The creep accused of slashing an Asian woman in Times Square with a box-cutter had been arrested for a violent robbery just days before the random attack — but a lax Queens judge let him walk free, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Anthony Evans, 30, was cut loose on supervised release by Judge Denise Johnson on July 27, despite facing second-degree robbery charges for allegedly slugging aa grocery store worker and, in a separate case, swiping a case of beer, according to officials and records.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office cited Evans’ being free on a violent felony as part of their argument for why he should be held on $200,000 bail over the Sunday attack, which is being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The judge ended up ordering the suspect held pending a mental evaluation at the arraignment early Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Cops say Evans attacked a 59-year-old seamstress pulling a rolling cart on Seventh Avenue and West 42na Street on Sunday morning — leaving her with 19 stitches on her hand, according to a criminal complaint.
Anthony Evans was cut loose by Judge Denise Johnson days before the Times Square slashing.Robert Miller for NY PostEvans is accused of slashing an Asian woman in Times Square with a box cutter. NYPD
The slashing came only a week after Evans on July 22 allegedly stole a package of noodles from SkyFoods on College Point Boulevard, according to court records.
A manager, who spotted the theft on surveillance footage, followed Evans out of the store and got clocked in the face when he confronted him, the criminal complaint said.
Four days later, Evans allegedly walked into a Walgreens, picked up an 18-pack of Miller Light and strolled out of the store without paying, according to court records. A female employee grabbed the beer from him outside, the complaint said.
Evans previously was caught on camera stealing from a Walgreens and a SkyFoods. NYPD
Evans was arrested July 26 and charged in both cases. He faces charges of second-degree robbery, which is considered a violent felony, as well as Petty Larceny, over the grocery store incident, records showed.
Prosecutors had requested bail be set at $50,000 during his arraignment on July 27, according to a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney’s Office. But Johnson released Evans without setting monetary bail, according to officials and records.
Both those cases were added until Sept. 22, the DA’s office said.
In the slashing incident, Evans faces charges of assault, attempted assault and criminal possession of a weapon.Paul Martinka for NY Post
Evans is now facing additional charges of assault, attempted assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the caught-on-video Times Square attack on July 31.
He was seen in the video rushing up to the woman, raising his hand above his head and bringing the apparent box cutter down to her hand, according to court records.
Evans also had two misdemeanor convictions of assault and a robbery for which he was granted youthful offender status.
He is due back in court Aug. 25, according to the Manhattan DA.
Johnson — who was elected in November 2021 — caught heat a few months later when she cut loose a reputed gang member charged in a bar shooting after cops tracked him down to North Carolina, despite even his defense lawyer calling $50,000 bail “appropriate,” The Post reported at the time.
Trevor Noah spent a few minutes of his DailyShow monologue digging into Alex Jones, “far-right commentator and man who makes Donald Trump seem like a reasonable human being,” whose defamation trial took a shocking turn on Wednesday after it was revealed that Jones’ own lawyer had accidentally sent a trove of damning text messages to the opposing counsel representing the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims.
“Today in the trial, one of the funniest moments came when he found out that his inept lawyer had screwed up and sent the prosecution evidence that proved Alex Jones committed perjury,” the host explained before sharing an extended clip from the proceedings with viewers in which the InfoWars founder is caught red-handed.
“Oh shit, that was funny!” Noah said, barely able to control his laughter at him. “Oh man, I like how he was so shocked he started turning into every emoji.” He added that, “at one point he even tried to give himself COVID,” joking that Jones’ coughing fit may have been him pretending to have the disease he’s been calling fake for years now.
“You know you’re in trouble when the truth chokes you up like you’re on an episode of hot ones,” Noah continued. “But you realize, this moment is huge. Because it shows that Alex Jones probably committed perjury, which means Alex Jones lies about stuff.”
That “shocking” realization led Noah to wonder if “chemtrails from planes aren’t turning the frogs gay,” before asking, “Was that also a lie?!”
For more, listen and subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast.
SACRAMENTO — Widening his attack on Republican states for their positions on guns, civil rights and abortion, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Wednesday called on Hollywood to “walk the walk” on liberal values by bringing back their film and television productions from states such as Georgia and Oklahoma.
Mr. Newsom issued the challenge through an ad in Variety that asked the state’s left-leaning creative community to “take stock of your values — and those of your employees — when doing business in those states.”
The Democratic governor on Wednesday simultaneously endorsed a legislative proposal that would provide a $1.65 billion, five-year extension of California’s film and television production tax credit program.
