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Haiti unrest fuels fear, frustration in tight-knit Haitian diasporas

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

Montreal, Canada – Marjorie Villefranche has never experienced anything like it.

For the past six months, the head of Maison d’Haiti (Haiti House), a community centre in Montreal’s St-Michel neighbourhood, has received a wave of unsolicited messages from Haitians, begging for help to leave the country.

“‘Get us out of here please, we are starving, we are afraid, we are in the hands of mobs,’” Villefranche recalled of the messages that have poured in. “That never happened before.”

But this month, Haiti’s years-long crisis reached a new peak of political instability and violence.

Powerful armed groups have maintained their grip on the capital of Port-au-Prince after the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry last week and a shaky political transition is under way.

The attacks have paralysed Port-au-Prince, more than 360,000 people have been displaced, and the country faces a deepening hunger crisis.

For Haitians living outside of the Caribbean nation, the unrest has fuelled a sense of fear and anxiety over the safety of their loved ones back home. It has also spurred growing frustrations over their inability to get family members out of harm’s way, as well as calls to action.

Villefranche told Al Jazeera that more than half of the staff members at Maison d’Haiti have close family in Haiti.

“They’re just on the phone with them all the time because they don’t know what will happen to them. Some of [the relatives], they cannot go out of the house, they don’t have water, they don’t have electricity. You risk your life to go and buy some food,” she told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, the international airport in Port-au-Prince has been closed amid the violence and the Dominican Republic – which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti – has largely sealed its land border, too.

“It’s impossible actually to get them out but this is what everyone will like,” Villefranche said. “They want a break from that suffering. Everyone [is] thinking, ‘Can I bring my family here, please?’”

The diaspora

Haitians have migrated to other parts of the Americas region and further afield for many decades.

Some left in search of better employment opportunities or education, while others were pushed out due to natural disasters, political instability and increasingly, violence wrought by armed groups.

Today, there are large Haitian communities in the Dominican Republic, Chile and Brazil, among other countries in Central and South America, as well as in Canada, which is home to nearly 180,000 people of Haitian descent.

But the largest Haitian diaspora is in the United States, where US Census figures showed that more than 1.1 million people identified as Haitian in 2022.

“We’re all connected. I think that every Haitian immigrant is somewhat connected to Haitians in Haiti,” said Tessa Petit, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC), a coalition of dozens of community and advocacy groups in the southeastern US state.

Florida counts the largest Haitian community in the country, followed by New York City.

Like Villefranche in Canada, Petit said Haitians in Florida have strong ties to communities in Haiti – and they have been watching the latest developments in Port-au-Prince with alarm over the past several weeks.

“There’s a stress because you’re sitting here, you’re in Miami, you feel powerless,” Petit told Al Jazeera. “You hope that you’re not going to get bad news, that it’s not going to be your turn to lose a loved one.”

People carry water collected in buckets and containers in Port-au-Prince, March 12 [Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters]

Growing urgency

Petit said there is a growing sense of urgency among Haitians in the US that something must be done to stem the wave of deadly attacks in Haiti’s capital.

Amid the violence, US President Joe Biden’s administration and other foreign governments that had previously backed Henry, Haiti’s unelected prime minister, since he took office in 2021, withdrew their support for him.

They are now backing a political process that will see the establishment of a transitional presidential council, which in turn will choose a temporary replacement for Henry before Haitian elections can be held.

The United Nations has also supported a multinational security mission to help Haiti respond to the gangs but that proposal has been stalled.

The president of Kenya, which is expected to lead the deployment, said last week that the country would send “a reconnaissance mission as soon as a viable administration is in place” to ensure that Kenyan security personnel “are adequately prepared and informed to respond”.

But Petit said people in Port-au-Prince cannot wait for such a mission to arrive. Instead, she urged the international community, including the US, to provide better equipment and training to the overwhelmed Haitian National Police to restore security.

“What’s going to be left of the country if we’re waiting for a Kenyan police force?” she said. “There’s not going to be anything left to fight for.”

‘All is not lost’

Emmanuela Douyon, an anticorruption activist who left Haiti in 2021 amid fears for her safety and is now based in the US city of Boston, echoed the need to act.

