US news | The Guardian

Pity the poor billionaires – demands for higher taxes must feel hurtful | Arwa Mahdawi

May 12, 2026Center Left

No wonder they are upset by the slogan ‘tax the rich’. Despite their wealth increasing 81% since 2020, they need our emotional support now more than everWon’t anyone think of the poor, poor, billionaires? Their endless money can buy them political power, but it can’t buy them love. Instead of being worshipped by the hoi polloi, titans of industry are denounced! Despised! Disrespected! Insert another D-word of your own!Thankfully, class solidarity is strong among the super-rich. Steve Roth bravely brought attention to the plight of his fellow billionaires during a recent earnings call. “I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ … spit out with anger and contempt by politicians … to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs,” the Vornado Realty Trust CEO said. Continue reading...

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Pay-to-play cycle behind GOP's corporate tax cuts exposed in new report

Raw Story

6 hours ago

Pay-to-play cycle behind GOP's corporate tax cuts exposed in new report

Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company’s profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting “the largest tax cuts in American history,” not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.“Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill,” the report states.Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.“Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents,” Unrig Our Economy’s report observes.The report also points out that Bresnahan “owned stock in every single one” of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.“This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk,” the report notes.Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy’s campaign director, said in a statement that “one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks.”“Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report,” said Tal. “Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations.”

Far Left

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Conservative Catches CNN Host Abby Phillip in a Glaring Hypocrisy as She Defends Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Absurd Demand on Air Conditioning (Video)

The Gateway Pundit

7 hours ago

Conservative Catches CNN Host Abby Phillip in a Glaring Hypocrisy as She Defends Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Absurd Demand on Air Conditioning (Video)

Notorious CNN host Abby Phillip's efforts to defend communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's demand for air conditioning went sideways when one of her guests caught her in a huge hypocrisy. The post Conservative Catches CNN Host Abby Phillip in a Glaring Hypocrisy as She Defends Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Absurd Demand on Air Conditioning (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Far Right

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Billionaire Trump ally melts down in spat with pope: ‘Working for Chinese communists”

Raw Story

8 hours ago

Billionaire Trump ally melts down in spat with pope: ‘Working for Chinese communists”

Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his criticisms of artificial intelligence.According to a Thursday report from CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” when he released a 42,000-word encyclical that called for strict regulation of AI, a technology that the pontiff said heightens the “risk of dehumanization” throughout the world.Thiel argued that this sort of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the “race” to build more advanced AI to China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the pope is essentially “working for the Chinese communists” by trying to tap the brakes on AI development.Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long decried AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been delivering a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters From Leo newsletter, noted on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be “a manifestation of the Antichrist.”Thiel has said that he instructed Vice President JD Vance, a longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign, to ignore the pope’s moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.“Thiel seeded the vice president’s Catholic faith,” Hale wrote, “and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government.”In addition to his attacks on the pope, Thiel also warned about “a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.Thiel said that this “takeover” would doom the US, arguing that “when the Democratic Party goes, this country is over,” according to CNN.The New York Times reported in May that Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he’s created a “foothold” for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by ideologically likeminded libertarian President Javier Milei.“Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B,” the Times reported. “Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.”

Far Left

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How young people feel about American identity, on the nation's 250th birthday

NPR Topics: News

10 hours ago

How young people feel about American identity, on the nation's 250th birthday

Listen to the best student podcasts about what "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" means for young people today.

Center

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How Americans Are Feeling About the U.S. as the Country Turns 250

TIME

12 hours ago

How Americans Are Feeling About the U.S. as the Country Turns 250

With the country's landmark Semiquincentennial anniversary approaching, polls show that many Americans are harboring negative feelings about the state of the U.S.––and its future.

Center Left

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So much for Lakers’ big offseason … LA fans left with sinking feeling

New York Post

Yesterday

So much for Lakers’ big offseason … LA fans left with sinking feeling

The flame was lit when the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic in February 2025, a generational player who could put the team atop the NBA again.

Right

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Germans must now have doctor’s note to call in sick to work: ‘Extraordinarily high levels of sick leave’

New York Post

Yesterday

Germans must now have doctor’s note to call in sick to work: ‘Extraordinarily high levels of sick leave’

Under Germany’s former policy, workers were allowed to take up to six weeks of paid leave for an illness. That's on top of the six weeks of vacation time that most employees get.

Right

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SCOTUS Pasting Birth Tourism Into The Constitution Demands A Legal System Rebuild

The Federalist

Yesterday

SCOTUS Pasting Birth Tourism Into The Constitution Demands A Legal System Rebuild

That a court with six Republican-appointed justices could hand down such a patently un-American decision is an indictment of America's rogue legal system.

Far Right

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Pity the poor billionaires – demands for higher taxes must feel hurtful | Arwa Mahdawi

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Pity the poor billionaires – demands for higher taxes must feel hurtful | Arwa Mahdawi

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