It marked the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Newsom has used California legislation as a cudgel to rip Republican leaders elsewhere. Last month, I signed a bill allowing residents to sue makers of illegal guns and took the opportunity to rebuke Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for previously enabling its residents to sue abortion providers.
Mr. Newsom’s statements on Wednesday underscored the pressure that intensifying culture wars have placed on US corporations, particularly in states where the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade has severely constrained reproductive rights for women.
Some of the country’s biggest businesses, including the Walt Disney Company, Netflix and Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, have announced programs to help employees who need abortion access but cannot obtain it in their home states. Hundreds of entertainment figures also have denounced policies in Republican-led states that have weakened safeguards for LGBTQ people. Last week, some 400 television creators and showrunners publicly demanded that production companies protect pregnant employees in states where abortion is outlawed.
But entertainment companies have not yet announced major plans to cancel expansions or relocate offices. “Tulsa King,” Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming crime drama starring Sylvester Stallone, has been filming this summer for Paramount+ in Oklahoma.
In Georgia on Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp announced that film and television productions generated $4.4 billion in the state this fiscal year, a new record. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was filmed in the state, the governor noted, as was the fourth season of “Stranger Things.”
“I was happy to name Gavin Newsom Oklahoma’s Economic Developer of the Year Award in 2021 and I’m glad to see he’s making a run for two years in a row,” Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma joked in a statement on Wednesday. Mr. Stitt took a similar jab at the California governor last year in reference to the state’s pandemic shutdowns, which Mr. Stitt said drove business to his state.
The Motion Picture Association, the trade group representing major film studios and Netflix, declined to comment on Wednesday.
Moving a production can be exceptionally costly and logistically complex, and some of the entertainment industry’s biggest companies are deeply invested in states with conservative leaders. Disney, for example, has maintained extensive operations in Florida despite a bitter and expensive standoff between its employees and the state.
After Disney — pressured by its employees — opposeda Florida ban on LGBTQ-related instruction, state legislators and Gov. Ron DeSantis stripped the company of the special authority it had over the swaths of land where Disney World and other company properties are located. Disney, meanwhile, has delayed a planned relocation of some 2,000 high-profile jobs from California to Florida.
Mr. Newsom has been in the thick of that power struggle for months, trolling Mr. DeSantis on Twitter and inviting Disney to rethink its Florida investments. The Variety ad was the latest in a series of initiatives by Mr. Newsom to take his defense of “California values” onto a national stage.
A $105,000 spot that ran in Florida last month — attacking Mr. DeSantis and inviting Florida businesses to come to California — was the opening salvo in a national effort by Mr. Newsom that has included newspaper ads in Texas attacking Mr. Abbott on abortion restrictions and a highly publicized trip to Washington, DC, to discuss, among other things, gun legislation.
In widening his attacks to include Oklahoma and Georgia, Mr. Newsom targeted not only two of California’s most aggressive rivals for film, television and other content production but two of the nation’s most conservative states on social issues.
Oklahoma, which aggressively ramped up film production incentives during the pandemic, has banned nearly all abortions since the Roe v. Wade reverse. And Georgia, which has one of the nation’s most generous packages of film production incentives, has granted fetuses full legal recognition. This week, a Georgia tax agency found that pregnant women could take a $3,000 personal tax exemption for any fetus with a detectable heartbeat.
Mr. Newsom noted that California’s abortion rights are among the most secure in the nation. The state has also enacted some of the nation’s toughest laws on gun safety and civil liberties for LGBTQ people.
California’s film tax credit — which the state created in 2009 after productions began decamping for Canada — has been of debatable value, even with an expansion and overhaul in 2014. The incentive allows filmmakers to recoup as much as 25 percent of their spending — up to the first $100 million — on crew salaries and other costs, excluding star salaries. But other states, including Georgia, offer more significant rebates.
Critics complain that the tax credit encourages bidding wars and rarely keeps productions in the state over the long term. A 2019 analysis by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found that one-third of the projects that received the subsidies probably would have been made in California regardless.
“While the credit probably caused some film and television projects to be made here, many other similar projects also were made here without receiving any financial incentive,” the report said.
But Newsom on Wednesday touted another study, conducted this year for the Motion Picture Association by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., that concluded that California’s program had helped create more than 110,000 jobs and tens of billions of dollars in economic output. In recent years, the tax credit has also helped bring shows such as “American Horror Story,” “Veep” and “Lucifer” back from other states and countries to California.
