Facts About Donald Trump And His Administration

Some of the major themes of Trump 2.0's agenda are quite simply contrary to the law and Trump is just such as bad President and bad person.

* Opposition to the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians is not antisemitic.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has specifically held for decades that antisemitic speech is protected the First Amendment. National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977).

* Equity and inclusion have been legally required in employment, at least since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in public education since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

* Diversity achieved by breaking down barriers to employment and education for women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities is legal, and arguably mandated by U.S. Civil Rights laws.

* Diversity achieved by favorable treatment of women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities, relative to a meritocratic standard is legal to overcome past discrimination.

* No U.S. law is a valid basis for removing books and websites that laud the achievements of historical women, people of diverse sexual orientation, minorities, and people with disabilities, or depict these individuals in fiction. Indeed, multiple court cases applying existing U.S. law have held that this kind of censorship in public libraries is illegal, such as a recent case involving the Elizabeth school district in Colorado.

* None of the Trump 2.0's political appointments have been remotely meritocratic, contrary to his claim that he wants to end affirmative action.

* There is no legal basis for the U.S. federal government to prohibit educational institutions, public or private, at any legal, from teaching critical race theory.

* Discrimination against white, straight men in employment and education is modest at best, and mostly, non-existent.

* Discrimination against Christians in the U.S. is basically non-existent, and, instead, for the most part, the U.S. sees significant discrimination against non-Christians.

* Christian religious freedom is not a valid basis for discrimination against homosexuals and transgender people by organizations that are not religious organizations.

* All levels of government in the United States are strictly forbidden from supporting any particular religion, or religion at all, by the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

* It has been illegal since the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 for the President to refuse to spend Congressionally appropriated funds.

* Generally applicable rules and regulations of the Executive Branch of government in the United States can only be adopted after notice and hearing according to the procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act.

* Speech, legislative lobbying, and legal action against President Trump are protected by the First Amendment and it is illegal for President Trump to retaliate against law firms and individual for doing so.

* Federal employees who are not political employees or lawyers cannot legally be fired by the President without good cause.

* The President has no constitutional authority over employees of Congress or the judicial branch or employees of non-profit corporations formed by the U.S. government, and has only the authority granted to him by federal statutes to do so.

* The President has absolutely no legal authority to defy a court order, even if the legal basis for issuing that order was incorrect and it is later overturned on appeal. Despite this, President Trump has intentionally defied court orders more than once in his first four months in office.

* The U.S. Constitution requires the directors of federal agencies to be nominated by the President and approved by the U.S. Senate, or, when a Congressionally approved law provides otherwise, by a federal judge or a U.S. Senate approved officer of the United States.

* It is illegal for the President to use his office to promote a private business in his official capacity.

* The U.S. Constitution expressly prohibits federal employees, including the President, from receiving gifts or other private benefits from holding a public office without Congressional approval on a case by case basis.

* The international war crime of "aggression" prohibits the U.S. from invading Canada, Greenland, or Panama at this time.

* White South Africans are not facing genocide in South Africa and do not meet the legal criteria to be classified as refugees. The claims that White South Africans are been systemically murdered on account of their identity in South Africa are not true, and the most compelling pieces of evidence the President Trump presented in support of that claim in a White House meeting with the President of South Africa were actually evidence of mass killings of black women in the Democratic Republic of Congo and evidence of symbolic political protests in South Africa in which no one was physically harmed.

* Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, is not a gang members and evidence relied upon by President Trump to support that claim was photoshopped onto a picture of Mr. Garcia.

* The Alien Enemies Act relied upon President Trump for man deportations is not a valid legal basis to deport anyone because the U.S. is not experiencing an invasion within the meaning of the act as President Trump claims, as multiple judges, some appointed by President Trump himself have held, and as an investigation by U.S. government intelligence agencies that he commissioned established.

* The Alien Enemies Act does not legally authorize deportation without due process.

* Only Congress may authorize the suspension of the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus, and only in places where the federal courts are unable to operate. See Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866).

* A core principle of federal law is that every person, whether or not that person is a U.S. citizen, and whether or not that person is a criminal or terrorist, is entitled to due process before being detained or deported.

* It is a core principle of U.S. constitutional law that every person born in a U.S. state, who does not have diplomatic immunity at the time, is a U.S. citizen. This includes the children of illegal immigrants. No U.S. court has ever ruled to the contrary since the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave rise to this right, was adopted.

* It is illegal for the President to fire members of an independent agency board without cause. Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled that the U.S. Constitution allows the U.S. Congress to enact laws limiting the ability of the President of the United States to fire the executive officials of an independent agency that is quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial in nature.

* The President's authority to unilaterally impose tariffs without an act of Congress doing so is very doubtful, and mere trade deficits with a country are not a valid legal basis for doing so.

* The President has a legal duty to faithfully execute the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States.

* Every public official in the United States has a sworn duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

* The fact that the President has been held to have immunity from criminal and civil liability for his official acts does not mean that the President is legally entitled to violate the law, it just limited the legal remedies that are available when he does.

* The fact that the President has been held to have immunity from criminal and civil liability for his official acts does not mean that the President's subordinates charged with carrying out the President's orders also have immunity from criminal and civil liability for their official acts, if they are not judges or prosecutors and the claims are related to their participation in the legal process.

* Trump admitted on TV shortly after he announced tariffs to helping his billionaire friends engaged in insider trading on his tariff news. Many members of his administration and many Republicans in Congress have engaged in insider trading.

* Trump has sold access to the White House to mostly foreign investors in a meme coin he introduced after taking office for a second time. The coin has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump, enriched rich foreign investors, and produces big losses for almost all ordinary investors in the meme coin.

* Trump had basically a commercial for Tesla cars on the White House lawn after Elon Musk's political involvement (an advisor of the President so close that he has been called the co-President) with Trump and Nazi and far right, and Trump has quashed about a dozen federal investigations of Musk's companies, awarded Musk's companies many billions of dollars of government contracts without the usual government bidding process, and has insisted that countries do business with Musk's companies in trade negotiations.

