
Onion Editors on Reddit IAMA
We are the editors of The Onion , America's Finest News Source.
We will be over at /r/IAMA answering your questions today beginning at 1:00 Eastern/12:00 Central to celebrate this week's release of our special issue sent to all 535 members of Congress at all of their 1,824 offices. We wrote this issue—and its front-page editorial—after deciding the average American is no longer worth writing for, given their total lack of power, financial resources, or knowledge about anything that matters. Instead, we've tailored this edition to the interests of federal lawmakers: Tax loopholes. Insider trading. Tips for avoiding constituents. Free subscriptions to Covenant Eyes.
You are welcome to ask us anything, be it about the Congress issue, the recently restored print edition, femurs, skulls, the third metatarsal, the relaunched Onion News Network, various vertebrae, or The Onion in general. You are also welcome to not ask us anything, but you will regret it for the rest of your life because, frankly, this is your best shot at doing anything that matters in your otherwise unimpactful life.
We will split up your questions and answer as many as we can, but if you don't receive an answer, just know that it's because your question was bad and you are an idiot.
Tu Stultus Es,
The Onion

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


UPI
8 minutes ago
- UPI
Trump cancels U.S.-Canadian trade talks over tech taxes
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on May 6. Trump on Friday suspended trade talks due to Canada's new Digital Services Tax. File Photo by Francis Chung/UPI | License Photo June 28 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump cited potential Canadian taxes on U.S. tech companies as his reason for ending trade talks with Canada on Friday. The tech taxes on Amazon, Google, Meta and other U.S. tech firms are due on Monday, and Trump said it is a deal-breaker. "We have just been informed that Canada ... has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American technology companies," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday. He called the tax a "direct and blatant attack on our country" and accused Canada of "copying the European Union, which has done the same thing." "We are hereby terminating all discussions on trade with Canada, effective immediately," Trump said. His administration in the coming week will notify Canadian officials of the tariff that it will have to pay to do business in the United States, Trump added. Trump last week attended the G7 economic trade summit hosted by Canada and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and sought common ground on trade talks, The Washington Post reported. Officials at U.S. tech firms oppose the Canadian tax, the amount of which is based on the revenues generated by Canadians' use of e-commerce sites, social media and the sales of data. All tech companies that generate more than $14.59 million from such services would be subject to the new 3% Digital Services Tax. The tax is retroactive to 2022 and could cost U.S.-based tech firms up to $3 billion, NBC News reported. Upon learning of Trump halting trade talks, Canadian officials on Friday limited U.S. steel imports and placed a 50% surcharge on steel imports that surpass the quota. Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the surcharge will help to protect Canadian steel against what he called "unjust U.S. tariffs." He said the Canadian government is prepared to take additional actions, if necessary.


