Home Front: Politix | |
DOGE gains access to vast [HHS] child support database with revealing income info | |
2025-03-09 | |
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Elon Musk's DOGE has been granted access to a sensitive child support database by the Department of Health and Human Services. The landmark move was approved by the HHS, now headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite protests from career employees within the department, according to the Washington Post. The huge government database contains swaths of personal income data from Americans across the country, and it was initially created with the intention of enforcing child support payments. An HHS official told the Post that DOGE agents requested 'read only' access to the database, and were required to take 'necessary trainings' before they were allowed into it. The official said the Administration for Children and Families, which oversaw the database, 'supports DOGE’s efforts to improve efficiency and data quality to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.' 'ACF will continue to assist DOGE in efforts to strengthen the programs it runs,' the anonymous official said. Insiders reportedly saw DOGE's access of the child support database as part of its efforts to crackdown on wasteful federal payments to Americans, with their attempts to access IRS data previously halted by federal law. The child support database may offer similar information on tax records and federal benefits that could highlight duplicate or fraudulent payments that may have been previously missed by the separation of huge federal agencies. According to HHS insiders who spoke with the Post, a career civil servant protested allowing DOGE agents into the child support database, but that person has since left the department. Civil servants in multiple agencies have objected to DOGE's efforts to obtain sensitive government data since Donald Trump re-took the White House, amid fears the new department could overstep important safety guardrails. DOGE was reportedly especially interested in accessing a component of the child support database known as the National Directory of New Hires, which shows hiring data nationwide. The controversial new government agency has sparked backlash for its 'chainsaw approach' to cutting government spending, with critics claiming legitimate, needed government programs have been slashed alongside waste. After being rebuffed by the IRS as some opponents argue DOGE may recklessly access sensitive data, the department claims accessing such databases is necessary to root out issues deep within the federal government. As DOGE's access to the child support database was reported on Friday, Democrats urged the department to fully explain the move and reveal how many Americans 'have had their confidential information received or accessed.' 'It is essentially an end-run around the confidential taxpayer information protected by the IRS,' Congressman Richard Neal told the Post. Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote a letter to RFK Jr. and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging the White House to lead with transparency. 'No one, including DOGE, should be rummaging around in the confidential information of private citizens at any agency where the protected information resides,' Neal added.
It appeared this week that Trump heard criticisms of Musk's slash-and-burn approach as he told his cabinet leaders that they alone are in charge of hiring and firing employees within their departments, not Musk. 'DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing,' Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social. The president abruptly assembled his Cabinet on Thursday amid rising scrutiny over how much power Musk wields over the U.S. government. It appears Trump told his top leaders that they need to be more selective if they continue to conduct clear-outs of their workforce. He said that instead of taking a 'hatchet' approach, secretaries should instead use a 'scalpel' for 'surgical' precision over who they dismiss. The news from HHS comes just days after the agency controversially announced that the CDC will study the potential link between vaccines and autism. Two sources told Reuters the agency is planning a large study into the long disproven connection. However, it is unclear whether newly appointed health secretary RFK Jr., who has long been skeptical of vaccines, is involved in the planned study or how it would be carried out. The bombshell move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks in US history, with more than 150 cases across the country and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. Experts believe the outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the US. Kennedy, whose role includes authority over the CDC, has long sowed doubt over the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, along with Covid shots made by Pfizer and Moderna. However, he did make a U-turn move earlier this week when he urged people to get the shot to prevent measles. | |
Link |
-Land of the Free |
House Democrats Vote to Release Donald Trump's Tax Returns |
2022-12-22 |
![]() The committee’s vote came after chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) started a lengthy court battle in 2019 to review Trump’s tax returns. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to block an appeals court order ruling that he turn over his tax returns and financial information to the committee, ABC News reported. Members of the Ways and Means Committee met behind closed doors on Tuesday for more than three hours before ultimately voting along party lines, 24-16, to release Trump’s tax records. The committee reportedly voted to release the transcript of the closed-door proceedings when appropriate. The committee did not clarify how and when Trump’s tax records will be released but did announce there will be two days to redact sensitive information before anything is released. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung blasted the committee’s decision and accused the Democrats of "playing a political game." |