* Members of Congress have an express legal right to inspect immigration detention facilities without notice even if the President orders the officials there not to allow them to do so.

* The President does not have the legal authority to revoke a non-profit organization's tax exemption without good cause, and may not do so for legally authorized good cause specific to eligibility to receive non-profit status for reasons not specific to eligibility for non-profit status under the Internal Revenue Code.

* The President does not have the legal authority to deny a higher educational institution the right to admit and teach international students entitled to student visas under the Immigration And Nationality Act without good cause specifically set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act that is specific to eligibility to do so under the INA.

* The President does not have the legal authority to revoke a student visa, or any other person's immigration status, based upon the lawful free speech.

* It is a crime for IRS officials to share confidential tax information with the government to enforce non-criminal laws.

* It is a crime to use military personnel to enforce the laws within the United States. The law that says so is called the Posse Comitatus Act.

* The President does not have the legal right to blacklist a news reporting agency because he doesn't agree with the views expressed by that agency.

* Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

* Donald Trump is a legally adjudicated rapist.

* Donald Trump has been found repeatedly by the courts to have engaged in fraud, defamatory conduct, and illegal racial discrimination.

* Donald Trump is wealthy in large part because he inherited a large sum of money from his father.

* Six companies, including casinos, that Trump has owned have filed for bankruptcy.

* Trump's University had to settle a civil case against it for fraud for a large sum of money for fraud that Trump personally participated in.

* Trump's main business organization and one of its main executives were criminally convicted of tax fraud in New York during the most recent Presidential campaign.

* Trump and organizations he is affiliated with are notorious for not paying their bills when due. He is also notorious for not paying his lawyer's bills.

* Donald Trump has multiple multi-million dollar money judgments from courts that are currently enforceable outstanding against him.

* Donald Trump and his current wife have both acted in pornographic films. His current wife's primary employment prior to meeting Donald Trump was as an actress in pornographic films and her visa was obtained in the "genius" category despite the fact that she had no other meaningful professional or educational expertise, and she was not even a particularly success porn star.

* While they are not legally separated, Trump is de facto mostly separated from his wife and is notorious for subtly disrespecting her in public settings.

* Donald Trump paid $100,000 in hush money in an attempt to silence a prostitute he hired and then misreported it on financial statements.

* Donald Trump has repeatedly engaged in adultery during each of his many marriages.

* Donald Trump has publicly stated that he doesn't know if he has a legal duty to obey the U.S. Constitution despite twice swearing oaths to uphold it as President of the United States.

* Donald Trump is legally prohibited from operating any business or charity in the State of New York as a result of separate business and charitable fraud cases.

* Donald Trump was legally found by a Colorado trial court, in a decision whose factual determinations were affirmed by the Colorado Supreme Court, and which were not found to be incorrect on the merits by the U.S. Supreme Court, to have engaged in an insurrection against the United States that would bar him from holding federal office. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court only on the ground that the provision of the 14th Amendment which bars people who have engaged in insurrections against the United States from holding federal office is not self-executing and must occur in Congressionally authorized legal proceeding (contrary to strong arguments from the language of the U.S. Constitution, the legislative history of the 14th Amendment, and past precedents applying that constitutional provision).

* There is no legal or constitutional way that President Trump can hold the office of President for a third-term.

* There was no credible evidence that President Trump won the Presidential election in 2020, many attorneys who brought claims challenging that election where sanctioned or disbarred for bringing groundless and frivolous claims, and at least one elections official in Colorado was convicted of multiple state election law crimes in an effort to create that impression. Fox News paid more than $800 million to settle defamation claims to that effect in a lawsuit filed by a voting machine maker on the brink of trial in connection with those claims and another very strong defamation claim against it from another voting machine maker is currently pending.

* In President Trump's first four months in office, approximately four dozen court rulings have held that one or more of his Executive Orders is illegal. No President in U.S. history has issued Executive Orders at such a high rate, or had such a large percentage of his Executive Orders held to be illegal.

* Trump has, in a conspiracy with his physicians, repeated made grossly false statements about his height and weight.

* Trump dodged the draft multiple times during the Vietnam War by procuring a false medical excuse claiming that he had "bone spurs" from a doctor that conspired with him to do so.

* Trump was a transfer student to Wharton Business school whose admission was obtained with donations to the college from his father. It is know for certain that he was not a top student as he has sometimes claimed as he was never on the honor roll. He has jealously kept his academic records from Wharton secret but one of his past professors there characterized him as one of the least academically competent students that he ever had.

* Trump's father was a Ku Klux Klan member and a Nazi supporter.

* Despite Trump's America First trade stance, almost all of the merchandise he sells in his various businesses and for his political campaigns is made outside the United States, mostly in China.

* Many members of Trump's family and some of Trump's businesses have been greatly enriched personally in one-sides transactions meant to curry political favor with him.

* Trump was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, a famous procurer of child prostitutes for the rich and famous including British Prince Andrew, who died in prison after being convicted of related crimes, and Trump was a repeat visitor to Epstein's "sex island" and is shown in pictures surrounded by child prostitutes.

* Trump bragged in a recorded interview of sexually assaulting women.

* Trump has made sexually suggestive comments about his own daughters and was known to have abused his authority as a sponsor of beauty contests for minor girls to watch them undressed in the changing rooms associated with those contests.

* Trump on the campaign trail has mocked a disabled man for being disabled, denigrated veterans and prisoners of war (including Republican Senator John McCain) for being losers, and has encouraged people at his campaign rallies to use violence against hecklers at his rallies.

* Trump went out of his way, prior to being formally involved in politics, to denigrate five teenager who were wrongfully convicted of assault and rape of a jogger in a case occurring in Central Park in New York City in 1989, who were later exonerated by DNA evidence after serving prison terms (New York City later settled the civil case arising from the wrongful convictions for $41 million), and Trump stood by his actions (which may have contributed to their wrongful convictions) after the men were unequivocally exonerated.

