IRS ‘tax gap’ widens to $688 billion in 2021: reportThe gap between taxes owed and paid to the government is wider than originally estimated, according to a new report released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service.
The projected gross “tax gap,” the difference between the total taxes owed to the IRS and how much is collected on time, jumped to $688 billion for tax year 2021, the agency projects. That’s about $138 billion higher than revised projections for the three-year period ending in 2019.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by Democrats last August, included an additional $80 billion in funding for the IRS to beef up its enforcement efforts.
Republicans have opposed the new IRS funding, and they made a bill that would reverse most of that funding their first legislative priority when the party retook the House in January.
The stakes of the 2024 election could not be clearer, says Mary Trump: It’s “a choice between democracy and fascism.”
They identify not with Donald’s strength … but they identify with his weakness,” Trump said, arguing that his supporters know to some extent that he’s a fraud. In fact, they like that about him. “They identify with the fact that he gets away with everything.”
“To me, one of the biggest scams was this myth that Donald was this successful businessman … that he was a champion of the working man,” she said. “By the way, that’s not something he ever says. Somebody else made that up about him.”
Trump said that Donald’s portrayal in the media as a working-class hero is founded on a misunderstanding—he grew up privileged in Manhattan, after all—and that he then exploited it. “He just then flew his stupid private jet from rally to rally, and I guess that was enough to convince people that he really cared about them,” she said.
Human Rights Watch confirmed in a statement released Thursday that white phosphorus was used over the Gaza City port on Wednesday, after interviewing two witnesses who noted the stifling smell of white phosphorus. The organization also analyzed video of the event and identified airburst 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles were used in the strike. They condemned the use of the chemical, which can severely burn people and set fire to civilian structures, in such a densely populated area.
House Republicans collapse into anarchyWar in Israel. War in Ukraine. The federal government shutting down in 35 days. These are uncertain times.
But there is one eternal truth, one unwavering constant to steady us when all else is in flux: Every time the House Republican majority tries to govern, it’s guaranteed to turn into a goat rodeo.
A group of United Nations humanitarian experts denounced attacks on civilians in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza early Thursday, saying Israel is now committing “war crimes” through “collective punishment” by blockading aid from the territory.
The war has killed at least 2,500 people on both sides. Concerns for civilians in Gaza have mounted in recent days as the territory runs out of power and medical supplies due to a complete blockade by Israel.
“We strongly condemn the horrific crimes committed by Hamas, the deliberate and widespread killing and hostage-taking of innocent civilians, including older persons and children. These actions constitute heinous violations of international law and international crimes, for which there must be urgent accountability,” the U.N. group said.
“We also strongly condemn Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children,” it added. “They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for.”
“This amounts to collective punishment,” the experts continued. “There is no justification for violence that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians, whether by Hamas or Israeli forces. This is absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime.”
The U.N. said Thursday that more than 650,000 people in Gaza are running out of water due to the blockades. Medical supplies are also dwindling in the area's hospitals, which are at times without power. The Israeli energy minister said early Thursday the country will not allow aid into Gaza, despite calls from organizations, including the U.N.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Israel Katz said on X, formerly Twitter. “Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals.”
The Red Cross warned Thursday those hospitals could soon turn into “morgues” without immediate aid.
“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk,” Fabrizio Carboni, International Committee of the Red Cross regional director for the Near and Middle East wrote in a statement. “Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues.”
The Israeli military has committed to completely eliminating Hamas through a campaign of extensive airstrikes and an expected ground invasion.
The U.N. experts specifically called out Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over comments calling Gazans “human animals” on Monday.
“Besides this appalling language that dehumanises the Palestinian people, especially those who have been unlawfully ‘imprisoned’ in Gaza for 16 years, we condemn the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines,” the group continued. “Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity.”
It is also difficult for Gazans to leave the territory because the only border with Egypt was closed again Thursday due to Israeli airstrikes in the area. The crossing was previously closed on Monday due to strikes.
The Egyptian government has also urged Israel to stop the strikes so aid can enter Gaza.
The U.N. group called on both sides of the conflict to immediately negotiate a ceasefire, in addition to corridors for humanitarian aid and a release of the captured on both sides of the conflict.
-Fr. The Hill 10/12/23: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4251899-un-civilians-israel-gaza-war-crimes/
By choosing among and sometimes writing the questions the court agrees to answer, recent studies say, the justices have distorted the judicial process
We say that the Supreme Court decides cases, but that is not correct. It picks isolated questions to answer, often choosing among ones proposed by the parties or writing ones of its own.
That practice adds a disturbing element of politics to the judicial process, said Benjamin B. Johnson, a law professor at the University of Florida and the author of three recent papers on the subject.
“They are no longer doing what a court does, which is deciding cases,” he said. “They’re now doing what a legislature does, which is answering discrete policy questions.”
Consider a few examples.
When the court agreed to hear one of this term’s most important cases, it rejected a modest question proposed by the plaintiffs and said it would only consider one that asked it to overrule an important precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
The same thing happened in the Dobbs case, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. When the court granted review, it picked only the broadest of the three proposed questions, one that led it to overrule Roe v. Wade.“Even though the court had alternative pathways to resolve the case without inviting a firestorm of controversy,” Professor Johnson wrote in the Alabama Law Review, “the justices intentionally eliminated those alternatives from their review.”
In the recent case of a Christian web designer who challenged a Colorado law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, the court accepted only part of one of her two proposed questions. The court said it would not consider whether the law was at odds with her right to free exercise of her religion and would treat the case solely a free-speech challenge.And when the court agreed to hear two big cases on the First Amendment and social media last month, it did not adopt the questions proposed by any of the parties. It looked instead to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Biden administration, choosing two of its four questions.
This sort of cherry-picking and revision, Professor Johnson said, is on the rise. “What was once a relatively rare occurrence now makes up between a tenth and a quarter of the docket,” he said.Data compiled by Professor Johnson from the two decades ending in 2020 seems to back that up. When the court added or subtracted questions, he found, the case was more likely to attract friend-of-the-court briefs and to result in 5-to-4 splits.
A century ago, in 1925, Chief Justice William Howard Taft persuaded Congress to cut back on the kinds of cases the Supreme Court had to hear, allowing the court to choose for itself which ones it would decide. That itself was an extraordinary move. Giving the justices almost total discretion over their docket helped to transform and empower it.
But the 1925 law did not authorize the justices to take the further step of picking the questions they would answer. “This is clear both from the statutory language and the justices’ own testimony in favor of the bill,” Professor Johnson wrote. Indeed, Chief Justice Taft had assured lawmakers that in federal cases the “power of review extends to the whole case and every question presented in it.”Still, in later decisions and then in the court’s own rules, the justices said they would consider only discrete questions.
That was so, Professor Johnson wrote, “even though Congress mandated — and the justices promised — review of the entire case.”
It is one thing to allow the Supreme Court to decide which cases to hear and another to let it choose to answer the questions proposed in the petition seeking review. But it is a third thing for the justices to choose among those questions. And it is yet another thing for them to write their own questions.
But the court has drafted its own questions in any number of landmark cases, including ones on the right to counsel, the 2000 presidential election, campaign finance, same-sex marriage, class actions, recess appointments and immigration.At the same time, the Supreme Court has had little patience with lower courts that try something similar.
Three years ago, for instance, the justices chastised a federal appeals court for revising the questions before it, saying that it ran afoul of “the principle of party presentation.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, quoting an earlier decision, explained that “we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present.”