Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. It's like Call of Duty, one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. So cool, huh? This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead.
This is not to say that fraud does not exist, because it very obviously does, woven into the fabric of our society. The pandemic in particular was its own little golden age of American federal fraud, involving untold and unprecedented dollar totals being siphoned off from legitimate support programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
"It is time to ask a very simple question: Why? Why me? How is it possible that such a sophisticated and complex tool was used to spy on a private citizen, as if he were a drug trafficker or a subversive threat to the country? I have nothing more to say. Others must speak. Others must explain what happened."
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration has been preparing sweeping changes to the IRS which would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily. A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, the Journal said, with sources claiming that the administration intended to install allies of the president in the agency's criminal investigation division.
The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law, it said in a statement. When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk. Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms.
The Trump administration is pushing forward changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program that could destabilize nonprofits by injecting political control in what was meant to be an incentive for Americans to dedicate themselves to public service. The proposed rule...follows President Donald Trump's March 7 executive order claiming PSLF had been misdirecting tax dollars to "activist organizations" that "harm our national security and American values."
Coons specifically tied the raid to Bolton's criticism of Trump's attempts to negotiate a peace deal to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In recent days, after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, Bolton has been publicly criticizing President Trump, saying that Putin is playing him and that he doesn't understand the risks of what he's doing in engaging with Putin, and Trump has been firing back.
I think it's fair to say that my colleagues in the New York congressional delegation and I, we do not care about the Democratic Socialists of America. We're focused on defeating congressional Republicans in the midterm, and making Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker of the House, and reversing the catastrophic consequences of the Republican reconciliation bill.