* Despite being particularly popular with the Christian right to the point of being viewed as a messiah or saint by some, promoting bible sales to raise funds, and appointing an Evangelical Christian advisor, Trump is not at all religious and knows almost nothing about the Bible or Christian doctrine.

* Both Trump's FBI director and his attorney general in his current term were on the payroll of the Qatari government receiving large amounts of compensation from the Arab oil monarchy shortly before taking their current offices. The Qatari government recently gave Trump a $400 million jet liner for his personal use which his attorney general claimed did not violate constitutional or federal law limitations on receiving personal gifts from foreign governments. Trump's company has been pursuing a multi-billion dollar resort development project in Qatar at the time of this gift.

* No politician in U.S. history has ever publicly made false statements of fact at a rate as high as that of President Trump. Indeed, no one else even comes close.

* Vaccines do not cause autism.

* The measles vaccine is safe, effective, and the most effective way to prevent death or serious long term negative effects from measles.

* Trump's actions since he took office have significantly reduced the number of federal employees available to carry out air traffic control.

* Trump's actions since he took office have significantly reduced the number of federal employees and resources to predict the weather and response to weather related emergencies.

* No President in U.S. history has declined to provide emergency relief authorized by U.S. law to natural disaster victims at the rate that President Trump has in his second term.

* Trump has essentially dismantled federal enforcement of federal laws protecting the civil rights of women, racial minorities, homosexuals, and transgender individuals.

* No President in the history of the United States has made as many absurdly wrong statements of historical fact as Donald Trump (e.g., that there were air based during the American Revolution, or that the U.S. was an ally of the Roman Emperor, or that Mattel is a country).

* In his 2024 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly made knowingly false claims that Haitian refugees in Ohio were stealing and eating cats and dogs, that that public schools were providing free sex change surgeries to transgender children at those schools.

* Many of the pardons issued by Trump have been to people who contributed to his political campaigns.

* Many of the people whom Trump pardoned for January 6, 2021 capitol riot charges have subsequently committed crimes in the four months since he pardoned them.

* President Trump has nominated a convicted felon, who is the father-in-law of one of his children, to be the U.S. ambassador to France.

* No President has had more subordinates and affiliates convicted of crimes than Donald Trump.

* No one other than Donald Trump has been impeached two separate times by the U.S. House of Representatives although neither of those impeachments were upheld by the required two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate (in both cases the vote was largely on party lines, although a number of Republican Senators joined Democrats to convict in the second impeachment trial). In the second impeachment of Donald Trump, 57% of Senators voted to convict, the highest percentage other than the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868 which failed to convict in the face of 35-19 votes to do so in the U.S. Senate when 36 voters were required to convict.

* Trump, in both his first and second terms, was the least popular President in the history of modern polling.

* Trump's anti-vaccination rhetoric, and pseudo-scientific medical claims about COVID-19, and his downplaying of the severity of the COVID-19 led to hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., primarily among elderly Republicans.

* Trump was indicted in four criminal cases which were still being tried during his 2024 Presidential campaign: a federal case arising from his involvement in the January 6, 2021 capitol riot, a federal case arising from his refusal to return top secret nuclear weapons information to the government that he was storing in a bathroom in his Florida resort, a Georgia case involving his illegal attempts to cause election officials there to engage in election fraud to elect him, and a New York State fraud case in which he was convicted of 34 felonies (but given no substantive criminal sentence in a sentencing hearing conducted after he was elected). The confidential records case was presided over by a federal judge he personally appointed in Florida, and dismissed on the legally dubious grounds that the special prosecutor statute was unconstitutional, with the case dismissed because Justice Department policy prohibits pressing criminal charges against a sitting President. The January 6 case was appealed on the grounds that he had absolute immunity from criminal charges for his official acts, which lower courts unanimously denied but the U.S. Supreme Court with had three justices he personally appointed who did not recuse themselves made the unprecedented decision over a strongly worded dissent that the President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for his official acts. The charges in that cases were revised on remand to limit the case to Trump's unofficial acts (with considerable damning evidence revealed in a final report from the case) and then this federal case was dismissed because Trump was elected President and Justice Department policy is to not prosecute a sitting President.

* Trump routinely dresses inappropriately for state funerals and fell asleep in public during the funeral for Pope Francis.

Mobile Home Anchors

In the movie "Twisters" one of the tornado chasing vehicles has four construction equipment sized augers (i.e. big screws) that it uses to burrow into the gorund and anchor itself in high winds.

A huge problem in tornado and hurricane territory is that mobile homes aren't well anchored, and tend to blow over or away in high winds, because they aren't well anchored to a foundation.

One partial solution to this problem would be to have similar auger anchors to hold mobile homes (or even RVs), which don't have adequate foundations themselves, firmly to the ground.

American Suburbs Are Still Stupid

 

A Policy Take On The "Big Beautiful Bill"

So, what is good or bad about the Trump 2.0 budget bill called the "Big Beautiful Bill."

1. The Medicaid and Food Stamps cuts are catastrophic and hurt the most needed in a bill that lavishes benefits on the rich and there are many other bad cuts to spending (and to the Obamacare health insurance tax credit):

Major Spending Cuts

. . . 

Changes to Medicaid and Health Insurance Marketplaces: The Energy and Commerce Committee’s proposal includes changes to major federal health programs. It would cut Medicaid spending by imposing work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, increasing eligibility checks to twice a year, reducing the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for states covering undocumented immigrants, introducing cost-sharing for Medicaid expansion enrollees, banning new or increased provider taxes used to draw federal funds, and capping provider payments at Medicare rates. It would also codify proposed changes to the federally subsidized Health Insurance Marketplaces that would reduce participation in the Marketplaces. These proposals would reduce the deficit by more than $900 billion over the budget window.

Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): The Agriculture Committee’s proposal would reduce spending on SNAP by more than $290 billion over ten years. The bill would shift a significant portion of SNAP benefit costs to states with a new cost-sharing formula linked to payment error rates. It would also create additional work documentation requirements, limit the growth of the Thrifty Food Plan, shift administrative costs to states, and make other changes to reduce federal SNAP costs.

Changes to student loans: The Education and Workforce Committee’s proposal would eliminate subsidized and income-driven loan repayment plans, impose new overall limitations on student borrowing, and tighten Pell Grant eligibility. Altogether, the Education and Workforce Committee’s proposal would reduce spending by $350 billion over the budget window. Under federal budget accounting rules, the lifetime subsidy costs of student loans are measured on an accrual basis and recorded up front. As a result, almost $200 billion of the Committee’s total savings are recorded in the budget immediately in Fiscal Year 2025.

3. The cuts to the Obamacare health insurance tax credit are very bad for middle class people, especially the self-employed, even though the original design of those tax credits is far too clunky and complicated.

4. Many of the extended provision of the Trump 2017 tax bill are bad, including:

* Lowering the corporate tax rate to 21%, which is bad tax policy.

* The pass through entity tax break (which is increased from 21% to 23%), which never made sense.

* Ending most casualty loss deductions.

* Ending most cost of earning income deductions.

* Severely curtailing the state and local tax deduction (although this is modestly relaxed increasing the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $30,000 from $10,000 for taxpayers with income under $400,000, but limiting taxpayers’ ability to use state pass-through entity workarounds for the individual SALT cap).

* Opportunity Zones were a clunky and bureaucratic tax policy that was always a mechanically bad way to achieve the desirable end of encouraging economic development in depressed areas.

Broadly speaking, many of the revenue raisers in that bill abridged good tax policies, and the giveaways to the wealthy and publicly held companies were outrageous. We have a big budget deficit primarily because of these tax giveaways to the rich. One leading model summarizes the budget impacts as follows:

Some of the new tax provisions break down as follows (from the same source):

5. It makes the giveaway in gift and estate taxes worse, increasing the lifetime exemption for the estate, gift, and generation skipping transfer taxes to $15 million in 2026 (indexed to inflation thereafter). It is currently $13.99 million indexed for inflation, which is also too large. It would have fallen to about $7 million in 2026 without this bill.

6. A $4,000 tax deduction per person age 65 or older, simply because of their age, is bad policy. Excluding Social Security payments from income would have been a better policy and closer to the campaign rhetoric but more expensive. This would have cost a $1 trillion over ten years v. $200 billion if the bonus deduction for seniors were made permanent.

7. The new tax break for car loan interest probably violates our World Trade Organization treaty requirements and tax incentives to take out personal debt on depreciating personal assets. is bad tax policy. This is why Ronald Reagan eliminated them in the 1986 tax bill and why they haven't been reinstated. The $35 billion tax savings over four years doesn't justify it (and higher car prices due to tariffs undermine the policy).

8. The MAGA account $1,000 tax credit for newborns is clunky and bureaucratic and a political cheap shot, when it could have been a simple extra child tax credit.

9. The tip deduction, by continuing to make tips subject to payroll taxes and state and local income taxes, for a group that pays little or nothing in federal income taxes, is pretty meaningless. The extension of the employer payroll tax tip credit from the food and beverage business to the beauty services industry (hair car, manicures, etc.) is a step in the right direction. But the whole treatment of tipped income is clumsy and doesn't address the real concerns. Tips should be classified as self-employment income rather than as wages and salaries, and any tax break on tips should extent to self-employment taxation.

10. The tax plan for net investment income from large college endowments is politically presented as a way to punish higher education as part of a larger assault on higher education by Trump, also attacking foreign students and immigrant professors, trying to regulate DEI in higher education without legal authority to do so, doing serious harm to the military academies, and baselessly threatening university tax exemptions. Honestly, a tax on the net investment income all of non-profits (which already is in place for political organizations) wouldn't be a horrible thing. But singling out colleges and universities, which are less abusive than other kinds of non-profits, is problematic. A provision granting the President great freedom to revoke non-profit status based upon the policies and speech of the non-profit is also deeply problematic (and has been removed from the bill for now).

11. The bans on state and local regulation of AI for ten years is at a minimum over broad.

12. The phase out of the environmental tax credits of the Inflation Reduction Act aren't necessarily bad as a matter of tax policy but aren't good as a matter of environmental policy. Tax laws that pick winners and losers aren't a great idea and should be temporary. Tariffs on imports of electric vehicles and solar panels, especially from China, however, add insult to injury.

13. Proposed payments to farmers hurt by tariffs, while netting out the harm to farmers, is much worse than not imposing tariffs in the first place. It has left farmers irrevocably harmed as foreign buyers have found new suppliers, and hits Americans with not only tariffs paid but also with taxpayer funds to counteract them.

14. Imposing new reciprocal taxes for "unfair" foreign taxes sounds murky and like an invitation to horrible foreign policy.

Trump's Tax Proposals For Tips, Overtime, And Social Security Are Skimpy

Proposed tax breaks for tips, overtime pay, seniors, and car loan interest, are stingier than the rhetoric Republican politicians have made about them would imply.

The proposed tax breaks for tips, overtime, Social Security, and car loan interest are skimpier than the political rhetoric from Trump and the GOP would suggest. All would be from 2025 to 2028 only. All require the taxpayer to have a Social Security number (which is designed to impose a penalty tax on immigrants not authorized to work).

Tips and overtime would still be subject to payroll taxes and state and local income taxes. There would be an above the line tax deduction for them on federal income tax returns for tips and overtime. For overtime, it would only cover the 1/2 hour per hour worked of additional overtime pay rates, not the full 1 and 1/2 hours of overtime pay per hour worked. The tip and overtime deductions are not allowed for taxpayers with incomes over $160,000 in a "cliff rule" rather than with a phase out. 

The employer tip credit against certain payroll taxes is expanded from the food and beverage industry to the beauty services industry.