“It’s really painful and I’m feeling a lot of emotions at the same time,” she told Al Jazeera about what it has been like to watch the violence in Haiti unfold over the past weeks from afar.

She noted that this month’s crisis is not new, however, but the continuation of years of corruption by Haitian politicians and businessmen who have used armed groups to maintain power and further their economic interests.

“The situation is extremely serious but all is not lost,” said Douyon, who stressed that many Haitians can serve their country and help rebuild state institutions.

“But on their own, without the support of the international community, without the support of international civil society groups, they won’t manage it” in the face of armed gangs that increasingly want political power, she said.

Villefranche at Maison d’Haiti in Canada, also told Al Jazeera that there are many groups and people in Haiti who are well organised and have ideas about how to chart the country’s future.

But these Haitian voices often get excluded, Villefranche said, in favour of “the same old actors who created the problem” in the first place.

“It’s funny because in the Haitian spirit, we’re never discouraged. We always think that there will be a solution, so I think being in despair is not in our DNA. Even if it’s terrible, we just hope that something better will come out of it.

“People are sad, they are angry, and I would say that a lot of them, their body is here but their heart is in Haiti – because their family is there. So this is how we feel, I would say: a little bit empty,” Villefranche added, her voice trailing off.

“But still hoping that something will happen because there are a lot of possibilities in the country – because there are a lot of people still living there and ready to do something.”

 

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Photos: Haitian gangs unleash new attacks on upscale Port-au-Prince

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

Gunmen looted homes in the communities of Laboule and Thomassin, two upscale neighbourhoods in Haiti’s capital, early on Monday, forcing residents to flee as some called radio stations pleading for police.

The neighbourhoods had previously remained largely peaceful, despite the surge of violence across Port-au-Prince that began on February 29, with armed gangs seizing control of many parts of town.

Witnesses saw the bodies of at least 12 bodies strewn on the streets of Petion-Ville, located just below the mountainous communities of Laboule and Thomassin.

“We woke up this morning to find bodies in the street in our community,” said Douce Titi, who works at the mayor’s office. “Ours is not that kind of community. We will start working to remove those bodies before the children start walking by to go to school and the vendors start to arrive.”

The attacks raise concern that gang violence is not about to cease, despite Prime Minister Ariel Henry announcing nearly a week ago that he would resign.

The gangs, have long opposed Henry, noting that he was not elected and blaming him for deepening poverty. They had suggested that the violence would come to a halt should he step down.

However, critics accuse the gangs of trying to seize power for themselves or for other – unnamed – political figures.

As gang violence continues unabated, Caribbean leaders have been trying to help with the creation of a transitional council.

The body was originally supposed to have seven members with voting powers. But one of Haiti’s political parties rejected the seat it was offered, while another is still squabbling internally over who it will nominate.

The delay is holding up the deployment of a UN-backed Kenyan police force to fight the gangs. The East African country has said it will wait until the transitional council is established before sending 1,000 police officers that will attempt to secure peace.

In a bid to curb the relentless violence, Haiti’s government announced on Sunday that it was extending a nighttime curfew through March 20.

 

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Cubans stage rare protests amid persisting economic crisis

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

Rare protests have taken place in Cuba as the island nation’s economic crisis persists.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel called for calm on Monday after hundreds of people gathered in Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city, to demonstrate against power blackouts and food shortages a day prior.

Social media videos showed crowds in the communist-governed country chanting, “Power and food.”

Diaz-Canel blamed the United States for provoking the unrest, and his government summoned the US’s top diplomat to Cuba for meeting on Monday.

A wave of blackouts in Cuba has recently seen power supplies cut for up to 18 hours or more in a day. That, in turn, has jeopardised food supplies and economic activity in the cash-strapped country.

Cuba is battling its worst economic crisis in decades, caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the flow of much-needed tourism dollars plunge. Its economy has also long been stymied by US trade embargoes and recent sanctions imposed during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Diaz-Canel called for dialogue and “peace”.

“Several people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation of electrical service and food distribution,” he wrote on X.

“The disposition of the authorities of the party, the state and the government is to attend to the complaints of our people, listen, dialogue, explain the numerous efforts that are being carried out to improve the situation, always in an atmosphere of tranquility and peace,” he added.