Link |
-Great Cultural Revolution |
Roberts delays handover of Trump tax returns to House panel |
2022-11-01 |
![]() Roberts' order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump's emergency appeal to the high court, filed Monday. Without court intervention, the tax returns could have been provided as early as Thursday by the Treasury Department to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. Roberts gave the committee until Nov. 10 to respond. The chief justice handles emergency appeals from the nation's capital, where the fight over Trump's taxes has been going on since 2019. Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping. If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could potentially delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House in the fall election, they could drop the records request. The temporary delay imposed by Roberts is the third such order issued by justices in recent days in cases related to Trump. The court separately is weighing Sen. Lindsey Graham's emergency appeal to avoid having to testify before a Georgia grand jury that is investigating potential illegal interference by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election in the state. Also before the court is an emergency appeal from Arizona Republican party chairwoman Kelli Ward to prevent the handover of phone records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The House Ways and Means panel and its chairman, Democrat Richard Neal of Massachusetts, first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s audit program and tax law compliance by the former president. A federal law says the Internal Revenue Service “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers. The Justice Department, under the Trump administration, had defended a decision by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued. After President Joe Biden took office, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015-2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the Treasury Department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court. Then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation. That case, too, went to the Supreme Court, which rejected Trump’s argument that he had broad immunity as president. Trump had most recently sought the justices’ intervention in a legal dispute stemming from the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August. The court rejected that appeal. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
Key Democrat's Threat Makes Perfect Case for Why Republicans Must Retake the House in November |
2022-08-13 |
[REDSTATE] If there were ever a clearer red-flag warning why the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives must be unceremoniously kicked to the curb in the November midterm elections, I cannot recall it. But I am surprised that a key Democrat just purposely issued a beauty — for multiple reasons. Democratic Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the powerful chairman of the House Boodle Central, suggested that the House would increase tax rates if his party remains in power following the upcoming midterm elections this fall, according to a congressional news hound. "I do think there’s a chance here to address some fundamental tax reform issues," Neal said. Incidentally, ever notice how Democrats use buzzwords and phrases like " tax reform," "invest," "fair share," and other nicey-nicey sounding ideas, solely for the purpose of exploiting and pandering to the left, when in reality, they mean "tax increases," "spending more taxpayer money and/or increasing the national debt," and "sticking to the rich"? And rank-and-file Democrat voters eat it up, every time. The late great comedian George Carlin said it best: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." The Democrat Party has known — and exploited — that reality for more than six decades. According to Eric Wasson, a congressional news hound for Bloomberg News, Neal said the Democrats will attempt to raise both corporate and individual tax rates in 2023. Related: Richard Neal: 2019-11-30 López Obrador tries again to persuade the Speaker to accept a new trade agreement. Richard Neal: 2019-10-04 As The Ukraine Whistleblower Story Falters, Dems/Media Have Another Flawed Story Lined Up And Ready To Go Richard Neal: 2019-07-04 House Democrats Sue to Obtain Donald Trump’s Tax Returns |
Link |
Caribbean-Latin America |
López Obrador tries again to persuade the Speaker to accept a new trade agreement. |
2019-11-30 |
[WSJ] The Speaker of the House who called a border wall with Mexico "an immorality" is still sitting on a Mexican request to approve a new trade agreement. What is the morality of ignoring this key priority of our southern neighbors? In a letter this week, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador takes another shot at persuading Mrs. Pelosi to accept yes for an answer on a union-friendly renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement: Dear Madam Speaker: Following up on my letter dated October 8, I would like to inform you that, with approval of our 2020 federal budget, which includes appropriations for implementing the labor law reforms that I have promoted, we have fully met our commitments regarding the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). A bona fide leftist, Mr. López Obrador by now must be wondering how many of the Speaker’s liberal allies he needs to lobby to get this deal done. Writes the Mexican president: I reiterate here what I have said in my conversations with the Congressional delegation led by Representative Richard Neal, Chairman of the Boodle Central, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, regarding a key concern that has been raised: you can be assured that we will fulfill our labor-related commitments. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
As The Ukraine Whistleblower Story Falters, Dems/Media Have Another Flawed Story Lined Up And Ready To Go |