The Social Security tax break is actually unrelated to Social Security. It would be an up to $4,000 added to the standard deduction for those who use the additional standard deduction for older taxpayers (age 65+) per senior, or an itemized deduction of up to $4,000 for taxpayers of that age who itemize (which can't be refunded and carried over). It starts to phase out at $150,000 for married couples and $75,000 for other taxpayers.

The above the line deduction of up to $10,000 for car loan interest would apply only to cars whose assembly was completed in the U.S. on purchase money car loans for cars purchased in 2025 or later. It starts to phase out at $200,000 for married couples and $100,000 for other taxpayers.

The anticipated total revenue impact of these tax breaks is quite modest, because the limitations keep the budget cost of the tax cuts much lower than they would have been otherwise.

The Tax Foundation summarizes these tax breaks, and some others for individual taxpayers, as follows:

The standard deduction and child tax credit just tweak the usual moving parts of the tax code. The above the line deduction for charitable deductions is, needless to say, modest. The tax credit for contributions to scholarship granting organizations is an expensive back door national school voucher program. The MAGA accounts for newborns is a gimmicky and unnecessarily complicated way to provide an extra $1,000 on time tax credit for newborns.

Some of the harsh provisions of the 2017 tax bill, like the limitation on the state and local tax deduction and the near elimination of the casualty loss deduction, are extended.

No Tax On Tips 

Trump initially promised to end taxes on tips while campaigning in June in the swing state of Nevada. The hospitality industry is huge in Nevada, making up more than 20% of jobs in the state. The pledge didn't make it into the draft bill but did make it into the chairman's amendment, introduced on Monday.

As proposed, tip income would be temporarily deductible—only for tax years 2025 through 2028—for individuals who work in what are considered “traditionally and customarily tipped industries.” (According to the proposal, that would only include industries that accepted tips on or before December 31, 2024—Treasury is directed to make a list of those that qualify.)

Some media and social media reports I've seen say that this is not allowed for non-itemizers, but the bill language states that it is an "above the line deduction" available to non-itemizers. But many tipped workers only pay FICA payroll taxes and state income taxes on tips anyway (due to the large standard deduction and the fact that many tipped workers work part-time).

Self-employed persons, like Uber and Lyft drivers, would also qualify for the break as currently written.

Highly compensated employees (those who make over $160,000 in 2025) would be excluded. And, in a nod to concerns that all of the sudden, clever tax lawyers, business owners and others could wiggle their way into a no-tax-on-tips zone, Treasury is directed to craft regulations or other guidance to “prevent reclassification of income as qualified tips... to prevent abuse of the deduction.”

It's important to note that this is a federal income tax deduction, not an exclusion. That means that tips would still be reportable—and taxable at the state and local level. It also means that tips would remain subject to payroll taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, for employees.

Employers will get a break, however, via a tip credit. The deduction, which has been in place since 1993 for restaurants, is known as the 45B credit and allows for a rebate on the entire employer side of FICA taxes on tips. The instructions for claiming the 45B credit made clear it covers tips to employers involved in "providing, delivering, or serving food or beverages for consumption." The result is that tips provided elsewhere—like in salons—are subject to payroll taxes for both employees and employers, even though not a penny goes to the salon.

The most recent tax bill proposes to change that by extending the benefit to the beauty industry. Under the amendment, section 45B would be amended to include barbers and hair care, nail care, esthetics, and body and spa treatments. 

No Tax On Overtime

Trump also promised to eliminate taxes on overtime pay. That pledge was originally made in September 2024, during a speech in Tucson, Arizona. That break also didn't make it into the draft bill, but did make it into the chairman's amendment.

As proposed, workers who receive overtime would not have to pay taxes on that extra compensation. For purposes of the rule, overtime compensation is defined as the amount paid in excess of the employee’s regular rate—only the overtime compensation is part of the break. While taxpayers wouldn’t have to itemize to take advantage of the benefit, it would be temporary—only for tax years 2025 through 2028.

This tax break is also proposed as a deduction, not an exclusion. That means that overtime pay would still be reportable, and, as with tips, overtime pay would remain subject to payroll taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, for employees.

Quick Payroll Tax Primer

Confused about the employer versus employee sides of payroll taxes? For wage earners, Social Security and Medicare taxes are called FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) and are taken out of your paycheck. Taxes on self-employment income are sometimes called SECA (Self-Employment Contributions Act) taxes since self-employed persons pay both the employee and employer contributions.

If you're employed, you pay Social Security tax at a rate of 6.2% as the employee, and your employer pays the same tax rate on your behalf. If you're self-employed, you are responsible for both parts.

Social Security taxes are subject to a wage cap. That means you pay Social Security taxes on your earnings until you hit the magic number. After that, your wages are no longer subject to Social Security taxes. For 2025, the magic number is $176,100. That means that whether you make $1,000 or $100,000, you will pay Social Security taxes on your income. But if you earn $176,101? You'll pay Social Security taxes on the first $176,100, but not on the extra dollar. And if you earn $1,176,100? Same result: you'll pay Social Security taxes on $176,100, but not on the extra million.

In contrast, all wages are subject to Medicare taxes. If you're employed, you pay Medicare tax of 1.45% as the employee, and your employer kicks in tax at the same rate. As before, if you're self-employed, you'll pay both portions, for a total tax rate of 2.9%.

High-income taxpayers are also subject to an additional Medicare tax of 0.9% tacked onto wages that exceed $200,000 for single filers—those thresholds are $125,000 for married taxpayers filing separately and $250,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly.

If you're a wage earner, your employer collects your Social Security and Medicare payments and remits both their portion and your share to the government. Self-employed persons pay the IRS directly. Retaining payroll taxes on tips and overtime may mean a bigger bite at tax time, but there is an upside: No matter who pays, these taxes are credited toward your retirement benefits. 