Short, Jacob and Cipollone testified to the Jan. 6 select committee but negotiated strict terms to avoid discussing their direct interactions with Trump — a nod to the disputed possibility that such communications could be protected by executive privilege. But it’s unlikely that such claims would pass muster in a criminal probe.
“There is no way that any court would say they didn’t have to testify to conversations with President Trump in a grand jury investigation — a criminal investigation arising out of that conduct,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama and represented President Bill Clinton in several executive privilege fights. “There’s no doubt if this got to a court, it would hold that the department is entitled to the information. … I think it’s a no-brainer.”
CNN reported last week that Short and Jacob declined to answer some questions before the grand jury on executive privilege grounds, as they had done during depositions conducted by the House Jan. 6 Select Committee. The panel has argued that executive privilege does not apply to nearly any conversation Trump had related to efforts to overturn the election, but the committee has opted against litigating those thorny and time-consuming issues, instead permitting cooperating witnesses — including Short, Jacob, Cipollone and others — to answer questions without revealing specific details of conversations with Trump that could even arguably be privileged. But Trump’s suit against the panel and the National Archives was an exception to the panel’s general approach of seeking to avoid or delay litigation on such issues.
It remains unclear whether Trump intends to formally assert executive privilege in a bid to block any testimony to the grand jury. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comments on the former president’s plans.
However, Trump is likely to be at a disadvantage in such a legal battle because of the defeats he already suffered as he tried to block the National Archives from disclosing thousands of pages of his White House records to the Jan. 6 select committee. That fight also helped the Justice Department hone arguments that may come into play in the grand jury probe encircling Trump’s allies.
The department represented the National Archives in that fight, lodging extensive briefs opposing Trump’s power to assert executive privilege as a former president over the objection of the sitting president, Joe Biden.
“The exceptional events of January 6 amply justify President Biden’s determination that assertion of the privilege is unwarranted with respect to the records at issue here,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar contended in a Supreme Court brief, “and [Trump] has not even attempted to offer ‘any specific countervailing need for confidentiality.’”
In short, the Justice Department’s grand jury investigation might benefit from Trump’s repeated efforts to block investigators in the past. Even before those court rulings, the department typically had the upper hand in battles over privilege. Grand jury subpoenas are more legally potent than the congressional variety, and the Justice Department will enter any fight with Trump armed with a court-approved strategy to defeat Trump’s executive privilege claims.
Judges at every level determined or acquiesced in rulings that the urgency of Congress’ need to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection easily outweighed Trump’s desire to maintain the secrecy of potentially privileged records.
“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in the first ruling against Trump last November. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals followed suit, with a 68-page opinion rejecting Trump’s effort to assert privilege on multiple bases.
“The January 6th Committee has … demonstrated a sound factual predicate for requesting these presidential documents specifically,” Judge Patricia Millett wrote for the three-member panel. “There is a direct linkage between the former President and the events of the day.”
The panel’s victory against Trump unlocked some of its most crucial evidence against the former president, including handwritten notes, call and visitor logs and speech drafts that showed the West Wing struggling to get Trump to condemn violent supporters on Jan. 6 and continue his efforts to overturn the election during and after the riot.
A separate legal fight—between Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the Jan. 6 select committee—may also bear on Trump’s ability to insert executive privilege issues into the grand jury investigation. In that civil case, Meadows asserted immunity from congressional subpoenas, a power that the Justice Department has long supported for sitting presidents and their immediate advisers.
But the department had never weighed in on whether similar immunity applies to a former aide to a former president. In fact, the Justice Department’s only reference to any similar scenario was to directly cite a decision by President Harry Truman to resist a subpoena from the House UnAmerican Activities Committee after he had left office, citing separation-of-powers concerns. But Truman’s quote held no legal value, and the matter has never been litigated until now.
In a 17-page brief filed in Meadows’ case just over two weeks ago, the Justice Department for the first time said that a former aid to a former president did not have “absolute” immunity from compelled testimony, and that Biden’s decision to waive privilege should take precedence over any attempt by a former president to assert it.
“Allowing a former President to override the decisions of the incumbent would be an extraordinary intrusion into the latter’s ability to discharge his constitutional responsibilities,” the department argued.
Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger sharply criticized the Justice Department’s move, saying it “elected to become an advocate for the committee and urged the court to go into untested legal waters.”
Some executive privilege battles litigated in civil cases have dragged out for years. One, involving a House subpoena for Justice Department documents related to the Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation, stretched for seven years, from 2012 to 2019.