2019-10-04 |
[Redstate] The Ukraine whistleblower story has been disintegrating all week. It really took a dive yesterday when it was revealed that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) had prior knowledge of the complaint while publicly he was professing otherwise. But the Washington Post dropped a story tonight that suggests Democrats may have an even more flawed story lined up in the box. The WaPo claims: Ah, the “if true” standard strikes again. If true, unicorns can fly. Thirdhand hearsay. Journalism at its finest. Meanwhile, the WaPo admits that they themselves have not been able to confirm that anything wrong happened. “The Post has been unable to verify the allegation in the whistleblower’s complaint of improper communication between Treasury and IRS on the tax audit program.” But hey, it’s cool, we’ll run with it anyway. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
House Democrats Sue to Obtain Donald Trump’s Tax Returns |
2019-07-04 |
![]() ...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies... in an effort to obtain President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... ’s tax returns. The committee, headed up by Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), said it doesn’t have to explain its reasons for seeking President Trump’s tax return information. The panel stated that the administration has defied a subpoena for the documents "in order to shield President Trump’s tax return information from Congressional scrutiny." Further, politicians said it’s investigating tax law compliance by the president, among other things. "In refusing to comply with the statute, Defendants have mounted an extraordinary attack on the authority of Congress to obtain information needed to conduct oversight of Treasury, the IRS, and the tax laws on behalf of the American people who participate in the nation’s voluntary tax system," reads the lawsuit. "The Committee has been unable to evaluate President Trump’s claims about the audit program or investigate its other concerns because the President has declined to follow the practice of every elected President since Richard Nixon of voluntarily disclosing their tax returns," court filing state. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix | |
Liberal group presses Democratic chairman to file lawsuit for Trump's tax returns quickly | |
2019-06-20 | |
![]() liberal groupStand Up America 501(c)(4) non-profit organization founded in the weeks after the 2016 U.S. presidential election to resist Donald Trump's announced on Wednesday that it's launching a new campaign to pressure House Boodle Central Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) to immediately file a lawsuit over the Treasury Department's failure to comply with his requests for President Trump's tax returns. Stand Up America said that its campaign will involve volunteers sending text messages to people in Neal's district, urging them to contact the congressman's office to demand that he promptly file the lawsuit. Stand Up America's new effort comes one month after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected Neal's subpoena for six years of Trump's tax returns. Earlier this month, the House passed a resolution that gives committee chairmen more legal authority to enforce subpoenas. In 2016, Trump became the first major party presidential nominee in decades to decline to release his returns, which Democrats say must be examined for instances of corruption or conflict of interest. Neal has taken a careful approach to seeking Trump's tax returns, and he has said that he plans to file a lawsuit in the near future. But some progressives have been frustrated with the pace that Neal has taken on the tax-return issue and want him to move more quickly. "The House of Representatives handed Chairman Neal the power to take Secretary Mnuchin to court to get Trump’s tax returns ‐ and he should use it," Stand Up America front man Ryan Thomas said. "Every day that Neal delays this process further, the Trump administration is able to make a mockery of Congress and deprive the American people of the transparency they deserve." | |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
Justice releases legal opinion backing Treasury's refusal to release Trump tax returns |
2019-06-15 |
[The Hill] The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday released a legal opinion backing up the Treasury Department's decision to reject a request by congressional Democrats for six years of President Trump's tax returns. "While the Executive Branch should accord due deference and respect to congressional requests, Treasury was not obliged to accept the Committee’s stated purpose without question, and based on all the facts and circumstances, we agreed that the Committee lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for its request," Steven Engel, an assistant attorney general in DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, said in the 33-page opinion. The opinion comes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last month rejected a subpoena from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) demanding Trump's personal and business tax returns from 2013 through 2018. When Mnuchin rejected Neal's request, he said he did so upon the advice of DOJ, and that the Justice Department would publish a legal opinion with its advice. Both Mnuchin and Neal have said they expect the tax return issue to end up in the courts. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
Sekulow: Tax return request is using 'the IRS as a political weapon' |
2019-04-08 |
