Fight Over ‘Green New Scam' Complicates Trump's Tax Plans
House Republicans could release detailed tax proposals within days—revealing decisions on tax rates, the state and local tax deduction and corporate taxes—and push that plan through a committee next week. House leaders hope to pass the broader tax-and-spending bill—which would also reduce Medicaid spending and expand border enforcement—this month and get it to President Trump's desk by July 4.
The Inflation Reduction Act's incentives for renewable energy, electric vehicles and battery production are an attractive target for GOP lawmakers. Republicans opposed the law in 2022 under President Joe Biden, and Trump campaigned against it as the 'green new scam' that gave priority to clean energy over fossil fuels.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elections to lead new Weber County city draw 37 mayoral, city council hopefuls
EDEN, Weber County — As the new city materializing in the Ogden Valley takes shape, there's no lack of interest in leading the locale. The filing period to run for mayor or one of five city council seats that will serve the new city ended last Friday, and a total of 37 people have stepped forward to run for the six leadership posts. Four mayoral candidates have emerged: Janet Wampler, Kyle Reeder, Andrew Newton and Shanna Francis. 'It's an indication that this community is eager to get on with being its own municipality,' said Nick Dahlkamp, who helped with initial organizing efforts that led to last November's vote to create the city. 'This just again exemplifies how important people feel that they want to take control of their destiny and are eager to get on with it.' Apart from the four mayoral hopefuls, the District 1 and 5 City Council races have drawn five candidates each, the District 2 contest has seven candidates and the District 3 and 4 races have eight hopefuls each. Dahlkamp said the numbers exceeded his expectations. The Ogden Valley city, to be officially named by the slate of leaders who win, covers an expansive area around Pineview Reservoir on the eastern side of the Wasatch Mountains, east of Weber County's population cluster around Ogden. It's a picturesque zone, home to three ski resorts, and boosters of incorporation touted becoming a city as a means of maintaining local control as growth pressures mount. An estimated 7,600 people live within the planned city's boundaries. The long list of candidates will be whittled to two in each contest in primary voting, which culminates on Aug. 12. The winners will be selected in general election balloting, which ends on Nov. 4. Those victors will be sworn in on Jan. 5 next year, when the city formally comes into being, according to Ogden Valley Inc., the organization that promoted incorporation. While campaigning has yet to begin in earnest, the filing paperwork offers some information about the candidates. In the mayoral race, Wampler's filing says she serves as chairwoman of the Ogden Valley Planning Commission, which serves as an advisory body to Weber County commissioners on planning issues in the Ogden Valley. The Weber County Commission is the ruling body that now governs the unincorporated area, pending installation of the newly elected leaders next January. She also serves the Community Foundation of Ogden Valley, a nonprofit group that raises funds for other nonprofits serving the area. Reeder is an attorney 'specializing in business transactions and commercial litigation,' reads his filing. Newton is owner of two small businesses, Composet Products and Proformance Services, and served in a volunteer post with the Pineview West Water Co., a provider of secondary water, according to the Utah Division of Water Rights. Francis is the owner and operator of the Ogden Valley News, a newspaper serving the Ogden Valley. She was also one of the six original sponsors who pursued incorporation of the Ogden Valley. Separately, incorporation proponents have been working with the public to plan for the transition to incorporation. Some 180 people have stepped forward to assist with things like budget preparation, creating an organizational structure for the city and crafting of zoning ordinances and other codes, according to Kay Hoogland, who's helping with transitional efforts and also running for a city council seat. She called the volunteers 'the advance team' for the eventual winners in elections and said the many candidates will be invited to take part in the efforts. While the Ogden Valley locale will be the newest Utah city, a new town is taking shape in Utah County, Spring Lake, which sits between Payson and Santaquin and is home to around 600 people. Residents there last year also voted to become a new locale and will pick leaders in this year's election cycle. Wade Menlove is the sole mayoral candidate, according to Utah County election officials. Seven hopefuls are running for two four-year town council posts, and seven are running for two two-year town council seats.
