i have said this before but when “getting rid of race in admissions” for the administration means “you can’t even try to reach out to underrepresented communities and encourage them to apply and if you do it is illegal discrimination against white people” then the actual goal here is segregation

If you want to build a bunch of AI data centers, and also pull the rug out from under the wind, solar + battery industries that contributed **94%** of all new generation last year, you're gonna end up with an energy affordability crisis. From @asteephen.bsky.social: time.com/7312151/ener...

READ: ESP Fellow @asteephen.bsky.social breaks down why families are facing higher energy bills—from the rollback of clean energy incentives to the rapid growth of AI data centers—and how these shifts are raising costs for families.

NEW PIECE: Powell and the Federal Reserve System has already failed to meet the moment and not defending Lisa Cook will seal both Powell's and the Fed's fate. www.crisesnotes.com/powell-will-...

i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.

Energy bills are rising nationwide, and Trump and the GOP are to blame. They rolled back clean energy incentives and greenlit an AI surge, pushing costs onto working families and deepening economic & environmental inequality. I break it down in TIME today: time.com/7312151/ener...

Dear journalists: The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her. Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.

Trump posts a letter stating that he is removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook

so okay! first piece out from me at Common Wealth "Beyond Bidenomics: On what is living and what is dead in economic policy" the argument is that progressives should take credit for the successful parts of the pandemic policy response and build the next Thing www.common-wealth.org/perspectives...

NEW PIECE: I'm back, finally, and its a long one. Superficially this moment is a vindication for Central Bank Independence but at a deeper level, cutting the Fed off from its independent agency brethren is its death warrant. www.crisesnotes.com/trump-vs-pow...

From airfare to rent, companies are using your data to jack up prices. With your help, ESB experts @bedoyausa.bsky.social and @dohamekki.bsky.social will join @groundwork.bsky.social's @lindsayowens.bsky.social at @sxsw.com to break down these deceptive pricing practices and how to fight back.

🎧LEVER TIME: Inside the Trump-Powell fight over Federal Reserve “independence.” Matt Stoller & Nathan Tankus on how the era of insulating the Fed from democracy has coincided with financial crises, bailouts & a huge upward transfer of wealth. www.levernews.com/the-fight-fo...

The IRS said clergy and houses of worship should be allowed to make political endorsements, a potential move away from a 71-year-old policy that banned the mixing of religion and politics.

Astoundingly good article from @asteephen.bsky.social on the role of taxation in a democratic society, and what the current US Government is doing to turn the IRS into their own instrument of political control. www.crisesnotes.com/the-fiscal-s...

I have no words

NEW @crisesnotes.bsky.social PIECE: Today @asteephen.bsky.social & @iraregmi.bsky.social provide a 2nd installment in their series on DOGE at the IRS. Today's piece is on the so-called "modernization" of the IRS's legacy IT systems & the manifold dangers posed www.crisesnotes.com/inside-doges...

As Republicans push a reconciliation bill that includes significant cuts to IRS funding don’t miss what’s already underway: DOGE has laid off staff, rushed tech upgrades, and is pursuing access to + control of sensitive taxpayer data. More from me + @iraregmi.bsky.social in @crisesnotes.bsky.social

I know my colleagues already dropped this line (h/t: @brendanvduke.bsky.social ), but it bears repeating - there already exists a rural hospital fund and it is called: 🚨🚨MEDICAID🚨🚨 www.politico.com/live-updates...

Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event

Now that we’ve seen the full Senate text, we can say for certain: either the House or the Senate version would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in history. Each have the largest Medicaid and largest SNAP cuts ever. And each give huge tax cuts to the rich.

"This is not about eliminating bureaucracy, fraud, waste, or abuse. It’s about repurposing it to serve a new model of power and breaking the chain of democratic accountability between Congress, the law, and the public." Important, scary stuff.

Delighted to read @asteephen.bsky.social in @crisesnotes.bsky.social and unsurprisingly, completely in agreement. Read the whole thing!

🚨 Kristi Noem confirms IRS agents are in LA “to help us track how these violent protestors are funded." She names “NGOs out there, unions, other individuals” as possible targets. This is fiscal surveillance weaponized to silence dissent.📍29:15 in the video stream.

If you're following the GOP tax bill disaster, my latest in @crisesnotes.bsky.social traces how this effort builds on a longstanding campaign to weaken the IRS and consolidate fiscal power in the hands of the wealthy. This is the first in a series on DOGE, taxes, and the future of public governance.

Follow @asteephen.bsky.social who just wrote this fantastic article: "We don’t need to defend what the IRS has been. We need to fight for what it could be: a mechanism of equity, not control by the elite. And accountability, not surveillance" www.crisesnotes.com/the-fiscal-s...