No Tax On Social Security

Last year, also on the campaign trail, Trump promised to exempt Social Security income from tax. The idea was popular, but likely because many people do not understand how Social Security income is taxed. The majority of people who get Social Security do not pay federal income tax on those benefits—according to the Social Security Administration, only about 48% of people pay federal income taxes on their benefits (though some studies suggest that the percentage is higher).

If your only source of income is your Social Security check, your benefits are generally not taxable. You may not even need to file a federal income tax return.

If you receive income from other sources, your benefits would not be taxed unless your combined income exceeds the base amount for your filing status, and then, the taxable amount is based on income. No one pays federal income tax on more than 85% of their Social Security benefits.

There is no language in the draft bill or the amendment that would further exempt Social Security from tax. However, the proposal does include a new—also temporary—deduction of $4,000 for the tax years 2025 through 2028.

The deduction would be available to taxpayers who itemize and those who claim the standard deduction. It would begin to phase out once income hits $150,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly and $75,000 for all other taxpayers (disappearing completely when modified adjusted income reaches $350,000 for married taxpayers and $175,000 for all other taxpayers).

To claim the deduction, you would have to have a Social Security number and, if married, your spouse would also have to have a Social Security number.

The deduction is not the same as a refundable credit. That means you will not receive a benefit if you have little to no taxable income—the case for most Social Security recipients. The deduction simply disappears. Realistically, the deduction won't help seniors with little to no other income sources outside of Social Security and will primarily benefit those with income in addition to Social Security. 

What Comes Next

You can see the original draft version of the bill before the markup here. The Smith amendment version is here.

The bill is still working its way through the House where Republicans hold a slim majority. Even if it's approved, the House bill must conform to the Senate version to be signed into law.

From Forbes.

The proposed car loan interest deduction (which Reagan eliminated in 1986) is explained, here, as follows (and may violate WTO rules):

Who could claim a $10,000 deduction on car-loan interest?

The bill also includes a deduction worth $10,000 on the interest on auto loans for vehicles, if that vehicle’s “final assembly” occurs in the United States. It’s a reflection of the Trump administration’s stated mission to nudge more manufacturing back to America — and then reward consumers for buying American-sourced products.

The deduction amount starts phasing out at the $100,000 mark for individuals and $200,000 for married couples filing jointly. It completely ends when modified adjusted gross income goes past $150,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

Cars are expensive, though. People paid more than $47,000 on average in March for a new vehicle, according to Cox Automotive. So buyers who want to take advantage of the potential break would have to start planning a major purchase.

If the bill became law, the deduction on car-loan interest would be in place from tax years 2025 to 2028.

The exact bill language is below the fold (and could change before the final bill is passed, if it is passed).

U.S. Apparently Ditching Robotic Combat Vehicle Program

The U.S. Army is apparently cancelling the Robotic Combat Vehicle program (RCV). Like the JTLV, this was one of the technologically and militarily more sound new programs in the Army, so I'm not really sure why this decision was made (which may very well be for unsound reasons, given the track record of the Trump administration). (The U.S. Marine Corps continues to support the JTLV and doesn't understand the Army's action on that program either.)

The RCV program put considerable firepower in a low weight, easy to deploy package, while reducing the extent to which soldiers are in harm's way. And, it did not appear to be facing significant cost overruns, delays, or strong technological challenges. Four working prototypes were competing and all of them functioned quite well. And, it isn't a terribly expensive program as major military procurement programs go.

The report is attributed to the Breaking Defense newsletter, apparently in reference to this story:

WASHINGTON — An Army two-star general has told staff that the service expects to halt work on its embattled Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program and pause a new howitzer competition, according to several service and industry sources.

The news was delivered just hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and top Army leaders unveiled a massive service shake up that will combine Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command, and stop production on the new light tank, the M10 Booker.

“Here’s what we believe is true of today, RCV will stop development. The future of the robotic software program is unknown,” Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean wrote in an internal Army email Thursday, according to one of the industry sources. Four other sources told Breaking Defense they were aware of or saw the email.

An Army spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about this letter or new details about expected program cuts. However, three Army sources confirmed that RCV would not move forward, despite a previously expected contract award.

In early March, Breaking Defense first reported that industry sources had been notified that Textron Systems’s Ripsaw 3 had won the RCV competition and the service was preparing to ink a deal with the victors. But around that same time, Army leaders identified RCV as one program to cut as part of the 8 percent budget drill to realign funding toward higher priorities, one service official told Breaking Defense.

“We need robotic combat vehicles, but we want a consortium of vendors to bring their robotics and the best software folk,” that first Army sources explained today. “We don’t want to downselect just to one vendor and pay almost $3 million per copy.”

A second Army source confirmed that rationale, noting that the idea is to select the “absolute best next-generation robotic for the warfighter,” and the decision was made to open it up industry again. (This was a second go around, of sorts, for the RCV program after the service revamped the acquisition strategy). 

Dean’s email also included a line saying that “Artillery modernization is still on ‘pause’ for the moment,” which appears to be a reference to a potential competition for a new self-propelled howitzer that has been closely watched by industry.

After cancelling work on its Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) platform last year, the Army started a globetrotting roadshow evaluating existing self-propelled howitzers. Service officials decided they wanted to forgo another foray into developing their own and will launch a full and open competition.

The plan had been to release a Phase I request for proposal in mid-February, Dean previously told Breaking Defense, but that document still has not been published. It is unclear if the Army will launch forward with the competition later than expected but clarity may only come once the fiscal 2026 budget request is released.

In addition to the RCV hit and howitzer still up in the air, the Army announced Thursday it will stop producing Humvees and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.

In his email, Dean confirmed the fate of several other programs affected.

“M10 Booker will not move into full-rate reproduction, and it is unknown if the Army will field the systems currently in production or buy any additional [low-rate initial production] quantity,” he added. “AMPV [Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle] production will be reduced to minimum sustainment rate but mitigated by Ukraine buyback. Stryker will not award further production orders in accordance with the AROC [Army Requirements Oversight Council].

