Trump Looks to Africa Next for Diplomatic Win
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Donald Trump has long scorned Africa. Now he sees it as another potential route to a Nobel Prize.
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Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
4 Types of Workers Could Save Big Under Trump's Overtime Tax Break
President Donald Trump's signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) includes a provision that allows employees who work more than 40 hours per week to deduct a portion of their overtime pay from their taxable income. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) guarantees pay of at least 1.5 times a worker's regular wages for every hour worked over 40 in a given seven-day period. Traditionally, time-and-a-half pay has been subject to federal income taxes, including those that fund Medicare and Social Security. However, from 2025 through 2028, eligible taxpayers can deduct up to $12,500 in overtime pay, or $25,000 for joint filers, without itemizing, provided they earn less than $150,000, at which point the deduction begins to phase out. However, the FLSA and its numerous subsequent updates have carved out exceptions for executives, administrative and professional employees, those in certain computer and sales occupations and others who are exempt from overtime pay protection. Therefore, many Americans won't benefit from the new rule. This article profiles those who likely will. Check Out: Read Next: Nurses According to the Lore Law Firm, at least 18 states have laws regulating mandatory overtime for nurses. In much of the country, however, these crucial healthcare workers are often required to work more than 40 hours per week, whether they want to or not, to compensate for persistent staffing shortages. As early as 2004, the CDC was reporting on the heavy toll that mandatory overtime was taking on nurses and their patients, citing fatigue, burnout, diminished work performance and increased error rates due to long hours of stressful work. Roughly 20 years later, ShiftMed reported that little had changed. The OBBBA stands to give millions of nonexempt nurses a break — on their taxes, at least, if not at their workplaces. See More: Law Enforcement Like nurses, law enforcement officers play a crucial role in society that often requires them to work overtime. Also like nurses, many seek extra hours voluntarily, but often don't have a choice. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook page for police and detectives, 'Paid overtime is common, and shift work is necessary to protect the public at all times.' Tradespeople Overtime is common in many trades occupations. Like police officers and nurses, the nature of their work often makes extra hours an unavoidable part of the job. The following are some of the many circumstances that can keep them working beyond 40 hours per week. Emergency repairs Installations with tight deadlines Frequent calls after regular business hours Spikes in demand during extreme weather events The tradespeople most likely to work overtime — and therefore benefit from the new OBBBA provisions — are: Welders Plumbers Electricians Construction workers HVAC techs Manufacturing Employees According to the BLS, the average manufacturing employee works between 3.6 and 3.7 hours of overtime per week, or roughly 14.6 hours of time-and-a-half pay per month. That's nearly 190 overtime hours per year — much of which will now be tax-deductible. In fact, reliance on overtime is so common in the sector that the industrial staffing firm Traba wrote a report with striking similarities to the ShiftMed report on the nursing crisis. Chronic understaffing as high as 34% in some industries forces manufacturing companies to pay staggering levels of overtime compensation, with some employees racking up 500 overtime hours per year or more. Similarly to nursing, the result is often burnout, diminished performance and preventable accidents, often to the most seasoned and reliable employees. More From GOBankingRates 5 Cities You Need To Consider If You're Retiring in 2025 This article originally appeared on 4 Types of Workers Could Save Big Under Trump's Overtime Tax Break Sign in to access your portfolio
Chicago Tribune
20 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Seth David Radwell: The emerging schism within the Democratic Party
Much has been written of late about the fate of the Democratic Party after its poor performance last November and with its damaged brand and lack of a coherent strategy. Over the last several years, the party's primary unifying focus has been assailing President Donald Trump and MAGA, while lacking an articulate compelling message or prescriptive platform. Not only has this left the party adrift, but also, Trump has been all too eager to fill the resulting vacuum, imprinting his 'evil' characterization of the party. While myriad efforts within and adjacent to the party are scrambling to advance a winning strategy for 2026, we can already detect competing agendas. The left flank of the party has a resolute hold on the identity issues it keeps front and center, despite persuasive evidence that this strategy alienates working-class voters. In contrast, the center of the party has been coalescing around what some call the 'abundance agenda' — following the launch of the bestselling book 'Abundance' by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The agenda centers on an insightful reckoning: How can the Democratic Party represent itself as the problem-solving party of the working class when its track record exhibits innumerable failures in major cities? Accordingly, the abundance strategy focuses on enabling government to undertake the 'big things' it accomplished yesteryear by liberating it from a maze of bureaucratic obstacles. Perhaps the most credible advocate of this revitalized spirit is Josh Shapiro, the charismatic governor of Pennsylvania. His 'get stuff done' approach has resulted in some tangible wins such as the rapid reopening of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia and the expansion of school breakfast programs. In fact, many Democratic leaders in the center recognize that their rapprochement with the progressive wing in recent cycles has resulted in the party estranging its working-class base. But, the Democratic Party has a more fundamental conundrum based on a contradiction that lies at the heart of progressivism itself. As described in detail in Marc Dunkelman's recent book 'Why Nothing Works,' the reason why our government today cannot build the big things it did in past eras (e.g., the interstate highway system and the Social Security system) is because of this very conflict: On one hand, many progressives deliver a clarion call for government to undertake large-scale solutions to the most pressing current policy problems, such as building green energy infrastructure and affordable housing. But at the same time, these same advocates demand controls that often stymie government from getting anything done. Ever since the Vietnam War, a distrust of the establishment has taken root and grown deep, manifested in a fear of yielding broad powers without adequate controls and limitations. Nonetheless, these two instincts underlying progressivism are at cross purposes: It is hard to have it both ways. How can government solve big problems if it is intentionally designed with diffuse power, easily and frequently obstructed or contested? What is remarkable is that these