Texas poised to approve more Bible stories, history revamp — but changes for high schoolers delayed

Has the  state of Texas become a christian theocracy now?  It seems every year they change the school curriculum to make it more white and more Christian.  Itis clear that the Christian billionaire preacher who basically bought the state legislature and calls the shots has long wanted the state to be a White Christian Male paradise.  These new changes basically make the state schools the same as the Jewish Orthodox schools in NY, where the students learn only the Torah but can hardly count to 20 and speak / write very little English.  They are getting tax money to educate kids but they don’t.  The kids  graduate and can’t get jobs and are on state assistance.   The new Texas standards emphasize white contributions and minimize any contributions from other races.  They push religious stories over facts.  This is just the forced religious indoctrination of children regardless of the religious beliefs of the parents.  Notice there is no opt out on these religious texts, books, stories but parents much be told and can opt their child out of any lesson that mentions the LGBTQ+ or reading material containing information about it.    If you are worried about the white washing race removing Christifying of public schools and the rewriting of history to change what really happened to make white people look better please give this article a read.   below are a few quotes from the article.  Hugs

The statewide reading list would require, among other literary works, that schools teach Bible material to children as young as 6 years old up to young adults preparing to receive their diplomas. That includes Christian stories about Adam and Eve, the eight Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

On the contrary, Republicans eliminated a standard specifying that students should consider “the perspectives of groups whose voices are less represented in traditional historical accounts.” They added another requirement that introduces the biblical story of Moses alongside the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman — who was nicknamed “Moses” because, similar to the biblical prophet, she helped people escape slavery. 

“Let me be very clear: Islam is not a religion,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, testified before the education board Monday. “It is a totalitarian theocracy, not unlike totalitarian systems of communism, Nazism and globalism.”

Meanwhile, students, educators and progressive activists spoke out in opposition to the lack of racial, ethnic and gender inclusion in the debated books and lessons, as well as the state’s Christian focus over other religions. 


 

Texas poised to approve more Bible stories, history revamp — but changes for high schoolers delayed

The State Board of Education will hold a final vote Friday on incorporating more Christian stories into classrooms and deemphasizing race and cultural diversity in history lessons.
Certified elementary school librarian Sarah Pepin speaks at a State Board of Education meeting in Austin on June 22, 2026.Certified elementary school librarian Sarah Pepin speaks at a State Board of Education meeting in Austin on June 22, 2026. Manoo Sirivelu/The Texas Tribune

Texas elementary and middle school students will likely see redesigned social studies and reading lessons that minimize racial, geographic and cultural diversity while emphasizing the Bible — but changes for high schoolers have suddenly hit a pause.

The Republican-led State Board of Education decided Thursday evening to allow final votes on a rewrite of Texas’ K-8 social studies lessons and a mandatory reading list for all public schools that includes Christian stories. Those votes are expected Friday. 

However, the board delayed proposed changes to high school U.S. history, world history, geography and government. 

For months, educators, Democrats and public education advocates criticized Texas’ social studies revamp as rushed. Conservative advocates and Republican board members insisted on pushing the process forward. But board chair Aaron Kinsey expressed doubts Thursday about having enough time to cut down the number of lessons packed into each course. 

“This is a conundrum we’ve created of our own doing,” Democratic member Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz said. “And I’m very frustrated by it.”

Kinsey rejected an assertion from Pérez-Díaz that he rushed the process and said he was willing to continue working. But he also said board members made mistakes when they pushed through changes during late hours. For example, they eliminated a requirement that students learn about the American Revolution in high school U.S. history before reinserting it Thursday.

The elected board is on track to update what public school students must learn in reading and social studies. This week’s meetings ran as late as 2 a.m., as board members meticulously parsed through changes to lessons in each grade.

Along with Bible stories in reading, the social studies proposal features a dramatic transformation in how Texas schools have long administered lessons on history, geography, economics and government. It eliminates the current sixth-grade world cultures course, deemphasizes world history outside of European tradition and dedicates more focus to Texas and the United States.

Democrats suggested changes they hoped would make lessons more accurate and inclusive of historically underserved groups — most notably people of color — even if they ultimately did not favor the overall plan. 

