider community. They also had significantly lower levels of emotional intelligence (as would be expected of psychopaths).

President Donald Trump and members of his administration have long used allegations of anti-Christian discrimination as a rallying cry for supporters, arguing that policies and laws on issues like school prayer and LGBTQ+ rights threaten Christians’ right to express their beliefs.

Weeks into his second term, Trump took action, signing an executive order on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” The order vowed to “protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government” by identifying anti-Christian conduct and recommending policy changes. In mid-April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed employees in the State Department to report any incidents of such bias that occurred during the Biden administration.

Many critics contest claims of widespread discrimination against Christians in U.S. society, given that Christians are the country’s largest faith group and benefit from associated privileges. Consider how Christmas is recognized as a federal holiday, whereas other faiths’ major holidays are not.

As social psychologists, we were curious who claims of anti-Christian bias appeal to, and how those claims are perceived.

Hats for sale at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Vandalia, Ohio, on March 16, 2024.AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski

Our 2024 research, as well as other scholars’ work, suggests that people’s beliefs about anti-Christian discrimination are tied with their attitudes about race. These studies suggest that when politicians talk about anti-Christian bias, it does more than signal a concern and commitment to Christians – it can also serve as a signal of white solidarity.

A changing America

Even though they remain the largest religious and racial groups, white Americans and Christian Americans have both declined as a proportion of the U.S. population. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Christian Americans has decreased from 78% to 63%, and the percentage of white Americans has decreased from 69% to 60%. White Christians now account for less than 50% of the country.

Many scholars have argued that, at the root, some white and Christian Americans feel threatened by these demographic shifts. Increasing secularization and other cultural changes have added to some white Christians’ sense that their identity is under attack. According to FBI data, however, only 3% of hate crimes over the past five years targeted Christians. In comparison, 14% targeted Jews, Muslims or Sikhs – groups that make up just 3% of the population.

The Public Religion Research Institute found that 55% of white Americans believe discrimination against white people is as much of a problem as discrimination against minority groups. Meanwhile, 60% of white evangelicals say that Christians in the U.S. face discrimination.

In his executive order, Trump echoes these perceptions of threat, painting a picture of embattlement for Christians.

The executive order provides examples of charges brought against Christian pro-life protesters and alleges that Democrats failed to respond to attacks on churches. The executive order criticizes the Biden administration for policies that it says “force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith,” including for potential foster parents.

Testing views

Historically, white people and Christians were often treated as the quintessential Americans – meaning race and religion are tightly connected in U.S. culture.

Sixty-two percent of white American adults identify as Christian, and 61% of American Christians identify as white.

Marchers protest school integration in Little Rock, Ark., in 1959. One of their signs says ‘Please save our Christian America.’Bledsoe/Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty Images

In our four experiments, published in Psychological Science in March 2024, we tested these connections between views of race and religion, focusing on claims about anti-Christian bias.

First, in two online experiments of about 3,000 participants, we randomly assigned white and Black Christians to one of four groups. One group did not read anything, while the other three were each given a brief blurb about discrimination. Each blurb summarized a different group’s fears that bias against them was increasing: white Americans, Black Americans and Christian Americans.

Afterward, we asked all the participants to assess how much bias they think those groups actually face. Compared to white Christians who did not read anything, white Christians who read the blurb about anti-Christian bias perceived greater anti-white bias. Black Christians who read the blurb about anti-Christian bias, however, did not perceive greater anti-white bias than Black Christians who did not read anything.

Thus, it appears that the white Christians mentally linked anti-Christian and anti-white bias.

In our other two experiments, we randomly assigned about 1,000 white and Black Christians to read an interview excerpt from a fictional local politician who was asked about the most pressing issue in their community. The politician either voiced concern about anti-Christian bias, anti-white bias, religious freedom or the economy.

The Trump administration quietly announced Thursday that it is abandoning a Biden-era effort to close a loophole that allows large business partnerships to repeatedly manipulate the value of their assets to minimize their tax obligations.

The Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department announced the decision in a notice that received little attention in the mainstream press. The notice states that the administration, guided by an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February, intends to scrap so-called basis-shifting regulations that were finalized at the end of former President Joe Biden's White House term.

As the Biden Treasury Department explained last year, it was targeting a tactic whereby "a single business that operates through many different legal entities ('related parties') enters into a set of transactions that manipulate partnership tax rules to maximize tax deductions and minimize tax liability."