As Dean wrote in his email, it is not clear what the service will now do with the 80-plus Bookers it has acquired. They could be fielded in a limited quantity or even stripped of sensitive components and sold to foreign countries.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll called the Booker acquisition decision “a classic example of sunk cost fallacy, and the Army doing something wrong.”

“We wanted to develop a small tank that was agile and could be dropped into places our regular tanks can’t. We got a heavy tank,” he added.

While these are the programs negatively impacted, it’s not all bad for planned modernization programs, with Dean saying the service wants to “accelerate” development of the Bradley replacement — dubbed the XM30 — and development of the future M1E3 Abrams main battle tank.

Even before the Trump administration was sworn in, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George was outspoken about his desire to cut programs he viewed as ineffective or too costly.

“I’m tied to overall capability,” the four-star general told Breaking Defense during a March interview at Ft. Irwin, Calif. “How we do that is probably going to change … [and] with what equipment.”

“Look at how much has changed in technology just in the last couple years, it would make sense that we probably wouldn’t buy the same things that we’ve been buying for a long time,” George added. 

Defense contracts from all sectors have been bracing to see how this pans out with the ground vehicle sector preparing for the worst.

Buddhism And The State

China and Korea, at least, do not have a tradition of separation of church and state when it comes to Buddhism (which, notably arrived in this region long after Confucianism became a defining and state sponsored ideology). The Buddhist reliance on state support also helps to explain its fall in these places.

Again, as was also the case in so many Buddhist countries, the success of Buddhism relied heavily on its connections to the court. In Korea, the tradition of “state protection Buddhism” was inherited from China. Here, monarchs would build and support monasteries and temples, where monks would perform rituals and chant sutras intended to both secure the well-being of the royal family, in this life and the next, and protect the kingdom from danger, especially foreign invasion.

…As in China, the Korean sangha remained under the control of the state; offerings to monasteries could only be made with the approval of the throne; men could only become monks on “ordination platforms” approved by the throne; and an examination system was established that placed monks in the state bureaucracy. As in other Buddhist lands, monks were not those who had renounced the world but were vassals of the king, with monks sometimes dispatched to China by royal decree. With strong royal patronage, Buddhism continued to thrive through the Koryo period (935-1392), with monasteries being granted their own lands and serfs, accumulating great wealth in the process.

From Donald S. Lopez, Jr., "Buddhism: A Journey through History" (2025).

Education And Church Attendance In The U.S. And In Europe

The relationship between education and church attendance in the U.S. is the opposite of what you would expect in the U.S. according to data in this blog post. 

In the U.S., more education corresponds to more church attendance (New Hampshire, Maine, and Wyoming are exceptions to that trend and a number of states seem to be bimodal with the least and most educated people both attending church at higher rates), while in Europe (except for the formerly Communist Lithuania and Slovakia) more education corresponds to less church attendance (although the least religious countries like Finland, France, Germany,  Hungary and Iceland, are quite flat and the education-church attendance relationship basically breaks down).

I don't think that this means that more educated people in the U.S. are more religious, however.  

Rather, I think that it means that more educated people who are religious are much more diligent in attending church regularly as their religion dictates (in part because they have more time to devote to church attendance), than less educated people who are religious but not very diligent. As one comment to the post notes, free time to spend on anything but working, eating, sleeping, and the basic needs of your household is increasingly a luxury good.

There is solid evidence (for example from Pew) that more educated American are less religious in terms of belief and the importance of religion in their lives (although the magnitude of this difference isn't as big as one might intuitively expect), but this isn't necessarily inconsistent with higher religious attendance by more educated people, if more educated people who are religious attend church more regularly than less educated people who are religious.

Also, there is evidence that students and college graduates of more elite institutions are much more secular than college graduates of less elite institutions.

To the extent that Pew and the U.S. survey cited in the blog post are at odds, however, Pew is more credible and has a long track record of accurate data in this area. 

Also, it is worth noting that a variety of measures have shown that reported church attendance in the U.S. is much higher than the levels of actual church attendance. See, e.g., here and here. So, survey data on church attendance may not be the most accurate measure of actual behavior. 

I also don't give much credit to an anecdotal evidence based book pointing to a religious revival among Gen Z people in the U.K., which does more to capture the changing flavor of religiosity among the minority of young people there who are religious, than capture of growing rate of religious affiliation among British youth. 

I also suspect that there is a generational factor. The trend towards more secularism in Europe is 30-40 years older than it is in the U.S. So, older educated Europeans are much more secular than older educated Americans, an effect which may swamp differences in rates of secularization among younger people by level of education. Further, education levels rose sooner in the U.S. than they did in Europe, so in Europe, education level is a better proxy for age than in the U.S.

It is also worth noting that the European data breaks out far more detail among non-college graduates and among non-high school graduates. In part, this reflects larger numbers of immigrants to Europe with very low levels of formal education, and immigrants, in general, tend to be more religious (because religion thrives when it defends a threatened culture). Apart from people who didn't graduate from high school, the European data is quite flat.

U.S. Data

European Data

How Should The U.S. Military Be Organized?

Background

The U.S. military is primarily divided into five services: the Army, the Air Force (which was split off from the Army after World War II), the Space Force (which was split off from the Air Force during Trump's first term), the Navy, and the Marines (which are a separate military service within the Department of the Navy). 

Each of these services has (or will have once it is set up, in the case of the Space Force) a reserve component that consists mostly of recently retired active duty service members who train on a part-time basis and can be called up to serve if there is a shortage of active duty personnel.

In addition to the federally operated reserves for each service, each U.S. state has an Army National Guard and an Air Force National Guard, staffed mostly by part-time citizen soldiers (the normal obligation is one weekend a month and one week a year, when not called up for an emergency). Normally, these forces report to the state governor and are called up for disaster relief and to deal with potential "insurrections" and civil unrest, for example, to enforce court orders that local civilian law enforcement is disregarding in an organized resistance. The national guard can also be called up to serve by the President as basically temporary active duty military service members when needed.