Republicans blamed cherry-picking over what students should learn for the delay. 

“We wasted many hours late into the morning,” Republican member Brandon Hall said. “We have worn out and exhausted our staff on trifling amendments coming from people who had no intention of ever working with us or ever actually approving something they wanted to pass.” 

Conservative leaders and activists champion the new lessons, which they view as “the final battle” in a push to rid Texas schools of instruction they say paints America in a negative light and trains students to hate the country. 

Sociology classes, for example, currently require students to understand “the impact of race and ethnicity on society” and “analyze the varying treatment patterns of minority groups.” But that standard was eliminated in the newly proposed social studies plan. 

If approved by the education board Friday, the K-8 social studies changes and the reading lists will take effect during the 2030-31 school year. The board will also decide whether to phase in the social studies changes or introduce them all at once.

Members could take up the high school courses at its next scheduled meeting in September, or the chair could schedule a special meeting before. 

Reframing history

Educators criticized how the social studies proposal prioritizes memorization over critical thinking and simplification over accuracy. Historians called attention to factual errors, saying the new standards would set children up for failure post-graduation. 

One lesson, for example, had described the forced relocation and imprisonment of Japanese families during World War II as one of the “contributions” to America’s military effort. Another proposal noted that high school students should know the significance of leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, specifying Thurgood Marshall, Barbara Jordan and Hector P. Garcia — but not Martin Luther King Jr. 

The standards initially approved this week reflect slightly different suggestions, instead describing Japanese incarceration as one of the “changes” during the war and adding King to the list of Civil Rights leaders. 

But Democratic board members said the minor tweaks will not fix what they see as a whitewashed social studies plan and a politically influenced approval process. 

panel of nine advisers guided the social studies overhaul, almost all of whom hold no Texas K-12 classroom experience and several of whom are either conservative activists or closely affiliated with them. Educators have described it as a major reversal of previous years when teachers led the way, while Democrats have said they do not feel fairly included in decision-making. 

“Our voices are being left off constantly,” Democratic board member Tiffany Clark said. 

Republicans clarified that advisers only provide recommendations. Elected members maintain final say in the social studies overhaul, they noted. The GOP members argued that it is Democrats’ own responsibility to ensure they are included in the rewrite. 

“I, as well as several of my colleagues, have been in direct contact with our content advisers,” Republican member Audrey Young said. “I have been communicating through my content adviser this entire time.”

But some of the appointed experts also expressed frustrations. Yolanda Chávez Leyva, a historian at the University of Texas at El Paso helping guide the board, said she “didn’t feel that every adviser’s input was treated equally.” 

Kate Rogers, a social studies adviser who previously led the Alamo Trust before publicly clashing with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, said the group remained professional but its recommendations did not represent all participants. 

For instance, the advisory panel proposed changing a lesson that originally called on students to “identify domestic challenges for the United States following World War I related to racial violence and intolerance, including the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the Tulsa Race Massacre.”

They instead suggested that students learn about the Klan’s “intolerance” of Catholics, Jews and immigrants but did not specify Black Americans. They also changed the “Tulsa Race Massacre” to the “Tulsa Race Riots.” During the 1921 massacre in Oklahoma, a white mob killed Black residents, destroyed their homes and looted their businesses after a Black teenager was falsely accused of trying to assault a white girl in an elevator.   

The appointed group also removed standards that defined racial segregation as “keeping people apart based on the color of their skin” and specified that Africans endured slavery in the U.S. because of their race.

“I want to make it clear to the board members that we did not discuss every item on this document,” Rogers said. “Some of the changes were not reviewed by all of the content advisers.”

Board members adopted many changes proposed by the advisory group but reinserted several others, including how Nat Turner’s Rebellion “heightened sectional tensions and deepened disagreements over slavery” and how the expansion of slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. They also clarified that the Klan sought to intimidate and “limit the rights of African Americans in Texas during Reconstruction.” 

Some members initiated changes that would expose students to more positive aspects of Black history, including Republican Keven Ellis’ suggestion that schools teach about Bessie Coleman, a Texan who became the first African American and Native American woman to obtain an international pilot’s license. 

