WND

Former Reagan economist and co-author of “The Trump Economic Miracle” Art Laffer detailed Wednesday on Fox Business how Americans can benefit from the tax cuts.

House Republicans have advanced a budget resolution to extend Trump-era tax cuts, bolster national security, and support American workers. During an appearance on “The Bottom Line,” Laffer expressed what he said was his satisfaction with the recent developments in the House and criticized the opposition, particularly Democrats, for their negative remarks about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“It doesn’t matter whether it was by a large margin or a small margin. The bill was passed. Johnson did a great job on that. What shocks me, Brian, is where did you find those Democrats who sell those stupid comments?” Laffer asked. “You know what we know very well is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased tax revenues to the federal government, didn’t lower them. It made the poverty levels for the minorities, the disenfranchised, the less educated, the lowest in U.S. history ever.”

Laffer also pointed out that economic growth in the U.S. surged ahead of the Eurozone following the Act’s implementation.

“U.S. growth relative to the Eurozone, which had been going right together, all of a sudden increased very much in favor of the U.S. All of the things they’ve said there are just counterfactual. I just don’t get where these people get off saying that stuff without having consequences for them,” Laffer said. “It’s just plain wrong. And I’d love to debate any one of them on a show you have on the facts of what happened with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, because they are just absolutely wrong on everything they say.”

Laffer addressed the broader economic policies under the Trump administration, praising measures taken to protect American businesses from what he termed “overseas extortion.”

“If I can say one thing here, the taxes did go up with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The rich paid more in taxes at lower tax rates. Revenues went up, not down. And, you know, this was a win, win, win, win. Who on earth would ever want to raise taxes and collect tax rates and collect less revenues? You have to be dumb, blind, and stupid to do something like that,” Laffer said.

“We got more revenues and we got more prosperity, and we helped the poor a lot more with the tax rate reductions.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged to collaborate with Congress to extend the 2017 tax cuts enacted under the first term of President Donald Trump, which the Treasury secretary highlighted as the day’s most critical economic issue. The House advanced a budget resolution that extends the Trump tax cuts through a substantial reconciliation bill.

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WASHINGTON, DC — House Republicans zeroed in on the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid to bankroll left-wing causes that undermine American interests across the world in a heated oversight hearing Wednesday.

House Republicans, led by Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, sought testimony from experts to outline how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced a left-wing policy agenda during the Biden administration that in turn alienated U.S. allies and made the world less safe for Americans. Democratic lawmakers struggled to defend the worst abuses of USAID funding, such as pushing far-left ideologies on countries with conservative cultures and indirectly financing terrorist groups.

House Oversight Republicans’ hearing on foreign aid comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has effectively dismantled USAID and left its future in limbo. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the Trump administration cut roughly $60 billion in USAID and State Department grants and multi-year awards that it determined did not align with American interests.

Greene also said the DOGE Subcommittee will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals to those it believes have abused foreign aid. The subcommittee is expected to release a post-hearing review on USAID’s foreign aid abuses next week.

“USAID has been transformed into an America-last foreign aid slush fund to prop up extremist groups, implement censorship campaigns and interfere in foreign elections to force regime change around the world,” Greene said in her opening remarks. “That is the dark truth about USAID.”

“Taxpayer funds have literally been used to undermine U.S. interests and counter American foreign policy goals under the guise of foreign aid,” Greene continued. “This is unacceptable, and the American people agree.”

More than 60% of Americans believe that U.S. foreign aid is being “wasted on corruption or administration fees,” according to a survey published by the Financial Times on Feb. 17.

Democrats appeared unable to confront the worst USAID abuses that occurred under Biden, and at times, sought to deflect attention to unrelated topics.

After Greene outlined how USAID funding had been funneled to terrorist groups, Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the top Democratic lawmaker on the subcommittee, began her opening remarks with the statement, “Welcome to the Elon Musk chainsaw massacre.”

Stansbury then proceeded to rail against Musk for weighing into Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, Vice President J.D. Vance scolding European elites for abandoning core civil liberties and the president’s recent comments on the Russia-Ukraine War.

