Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Millions of households are about to discover that President Donald Trump’s new tax rules make a zero-dollar federal income tax bill a realistic outcome in 2025, not a fantasy. The key is a cluster of fresh deductions and exclusions that target seniors, workers who earn tips or overtime, and families with children, layered on top…
California’s latest tax fight centers on a union-backed proposal to raise roughly $100 billion from a one-time levy on the state’s richest residents, a group estimated at just a few hundred people. The measure would test how far voters are willing to go to protect health care and education by concentrating a massive new tax…
President Donald Trump’s tax overhaul reshaped the financial incentives that long encouraged wealthy Americans to give large sums to charity, and nonprofit leaders are already bracing for a shift in who writes the checks. If big donors scale back because the tax code is less generous to itemizers, the question is whether middle income households,…
President Donald Trump has promised to send $2,000 tariff dividend checks to every American, pitching the idea as a way to turn trade policy into direct household relief. I see four major obstacles that will determine whether those $2,000 payments ever materialize, from basic budget math to the politics of getting any new stimulus through…
A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions after concluding that their sweeping lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a long list of other defendants was built on political grievances rather than viable legal claims. The penalty marks one of the most severe courtroom…
West Virginia’s Jim Justice has agreed to resolve more than 5 million dollars in overdue federal taxes tied to his family’s coal empire, a deal that pulls one of the state’s most powerful political figures into sharper financial focus. The settlement caps a long-running dispute over unpaid obligations while raising fresh questions about how the…
The Trump administration is moving to shut off a little understood but politically explosive corner of the tax code, targeting refundable credits and other tax-based benefits that officials say have been flowing to people who are in the country illegally. The Treasury Department’s new push, framed as a crackdown on “abuse,” could reshape how undocumented…
Tariffs on Chinese imports have quietly swelled into a more than $200 billion drag on trade, even as a major Supreme Court case threatens to redraw the legal boundaries around presidential power over commerce. The result is a rare moment when courtroom doctrine, campaign politics, and supply chain strategy are colliding in real time, with…
Donald Trump is now confronting a new kind of fiscal scrutiny, as a prominent watchdog warns that his favored payouts and tax breaks could ultimately carry a multitrillion dollar price tag for the federal government. The warning frames Trump’s second term agenda not just as a political fight, but as a potential $6 trillion test…
President Donald Trump is promising that typical households will see roughly a four-figure boost in their federal tax refunds for the 2026 filing season, arguing that his new tax law will put more cash in pockets just as family budgets are straining. The White House is leaning into that message, casting the coming filing season…