On the contrary, Republicans eliminated a standard specifying that students should consider “the perspectives of groups whose voices are less represented in traditional historical accounts.” They added another requirement that introduces the biblical story of Moses alongside the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman — who was nicknamed “Moses” because, similar to the biblical prophet, she helped people escape slavery. 

Prior to debating high school social studies, a handful of Republicans on the elected board unsuccessfully attempted to block amendments from members who did not meet an earlier deadline to submit proposed changes. 

If successful, the move effectively would have stopped Democrats from proposing on-the-spot tweaks, which was notable because the rule had not been enforced when the board discussed elementary and middle school lessons.

Reading lessons with Christian stories

Some of the nearly 500 speakers at this week’s meetings exchanged heated words about Christianity’s role in the development of the country, and at least one person with a Confederate flag was deemed out of order by the board chair and escorted from the room for verbally interrupting the meeting. 

The statewide reading list would require, among other literary works, that schools teach Bible material to children as young as 6 years old up to young adults preparing to receive their diplomas. That includes Christian stories about Adam and Eve, the eight Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Republican leaders across the state often depict Islam as a violent religion they view as incompatible with their conservative Christian American values. During the board’s April meetings, the board eliminated a social studies standard that would have required students to learn about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy.

“Let me be very clear: Islam is not a religion,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, testified before the education board Monday. “It is a totalitarian theocracy, not unlike totalitarian systems of communism, Nazism and globalism.”

Asked if he had ever visited a Muslim-majority country, the senatorHall responded no. 

Elizabeth Jensen, who identified herself as a Texas school board trustee but did not specify the district, told the education panel that she believes “slavery was and still is fundamental to Sharia,” referring to the set of moral codes and principles that Muslims follow. Sharia does not have a uniform meaning, as Muslims interpret and act upon it differently. 

Muslims have spent months denouncing such Islamophobia at State Board of Education meetings, calling it misinformation and harmful to the hundreds of thousands of Texans who practice the faith. 

Meanwhile, students, educators and progressive activists spoke out in opposition to the lack of racial, ethnic and gender inclusion in the debated books and lessons, as well as the state’s Christian focus over other religions. 

“These proposed standards actually defy the Constitution and highlight only one group of Americans as the founders who built this country to the exclusion of others — both in the past and in the present,” Ruth Nasrullah, a Muslim speaker, told the board members.

English teachers stressed during the meeting that many of the books on the proposed reading list do not align with what Texas requires them to teach, despite taking up most of roughly 36 weeks of instructional time in an academic year.   

Before initial approval of the reading list, the board members — led by Republican Tom Maynard — debated whether they should prohibit teachers from assigning non-state-mandated books without the educators first posting them online for parental review. However, some expressed concerns about micromanaging teachers.

They also considered whether to grant charter schools flexibility in which grades they introduce the required readings, an attempt to appease charter leaders who said they wanted to assign more rigorous books to children in lower grades. But some members said doing so might create the opposite effect, allowing lower-performing campuses to lessen rigor for students in higher grades. 

Neither of those passed, but board members have another opportunity to resurface suggestions before the final vote Friday. 


Jaden Edison is the public education reporter for The Texas Tribune, where he previously worked as a reporting fellow in summer 2022. Before returning to the Tribune full time, he served as the justice…

Florida Just Handed $15 Million to Catholic Schools

Just remember this is pure pushing the Christian religion and denying that same money to public schools.  And if you watch the video the church is hoping this is only a drop in the bucket they can get.  Remember these churches don’t pay taxes, and they are not under state laws on what they teach.  The don’t allow the general public who pay those taxes including the LGBTQ+.  They discriminate against these and other groups due to religious beliefs, and they refuse the enrollment of the disabled because that cuts into their profit.  This is a money-making scheme designed to suck public taxpayer money from public schools while not being required to serve all students or pay into the funds they want given to them.  This is just an attempt to push religious schools while denying needed funds to public schools.  These people want a Christian nationalist nation, and they demand the rest of us pay for it.  They have no concern for the truth of history or anyone else’s beliefs; it is their god pushed at your money while you get no services or money for your local schools.   Great video I hope you will watch. And I can tell you as an atheist in Florida I am against this hard drive desire of DeathSantis to force his religious views onto me and the children of this state.   After all he helped his wife steal a huge amount of money meant for a charity to help sick people and use it for their gain.   Hugs 