The president blamed government “enemies” and “mediocre politicians and terrorists” in the US for trying to hijack the protests. Vedant Patel, a US State Department spokesperson, vigorously denied those allegations in a press conference on Monday.

“The United States is not behind these protests in Cuba and the accusation of that is absurd,” Patel said.

Meanwhile, the US embassy in Havana said in a post on X that it had received reports of protests in Bayamo, Granma and other locations. It urged the government “to respect the human rights of the protesters and address the legitimate needs of the Cuban people”.

The protests in Santiago were peaceful as demonstrators shouted, “Down with communism. Down with Diaz-Canal.” Videos on social media showed no signs of scuffles or arrests. A large number of state security forces were also in attendance.

However, internet services were down late on Sunday until early Monday, according to some reports.

Havana cracked down heavily on large protests in July 2021, the widest demonstrations seen in Cuba since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. The response was criticised by the international community.

Since 1960, the US has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba, which restricts trade between the countries.

For the first time, Cuba turned to the UN’s World Food Programme in February, requesting help in supplying milk to children, the organisation said.

 

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Photos: Record heat index of 62.3C scorches Rio de Janeiro

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

A heatwave stifling Brazil has set new records with Rio de Janeiro’s heat index hitting 62.3 degrees Celsius (144.1 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest in a decade, weather authorities say.

The heat index measures what a temperature feels like by taking into account humidity. The actual maximum temperature in the city was 42C on Monday, the Rio Alert weather system said.

The 62.3C record was notched in western Rio at 09:55am (12:55 GMT) on Sunday, and was the “highest mark” since Alerta Rio began keeping such records in 2014.

The Ipanema and Copacabana beaches were packed with people as authorities published tips on coping with the heat.

“I am very afraid it will get worse because the population is increasing a lot and deforestation is very high due to the increase in housing,” 49-year-old administrative assistant Raquel Correia lamented in a park in central Rio.

The previous heat index record was set in November when it hit 59.7C (139.5F).

Meanwhile, extreme rains were wreaking havoc in the south of the country and are forecast to continue next week, according to authorities.

“The week will be of very high risk in the centre-south of Brazil due to intense rains and storms. The most worrisome system is a very intense cold front that will arrive with torrential rains and possible gales,” the weather information agency MetSul warned.

 

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At least 12 bodies found after gang attacks in upscale Haiti suburb

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

At least 12 bodies have been removed by ambulance from the affluent neighbourhood of Petion-Ville on the outskirts of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, as tensions simmer pending the announcement of a new government.

Gunmen looted homes in the mountainous communities of Laboule and Thomassin before sunrise on Monday, forcing residents to flee as some called radio stations pleading for police.

The neighbourhoods had remained largely peaceful despite a surge in gang attacks across Port-au-Prince that began on February 29.

The bodies of the victims, who had been shot, were removed from the main road leading into the suburb and from outside a fuel station, the Reuters and Associated Press news agencies reported.

The latest attacks have raised concerns that gang violence will not end, despite Prime Minister Ariel Henry announcing nearly a week ago that he would resign once a transitional presidential council is created. The council will have seven voting members and two observers from different political coalitions and sectors of society.

Gang leaders, who have long sought to remove Henry, have warned of a “battle” for Haiti and threatened politicians who join the transition council. Meanwhile, residents are facing worsening shortages of food and medical care.

Haiti has seen years of unrest that took a sharp turn to the worst after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021.

The crisis deepened this year as Haitian armed groups launched attacks on police, prisons and other state institutions. The main airport in Port-au-Prince has been shut down, and residents have been afraid to leave their homes to get water, food and other supplies.

On Monday, Haiti’s power company announced that four substations in the capital and elsewhere “were destroyed and rendered completely dysfunctional”. As a result, swathes of Port-au-Prince were without power, including the Cite Soleil slum, the Croix-des-Bouquets community and a hospital.

The company said criminals also seized important documents, cables, inverters, batteries and other items.

The deteriorating conditions are making it difficult for humanitarian organisations to deliver aid to the Caribbean country, said Jean-Michael Bauer, the Haiti director at the United Nations World Food Programme.

“Port-au-Prince is a place that’s in a bubble right now. You can’t get in and out by road. It’s very difficult to get in by air. Getting in and out by sea is a challenge,” Bauer told European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights on Monday.

