“The first possibility is that the most senior officials in the Trump administration — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — exploited a terrible child sex trafficking tragedy for their personal political and financial gain. Some of these officials, perhaps all of them, knew that there was no elaborate government conspiracy or cover-up surrounding Epstein’s crimes or his death, but they intentionally misled millions of Americans for years to make money, get Trump back in the White House or both. And now that they’re in office, they’re dealing with the mess they made.
A second possibility is that the Justice Department’s review of the evidence in the Epstein case turned up references to Trump — on something akin to a “client list” or otherwise — and that the government is now engaged in a cover-up to protect the president. This cannot be ruled out given Trump’s social history with Epstein prior to Epstein’s arrest; Trump has previously been referenced in public documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein, though Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the matter. Also potentially notable is Trump’s hyper-defensive attempt to turn the page at a Cabinet meeting last week by claiming that the public needed to ignore the conspiracy theories and move on — a striking position for a man who is famous for his own conspiracy theories and never moving on from things.
Still a third possibility is that the administration has been telling the truth from the start — that officials believed the conspiracy theories they had fueled and are only now discovering there is no Epstein “client list” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anyone. In this scenario, Trump and everyone else were all just as surprised by these revelations as many of Trump’s supporters are, and now they’re struggling with the fallout.”
“Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” includes a gift to millions of families: $1,000 in an investment account for every eligible newborn.
The new savings vehicles, akin to Individual Retirement Accounts, are designated for children who are U.S. citizens born from 2025 through 2028. In addition to the one-time government contribution, parents and others can chip in as much as $5,000 a year to the accounts, which beneficiaries can access at 18, with some constraints.
The seed money is a boon for recipients and will grow tax-deferred. Financial planners say parents and guardians might do better putting their money into existing investment vehicles such as a 529 plan, a savings plan designed to cover college expenses. But 529s are limited to education, while backers say the new accounts can help their recipients beyond college.
Republican lawmakers call the accounts “Trump accounts,” though the Senate’s plan to officially name them after the president did not make it to the final version of the legislation, which was signed Friday. They deliver on an idea that both Democrats and Republicans have floated for years: to invest money for all children at birth.
Withdrawals from a 529 are not subject to state or federal taxes as long as the funds go toward qualified education expenses – a feature the new investment accounts don’t share. And in the new accounts, parents’ deposits don’t qualify for a tax deduction, notes Greg Leiserson, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at New York University. “You have this very slight or minimal-to-nonexistent tax benefit,” he said. “What is the point here?”
Financial adviser Amy Spalding of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said she will continue to steer her clients to 529s. “It’s better from a tax standpoint,” Spalding said. “And there are more investment options. And then there’s a higher contribution limit.” (For 2025, a single person can deposit as much as $19,000 a year into a beneficiary’s 529, while married couples can contribute as much $38,000.)
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withdrawals will be taxed at typical income rates, not at the capital gains rate of a taxable brokerage account. “For most people, this is going to be worse than what they could do in a taxable account,” he said.
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The law requires the new investment accounts to track a U.S. stock index
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“If you’re saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to start school in the fall’ – if the market falls over the summer, the planning you were doing about how you were going to pay for college is totally messed up, because the money you thought would be there, isn’t.”
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account holders cannot touch the funds until they turn 18. After that, the rules are the same as those of an individual retirement account – withdrawals are taxed like income, plus an additional 10 percent tax penalty on any withdrawals before age 59½ except for certain qualified uses.
Those uses include paying for college, supporting themselves if they become disabled, or recovering from domestic abuse or a natural disaster. Beneficiaries also can withdraw as much as $10,000 to buy their first home, and up to $5,000 when they have a new baby themselves.
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Even one of the Trump accounts’ biggest proponents in Congress, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), said in an interview that for many parents, the new account design offers more benefits for retirement than for college expenses.”
Population growth isn’t a primary cause of environmental damage or global warming. Other things matter much more. So, the environment is not a good reason to not have kids!
France had modestly successful pro-natal policies, so such policies can work! They were implemented in 1939. These policies produced an additional Paris!
“A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week.”
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“Trump administration officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information.
“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.””
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“The court battle ignited Thursday, when lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana seeking V.M.L.’s immediate release from ICE custody and a declaration that the girl’s detention had been unlawful. The petition was filed under the name of Trish Mack, who the lawyers indicated had been asked by V.M.L.’s father to act as the child’s custodian and take her home from ICE custody.
Lawyers for the guardian told the court that V.M.L.’s father had been attempting to contact the girl’s mother to discuss plans for their child but ICE officials denied him the chance to have a substantive phone call. He says ICE allowed the two to speak for about one minute on Tuesday, while the mother was in ICE custody, but that they were unable to make any meaningful decisions about their child.”
Twenty-six U.S. states have banned certain medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria. In a free country, the barrier for straight up banning a medical intervention needs to be very high. The evidence needs to be overwhelming that such interventions are bad—that they do far more harm than good. That is not the case for puberty suppressing drugs, hormone replacement therapy, or even surgery. Such bans are an insult to liberty and should be removed.
If a doctor, parent, and child, all agree that a particular medical intervention is the best solution for their problem, then who the Hell is the government to stop them? Who the Hell are you to stop them? It doesn’t matter how you feel about transgenders, unless such interventions are clearly net bad for patients to the point where no reasonable person would perform them, they should not be banned.
There are lots of studies on transgender interventions, and there is some evidence that puberty suppression, hormones, and/or surgery help children and adolescents with their gender dysphoria, their quality of life, depression, and even lessens their chance of suicide. Unfortunately, that evidence is mixed and the studies are far from conclusive. Researchers on both sides seem biased and exaggerate the quality of evidence for their positions while undervaluing the evidence in favor of other positions.
The evidence is mixed enough that doctors and parents need to approach such decisions with a heavy dose of caution. The burden of evidence for stopping, and especially changing, a child’s natural puberty needs to fall on the intervention. If doctors are negligently transitioning kids who should not be transitioned, then those doctors should be charged and sued under normal medical malpractice or negligence laws. We don’t need to ban procedures to enforce basic medical law.
I strongly encourage parents and medical professionals to be careful about transitioning children, and for parents to get second opinions from different-thinking doctors. The evidence in favor of such interventions is quite modest, and it’s hard to tell which children are more likely to benefit from them. Nevertheless, such decisions should be in the hands of the parents, doctors, and the children, not the government. We are not truly a free country if medical interventions can be banned on such weak justifications.
What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows Heather Boerner. 2022 5 12. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows Mastectomy John Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/breast-cancer/mastectomy#:~:text=A%20mastectomy%20is%20surgery%20to,a%20high%20risk%20for%20it. Correction: Access to gender-affirming hormones during adolescence and mental health outcomes among transgender adults Jack L. Turban et
“About 70% of rural Illinoisans live in a child care desert, forcing tough choices on parents: Some drive 100 miles a day or more to find care, others leave the workforce.”
Ezra is a liberal because the world is inherently unfair. People can’t choose their parents or the neighborhood they grow up in. They also have minimal control over their tendencies to work hard and excel.
Having kids isn’t just about how rewarding it is for you, but that you created a precious life that gets to exist.
Did all the death and destruction wrought by Israel trying to get Hamas achieve anything? If Gaza is still ruled by a terrorist organization, won’t it just rebuild, then attack Israel, and this happens all over again?