However, the courts tend to fast-track grand jury subpoena battles because of the priority given to criminal investigations.
“The Department of Justice can get in front of a court really fast, unlike Congress,” said Eggleston, the former Obama White House counsel. “They can do that in a matter of days. They can work so much faster and they don’t really have to negotiate.”
Legal experts say the reported grand jury subpoenas to Cipollone and Philbinraise issues beyond the traditional executive privilege ones because they were, at times, giving Trump legal advice that would normally be protected by attorney-client privilege. However, in a 1998 dispute stemming from Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s probe of President Bill Clinton’s White House, the DC Circuit ruled that governmental attorney-client privilege had to yield to a grand jury subpoena in the context of a criminal investigation.
“The DC Circuit is very explicit that government attorneys do not have any greater privilege than other advisers when it comes to information they have that is relevant to a grand jury,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and co-founder of the Just Security blog. “I think it’s highly likely that Trump will lose very quickly because … there’s case law in the DC Circuit contradicting any such claims.”
One former White House lawyer for Trump, Ty Cobb, said he thought some of the recent court rulings might have been mistaken to hold that a former president couldn’t assert executive privilege if the current one disagreed.
“I’m not sure that that is right,” said Cobb, who has publicly broken with Trump and called his actions related to Jan. 6 “disqualifying.”
However, Cobb acknowledged that either way, current law says criminal investigators can get even information protected by that privilege if they show “an urgent need” and “no other place to go” for it.
“If you tick those boxes, you can be questioned,” he said. The attorney noted, though, that some witnesses might choose to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights regardless of, or in addition to, any privilege Trump might assert, and the right against self-incrimination is largely treated as sacrosanct.
The initial stages of any executive privilege fight over grand jury testimony about Trump would go to Chief Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee and former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel who has repeatedly voiced outrage about the Jan. 6 attack.
Beyond that, Trump’s lawyers can take the issue to the DC Circuit, which already snubbed him in the White House records fight, and on to the Supreme Court, which did the same.
The only outward sign of hesitation from the Justice Department on executive privilege issues is its decision last year not to bring criminal charges against Meadows and Trump’s social media guru, Dan Scavino, for defying House subpoenas based on what they said were instructions from Trump.
But the department’s recent backing for the House in Meadows’ civil suit seems to indicate that Justice Department officials are committed to their view that the stronger legal argument here is that, as a former president and because of the gravity of the Jan. 6 events, Trump cannot successfully assert the privilege to block testimony.
Indeed, some legal observers say Trump’s chances of succeeding in this sort of court battle are so remote that he might not even choose to fight it out. A privilege battle that attorney John Eastman pursued in court against a House subpoena led to a judge ruling in March that Trump likely committed a crime — obstruction of justice — by trying to interfere with the certification of electoral votes by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 .
One potential downside for Trump if he does put up a privilege fight over the grand jury demands is a repeat of what happened in the Eastman case, with a judge or multiple judges publicly declaring that he probably broke criminal law. It would not amount to a criminal charge, but it would fuel public perceptions that Trump crossed the legal line in his activities by trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s win at the ballot box.
“There’s a potential risk for Trump that a judge holds there’s sufficient evidence of his engaging in criminal conduct,” said Goodman, the New York University law professor, a possibility that might dissuade Trump from embarking on a quixotic legal battle to shield his advisers from testifying about their conversations with him.
More than 80% of pistol-packing perps were put back on the streets after getting busted for gun possession in New York City this year, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.
“When it comes to guns, this year, 2,386 people were arrested with a gun. Of those, approximately 1,921 are out on the street,” Adams said during a news conference on bail reform and recidivism.
“Arrested with a gun, out on the street.”
Adams added: “Gun arrests in custody: 19.5%. Out of custody: over 80%.”
“How do you take a gun law seriously when the overwhelming numbers are back on the streets after carrying a gun?” I have asked.
Adams also highlighted the number of gun suspects who’ve been re-arrested — and re-released.
“This year, 165 people were arrested with a second gun charge,” he said.
“Of those, 82 — out on the street. Not one arrest but two gun arrests — back out on the street,” he smoked.
Major Eric Adams questioned how anyone could take a gun law seriously if they are released from custody so quickly.NYC Special Narcotics ProsecutorAround 80% of perps for gun arrests are released to the streets. Robert Miller
Adams didn’t specify how many defendants were released without bail or how many posted bail to get sprung.