Sekulow told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Congress may request individual citizens’ tax returns only for a "legitimate legislative purpose," which he claimed House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) has not identified. The Supreme Court "has said congressional oversight cannot become law enforcement," Sekulow told Stephanopoulos, saying the request would be using the IRS as "a political weapon" and suggesting it could set a precedent where Republicans could demand Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) tax returns. On Friday, William Consovoy, an outside attorney for Trump, wrote to the Treasury Department's general counsel that the IRS should not release Trump’s tax returns without an opinion from the Justice Department. Trump has claimed an ongoing audit prevents him from releasing the returns. |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
Running in record numbers, US Muslim candidates face backlash |
2018-07-18 |
[DAWN] A liberal woman of colour with zero name recognition and little funding takes down a powerful, long serving congressman from her own political party. When Tahirah Amatul-Wadud heard about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset over US Representative Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary last month, the first-time candidate saw parallels with her own long-shot campaign for Congress in western Massachusetts. The 44-year-old Moslem, African-American civil rights lawyer, who is taking on a 30-year congressman and ranking Democrat on the influential House Boodle Central, says she wasn’t alone, as encouragement, volunteers and donations started pouring in. "We could barely stay on top of the residual love," says Amatul-Wadud, US Representative Richard Neal’s lone challenger in the state’s Sept 4 Democratic primary. "It sent a message to all of our volunteers, voters and supporters that winning is very possible." |
Link |
Home Front: Politix |
Support for Israel runs on party lines |
2010-04-11 |
![]() In the wake of the diplomatic fight that the Obama administration went out of its way to pick with Israel last month, two high-ranking members of the US House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Minority Whip Eric Cantor invited their colleagues to sign a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The letter reaffirmed the signers' commitment to the unbreakable bond'' and extraordinary closeness'' that exists between the United States and Israel, and declared that our valuable bilateral relationship with Israel needs and deserves constant reinforcement.'' It expressed dismay at the highly publicized tensions'' between the White House and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, and pointedly counseled the administration to resolve its differences with Israel quietly, in trust and confidence, as befits longstanding strategic allies.'' The letter was polite, but there was no mistaking the implicit rebuke of the president for treating Israel so shabbily. Nor, one might think, was there any mistaking its bipartisan appeal: It was signed by 333 members of the US House, more than three-fourths of the entire membership. The Hoyer-Cantor letter wasn't the only apparent evidence in recent weeks that American friendliness for Israel crosses party lines. At the national conference of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, for example, two of the featured speakers were US Senators Charles Schumer, a staunch Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, an equally staunch Republican. In a Gallup poll released in February, Israel was one of the five countries most positively viewed by a majority of US citizens: 67 percent expressed a favorable opinion of the Jewish state. And the president's tilt against Israel has been denounced as bluntly by GOP loyalist Liz Cheney (President Obama is playing a reckless game of . . . diminishing America's ties to Israel'') as by lifelong Democrat Ed Koch (It is unimaginable that the president would treat any of our NATO allies, large or small, in such a degrading fashion.'') Peer a little more closely, however, and the wall of pro-Israel solidarity turns out not to be quite so well, solid. Take that Gallup survey, which found that 67 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Israel. The same survey also found that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 63 percent of the public stands with Israel more than quadruple the 15 percent that support the Palestinians. There's not much doubt that the American mainstream is pro-Israel. But look at the disparity that emerges when those results are sorted by party affiliation. While support for Israel vs. the Palestinians has climbed to a stratospheric 85 percent among Republicans, the comparable figure for Democrats is an anemic 48 percent. (It was 60 percent for independents.) And behind Israel's Top 5'' favorability rating lies a gaping partisan rift: 80 percent of Republicans but just 53 percent of Democrats have positive feelings about the world's only Jewish country. Similarly, it is true that 333 US House members, a hefty bipartisan majority, endorsed the robustly pro-Israel Hoyer-Cantor letter to Clinton. But there were only seven Republicans who declined to sign the letter, compared with 91 Democrats more than a third of the entire Democratic caucus. (Six Massachusetts Democrats were among the non-signers: John Olver, Richard Neal, John Tierney, Ed Markey, Michael Capuano, and Bill Delahunt.) From Zogby International, meanwhile, comes still more proof of the widening gulf between the major parties on the subject of Israel. In a poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute last month, respondents were asked whether Obama should steer a middle course'' in the Middle East code for not clearly supporting Israel. There is a strong divide on this question,'' Zogby reported, with 73 percent of Democrats agreeing that the President should steer a middle course while only 24 percent of Republicans hold the same opinion.'' Taken as a whole, America's identification with Israel is as stout as ever the special relationship'' between the two nations still runs deep. But the old political consensus that brought Republicans and Democrats together in support of the Middle East's only flourishing democracy is breaking down. Republican friendship for Israel has never been more rock-solid. Democratic friendship especially in the age of Obama is growing steadily less so. |
Link |