Atlantic
29 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles
The last time President Donald Trump tried to send military forces into American streets to put down civil unrest, in June 2020, Pete Hegseth was positioned outside the White House with a Kevlar helmet and riot shield. Major Hegseth's mobilization as part of a District of Columbia National Guard unit summoned to restore order in the nation's capital, where protests had erupted following the police murder of George Floyd, occurred as Pentagon leaders scrambled to avert what they feared could be a confrontation between active-duty U.S. forces and their fellow Americans. Today, Hegseth is second only to the president in directing the administration's use of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to respond to unrest over immigration raids in Los Angeles. And this time, the military's civilian leadership isn't acting as a brake on Trump's impulse to escalate the confrontation. The Hegseth-led Pentagon is an accelerant. The administration's decision to federalize 4,000 California National Guard forces, contrary to Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes, and to dispatch 700 active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area, marks a break with decades of tradition under which presidents have limited their use of the military on American soil. If there are any internal misgivings about busting through yet another democratic norm, they haven't surfaced publicly. Indeed, officials at the White House told us they are satisfied with the way the L.A. confrontation has unfolded. They believe that it highlights their focus on immigration and law and order, and places Democrats on the wrong side of both. One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders. 'We couldn't have scripted this better,' said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. 'It's like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.' Democrats, of course, take a different view, and say the administration's actions have only risked triggering further violence. Retired officers who study how the armed forces have been used in democracies told us they share those concerns. They point to the damage that Trump's orders could do to the military's relationship with the citizens it serves. 'We should be very careful, cautious, and even reluctant to use the military inside our country,' Bradley Bowman, a former Army officer who heads the defense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told us. Conor Friedersdorf: Averting a worst-case scenario in Los Angeles State and local authorities typically use law-enforcement personnel as a first response to civil disturbances or riots, followed by National Guard forces if needed. Retired Major General Randy Manner, who served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Obama administration, said the federalizing of California Guard forces—putting them under presidential rather than state control, a move allowed with certain limits—pulls those service members away from their civilian jobs and makes it harder to complete planned training or exercises. 'Basically, the risk does not justify the investment of these forces, and it will negatively impact on readiness,' Manner told us. Retired officers we spoke with also drew a distinction between the involvement of National Guard and active-duty forces. Whereas National Guard troops assist citizens after natural disasters and have the advantage of knowing the communities they serve, active-duty forces are primarily trained to 'see the enemy and neutralize the enemy,' said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'When you're dealing with U.S. citizens, no matter what they're doing, that's not the right mindset.' 'This is not Fallujah,' Bowman added. 'This is Los Angeles.' Juliette Kayyem: Trump's gross misuse of the National Guard This morning, Hegseth made his first congressional appearance since his bruising confirmation process, appearing before a House committee. His tone with Democrats was at times combative. When Representative Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, asked the defense secretary what the cost of the California deployment would be, he declined to provide a figure and instead pivoted to criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for the state's response to the violence that followed Floyd's killing in 2020. (Military officials said later they expected the Los Angeles deployment, as envisioned, to cost roughly $134 million.) 'If you've got millions of illegals, you don't know where they're coming from, they're waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that's a problem,' Hegseth told lawmakers. Trump, for his part, told reporters that anyone who tries to protest at the Saturday parade celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army will 'be met with very big force.' He also said that he wouldn't hesitate to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit him to employ the military for law enforcement or to suppress a rebellion, if he believed that circumstances required. Speaking to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina later in the day, the president promised to stop the 'anarchy' in California. ' We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,' he said. 'We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' Some Republicans have privately expressed worry that Trump may overplay a winning hand. Even in the West Wing, two people we spoke with tried to downplay the incendiary rhetoric from Trump and Hegseth. They stressed that, to this point, National Guard forces have been in a defensive posture, protecting federal buildings. Although they believe that Trump has the political advantage at the moment, they acknowledged there would be real risks if U.S. troops got involved in violence. 'We don't know who would get blamed but no one wins if that happens,' one senior aide told us. 'No one wants to see that.' Hegseth's support for using active-duty troops in Los Angeles stands in contrast to what his predecessor did in 2020. At that time, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, scrambled to block Trump's desire to employ active-duty forces against the demonstrators protesting racial violence. The president had mused about shooting protesters in the legs, Esper wrote later. To satisfy his boss while also avoiding a dangerous confrontation, the defense chief called active-duty forces from Fort Bragg to Northern Virginia but sought to keep them out of the fray. Tom Nichols: Trump is using the National Guard as bait In his 2024 book The War on Warrior s, Hegseth described how his experience as a D.C. Guardsman in 2020 crystallized his views about the divide between military personnel and what he saw as the degenerate protesters who were lobbing bricks and bottles of urine at the citizen soldiers. When the D.C. Guard was again summoned seven months later, to help secure the 2021 inauguration following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Hegseth was told to stand down because fellow Guardsmen suspected that one of his tattoos was a sign of extremism. (Hegseth has maintained it is part of his Christian faith.) Hegseth was angered by his exclusion and resigned from the Guard. That experience remains with him as he attempts to reshape the military, and its role in society, in line with Trump's worldview. As he has written: 'My trust for this Army is irrevocably broken.'
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Taxing Michigan's rich to pay for schools part of potential ballot proposal
The Brief A coalition of Michigan education groups wants to raise taxes on the state's richest residents to pay for the state's schools. The Invest in Mi Kids petition must first collect 600,000 signatures to get before voters, but only if approved by the state's canvassing board. It would likely go before voters in the 2026 Midterms. LANSING, Mich. (FOX 2) - Tax the rich to pay for schools? That's the idea behind a potential ballot proposal Michigan voters could vote on in the upcoming midterm election. But an expensive fight lies in the way if it ever reaches that point. Big picture view A coalition of state education advocates want to get a ballot proposal before voters that would ask them to raise taxes on rich people in Michigan to help fund the state's public education system. The "Invest in MI Kids" proposal would look to raise taxes on earners in the highest tax brackets. The groups behind the petition hope to funnel $1.7 billion into Michigan's public schools. The language for the proposal needs approval from the State Board of Canvassers before it can start collecting signatures. It will require more than 600,000 residents signing onto the petition before it can be considered by voters. If the effort clears the necessary bars, it will go on the 2026 midterm ballot - the same election where voters will pick a new governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. Local perspective Rachelle Crow-Hercer, one of the people behind the petition, expects an expensive fight if the proposal is sent to voters. Polsters who evaluate public opinion in Michigan agree. And while proponents may be able to make a better argument, that just means more money from opponents to keep it from passing, says Steve Mitchell. "Democrats do very well with the class warfare type-issue like this," he said. "The rich would spend a lot of money to protect the rich." In asking why the public would support higher taxes for some people, Bernie Porn says it's about people paying their part. "(It's) because they think they've been getting off without paying their fair share," the pollster said. The Source Interviews with pollsters and representatives of the group behind the "Invest in Mi Kids" petition.