All gun-possession charges are eligible for bail under New York law, which requires judges to impose the least restrictive conditions necessary to ensure defendants return to court.
In 2019, the year before the state’s controversial bail reform law took effect, “we arrested 80 people for a gun crime who had an open gun arrest,” Adams said.
Adams has continuously challenged state lawmakers on bail reform. Robert Miller
In 2021, he said, “the number was 259” — more than three times as many.
Adams also said that in 2019, 20 people arrested in shootings already had pending gun-possession charges but that last year, the number spiked nearly fourfold, to 77.
Also during Wednesday’s news conference at One Police Plaza, NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael Lipetri said, “We like to talk about credible messengers when we work with our social service providers … to deliver the message to the crew member about stop the violence. ”
But Lipetri said that “the credible messenger today in New York City is the crew member that was arrested with a gun yesterday, that’s out today, that’s telling that crew, ‘Well, look at me, I can carry a gun in New York City .’”
Lipetri said the NYPD was investigating 716 suspected of committing 30% of the roughly 2,400 shootings that have taken place since 2021.
“Of those individuals, 54% — almost 385 — today have an open felony,” he said.
The accountant now in charge of overseeing right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ company Free Speech Systems through its bankruptcy was questioned Wednesday by attorneys for families of Sandy Hook shooting victims over $62 million in funds Jones has drawn from the company over the years.
Free Speech Systems, which runs Jones’ conspiratorial outlet Infowars, filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, amid proceedings in two states to determine how much Jones owes in damages to families of Sandy Hook victims over his false claims that the shooting was a hoax and they had not actually gone through the experience of losing a child in it.
Marc Schwartz testified he signed a contract to take over as Chief Restructuring Officer for the company in June and now controls all bank accounts, payroll and hiring decisions. Schwartz testified that Jones withdrew about $62 million dollars from the company over 14 years, and testified that $30 million of those withdrawals was paid to the IRS.
Schwartz also testified during the hearing, which ran for more than six hours, that Infowars received about $9 million in cryptocurrency donations and that “they went directly to Mr. Jones.”
Schwartz said during his testimony that Free Speech Systems should be allowed to use cash it has on hand to be able to pay vendors, saying otherwise it will have to shut down.
“If we can’t pay the critical vendors then we will be shut down,” Schwartz said. “The company’s in a situation right now where there’s not a whole lot of breathing room.”
US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said Wednesday he would not allow more withdrawals moving forward and that he found some of Schwartz’s testimony “troubling.”
Court documents filed Friday as part of Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy showed the company has between $10 million and $50 million in estimated assets and between $50 million and $100 million in estimated liabilities. An attorney for Free Speech Systems said at the hearing Wednesday that the company has about $1.3 million cash on hand.
Schwartz stressed the importance of being able to pay vendors that allow the company to broadcast and sell products online, saying that when Jones is not on the air discussing products he sells, the company sees a 30% drop in sales.
“If we can’t broadcast, we can’t sell,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz testified the management structure of Free Speech Systems was not set up the way a successful business should be managed.
“There is Alex and then there is everybody else,” Schwartz testified.
Schwartz said accounting controls were, as far as he could tell after taking control of the company, “nonexistent,” that the people responsible for maintaining the company’s books did not have accounting degrees and that there had been no financial reports produced in at least 18 months when he took over.
Lawyers homed in on Jones’ salary under the bankruptcy plan, saying documents showed Jones’ salary before the bankruptcy was $625,000 a year, and under a restructuring plan, it would amount to about $1.3 million. Schwartz said Jones’ salary could be considered reasonable because of his value to the company.
“Who is more valuable? Nobody,” Schwartz said. Lopez authorized a lower salary for Jones to be paid, of about $20,000 every other week.
When asked how much the company had spent on legal expenses related to the Sandy Hook lawsuits, Schwartz said company records show at least $4.5 million have been spent between 2018 and 2021, but that he does not believe that number is accurate.
Schwartz also testified that Jones used a company-associated American Express card to pay for personal expenses, including housekeeping charges, regularly in the past 18 months. The card had $300,000 a month in charges, but Schwartz said accounting staff did not label what the charges were for.
“We can’t tell you whether it’s for electricity, entertainment or electronic supplies for the production studio,” Schwartz said.
Lopez said he would not authorize the current American Express bill of about $172,000 to be paid.
Schwartz said he didn’t know who Jones was before being hired, and that he doesn’t agree with many of Jones’ views but occasionally consults with him on matters involving the business.