School Agrees to Pay Student $10,000 After She Was Suspended for Coming Out as Gay

 

https://people.com/school-pay-student-who-suspended-for-coming-out-gay-online-12005324

A settlement was reached between Morgan Armstrong and Tennessee Christian Preparatory School

The Right’s Anti-LGBTQ Hysteria is Now Indistinguishable From Satire

While I detest the end song he plays I love Mark’s take on issues.  He doesn’t pull his punches and lays out the facts.  In this case it is important to watch to the end where he elaborates on the current attempt to genocide trans people by making them illegal as Russia has.  Now requiring that no business, event or medical facility that takes any government money can allow any kind of support or positive affirmation of trans people.  He talks about how important it is to let trans youth socially transition and live as the gender they identify with, and to get puberty blockers to not go through the wrong puberty.  He mentions trans children figure out their gender the same way and ages that cis kids do.   Hugs

Panic over the existence of LGBTQ+ people is becoming so ridiculous it’s almost impossible to tell if it’s satire or not. In this video we’ll look at some of the most ridiculous examples of right-wing hysteria over queer people. Well also talk about how conservatives have successfully weaponized their outrage against queer people and how culture influences politics.

The Humanist Report (THR) is a progressive political podcast that discusses and analyzes current news events and pressing political issues. Our analyses are guided by humanism and political progressivism. Each news story we cover is supplemented with thought-provoking, fact-based commentary that aims for the highest level of objectivity.

 

The Republican Front-Runner for Maine Governor Is Completely Unhinged

 

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles is one of the leading contenders to become Maine’s next governor, and his recent comments should alarm anyone who values evidence, competence, or basic reality.

Charles has suggested he would personally counsel women out of having abortions, claimed transgender identities are impossible because of Noah’s Ark, repeated the debunked “litter box” conspiracy theory about schools, and embraced a culture-war agenda that seems ripped straight from social media misinformation.

Yet despite these bizarre remarks, he’s a serious candidate with a real shot at winning the Republican nomination.

A Right-Wing Legal Group’s Lawsuit Over a High School Wrestling Match Falls Apart on Video

This is another Riley Gaines  person trying to say she lost only because her opponent was trans.  They claim that the wrestler Kallie Keeler was sexually assaulted.  The issue is that all the wrestlers asked and the experts say the moves were standard wrestling moves.   Even the coach says that fingers often end up in places they don’t belong in normal activities in public.  I was not a wrestler, but I know someone who did wrestle in high school.  I had joked with him I couldn’t have done wrestling with all the hands on the crotch of the wrestlers touching each other’s cocks and balls or fingers in the butt.  He told me it was very common and if you watched many boys got up from the floor during or after a match with hard ons or wet spots on their uniforms where their dicks are.   The law suit is an over the top attempt to get wrestler Kallie Keeler a bunch of rewards that she did not earn and to punish all trans athletes.  It also is so she can repeat Riley Gaines track of using her anti-trans hate to be on TV and make a lot of money she wouldn’t make if she was not pushing bigotry and hate.  Plus if the opponent was a cis girl and accidentally did the same thing she wouldn’t have won either.  This is a Christian family who feels entitled to award seh did not earn.  Athe the end of the video he reads responses and comments from anti-trans people who said it was a commonly used move and sexual touching happens.   Hugs

 

The right-wing legal group Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a sweeping federal lawsuit on behalf of Washington high school wrestler Kallie Keeler, claiming she was sexually assaulted during a match against a transgender opponent.

The problem? There’s video of the match, and according to multiple wrestlers, coaches, and wrestling experts I spoke with, it shows nothing controversial. Just legal, routine wrestling techniques.

The lawsuit goes far beyond the match itself, targeting the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), school officials, coaches, and state authorities while demanding that Keeler’s losses to transgender athletes be erased from the record books and that trans athletes be barred from competing against her in the future.

