Author name: Michael Mechanic

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Hero of 2025: Civil Servants

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The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays. In early April, as the planet’s richest man chainsawed apart the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working […]

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Sorry Geese: If You Don’t Pay Your Taxes, Uncle Sam Might Have You Plucked

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If you’ve been thinking about tax resistance lately, you’re not alone. On progressive social channels, I’ve seen increasing calls for a federal tax strike in response to a federal government that doesn’t even pretend to represent all Americans, that uses base language to demonize immigrants and left-leaning citizens, and openly penalizes cities and states the […]

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It Sure Looks Like Trump Is About to Weaponize the IRS

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In an exclusive story on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on the Trump administration’s plans to weaponize the IRS, much as he has weaponized the Department of Justice, against his perceived enemies. “Sweeping changes” are planned, the Journal reported, citing anonymous sources, “that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups […]

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New York Sues Anti-Immigration Group For Multimillion-Dollar Charity Fraud

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Peter Brimelow, founder of the vehemently anti-immigrant website VDARE.com, is being persecuted. That’s what he’s been telling followers, anyway. In a video posted on X last July, Brimelow announced his resignation and the suspension of VDARE, claiming the organization “has been murdered by New York State Attorney General Letitia James,” who “is quite obviously aiming […]

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An Economy Based on Carbon Waste? Don’t Laugh. It Might Just Save Us.

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The US government is a big-time hoarder. At last count, in three locations—Denver, Fort Knox, and West Point—it had socked away 248,046,115.696 troy ounces of gold. One might think to round that to the nearest ounce, but at today’s prices, that extra 0.304 ounces of gold would fetch about $1,060 and the entire hoard is […]

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How a Rich Dad’s Obsession With the Estate Tax Nearly Tore His Family Apart

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Amid the rancor and rhetoric of the fight over the “big, beautiful bill,” we heard many a story about Americans likely to suffer as a result of it—families who might lose access to elder care and food stamps and homes and health insurance and other important things. Largely missing were insiders’ views of the kinds […]

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The Big Bad Republican Bill Wasn’t Regressive Enough for the Anti-Tax Crusaders

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It is apparently not enough for America’s anti-tax crusaders that Congress just passed one of the most expensive and regressive tax bills in our history. The Washington Post reports that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and other conservative groups are now urging the Trump administration to change how investment profits are taxed—unilaterally, if need […]

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Trump Is Eager to Defund Harvard, Yet Publicly Subsidized Hate Groups Get a Pass

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One particularly surreal aspect of Donald Trump threatening the tax-exempt status of Harvard, one of the nation’s oldest and foremost educational institutions—and excluding it from federal research funding for refusing to heed the administration’s oversight demands—is the fact that even some of the nation’s most hateful and antidemocratic entities qualify as tax-exempt charities. As I […]

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Why is Everybody Hating on Richie Rich?

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For kids like me, who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, comics were a big deal. Our media landscape otherwise consisted mainly of books and records, commercial radio, and, in my family’s case, a small black-and-white TV with a coat hanger antenna that got four staticky channels. So we periodically raided our piggy banks […]

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A Former IRS Chief on Trump’s Attempts to Gut—and Weaponize—His Agency

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The Internal Revenue Service, as the New York Times reported this week, is mulling Donald Trump’s request to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University after Harvard refused to cave in to the president’s demands for a sweeping right-wing overhaul. The Times also reported, just yesterday, that a Treasury official had emailed a high-level official […]

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Why Elite Colleges Aren’t Pushing Back on Trump, and Why Silence Is Dangerous

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America is witnessing an unprecedented series of attacks on higher education that commenced well before Donald Trump was re-elected, amid the contentious protests that followed Hamas’ attacks on Israel and Israel’s ruthless (and ongoing) retaliation on Gaza and its inhabitants. But Trump, as president, has taken matters much further. Claiming antisemitism, his administration is revoking […]

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