Three smaller companies tied to Jones declared bankruptcy earlier this year, briefly pausing the suits against Jones. But the families suing him dropped those companies from their lawsuits so that the cases could move forward against only Jones and Free Speech Systems. Shortly after, the companies exited bankruptcy protection.
Mark McCloskey, who became infamous in 2020 for waving a rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters who marched near his front lawn in St. Louis, lost his bid for a US Senate seat in Missouri on Tuesday night.
McCloskey won just 3 percent of the vote, according to results from The Associated Press, while Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt earned 45 percent of the vote to clinch the GOP nomination.
Polls had shown McCloskey was running far behind his opponents headed into election day.
McCloskey, an attorney, brandished an assault-style rifle while standing outside his home with his wife Patricia McCloskey, also a lawyer, during the 2020 summer protests against police brutality that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn.
The couple became a symbol of the culture war in America, drawing praise at the time from former President Trump and conservatives who argued Mark McCloskey was defending his home, but also condemnation from the left who said he threatened peaceful protesters.
The McCloskeys pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of assault and harassment over the incident, but were later pardoned by Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson.
A Missouri panel also filed an ethics complaint against the couple to suspend their law licenses, which the Missouri Supreme Court ruled on in February.
The court, calling the couple’s crimes a “moral turpitude,” sanctioned the McCloskeys and ordered them to complete 100 hours of pro-bono work. They were also ordered to a one-year probationary period, which if violated could result in an indefinite suspension of their law licenses.
The US Supreme Court last month rejected an appeal from the couple, who argued the ruling violated their Second Amendment right to defend themselves in their own home.
In May 2021, Mark McCloskey announced his bid for Missouri’s open US Senate seat to replace retiring GOP Sen. Roy Blunt.
At the time, he said Missourians were seeking a candidate like him who would fight back against the “cancel culture mobs.”
Small business owners may soon be in for a lengthy and expensive battle with the IRS, tax experts warn.
A key provision in the Inflation Reduction Act — which throws an extra $80 billion to the IRS to improve the agency’s collection of under-reported income — will end up targeting small business owners to pay for the legislation, according to nonpartisan watchdog the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The group estimates that between 78% and 90% of the estimated additional $200 billion the IRS will collect will come from small businesses making less than $200,000 annually.
Just 4% to 9% would come from businesses making north of $500,000 a year — meaning the legislation is in sharp contrast to President Biden’s longstanding claim that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000.
“The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back,” Joe Hinchman, executive vice president at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, told The Post. “We’ve seen this play out before … the IRS says ‘We’re going after the rich’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.”
Increasing the number of IRS agents could hurt small businesses most.Getty Images
In fact, going after the lower and middle class can actually be more lucrative for IRS auditors than trying to get more money from the wealthy. “The rich have their lawyers and fight it — that’s why the poor are easier to go after,” Hinchman adds.
Accordingly, tax experts warn that the IRS’s audits will be far more painful and costly for small business owners — even for those who think they’re filing their taxes correctly.
Sens. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer have reached a deal that would give the IRS an extra $80 billion.Getty Images
“Most small businesses aren’t doing anything wrong,” Daniel Bunn, executive vice president at the Tax Foundation, told The Post. “We don’t make the tax code simple and the complicated tax code makes it difficult for small business owners to comply with all the requirements.”
Even if small business owners get everything right, they may still be faced with a headache since part of the IRS expansion will involve sending out more notices and letters to businesses, Bunn adds. For individual contractors or small businesses, an IRS letter that they owe more money or made an error on their taxes can put them underwater.
“Anytime you get an IRS letter, it could take months or years to get it settled — we’re talking many thousands of dollars to address,” Bunn added. “Large companies have constant reviews and lawyers going through everything… small business doesn’t have the resources to fight back in the way.”
The White House has dismissed claims the bill will hurt lower- and middle-income Americans, instead noting the JCT estimate doesn’t take into account how much the bill will offset costs for average Americans like prescription drugs.
But tax experts aren’t so sanguine about the reality of giving the IRS more resources.
“The approach here is to double the IRS workforce, take the leash off, and see how much they can collect,” Hinchman adds. “I think they’ll collect it but it will be quite painful.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — US-China relations are teetering on a precipice after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
Pelosi received a rapturous welcome in Taipei and was applauded with strong bipartisan support in Washington, despite the Biden administration’s misgivings. But her trip from Ella has enraged Beijing and Chinese nationalists and will complicate already strained ties even after her departure.