“We need security in this country. Security is the number one problem right now. But we also need to make sure that at the same time we bring security, that we have a strong humanitarian component to everything we do.”

The violence has created a political impasse that has seen the UN as well as the United States and Canadian embassies withdrawing their staff in recent days.

The international community is also pushing to deploy a Kenyan-led police force to help maintain security in Haiti.

US Department of State spokesperson Vedant Patel on Monday said that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is close to finalising the transitional council.

“The announcement of this council, we believe, will help pave the way for free and fair elections and the deployment of the multi-national security support mission,” Patel told reporters.

The State Department has chartered flights to evacuate dozens of US citizens out of Haiti. Patel said the evacuation plan was put in place in response to the limited availability of commercial flights out of the country.

 

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Bolsonaro proposed Brazil coup plan after 2022 election loss: Court records

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

Top military leaders in Brazil have alleged that former President Jair Bolsonaro presented them with a plan to reverse the results of the 2022 presidential election, according to court documents.

The filings, released on Friday, offer some of the first evidence that Bolsonaro was directly involved in an effort to subvert the vote, which he narrowly lost to left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The documents contain testimony from the former commanders of the country’s army and air force, both of whom said they refused to accept the right-wing president’s plan.

Instead, they alleged they warned Bolsonaro that any attempt to overturn the election results could lead to his arrest.

The allegations emerge as part of several probes Bolsonaro faces before Brazil’s Supreme Court, including an investigation that seeks to determine his involvement in a 2023 attack on key government buildings, shortly after Lula’s inauguration.

Friday’s court filings contain a federal police report, in which former army commander Marco Antonio Freire Gomes described Bolsonaro holding several unscheduled meetings at the presidential palace after the second round of voting in 2022.

Gomes told federal police that, in one of the gatherings, Bolsonaro told the three commanders of his military, as well as then-Defence Secretary Paulo Sergio Nogueira, that he wanted to create a commission to “investigate the confirmation and the legality of the electoral process”.

He added other tools could be used to look into the elections, including a decree calling for a state of siege. Gomes said he repeatedly told Bolsonaro that “under the conditions at the time, there was no possibility to reverse the result of the elections from a military standpoint”.

Former Air Force commander Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Junior also told federal police he rejected Bolsonaro’s efforts. He said that he believed that Gomes’s rebuke was key to stopping Bolsonaro from seeking to reverse the election results.

“General Freire Gomes said that, if such move was attempted, he would have to arrest the president,” the court filings read.

The release has come as prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation into whether Bolsonaro and his inner circle sought to overturn the election through a military coup. In February, police confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport amid a series of raids.

At the time, a court order by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said that Bolsonaro had received a draft decree in November 2022, prepared by his aides, that would have overturned the election results.

It would have also issued arrest warrants for Moraes, as well as fellow Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes and Senate leader Rodrigo Pacheco.

The court order said that Bolsonaro had requested some changes to the draft decree, but his edited version continued to call for the arrest of Moraes and for a new presidential election.

Bolsonaro has already been ruled ineligible to run for office until 2030 after Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court determined in June that he had spread false claims about the election and misused public funds to do so.

Investigators are also continuing to search for links between Bolsonaro and the riots on January 8, 2023, which trashed government buildings in the capital Brasilia.

Bolsonaro refused to publicly concede defeat following his election loss, and he and his allies have suggested the result was the result of voter fraud.

 

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‘Overthrow the system’: Haiti gang leader Cherizier seeks revolution

The content originally appeared on: Latin America News – Aljazeera

A powerful Haitian gang leader has rejected attempts by foreign nations for an electoral road map and a path to peace as the country plunges deeper into violent chaos and armed groups control most of the capital following the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Regional leaders of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) held an emergency summit last week to discuss a framework for a political transition, which the United States had urged to be “expedited” as gangs wrought chaos in the capital, Port-au-Prince, amid repeatedly postponed elections.

“We’re not going to recognise the decisions that CARICOM takes,” Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, a former police officer whose gang rules vast swaths of Port-au-Prince, told Al Jazeera. Rights groups have accused his gang alliance of committing atrocities, including killings and rape.