Despite the dramatic allegations, Pierce County prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges, and even some conservatives who oppose transgender participation in sports have criticized ADF’s characterization of the match.

What A Wonderful Thing!

Under Mamdani, New York will be the first to open a free childcare center for city workers

The center, called The Little Apple, could be a model for other cities exploring ways to make life more affordable for workers.

This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Tucked in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sprawling universal childcare plan is a little-talked-about milestone: In September, the city will open what appears to be the first free daycare for municipal workers in the country. 

The center, called The Little Apple, is a pilot program that could prove to be a model for cities across the country that are childcare curious, but not ready to take the big universal swing. 

Housed in a renovated space on the first floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan, home base for more than 2,000 city workers, the Little Apple will offer free care to the kids of full-time staff. All workers in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), a city government support agency, can also take advantage of it regardless of their work location.

The center will be small — just 40 seats for children ages six weeks to 3 years old. To pay for it, the city budgeted about $1.5 million, or $35,000 per child.

“This is what Wall Street could call a good investment,” Mamdani said in a press conference announcing the new center. “We know that after housing, the cost of childcare is what is pushing working families out of this city.” 

DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei told The 19th said the solution came about as a retention strategy, responding to the needs workers shared. In surveys, workers enthusiastically embraced the idea. One worker described access to free childcare as “life-changing.”

That’s probably not hyperbole. Childcare affordability is a national problem that has only grown more acute. Childcare costs an average of more than $13,000 annually nationwide; in New York for an infant at a center it’s closer to $21,000 on average. Paying for a daycare now vies with housing costs as the top constraint on family budgets, so much so that some parents have had to move or drop out of the workforce

Cities, meanwhile, have been struggling to retain their workers since the pandemic. Benefits like childcare, which some cities and private companies have dabbled with, can help address the quality-of-life issues that are pushing workers out of jobs. 

“This is a great time for us to sort of be thinking about: How can we make our jobs even more attractive to people and also retain the city workers that we have?” Kitasei said. “This is one piece of that puzzle.” 

Kitasei added that a “healthy” number of staffers applied for The Little Apple and the department expects to fill its 40 childcare seats. Anyone who doesn’t get a spot will be put on a waitlist.

There is an appetite across the country for childcare solutions that could help bring down costs for certain workers, and cities are already taking on creative fixes. 

Several already have childcare centers in municipal buildings or for city employees, including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Grand Junction, Colorado, though none of them are free like New York’s. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the county school district and a local childcare center known nationally for creating stable childcare models have partnered to provide childcare for the children of teachers inside unused classrooms in schools. Boone County, Missouri, is building a childcare center exclusively for children of first responders

In the private sector, Google, General Mills and Siemens closed longstanding childcare centers they operated on their campuses in recent years, but efforts continue elsewhere. Patagonia has operated a childcare center at its California headquarters since the 1980s, a move it argues has lowered turnover from employees who use the site by 25 percent. Overstock.com also has an onsite childcare center at its Utah headquarters. Both are subsidized, not free. 

“As cities in every region of the country compete with the private sector and other municipalities to attract and retain workers and elected officials, ensuring access to childcare offers an opportunity for local governments to build a representative workforce and invest in the future of their communities,” said Quincy Midthun, an outreach specialist with the Mayors Innovation Project at the High Road Strategy Center, a think tank focused on solutions to social problems.

The Little Apple, and New York City broadly, reflect a changing political tide when it comes to childcare. 

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani crouches down to shake the hand of a blonde girls wearing a pink shirt.
Mamdani and New York City children cut through “red tape” at a formerly vacant early childhood education center in Brooklyn, marking its official opening ahead of the fall term in 2026. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The announcements of universal childcare in New York City and in New Mexico in the last year received an enormous amount of attention across the country. Both places took an idea that for many years was floated as a pipe dream — treating childcare similarly to public education — and turned it into reality. In New York, it’s one of the few issues that Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, can agree on

Voters are also hungry for more solutions: In poll after poll, they assert that spending money on childcare is a good investment

Emmy Liss, who heads Mamdani’s childcare office, said childcare is at a “political tipping point.” 