two opposing impulses frequently operate simultaneously. Millions of young people today call for administrative solutions to the climate crisis, while demanding bodily autonomy free from government intervention. As I describe in my book 'American Schism,' the pendulum has vacillated throughout our entire history between eras characterized by these opposing impulses. At times, centrally designed Hamiltonian solutions (designed by elites) dominated, such as after our founding, in the New Deal and post-World War II periods, and again through Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. In other epochs, such as when the Federalist party lost influence in the early 19th century, when Reconstruction failed and during the dawning of the Gilded Age, the Jeffersonian demand for curtailed central power reigned supreme. Since the Ronald Reagan era, the wariness of big government has taken hold on the right. But often overlooked is that progressive reformers in recent decades, fearful of the sins of power-hungry leaders such as New York's Robert Moses, have demanded controls on government, which often lead to unwieldy processes and boxed-in government action. Many of these checkpoints, such as mandated constituent input in the policy development process, are warranted. But as a result, government today at all levels feels more like a vetocracy in which citizens or corporate-sponsored interest groups stifle progress at every turn, often via the slow legal system. Even when a major project does get completed, the number of involved commissions and the lawsuits brought by opposing constituents result in skyrocketing costs and years of delay. Perhaps, most ironically, the consequent gridlock has over time eroded faith in public institutions and created the opening for MAGA-style populism. It is this dynamic that is already clashing within the Democratic Party; the centrists' call to tackle big problems may find itself at loggerheads with the fear of elite-designed solutions within the progressive wing. Moreover, such clashes could impede a cohesive and compelling party revival. Dunkleman argues for an adjustment in the belief that we have leaned too far in hamstringing government. However, our history demonstrates that attempts at moderate 'adjustments' usually overcorrect and result in pendulum swings. How any possible Democratic revival manages this underlying contradiction in its road map may determine whether the party can once again attract the populist voters it used to carry. Seth David Radwell is the author of 'American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation' and winner of an International Book Award for Best General Nonfiction. He is a political analyst and speaker in the business community and on college campuses in the U.S. and abroad.
Los Angeles Times
20 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
After a reference to Trump's impeachments is removed from a Smithsonian, questions of history arise
NEW YORK — It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it goes into the history books or is added to museum exhibits. But whether something even gets remembered and how — particularly when it comes to the history of a country and its leader — can become complex, especially when the leader is Donald Trump. The latest example of that came Friday, when the Smithsonian Institution said it had removed a reference to Trump's 2019 and 2021 impeachments from a panel in an exhibition about the American presidency. Trump has pressed institutions and agencies under federal oversight, often through the pressure of funding, to focus on the country's achievements and progress and away from things he terms 'divisive.' The Smithsonian on Saturday denied getting pressure from the Trump administration to remove the reference, which had been installed as part of a temporary addition in 2021. The exhibit 'will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation's history,' the museum said in a statement. In a statement that did not directly address the impeachment references, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: 'We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.' But is history intended to highlight or to document — to report what happened, or to serve a desired narrative? The answer, as with most things about the past, can be complicated. The Smithsonian's move comes as the Trump administration has asserted its dominion over many American institutions, such as removing the name of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship, pushing for Republican supporters in Congress to defund the Corp. for Public Broadcasting — prompting its elimination — and getting rid of the leadership at the Kennedy Center. 'Based on what we have been seeing, this is part of a broader effort by the president to influence and shape how history is depicted at museums, national parks and schools,' said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. 'Not only is he pushing a specific narrative of the United States but, in this case, trying to influence how Americans learn about his own role in history.' It's not a new struggle, in the world generally and the political world particularly. There is power in being able to shape how things are remembered, if they are remembered at all — who was there, who took part, who was responsible, what happened to lead up to that point in history. And the human beings who run things have often extended their authority to the stories told about them. In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders such as Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared. Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation. 'If they don't control the historical narrative,' he said, 'then they can't create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.' In the United States, presidents and their families have used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester's book on her husband's 1963 assassination, 'The Death of a President.' Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the effects of paralysis on his body and his mobility. Trump, though, has asserted far greater control — a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the facts, whether he calls for it directly or not. 'We are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens — as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,' said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. 'So part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it's very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.' Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate — one not beholden to the president's loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was 'concerned and disappointed' about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said that museum directors 'should have red lines' and that he considered one of them to be the removal of the Trump impeachment panel. While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum's offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump's outlook on history and his role in it — earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' — shows how important those matters are to people in authority. 'You might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this ... why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?' Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: 'The legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.' Hajela and Italie write for the Associated Press.