Democratic lawmakers’ witness Noam Unger, director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, struggled to answer a question posed by Texas Republican Rep. Brandon Gill if spending more than $3 million “for being LGBTQ” in the Caribbean aligned with American values.

Stansbury and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel appeared to have learned few lessons about USAID’s abuses. Stansbury notably defended former USAID director Samantha Power’s push to turn the department into a de-facto “climate agency” and attempted to get the experts testifying to agree that USAID should continue to push LGBTQ rights on the rest of the world.

“If we want to do counter China, there’s nothing more that has alienated billions of people than pushing an ideology that they resent,” Max Primorac, who served as USAID’s acting chief operating officer, senior agency vetting official and regulatory reform officer in the first Trump administration, told Stansbury in response. “None of this is counter China. This is counter America.”

“A resounding ‘yes’ that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity and peace in accordance with our national interest and our values, but not as an instrument of progressive imperialism,” Primorac continued. “Aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the Middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse.”

Primorac previously told the Daily Caller that USAID’s left-wing agenda under former President Joe Biden weakened the United States’ influence abroad.

Experts also tore into the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid for damaging the United States’ standing in the world. Biden notably left office with an increasingly unstable world stage, with ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.

“It [USAID] has been doing harm while spending more on aid,” Primorac told lawmakers. “There is more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries.”

“The fiduciary duty of our aid officials over the past four years has done tremendous damage to foreign aid’s credibility and America’s standing in the world,” Primorac continued.

Despite Trump moving to cut the vast majority of USAID contracts and shut down the agency, most lawmakers on the panel — Republican and Democrat — still believe the U.S. government should be doling out some foreign aid to counter China’s influence in developing countries and provide relief in humanitarian crises. But foreign aid practices must align with American interests as outlined in the president’s executive order on foreign aid, according to Republican lawmakers.

“That’s just hyperbolic nonsense that we do not recognize that there’s a role to play for the United States in the federal aid space,” Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon said Wednesday. “But what we want to expose is $164 million going to radical organizations — $122 million of it to organizations that have aligned, or at least tied to terrorism.”

A DCNF analysis found that more than $1.3 billion taxpayer dollars doled out by the Biden administration ended up in terrorist groups’ coffers.

The hearing was disrupted on two occasions by left-wing protestors in the crowd. An elderly woman was removed after making an “obscene gesture” to an unnamed lawmaker while South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons spoke. Another person attending the hearing was promptly removed by police after shouting at lawmakers to stop DOGE.

Greene told the crowd that private individuals, including those in the crowd, were free to fund far-left causes around the world, but no longer would the government be bankrolling left-wing activism on the taxpayer’s dime.

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President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) said “gender dysphoria” is “incompatible with” what it takes to serve in the U.S. military in a court filing Wednesday.

The Pentagon filed the document in response to an ongoing case from LGBT activists challenging Trump’s ban on military service for people who identify as transgender. A policy memo from a “personnel and readiness” office at the DOD says they do not meet military standards and cannot serve, with exceptions for “warfighting capabilities.”

“The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service,” reads the memo, citing a Feb. 7 directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

HEGSETH MEMO: “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused.” https://t.co/xsqz98FrAu pic.twitter.com/RjJxrR32fO

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 10, 2025

The military requires “high standards for Service member readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the Pentagon told staff. Allowing gender-dysphoric people to serve “is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security,” it said.

The new DOD policy also says transgender people currently serving “will be processed for separation” from the military.

Trans-identifying military members sued the Trump administration in January over the president’s January executive order that declared transgender people ineligible for service. Pro-LGBT groups representing them allege the policy is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Aside from creating medical “constraints,” calling oneself transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle,” Trump’s executive order said. “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), one of the groups suing, said the statements from the DOD’s Wednesday memo are unfair in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The administration has doubled down on betraying service members who have faithfully followed the rules, met the same standards as others, and put their lives on the line to serve our country,” said NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter, an attorney on the case.

“The scope and severity of the ban are unprecedented,” Minter told the DCNF. “This is a complete purge of all transgender individuals from military service.”