Already, China is preparing new shows of force in the Taiwan Strait to make clear that its claims are non-negotiable on the island it regards as a renegade province. And, as the US presses ahead with demonstrations of support for Taiwan, arms sales and diplomatic lobbying, the escalating tensions have raised the risks of military confrontation, intentional or not.
And the trip could further muddle Washington’s already complicated relationship with Beijing as the two sides wrest with differences over trade, the war in Ukraine, human rights and more.
Wary of the reaction from China, the Biden administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan. It has taken pains to stress to Beijing that the House speaker is not a member of the executive branch and her visit from her represents no change in the US “one-China” policy.
That was little comfort for Beijing. Pelosi, who is second in line to the US presidency, was no ordinary visitor and was greeted almost like a head of state. Taiwan’s skyline lit up with a message of welcome, and she met with the biggest names on the island, including its president, senior legislators and prominent rights activists.
Chinese officials were enraged.
“What Pelosi has done is definitely not a defense and maintenance of democracy, but a provocation and violation of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said after her departure.
“Pelosi’s dangerous provocation is purely for personal political capital, which is an absolute ugly political farce,” Hua said. “China-US relations and regional peace and stability is suffering.”
The timing of the visit may have added to the tensions. It came ahead of this year’s Chinese Communist Party’s Congress at which President Xi Jinping will try to further cement his power from him, using a hard line on Taiwan to blunt domestic criticism on COVID-19, the economy and other issues.
Summoned to the Foreign Ministry to hear China’s complaints, US Ambassador Nicholas Burns insisted that the visit was nothing but routine. “The United States will not escalate and stands ready to work with China to prevent escalation altogether,” Burns said, according to the State Department.
The White House also said that Pelosi’s visit “doesn’t change anything” about the US posture toward China and Taiwan. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the US had expected the harsh reaction from China, even as she called it unwarranted.
“We are going to monitor, and we will manage what Beijing chooses to do,” she added.
Alarmed by the possibility of a new geo-strategic conflict at the same time the West sides with Ukraine in its resistance to Russia’s invasion, the US has rallied allies to its side.
The foreign ministers of the Group of 7 industrialized democracies released a statement Wednesday essentially telling China — by the initials of its formal name, the People’s Republic of China — to calm down.
“It is normal and routine for legislators from our countries to travel internationally,” the G-7 ministers said. “The PRC’s escalatory response risks increasing tensions and destabilizing the region. We call on the PRC not to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the region, and to resolve cross-Strait differences by peaceful means.”
Still, that status quo — long identified as “strategic ambiguity” for the US and quiet but determined Chinese opposition to any figment of Taiwanese independence — appears to be no longer tenable for either side.
“It’s getting harder and harder to agree on Taiwan for both Beijing and Washington,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an emeritus professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.
In Taipei and the US Congress, moves are afoot to clarify the ambiguity that has defined US relations with Taiwan since the 1970s. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will soon consider a bill that would strengthen relations, require the executive branch to do more to bring Taiwan into the international system and take more determined steps to help the island defend itself.
Writing in The New York Times, committee Chairman Robert Menendez, DN.J., lambasted China’s response to Pelosi’s visit.
“The result of Beijing’s bluster should be to stiffen resolve in Taipei, in Washington and across the region,” he said. “There are many strategies to continue standing up to Chinese aggression. There is a clear bipartisan congressional agreement on the importance of acting now to provide the people of Taiwan with the type of support they desperately need.”
But China appears to be pressing ahead with steps that could prove to be escalatory, including live-fire military exercises planned for this week and a steady uptick in flights of fighter jets in and near Taiwan’s self-declared air defense zone.
“They are going to test the Taiwanese and the Americans,” said Cabestan, the professor in Hong Kong. He said the actions of the US military in the area, including a naval force led by the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, will be critical.
China had ratcheted up potential confrontation weeks ago by declaring that the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland is not international waters. The US rejected this and responded to by sending more vessels through it. Cabestan said that he showed that “something had to be done on the US side to draw red lines to prevent the Chinese from going too far.”
Meanwhile, Taiwan is on edge, air raid shelters have been prepared and the government is increasing training for recruits serving their four months of required military service —- generally considered inadequate — along with annual two-week annual refresher courses for reservists.
“The Chinese feel that if they don’t act, that the United States is going to continue to slice the salami to take incremental actions toward supporting Taiwan independence,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund .
She said that domestic US support for Taiwan actually gives China added incentive to take a strong stance: “China does feel under pressure to do more to signal that this is an issue in which China cannot compromise.”