"These transactions defy congressional intent to avoid tax liability with little to no other economic consequences for the participating businesses," the department said. "For example, a partnership might shift tax basis from property that does not generate tax deductions (such as stock or land) to property that does (such as equipment). Taxpayers may also use these techniques to depreciate the same asset over and over."

The Biden administration estimated that the crackdown on basis-shifting would have raised $50 billion in federal revenue from wealthy taxpayers over a 10-year period.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that "this is a ridiculous loophole that allows the ultra-rich to dodge taxes by shifting assets around on paper while adding zero value to our economy whatsoever."

"Donald Trump is a known tax cheat, and it's clear his core economic agenda is to turn the government into an ATM for his billionaire pals, but that doesn't make it any less outrageous that his administration would reopen this kind of tax loophole for the rich while simultaneously wrecking Social Security and attacking Medicaid," Wyden added. "This is welfare for billionaire tax cheats and massive corporations, plain and simple."

The impending removal of IRS regulations targeting the rich comes as the administration is weaponizing the agency against nonprofits and immigrants and as congressional Republicans work on a legislative package that will likely call for massive tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations.

A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the GOP tax package could cost $7 trillion over the next decade, notwithstanding Republicans' misleading efforts to make the tax cuts appear free of cost.

While some congressional Republicans have floated the idea of allowing the marginal tax rate for the highest-earners to return to its previous level of 39.6% at the end of 2025, the proposal appears unlikely to garner enough support in both chambers.

"I think it is a mistake to raise taxes, and I don't believe Republicans are going to do that," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told NBC News earlier this week.

According toBloomberg, the GOP's tax plan "will almost certainly" reflect "the priorities of a small minority of high-earning constituents in a handful of districts in New York, New Jersey, and California" as Republicans work to raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.

Bloomberg noted that the SALT deduction "is a write-off that most Americans will never claim, even in the districts of the lawmakers fighting hardest to increase the tax break."

NOW READ: The Republican Party finally meets its reckoning

If the Trump regime can dictate what the universities of America teach or research or publish, or what students can learn or say, no university is safe.

Not even the truth is safe.

If the Trump regime can revoke student visas because students exercise their freedom of speech on a university campus, freedom of speech is not secure for any of us.

If the Trump regime can abduct a permanent resident of the United States and send him to a torture prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges, no American is safe.

What do we do about this?

We stand up to it. We resist it. We denounce it. We boldly and fearlessly reject it —regardless of the cost, regardless of the threats.

As columnist David Brooks writes in his column yesterday (I’m hardly in the habit of quoting David Brooks):

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

But what does a national civic uprising look like?

It may look like a general strike — a strike in which tens of millions of Americans refuse to work, refuse to buy, refuse to engage in anything other than a mass demonstration against the regime.

And not just one general strike, but a repeating general strike — a strike whose numbers continue to grow and whose outrage, resistance, and solidarity continue to spread across the land.

I urge all of you to start preparing now for such a series of general strikes. I will inform you of what I learn about who is doing what. (One possible place to begin is here.)

In the meantime: This evening, Friday, April 18, bells will be sounded in Boston’s Old North Church (the one-if-by-land church where lanterns signaled Paul Revere to warn the Minutemen of the approaching troops) and in churches across the country, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution. I urge you to have your place of worship join in the ringing. (More information can be found here.)

Tomorrow, Saturday, April 19, protests are being organized around the country by 50501. See here.

My friends, what the Trump regime has unleashed on America is intolerable. It is time — beyond time — for a national civic uprising. We must take action.

Should you be interested, here’s what I said yesterday at a rally on Berkeley’s famed Sproul Plaza, the site of the beginning of the Free Speech Movement, a little over 60 years ago.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Legal battles between the Trump administration and advocates for deportees flown to prison in El Salvador have turned into conflicts between the government and the judges overseeing those cases. One federal judge, James Boasberg, accused Trump administration lawyers of the “willful disregard” of his order in March to halt those flights, saying there was “probable cause” to hold officials in criminal contempt. Another federal judge, Paula Xinis, strongly chastised government lawyers for their failure to follow her order – affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court – to “facilitate” the return of a man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported to El Salvador. Xinis cited the government’s “repeated refusal to provide even the most basic information as to any steps they have taken.”