“We’re in this moment where folks across all political, socioeconomic, demographic spectrums recognize that childcare is essential, that childcare is something families are struggling to access, and know that the market economics of childcare don’t work without public investment,” Liss said. “We see recognition of that.”

With Little Apple, New York is testing what it looks like to commit to its promises of free care for all, but doing it first for its own employees. 

“If we are asking folks to report to work in person in parts of the city where childcare is expensive, as it is all over the city, I think that we have to recognize that childcare is an important part of how we keep people in the workforce,” Liss said. 

Mamdani and Hochul have been working to make childcare universally available to children in the city through a phased rollout set to conclude in four years. For 2-year olds, the mayor announced that 2,000 free seats will be available in the fall in four largely low-income areas of the city. Another 12,000 are planned for 2027. For 3-year-olds, about 2,000 new seats will be added in the fall, as well. The city has an existing universal childcare program for 4-year-olds. 

Universal childcare as Mamdani envisions it will cover kids ages 6 weeks to 5 years with a price tag of about $6 billion annually, making it the most expensive pillar of his affordability agenda. Mamdani is expected to push to fund the program with a tax increase on the wealthy, a strategy Hochul has not been on board for, though the state is chipping in $4.5 billion. Mamdani has not yet unveiled what his universal childcare program would look like for infants and young toddlers.

How New York City’s program rolls out and its sustainability are being closely watched by proponents of universal care, who argue it’s also an anti-poverty measure.

“We know that other places are watching as we try different things out, including the work at the Little Apple,” Liss said.

In New York City, 21 percent of working parents experienced some kind of childcare hardship in 2024 that forced them to forgo care or use inadequate care, particularly families living in poverty, single mothers and Black parents, according to a recent report from Robin Hood, an anti-poverty organization, and Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. 

An average of 3,400 2- and 3-year-olds were pushed into poverty between 2022 and 2024 specifically due to the cost of childcare, a separate report from the same organizations found. An estimated 4,100 2- and 3-year-olds would be lifted out of poverty each year if they had access to universal 2-K and 3-K education. That would reduce poverty for this age group by 9 percent

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of the parent organizing group New Yorkers United for Child Care, said the problem has reached such a fever pitch that thousands of parents started to organize around the issue in 2023 and helped push the agenda that was central to Mamdani’s election. 

Bailin, who has a 1-year-old, said she can now depend on a 3-K program when her child turns 3 and likely a 2-K program, as well — a savings of about $100,000. The 2-K program Mamdani is rolling out will also be full-day care rather than partial-day care that wraps up around 2 p.m. like the existing 3-K program, addressing a top ask from parents.

“People are stoked,” Bailin said. “People feel like they can stay in the city.” 

The Little Apple is a small part of the larger effort, but, “if we want to retain people, we have to do this,” Bailin said. 

“This is something we want to see scaled. If city workers can’t afford to live here, that’s a real problem,” she continued. “This is really critical and we need this for everybody.” 

[Sen.] Gallego Introduces Legislation to Crack Down on Billionaire Tax Loophole

Legislation would close the ‘borrow’ aspect of the ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole used by the ultra-wealthy to avoid paying capital gains or income tax

WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced the Redistribution Of Billions by Instituting New High-income Obligations on Overlooked Debt (ROBINHOOD) Act to close the ‘borrow’ aspect of the ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole that is used by the ultra-wealthy to finance extravagant spending without paying income or capital gains taxes.

“Working and middle-class Americans are paying their fair share – they do it with every paycheck. But the billionaires in this country? They’re using legal loopholes and tricky accounting to finance private jets and yachts while most Americans struggle to afford healthcare and groceries,” said Senator Gallego. “My legislation closes a critical loophole and brings us closer to billionaires finally paying their fair share.”

Punchbowl News: Gallego targets ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax maneuver

The ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole has three stages:

  • Buy: A wealthy individual buys, or is given as part of their compensation package, assets, such as stocks. This allows them to store and grow their wealth without paying taxes since the gains from these assets are considered unrealized
  • Borrow: The individual then borrows tax-free cash loans, often backed by those assets, to finance their extravagant lifestyles. All the while, their assets continue to gain value.
  • Die: Finally, when they dietheir assets are gifted to their heirs on a stepped-up basis, meaning their heirs can sell the assets without paying taxes on the capital gains accumulated during the individual’s life.