Despite the immediate concerns about escalation and potential miscalculation, there are others who don’t believe the damage to US-China ties will be more long-lasting than that caused by other, non-Taiwan-related issues.
China is “going to raise a huge fuss and there will be military exercises and there will be embargoes on importing Taiwan goods. And after the shouting is over, you will see a gradual easing,” said June Teufel Dreyer, a Chinese politics specialist at the University of Miami.
“The situation never goes back to completely normal, whatever normal is, but it will definitely die down,” she said.
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AP writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Joe McDonald in Beijing and David Rising in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, contributed to this report.
Already mourning the loss of members of a Rolling Meadows family, people who coached with Thomas Dobosz learned Wednesday he, too, has died as a result of injuries sustained in a wrong-way crash last weekend in McHenry County.
The 32-year-old Rolling Meadows father of four was being treated for serious injuries at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood after being flown there by helicopter early Sunday.
He was pronounced dead at 11:17 am Wednesday at the hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy has not been performed yet.
Illinois State Police and the organizer of a GoFundMe page for the family also confirmed Dobosz’s death Wednesday.
“We come with a heavy heart today with an update on Tom. Tom has gained his angel wings and is now with his amazing wife Lauren and precious children. We ask that you keep this family in your prayers. All proceeds are going to the family ,” wrote Lisa Torres of the Oriole Park Falcons, a youth travel football and cheer program that the family was involved in on the Chicago’s Northwest Side.
On their way to vacation at a family cabin in Minnesota, Dobosz was at the wheel of the family’s 2005 Chevrolet van traveling west on Interstate 90 near Hampshire when it was struck by a 2010 Acura TSX sedan traveling in the wrong direction. State troopers responded at 2:11 am Sunday to the scene, where the vehicles were engulfed in flames.
Six passengers in the van were killed: 31-year-old Lauren Dobosz, her four children — 13-year-old Emma, 7-year-old Lucas, 6-year-old Nicholas and 5-year-old Ella — and 13-year-old Katriona Koziara, who was a family friend.
The driver of the Acura, 22-year-old Jennifer Fernandez of Carpentersville, also died. State police have only said she was traveling east in the westbound lanes “for unknown reasons.”
Kasia Koziara, mother of Katriona, told the Daily Herald Wednesday she is making funeral arrangements and hopes to have a memorial ceremony at a Rolling Meadows park soon. Affectionately known by family and friends as Kat, the teen was a student teacher who led classes and mentored students at the Prospect Heights-based Breaking Program, a breakdance group that offers dance classes and workshops.
“It’s very appreciated to support us as Katriona has been and always will be loved and remembered by many,” her mom said. “She deserves the best farewell I can do to celebrate her life and her heavenly future.”
On Wednesday evening, friends of Thomas Dobosz gathered for an impromptu memorial during football practice at Chicago’s Oriole Park. It was the same location where a balloon-release memorial was held Monday for the rest of the Dobosz family and Kat Koziara.
“Tom was very good with his hands as far as being a carpenter, a mechanic, electrical work — he was like a Jack of all trades,” said cheer coach Wanda Perez of Chicago.
According to Perez, Lauren and Thomas Dobosz met and became sweethearts at Ridgewood Community High School in Norridge. The couple later moved and raised their family in Rolling Meadows to help Lauren’s grandparents.
“They were so loving and caring and giving,” said Perez, who befriended Lauren and Tom Dobosz in 2013. “Our friendship extended beyond the coaching.”
A family member of the Dobosz’s confirmed Wednesday there are three online fundraising pages that have been set up on GoFundMe to help pay funeral and other expenses.
The Oriole Park Falcons’ fundraiser, gofundme.com/f/dobosz-family-funeral-expenses, has collected more than $98,000 for the Dobosz family.
The Rolling Meadows Police Department’s Hope Fund, gofundme.com/f/rmpd-hope-fund, has raised more than $43,000.
A page set up by Lauren Dobosz’s parents, gofundme.com/f/tom-and-lauren-dobosz-family, has collected nearly $26,000.
“I can’t imagine the pain and suffering that the Dobosz and Johns families are feeling,” Perez said. “I also send my sincere condolences to the family of Jennifer Fernandez, because I can’t imagine how they’re feeling and what they’re thinking. They suffered a loss as well.”
Funeral arrangements are pending.
• Daily Herald staff writer Scott C. Morgan contributed to this report.