“I’m going to say to the traditional politicians that are sitting down with CARICOM, since they went with their families abroad, we who stayed in Haiti have to take the decisions,” Cherizier said, flanked by gang members wearing face masks, adding that he rejected plans for a transitional council made up of the country’s political parties.

“It’s not just people with guns who’ve damaged the country but the politicians too,” he added.

The United States and Caribbean nations have been pushing for the proposed council to appoint a new interim prime minister and lay a road map for elections.

Cherizier and his G9 Family and Allies gang alliance have been major contributors to years of escalating violence and political instability in Port-au-Prince.

They have blockaded fuel terminals, clashed with rival gangs and used violence to cement their grip on areas under their control, forcing thousands of Haitians to flee their homes.

Cherizier – who is under sanctions from the United Nations, US and other countries – has been at the centre of a new surge in unrest in Port-au-Prince as he called for Henry’s resignation.

In early March, Cherizier warned that Haiti faced the prospect of “civil war” if Henry did not step down.

There have been widespread looting and pitched street battles in Haiti following the resignation last week of the 74-year-old Henry – and no plan in place for what comes next. The US, which denied pressuring Henry to step aside, called for a “political transition”.

The Guatemalan and Salvadoran consulates were ransacked in Port-au-Prince along with hospitals as Henry’s office extended an overnight curfew to Sunday.

Haitian civil society leaders welcomed the resignation of Henry, an unelected leader who was named for the post in 2021 shortly before the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, as a long overdue step.

The prime minister was supposed to step down in February. He was effectively locked out of the country since the unrest spiralled, landing in Puerto Rico after being denied entry to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

The poorest country in the Western hemisphere has, for years, been saddled with corrupt leaders, and plagued by failed state institutions and violence wrought by rival armed groups.

While some political groups are putting their names forward for the council, seeing it as a way out of Haiti’s current power vacuum, Cherizier said he wants a revolution.

“Now our fight will enter another phase – to overthrow the whole system, the system that is five percent of people who control 95 percent of the country’s wealth,” he told Al Jazeera.

According to Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia, Cherizier likes to compare himself to historical figures like South Africa’s Nelson Mandela or Cuba’s longtime President Fidel Castro.

“And he likes to say that he’s essentially a revolutionary … and he’s going to redistribute wealth,” Fatton told Al Jazeera this week.

While Cherizier has distributed some food and resources to people in areas under the control of his G9 gang, “that’s hardly a vision of the future or some sort of revolutionary [act]”, he added.

Once a transitional government is in place it could pave the way for a multinational police force on the ground in Haiti, funded by the US and Canada.

Kenya’s President William Ruto said his country would lead such a force, which Cherizier rejected.

“The presence of Kenyans in Haiti will be an irony because the same people who gave weapons to people in poor neighbourhoods to rise up against the former government, then lost control of those armed groups, are now appealing to a foreign force to save things,” he said.

“It is a mission that’s failed in advance – it’s a shame that William Ruto has to go in that direction.”

The UN has estimated that gangs currently control more than 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.

Reporting from the Dominican Republic, Al Jazeera’s John Holman said the two rival gangs – the G9 and G-PEP – have formed an alliance called Viva Ensemble to try and prevent foreign troops from entering Haiti.

“They know it would challenge them,” he said. “Haitians have suffered immensely at the gangs’ hands. But the power that they have accrued means that they have to be taken into account in what is a largely lawless state.”

Fatton noted that “it’s more that he [Cherizier] wants to control his turf,” and that those who have suffered the most from the continued gang violence in the Haitian capital are “the very, very poor people in the major slums”.

“Something like over 200,000 Haitians had to leave their houses. They had to move into really very poorly equipped camps,” Fatton said. “You have, in other words, a situation where the people who are suffering the most are the very poor, the very people that Barbecue says he wants to help.”

 

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The 2024 Election is About the Rich Stealing From the Public

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A voter leaves a polling place after casting a primary ballot in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 12, 2024. Donald Trump can mathematically lock up the Republican nomination in primary voting Tuesday, which includes the key swing state of Georgia where he faces racketeering charges over an alleged conspiracy to steal the last election. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage / AFP) (Photo by ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images)

By Sonali Kolhatkar

News Americas, WAHSINGTON, D.C., Sat. March 16, 2024: There are many issues on the line this election year but one that gets little attention is former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform law that cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanently reduced the tax rate for big corporations from an already-low 35 percent to a ridiculously minuscule 21 percent. It also lowered tax rates for the wealthiest people from nearly 40 percent to 37 percent. Several provisions of that law are set to expire in 2025, making this November’s Congressional and Presidential elections particularly critical to issues of economic fairness and justice.