A Feb. 21 complaint from the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused a Biden-appointed judge overseeing the case of “political bias” against the Trump administration and “misconduct” over her questioning during a hearing. A hearing to decide whether to block the transgender policy is set for March 13.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Legendary actor Gene Hackman, a two-time Oscar-winner who’s known for his roles in “The French Connection” and “Unforgiven,” has been found dead in his home in Santa Fe, beside his dead wife classical pianist Betsy Arakawa and their dead dog.

He was 95, she was 63.

Fox News reported the suspicious circumstances were under investigation, but authorities said “foul play” appeared not to be involved.

“On February 26, 2025 at approximately 1:45 p.m., Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, 95 and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 64, and a dog were found deceased,” the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Legendary actor Gene Hackman, wife Betsy and dog found dead inside New Mexico home: police https://t.co/nnZjECHJU4 pic.twitter.com/S2VioWhMOv

— New York Post (@nypost) February 27, 2025

Hackman took on a long list of wide-ranging roles from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.

His was in “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Superman.”

Francis Ford Coppola, who directed the 1974 “The Conversation” in which Hackman appeared, said, “The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration: Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity. I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”

He was born Jan. 30, 1931 in San Bernardino, Calif., and grew up in Danville, Ill., where his father worked as a pressman.

Fox reported, “When Gene was 13, his father waved goodbye and drove off, never to return. The abandonment was a lasting injury to Gene. His mother had become an alcoholic and was constantly at odds with her mother, with whom the shattered family lived (Gene had a younger brother). At 16, he ‘suddenly got the itch to get out.’ Lying about his age, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines.”

He served from 1947 to 1952 as a broadcast journalist and field radio operator, seeing assignments in Qingdao, China, and Shanghai.

He later worked at radio stations in Florida and Illinois, then moved to New York to study painting, before finally switching to acting.

His first marriage, the Fay Maltese, lasted from 1956 to the 1980s, and resulted in a son and two daughters.

He married Arakawa in 1991.

His latter years were spent at his ranch in Santa Fe.

 

Western values are under threat, and Gad Saad, bestselling author of The Parasitic Mind, joins Elizabeth Farah to expose the dangers of mass immigration, political correctness, and ideological infiltration in media and politics. They argue that legal and illegal immigration can both reshape a nation’s culture in ways that may be irreversible, especially when people are too afraid to speak the truth. Saad shares his own experience fleeing religious extremism, warning that silence and “suicidal empathy” are leading the West toward cultural collapse. They challenge you to think critically, break through fear, and have the courage to defend free speech before it’s too late.

WATCH:

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Feb. 26, 2025: 11:00 p.m.:

Feb. 26, 2025: National Security Highlights

• President Trump announced a 25% tariff on European Union imports, escalating trade tensions and prompting potential retaliatory measures from the EU.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard terminated over 100 intelligence employees for participating in explicit chatrooms on a government platform, citing a severe breach of trust.
• The House Committee on Homeland Security advanced the “Cyber PIVOTT Act,” aiming to strengthen America’s cybersecurity infrastructure and counter evolving threats.

(FOX NEWS) — Seventy Christians have been beheaded with machetes or large knives, according to multiple groups that monitor terrorism and persecution, by Islamist militants in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – and yet the world remains mostly silent.

The 70 Christians were first rounded up by Islamist rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, a group affiliated with the terror group Islamic State, or ISIS, according to Open Doors U.S., which monitors Christian persecution around the world. The Christians, reportedly all from the Lubero district, were forced out of their homes allegedly early in the morning of Feb. 13, with the rebels shouting, “Get out, get out.”

Horrified to learn about the 70 Christian martyrs beheaded by terrorists in a church in Kasanga, DRC. Hungary stands in solidarity with the persecuted Christians BUT we need more the world needs to recognize and act against Christian persecution.

— Tristan Azbej ن (@tristan_azbej) February 19, 2025

They were taken hostage, and moved to a small Christian church in the village of Kasanga. There, inside the building that had until then been considered a sanctuary, they were first tied up, and then all 70 were beheaded, the groups say.

#BREAKING: Pam Bondi just announced she will be releasing new Epstein flight logs, names, and information TOMORROW

“It’s pretty SICK what this man did.”

She says she hasn’t released much more detailed information yet because there are “well over 200 victims.”

Release it… pic.twitter.com/c5ijD0vg5A

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 27, 2025