In addition, a sixth service, the Coast Guard, which used to be part of the Department of Transportation and is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, is a civilian law enforcement and first responder organization in peace time, can be placed under the command of the Navy in wartime and is organized in a paramilitary fashion.

There are also several independent agencies, some within the Department of Defense, and some outside it, that have national security duties. These include the NSA (which handles electronic surveillance and code breaking), the NRO (which handles spy satellites), the CIA (which gathers and analyzes covert and open source intelligence for both foreign policy and military purposes and also conducts covert military-style operations), DARPA (which does bleeding edge research and development for the military that isn't immediately actionable in a specific procurement project), the Selective Service system (which keeps the infrastructure in place to conscript new soldiers if Congress decides to do so), and more.

Observations

One of the problems with the status quo is that coordination between military services has to be arranged at a very high level of the Department of Defense bureaucracy, which creates bureaucratic friction in arranging joint exercises that use the resources of multiple services acting together in the same military operation, and discourages individual services from prioritizing the support that they provide to other military services in their resource allocation and procurement and military equipment systems development.

For example, the Air Force is supposed to be in charge of providing air support and logistics support to the Army, but it tends to deprioritize these missions in favor of air to air fighters designed to secure air superiority and long range bombers. The Army meanwhile, since it is allowed to have helicopters, pushes helicopters into transport and close air support missions even when fixed wing aircraft would have been better suited to those missions, because it wants to control the air power upon which its units rely.

Similarly, the Navy is responsible for delivering Army soldiers to war on transport ships and for providing fire support for Army and Marine soldiers from sea. But it has tended to neglect these missions (and more generally littoral operations) in favor of building up its blue sea surface and submarine fleet. Unlike the Army, however, the Navy and Marine Corps have been allowed to have fixed wing aircraft under their own command and control, and have, as a result, keep their use of helicopters mostly restricted to missions where they are actually preferable to fixed wing aircraft.

The U.S. military has tended to treat the national guard is just a second layer of reserve military force rather than seeing it as its own division of the military with its own distinct purpose that calls for different kinds of training, military equipment, and tactics.

The current structure also creates an incentive for each of the military services to focus its force design on engaging with the most capable "peer" and "near peer" military adversaries that require the most advanced and powerful military weapons and vehicles without regard to cost-effectiveness, because these kinds of conflicts amount of existential threats in which money is no object.

As a result, the U.S. military is ill designed to engage military adversaries less capable than "near peers" in a way that isn't expensive overkill. It can win this engagements, but at a price that makes fighting them so unsustainable that it puts pressure on leaders to abandon them. 

Among the sub-near peer adversaries and missions that the U.S. military is ill suited to engage in a cost effectively are counter-insurgency missions where the insurgents have limited access to military grade weapons other than small arms, anti-piracy missions, interdiction and anti-smuggling missions, peace keeping, intercepting a handful of rogue aircraft (short of an invasion with large numbers of military aircraft) in U.S. airspace, and humanitarian relief missions following disasters. Yet, a significant share of the missions that the U.S. military has historically been called upon to perform fit in these categories.

Proposal

* The Army National Guard, Air Force National Guard, and Coast Guard should be recognized as a separate military service that is focused upon homeland defense and emergency response, and should be called up into active duty service abroad only when the capabilities developed for those roles are needed.

Thus, the Army National Guard should be weighted more heavily towards air defense and drone defense, should have specialized equipment tailored to emergency response in low to moderate threat environments, and should largely divest itself of tanks and artillery. The Air Force National Guard shouldn't have bomber aircraft that have no appropriate mission within the U.S., should have cost effective non-stealth, fast but sub-sonic, lightly armed fighters to intercept rogue aircraft, and should increase its investment in search and rescue and transport and fire fighting aircraft. The Coast Guard should have resources for defending the U.S. from a coastal invasion (including diesel-electric coastal submarines), and the Army and Air Force National Guards in border states should have resources calibrated to land invasions from Canada and Mexico.

The final tier of the missile defense "golden dome" system that has been proposed designed to intercept income missiles and drones once they have gotten close to U.S. territory should also be a national guard function.

The Army Corps of Engineers might also be fruitfully relocated to this service.

* The U.S. nuclear weapons force intended as a deterrent force, made up of U.S. ballistic missile submarines, U.S. nuclear weapon carrying aircraft, and ground based nuclear weapons, should be part of a separate "strategic defense service", which is also responsible for intercepting incoming long range missile attacks near the point of launch and in mid-flight.

The remainder of the U.S. military should be divided into two services. 

* One military service would be devoted to addressing military confrontations with "peer" and "near peer" countries like China and Russia and Iran and North Korea with advanced, expensive, military grade weapons, including surface combatant ships, attack submarines, advanced fighter and bomber aircraft, and heavy army weapons. 

This would allow better coordination of resources that is discouraged by inter-service rivalries and lack of communication, such as balancing anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare missions between fixed wing aircraft historically in the Air Force (which are currently under utilized for that mission), surface combatants, submarines, and intermediate and long range missiles deployed by ground forces in the Army and Marines. It would also elevate the importance of missions to transport troops and their supplies. 

* The other military service would be devoted to proportionately and efficiently addressing sub-near peer military conflicts like counterinsurgency missions, peace keeping, anti-piracy missions, anti-smuggling operations abroad interdicting merchant grade ships trying to bust embargoes and international sanctions, embassy defense, evacuations of U.S. nationals and allies from areas were warfare has broken out in which the U.S. is not a party, and wars with countries that lack advanced military capabilities (like many countries in Latin America and Africa). This force would have a very different set of aircraft, ships, military ground vehicles, force design, and training.

* There would also be a paramilitary service, perhaps officially housed in the Department of State rather than the Department of Defense, that would be in charge of international relief missions that might have units specialized in disaster response, search and rescue, oil spill response, providing relief aid, setting up emergency shelters, deploying mobile field hospitals, and so on.