Trump Wants to Suspend Gas Tax as Peace Deal Seems Nowhere in Sight |
Trump Wants to Suspend Gas Tax as Peace Deal Seems Nowhere in Sight
This plan is a confession that things are about to get a whole lot worse.
President Trump wants to suspend the federal gas tax, telling CBS News Monday that he thinks “it’s a great idea.”
“We’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in,” Trump said in a phone interview. It’s a tacit admission that the effects of the Iran war aren’t going away anytime soon.
Gas prices have gone up 50 percent since the war started February 28, and cost an average of $4.52 per gallon in the U.S. as of this writing. As long as Iran (and the United States) block transit to and from the Strait of Hormuz, those prices will stay high. Pausing the federal taxes on fuel would amount to 18.4 cents less per gallon of gas and 24.4 cents less per gallon of diesel, but doing so requires an act of Congress.
Republicans in Congress are already working to carry out the president’s wish. Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Anna Paulina Luna said Monday that they plan to introduce bills in the Senate and House, respectively. If they’re successful, pausing the gas tax would cost the federal government half a billion dollars per week, money that pays for highway maintenance and other transportation projects.
Meanwhile, a peace deal with Iran is far away. Trump said Monday that the current ceasefire was on “massive life support” after he rejected Iran’s latest proposal as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” the day before. If the ceasefire ends and the U.S. resumes strikes against Iran, that would only send oil prices even higher, wiping out whatever temporary relief Americans get from the tax pause.
Trump’s poll numbers are already historically low. Does he think he can fool the American people with a temporary measure?
Trump Sued Over Reflecting Pool Renovation as Cost Skyrockets
Like many of Trump’s other renovation projects, the cost of repairing the Lincoln Memorial pool is far higher than what he initially claimed.
President Trump just got sued for painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue as part of an increasingly expensive renovation project.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing “support and understanding for cultural landscapes,” filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Monday against the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service, alleging the Trump administration broke federal law with the new paint job.
The lawsuit states that since the pool is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the paint job was subject to a review under law. The organization is seeking either a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order to prevent more blue paint from being added.
The group’s president and CEO, Charles Birnbaum, said in a statement that the blue paint “is more appropriate to a resort or theme park,” adding that the bottom of the pool has been grey since its construction in 1924.
The lawsuit comes on the same day as a New York Times report that found Trump’s renovation of the pool will cost more than seven times the $1.8 million he originally estimated. The Interior Department said Friday that it now plans to pay $13.1 million to a Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which Trump chose because it worked on his Sterling, Virginia, golf club’s swimming pools.
Last month, the company was awarded a no-bid contract by the Trump administration, which claimed that renovating the pool was so urgent that delaying it would cause “serious injury” to the government, but wouldn’t say why. The government has also said that Trump wants to get the project done before America’s 250th birthday celebrations on July Fourth. The contract gives Atlantic Industrial Coatings a 20 percent profit margin.
This is just another example of Trump attempting to remake Washington, D.C., in the aesthetic of his real estate properties. He is also getting sued over his proposed golden arch and White House ballroom. With a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, it seems Trump will end up leaving his permanent stamp on the nation’s capital.
Is Stephen Miller’s Time at White House Finally Coming to an End?
Donald Trump is turning to Miller less and less.
The architect of Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda is losing his influence.
White House deputy chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller has aimed to rewrite U.S. immigration policy since his early days in Washington as a Senate aide. But even atop his perch within the Trump administration, Miller’s schemes have experienced myriad setbacks.
Thus far, the president has dismantled the Border Patrol strike forces that Miller had campaigned for, turned on former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for effectively following Miller’s orders, and handed the reins of America’s deportation program back to law enforcement officials, reported The Atlantic Monday.
The White House insists that Miller’s place within Trump’s entourage has not changed, and that he remains a steadfast and widely respected adviser to the president.
“The President loves Stephen,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told The Atlantic in a statement. “And the White House staff respects him tremendously.”
But behind the scenes, Trump’s language about the immigration aide is changing. The president has privately joked that Miller’s “truest feelings” are too extreme for the public, and reportedly thinks that sometimes Miller takes things too far, according to presidential advisers that spoke with the magazine.
Trump reportedly disagreed with Miller’s description of Alex Pretti—one of two U.S. citizens shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this winter—as a “domestic terrorist,” and acknowledged afterward that U.S. policy needed to shift as a result.
Miller has framed immigration as an “invasion.” He has advocated to end habeas corpus for immigrants; promoted large-scale raids at workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods; threatened the futures of immigrants who do not “self-deport”; and encouraged the White House to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. He has leveraged his position within the administration to advance American warmongering abroad, pushing the White House to bomb boats in the Caribbean when a plan to invade........