Budget reconciliation ("big beautiful bill") timeline: -SNAP cuts text today, Medicaid & tax text Friday/weekend -Byrd bath next week/two -Senate voting in two/three weeks -House passage shortly after Next week is crucial week for opposition. Tell friends. Make calls. Very little time to stop this.

Nice piece by @darrickhamilton.bsky.social and @pressley.house.gov I guess we are all thinking the same thing. Trump accounts are not baby bonds as I lay out in my own piece. Any similarity is superficial at best. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

1/ We’re thrilled to announce a new cohort of fellows whose expertise in tech innovation, government, and economic policy will help us expand the ideas in our toolbox to build an economy that works for all of us. Please welcome:

(1) There’s a lot in W+Ms draft bill. We knew it'd be losing trillions of $$$ and in regressive fashion. But provisions also pick winners+losers often in unjustified ways and give us an (even more) swiss cheese tax system that’d generally be harder to administer and unfair in new ways.

the republican reconciliation bill would fundamentally rework both snap and medicaid for the worse, instituting the largest cuts to each of those programs in us history. all while giving enormous tax cuts to the richest americans. truly reprehensible.

There are many horrible things in the Ways & Means draft, but let me alert you to this underappreciated horror: They want to expand the Treasury Secretary's power to unilaterally designate nonprofits as "terrorist supporting organizations."

My colleagues @taxlawcenter.org will have analysis on the details of the W&M bill (AINS 05/12) to come. But its broad strokes are clear. taxlawcenter.org/blog/an-init... It doesn't consistently follow any sound tax principle I can think of. Seems more driven by picking winners and losers.

NEW from @emilypont.bsky.social: : How the House GOP tax proposal could amount to "a back-door full repeal" of the Inflation Reduction Act ⬇️

this is amazing!! if you're a young journalist, please apply!

Tax Day is a good time to remember Thomas Paine's observation about taxes. Paine argues that, to build a society without kings, we need to tax wealth. Still rings true to me! For more details, see my piece with @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This convo was about how equity is treated as a tertiary outcome when building housing, climate infra, & growing the economy. The primary goals are to build more, faster. The equity v efficiency tradeoff is a false dichotomy used to keep wealth and power concentrated. Growth should benefit everyone

If President Trump can wrongly deport a Maryland father to a prison in El Salvador and then defy a 9-0 Supreme Court order to facilitate bringing him home, who’s next? This threatens the rights and freedoms of everyone in the United States.

ICYMI I put out a very long piece yesterday on the "crisis of the dollar"narrative going around. To unpack it I ran through a thorough explanation of financial derivatives & the dollar-based 113 Trillion dollar FX swap market that structures global money & finance www.crisesnotes.com/is-the-trump...

🧵 Just finished my sixth call today with someone saying “equity is a tertiary priority” to building housing, renewable energy, and economic growth. Are we living in the same country? If your vision of progress doesn’t include everyone, you’re not building prosperity. You’re building exclusion.

US 30-YEAR TREASURY YIELDS RISE TO 4.95%, MARKING BIGGEST WEEKLY INCREASE SINCE 1982 - RTRS Via FirstSquawk

My latest scoop:

Two outstanding interviews by @doughenwood.bsky.social on the tariffs and what they tell us about Trump, labor, politics and capitalism. If you're trying to make sense of the madness, especially if you're on the left politically, I strongly recommend that you give a listen. kpfa.org/player/?audi...

#NEW: The House has also voted to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule limiting overdraft fees to $5. 217-211. All yay votes were GOP, 1 GOP plus all voting Dems were nay. The big banks won. Regular people lost.

An incredible statement from the Chair of the House Budget Committee on this—he brags about at least $1.5 trillion in savings from the House GOP budget while somehow forgetting that it includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

Senate Republicans just voted to repeal CFPB’s rule to cap bank overdraft fees at $5, blocking a policy that would have saved households $5 billion a year. That's real money for many hardworking families. Idk I thought senators were supposed to work for the people, not banks. #CFPB

The Senate voted 70-28 to gut IRS crypto tax reporting rules making it easier to hide digital asset transactions and evade taxes. This is a win for the crypto broligarchs and a loss for transparency and financial oversight. The U.S. is becoming a crypto tax haven #CryptoRegulation

The Trump admin is weighing (legally) unilaterally cutting Section 8 housing & select other funds. Because of how far into the fiscal year we are, this’d be an immediate 30% cut to Section 8 and would kick more than 2 million people out of their homes. Boring technical thread to follow explaining.

This is terrifying. Tax data is strictly protected by law—using it for anything beyond tax administration is a dangerous breach of trust. This is just the tip of the iceberg of how IRS info can be weaponized against people in this country. 🚨 #IRS #DOGE www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/20...

The Fed confirmed what many of us have already been feeling: President Trump has us on a crash course toward economic disaster.

Wow. The Treasury Secretary being babysat by a DOGE rep to talk about his own agency on FOX? Things are really going off the rails for Bessent.