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3 weeks ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
This May, the United Nations convened the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. The assembly marked the anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) — the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
Like nearly a third of U.S. adults, I was raised Catholic. So when Pope Leo XIV was elected, I took note. What stood out to me was not just our shared nationality, but the legacy of his chosen name. His predecessor, Leo XIII, issued Rerum Novarum, an 1891 encyclical that supported labor unions and championed workers’ rights.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
The House recently passed a massive Trump budget bill that will cut trillions in taxes for the ultra-wealthy while eviscerating Medicaid, SNAP, and other services for working Americans. It now moves to the Senate. This bill has been called a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
President Trump is requesting a record-high $1.01 trillion “defense” budget for FY 2026 while gutting federal agencies and social services that actually keep the country safe — things like clean air and water protection, Medicaid, child nutrition programs, the Department of Education, green energy, and so much more. The U.S. already spends more on the military than the next combined despite the Pentagon being the only federal agency that has never passed a federal audit.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers in Congress are currently pushing for a massive, 10-year budget bill that would reduce federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion. To fund these tax cuts, they will seek to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, food assistance, education and other services that millions of Americans depend on. Many experts are warning of a “fiscal tsunami” for state governments as a result — and the further erosion of America’s frayed social safety net.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
The Trump administration recently released its “skinny budget” for 2026, which slashes funding for science, education, research, foreign aid, environment, health, and anti-poverty programs while boosting Pentagon spending to a record $1.01 trillion. Our National Priorities Project called it “a bonanza for weapons and prison contractors.”This budget has “Project 2025 written all over it,” NPP Director Lindsay Koshgarian told Background Briefing with Ian Masters.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
In a report this spring, Sarah Anderson found that 102 million Americans who live in rural and small-town communities around the country would pay the biggest price for privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. The report finds that one of the biggest impacts would be skyrocketing mail delivery charges: “UPS and FedEx area surcharges now apply to retail customers sending parcels to addresses in ZIP codes where 102 million Americans live.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
In April, IPS, the Athena Coalition, and PowerSwitch Action released a damning new report that highlights how Amazon and its top executives exploit the rigged U.S. tax system. The report finds that Amazon avoids paying even the reduced corporate tax rate of 21 percent. “If they had paid the full statutory corporate rate of 21 percent between 2018 and 2021, their IRS bill would’ve been $12.5 billion higher,” the report explains.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
The top tax rate wealthy Americans pay on their investment gains today runs barely half the top rate the rest of us pay on our wages. But that only begins to tell the story of how lightly taxed our richest have become compared to the rest of us. On the surface, the nominal tax rate on long-term capital gains from investments seems somewhat progressive, even given the reality that this rate sits lower than the tax rate on ordinary income.
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1 month ago | 
ips-dc.org | Caleb Crowder
Increasing taxes on high income earners helped raise revenue without hampering the wealth of the millionaire class in Massachusetts and Washington, according to a new policy brief from the Institute for Policy Studies and State Revenue Alliance. A common counter to raising taxes on the rich is that they will simply flee their home states to jurisdictions with friendlier tax codes.
