The Trump Administration wants to give another gift to its wealthy donors: up to $100 billion in tax cuts.
The Treasury Department—under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who once said “it’s very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy”—is exploring a plan to allow capital gains to be “adjusted for inflation in a way that shields more of it from taxation.”
The move could be executed through executive power and as such wouldn’t require Congressional approval.
The proposed cuts come months after the congressional GOP’s $2 trillion tax scam, which touted corporate tax rates of 21% and is resulting in “eye-popping” payouts for—you guessed it—corporate CEOs.
Meanwhile, as Trump’s Treasury tries to figure out how to further line the pockets of the wealthiest Americans, Betsy DeVos is using executive power to make it basically impossible for student loan borrowers to get relief when their school takes advantage of them.
DeVos’ Department of Education proposed rules to cut an estimated $13 billion in student loan relief for students defrauded by for-profit colleges. The rules come, coincidentally, after DeVos hired several former for-profit college executives for her department.
Forget robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Trump Administration is all about robbing students to pay the 1%.
KAVANAUGH COVER-UP: WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?
Some Senate Republicans don’t want the Senate to see Brett Kavanaugh’s full record. Why? What are they hiding?
Kavanaugh was the staff secretary in George W. Bush’s White House. That means he saw and had input on key policy issues and every memo that crossed the president’s desk. Karl Rove described Kavanaugh as “being at the heart of the Bush administration in shaping White House policy.”
We certainly want to know Kavanaugh’s stances on those policies. The American people deserve to see Kavanaugh’s full record—especially American women, considering Kavanaugh has been a political operative in the anti-choice movement and could be the deciding vote to gut and overturn Roe v. Wade.
Senate Republicans’ refusal to request the document’s from Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary is obstructing a fair vetting of the man nominated to a lifetime seat on the highest court in the land.
As John Podesta and Todd Stern (former White House staff secretaries) wrote: “We should not tolerate this obstructionism.” No records? No hearings. Sign and send a petition to your Senators to demand the Senate see Kavanaugh’s full paper trail before holding any hearings on the nominee.
NEW RUSSIAN ATTACK ON OUR DEMOCRACY EXPOSED
Today, Facebook announced that it removed “a network of suspected Russian-linked accounts and pages.” The network is “the most extensive effort to interfere in American politics that Facebook has found and made public ahead of November’s midterm elections.”
This comes weeks after the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials charged with interfering in the 2016 election, as well as Trump’s alarming Helsinki summit, during which he publicly sided with Russia against the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community, even going so far as to invite Putin to the White House.
With midterms less than 100 days away, the Administration and Republican leaders in Congress have done absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again. It’s time to secure our elections from the ongoing Russian attack.
The Center for American Progress released a comprehensive fifty-state election security report following the 2016 election. See how your state stacks up here.