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A voter leaves a polling place after casting a primary ballot in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 12, 2024. Donald Trump can mathematically lock up the Republican nomination in primary voting Tuesday, which includes the key swing state of Georgia where he faces racketeering charges over an alleged conspiracy to steal the last election. (Photo by ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images)

A few months after Trump signed the bill, he boasted, “We have the biggest tax cut in history, bigger than the Reagan tax cut. Bigger than any tax cut.” It became a common refrain for him when touting his achievements. But, Trump, who was known for breaking all records on lying to the public while in office, conflated many different facts to come up with a positive-sounding falsehood in a nation already primed by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to view taxation as anathema. Trump’s tax cuts as a whole were the eighth largest in history. But his corporate tax cut was in fact the single largest reduction ever in that category.

Wealthy corporations have for years lobbied for and won so many carve-outs and loopholes to the U.S. tax system, and hidden so much money in offshore tax havens that their pre-2017 effective tax rates were already far lower than the official rates. Then, Trump lowered them even more. Imagine telling the American public that you are responsible specifically for the biggest tax cuts to the biggest corporations in U.S. history. It wasn’t a good look. And so, he lied, saying that he signed history’s biggest tax cut overall.

In the simplest terms, taxes are a way to pool collective resources so we can have the things we all need for safety and security. Progressive taxation is when wealthier individuals (and corporations) are taxed at higher-than-average rates because the richer one is, the less excess money one needs beyond one’s basic necessities. Progressive taxation ensures that wealth inequality doesn’t spiral out of control and helps ensure money that’s being sucked upwards, gets redistributed downward. When wealthy elites pay fewer taxes, they are effectively stealing from the public.

Since the cuts have been in place, many studies have attempted to assess their impact on the U.S. economy. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded in a March 2024 report that “[t]ogether with the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under President Bush (most of which were made permanent in 2012), [Trump’s] law has severely eroded our country’s revenue base.”

Trump’s law accelerated the draining of our collective revenues to fund the things we need. Even the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation concluded that, as a result of Trump’s law, “The United States collects fewer revenues from corporations, relative to the size of the economy, than most other advanced countries.”

Trump’s tax cuts were quite literally regressive, rewarding the already rich. A 2021 ProPublica report found that just one last-minute provision to the bill demanded by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) for so-called pass-through corporations benefited a handful of the wealthiest people in the nation: “just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows.” It only cost about $20 million in bribes to Johnson (i.e., donations to the Senator’s reelection campaign) to enact this windfall.

It’s no wonder that the rich were thrilled with Trump’s presidency and that his virulent white supremacy and fascist leanings were not deal breakers.

It’s also unsurprising that wealthy elites are backing a second term for Trump. They want an extension of those tax bill provisions that are expiring in 2025, and perhaps an even bigger tax cut, if they can get it. If those provisions are left to expire, people making more than $400,000 a year—the top 2 percent of earners—will see an increase in taxation in 2025.

This is a demographic that is already prone to tax cheating given the IRS’s recent announcement that 125,000 Americans making between $400,000 and $1 million a year have simply refused to file taxes since 2017.

If the GOP wins control of the Senate and the House of Representatives this fall, and if Trump beats President Joe Biden, those cuts will become permanent. A GOP sweep in November will also usher in a new wave of threats to people of color, LGBTQ people, especially transgender communities, labor rights, and reproductive justice, as well as an escalation to the already-dire Israeli genocide in Gaza that Biden is fueling. It’s hard to believe but many Americans seem to have forgotten the horrors of 2016 to 2020.

But, at its heart, this election will be about money, for it will take a lot of money to fund the GOP’s reelection campaigns in order for moneyed forces to ensure they retain control of more money—democracy, justice, and equity be damned.