Chicago Tribune
23 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
What's in the latest version of President Donald Trump's big bill now before the Senate
WASHINGTON — At some 940-pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. Now it's up to Congress to decide whether President Donald Trump's signature's domestic policy package will become law. Trump told Republicans, who hold majority power in the House and Senate, to skip their holiday vacations and deliver the bill by the Fourth of July. Senators were working through the weekend to pass the bill and send it back to the House for a final vote. Democrats are united against it. Here's the latest on what's in the bill. There could be changes as lawmakers negotiate. Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump's first term expire. The legislation contains roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts. The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill. It temporarily would add new tax breaks that Trump campaigned on: no taxes on tips, overtime pay or some automotive loans, along with a bigger $6,000 deduction in the Senate draft for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year. It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 under the Senate proposal. Families at lower income levels would not see the full amount. A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It's a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years. There are scores of business-related tax cuts. The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, which would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House's version. Middle-income taxpayers would see a tax break of $500 to $1,500, the CBO said. The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump's border and national security agenda, including $46 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and $45 billion for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year. The homeland security secretary would have a new $10 billion fund for grants for states that help with federal immigration enforcement and deportation actions. The attorney general would have $3.5 billion for a similar fund, known as Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide, or BIDEN, referring to former Democratic President Joe Biden. To help pay for it all, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections. For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security. To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back some long-running government programs: Medicaid, food stamps, green energy incentives and others. It's essentially unraveling the accomplishments of the past two Democratic presidents, Biden and Barack Obama. Republicans argue they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse. The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program's work requirements. There's also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services. Some 80 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama's Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts. All told, the CBO estimates that under the House-passed bill, at least 10.9 million more people would go without health coverage and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps. The Senate proposes a $25 billion Rural Hospital Transformation Fund to help offset reduced Medicaid dollars. It's a new addition, intended to win over holdout GOP senators and a coalition of House Republicans warning that the proposed Medicaid provider tax cuts would hurt rural hospitals. Both the House and Senate bills propose a dramatic rollback of the Biden-era green energy tax breaks for electric vehicles. They also would phase out or terminate the various production and investment tax credits companies use to stand up wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. In total, cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs would be expected to produce at least $1.5 trillion in savings. A number of extra provisions reflect other GOP priorities. The House and Senate both have a new children's savings program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury. The Senate provided $40 million to establish Trump's long-sought 'National Garden of American Heroes.' There's a new excise tax on university endowments, restrictions on the development of artificial intelligence and blocks on transgender surgeries. A $200 tax on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns was eliminated. One provision bars money to family planning providers, namely Planned Parenthood, while $88 million is earmarked for a pandemic response accountability committee. Billions would go for the Artemis moon mission and for exploration to Mars. The bill would deter states from regulating artificial intelligence by linking certain federal AI infrastructure money to maintaining a freeze. Seventeen Republican governors asked GOP leaders to drop the provision. Also, the interior secretary would be directed to sell certain Bureau of Land Management acreage to provide for housing. The sale of public lands would cover at least 600,000 acres and up to 1.2 million acres, according to a projection from the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. Altogether, keeping the existing tax breaks and adding the new ones is expected to cost $3.8 trillion over the decade, the CBO says in its analysis of the House bill. An analysis of the Senate draft is pending. The CBO estimates the House-passed package would add $2.4 trillion to the nation's deficits over the decade. Or not, depending on how one does the math. Senate Republicans are proposing a unique strategy of not counting the existing tax breaks as a new cost because those breaks are already 'current policy.' Senators say the Senate Budget Committee chairman has the authority to set the baseline for the preferred approach. Under the Senate GOP view, the tax provisions cost $441 billion, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Democrats and others say this is 'magic math' that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts the Senate tally at $4.2 trillion over the decade.


The Hill
37 minutes ago
- The Hill
Updated Senate bill slashes wind and solar incentives – and adds a new tax
An updated draft of the Senate's megabill text slashes tax incentives for wind and solar energy – and adds a new tax on future wind and solar projects. The initial draft released by Senate Republicans earlier this month cut the credit for any wind and solar projects that did not 'begin construction' by certain dates, while the latest version bases incentives on when projects actually begin producing electricity — a much higher bar to clear. The first draft gave any project that began construction this year full credit, any project that began construction next year 60 percent credit and any project that began construction in 2027 20 percent of the credit, before they were phased out thereafter. The new legislation instead says that the credits will only apply to facilities that begin producing electricity before the end of 2027. In addition, it imposes a new tax on some wind and solar projects that are placed in service after 2027. The projects that will be taxed if a certain percentage of the value of their components come from China. The Democrats' 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits for low-carbon energy sources, including renewable energy. These subsidies were expected to massively reduce the U.S.' planet warming emissions. The GOP's cuts to the credits are expected to severely curtail those gains. If they pass, the cuts represent a win for the party's right flank, which has pushed for major cuts to the credits, and a loss for it's more moderate wing which has called for a slower phaseout. The renewables lobby slammed the changes as hampering the sector. 'In what can only be described as 'midnight dumping,' the Senate has proposed a punitive tax hike targeting the fastest-growing sectors of our energy industry. It is astounding that the Senate would intentionally raise prices on consumers rather than encouraging economic growth and addressing the affordability crisis facing American households,' Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, said in a written statement. 'These new taxes will strand hundreds of billions of dollars in current investments, threaten energy security, and undermine growth in domestic manufacturing and land hardest on rural communities who would have been the greatest beneficiaries of clean energy investment,' he added.