For Trump, this is even more important given his legal challenges. He’s relying on small-dollar donations from his base to cover his mounting legal fees and has had to post a $91 million bond to cover the fines he faces from a defamation lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll. The more desperate Trump gets in his bid to secure the White House, the more willing he and his party will be to sell the nation to the highest bidder. And, he will lie to the public by conflating tax cuts for the rich with tax cuts for all.

We ought to think of tax cuts in terms of public revenue theft. When the wealthy win lowered taxes, they are stealing money from the American public as a whole. As per the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, permanently extending Trump’s tax cuts will result in a loss of $3.5 trillion in revenues through the year 2033. That’s highway robbery.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

Source: Independent Media Institute

Credit Line: This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Black Immigrants Face Serious Challenges In The United States

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Black migrants from Haiti look over paperwork inside Immigrant Families Services Institute as they wait to be connected with services like job opportunities and housing. (Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Mar. 14, 2024: Once Black immigrants are in the United States, it’s easy to assume they’ll have the same rights as everyone else living here. However, that’s not always true. Black immigrants in the United States face serious challenges every day. Awareness of these challenges may put us in a stronger position to tackle them and advocate for change in the future.

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Black migrants from Haiti look over paperwork inside Immigrant Families Services Institute as they wait to be connected with services like job opportunities and housing. (Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Ask lawyers from leading criminal law firms like Purser Law, and they’ll say their Black immigrant clients face many legal barriers and challenges. They’re primarily related to their immigration status.

They often have problems obtaining visas and can also face deportation. If they have a temporary status or are undocumented, they can face extreme difficulties when navigating the immigration system.

According to a 2016 report highlighted by The Guardian, people from Africa and the Caribbean were twice as likely to be deported for a criminal conviction compared to people from other regions. They were also three times more likely to be detained while their case was pending. Black Lives Matter movement co-founder Opal Tometi said the report showed that Black immigrants encounter social and economic challenges in the United States due to systemic racism.

Racism and Discrimination

Nearly five million Black immigrants live in the United States. That’s around one-tenth of the country’s Black population. You might assume we’d have less racism and discrimination with more Black people. That doesn’t seem to be the case.

A nationwide survey of immigrants revealed that Black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean experienced discrimination for being an immigrant and Black. Black immigrants were also more likely to report workplace discrimination and unfair treatment by the police.

A third of all immigrants have been told to go back to where they came from. That number skyrocketed to half for Black immigrants.

Economic Inequality

Black immigrants in the United States are fighting economic inequality every day. They’re receiving lower wages than their white peers. They’re also facing higher unemployment rates compared to other groups. Black immigrants even face challenges like fewer employment opportunities and limited access to education.

The racial wealth gap is as wide as ever. Black immigrant households had a lower median income compared to US immigrant households. They brought in a median income of $57,200 in 2019 compared to $63,000 for US immigrant households. At least 14% of Black immigrants were living below the poverty line even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Limited Access to Healthcare

There is still a lot we don’t know about the challenges Black immigrants face when seeking healthcare in the United States. However, current research suggests the challenges are significant. They generally face a lack of health insurance and a lack of interpreters. They may also face a lack of understanding from doctors about African and Caribbean illness perspectives and discrimination due to race and accent.

Black immigrants face many challenges every day in the United States. They’re facing daily legal battles, racism and discrimination, economic inequality, and healthcare challenges. While we’ve come a long way in combating such problems in many respects, we still have a long way to go.

ExxonMobil Announces New Oil Discovery In Guyana

News Americas, GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Fri. Mar. 14, 2024: ExxonMobil Guyana announced today that it has made its first discovery for 2024 at the Bluefin site in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana.

The discovery included about 197 feet (60 metres) of hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone, drilled by the Stena Drillmax drillship at a depth of 4,244 feet (1,294 metres) of water.

Located roughly 8.5 kilometres southeast of the Sailfin-1 well, in the Stabroek block’s southeastern part, the Bluefin well adds to the block’s impressive discovery record.

President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge, stated, “Our ongoing exploration efforts are further unlocking the block’s potential for sustainable oil and gas production. This discovery underscores our team’s ability to leverage our expertise, technology, and commitment to responsibly and efficiently harness Guyana’s energy resources.”

This discovery adds to the over 30 finds in the Stabroek block since 2015, marking a significant contribution to the region’s energy development.

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