The ROBINHOOD Act closes this loophole by treating taking out a loan as a realization event, meaning the individual would have to pay taxes on capital gains equal to the loan amount. The provisions of the bill apply to taxpayers who have an income over $100 million and/or assets worth more than $1 billion. 

You can find a one-page summary of the legislation HERE.

You can find a section-by-section explainer of the legislation HERE.

You can find the full text of the legislation HERE.

Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Rep. Dan Goldman (NY-10).

“While working, wage-earning New Yorkers pay income taxes on every single paycheck, billionaires live tax-free by borrowing against their stock portfolios, real estate holdings, and art collections without paying a dime in taxes on that money,” Congressman Dan Goldman said. “By restoring basic fairness to our tax code and making the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share and contribute what they owe, this bill will generate revenue to invest in universal pre-K, child care, and working families instead of subsidizing billionaires’ yachts and private islands. It’s long past time for the wealthiest people in the country to pay their fair share.”

Winning Elections Against Autocrats

Opinion M. Gessen

This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too.

By M. Gessen

Visuals by Máté Bartha

M. Gessen, an Opinion columnist, and Mr. Bartha reported from Budapest.

  • May 29, 2026

Leer en español

Starting early in the morning on the second Saturday of May, first hundreds and then thousands of people gathered in the square in front of Hungary’s majestic Parliament building to celebrate the start of a new political era. This was the square where tens of thousands gathered in 1956 and 1989 to demand an end to the Soviet occupation and in 2006 to protest a discredited government. It was the square on which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s regime imposed a major redesign more than a decade ago — with traffic rerouted away, a large reflecting pool and raised beds installed, narrow pathways laid down — apparently to ensure that no such mass gathering could take place again. Today it was the square where Peter Magyar, a former Orban loyalist, would be sworn in, promising a rebirth of democracy and liberty after 16 years of autocratic control.

Squeezing into the available spaces and gradually filling up nearby cafes and streets, the crowd absorbed people of all ages: young people who didn’t remember a time before Orban and who had voted in unprecedented numbers; aging intellectuals who didn’t think they’d ever celebrate their country again; multigenerational families who had arrived by bus after seeing Magyar in their hometowns and villages. During his campaign, Magyar had traveled to an estimated 700 locations, turning many of them into “Tisza islands” — outposts of support for his party. By the end, Magyar was holding five or more rallies a day.

It had looked like an impossible quest. Orban and his cronies dominated the media, persecuted and smeared opposition politicians and changed election laws to benefit his party, Fidesz. Orban had seemed to achieve what the Hungarian sociologist and political theorist Balint Magyar (no relation) calls “autocratic breakthrough” — the point after which it’s impossible to unseat an autocrat using elections. Illiberal politicians from other countries made pilgrimages to Hungary to learn from Orban; CPAC, the gathering for American national conservatives, started staging an annual convention there; and Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest in advance of the election, in a show of support for Orban. And yet Hungarians handed Tisza not just a victory but a constitutional majority, enough power to reverse Orban’s changes to Hungarian laws and institutions. The triumph was stunning — unique in our era of democratic backsliding — and it holds clear lessons for the United States.

One obvious lesson of Peter Magyar’s success lies in the scale, reach and relentlessness of his organizing network. “They had 2,000 Tisza islands with between 30,000 and 50,000 volunteers,” Balint Magyar told me, in evident awe. “Just in their call centers, they had 3,000 to 4,000 people in the last week of the campaign.” We talked two days before the swearing-in ceremony, at his office in the spectacular but largely empty building of Central European University. In 2018, Orban’s government forced most of the university’s operations into exile amid an antisemitic scare campaign focused on the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros, the C.E.U.’s founder and principal funder. Some of Orban’s many other scare campaigns targeted migrants, “the Brussels elites” and L.G.B.T.Q. people. During the latest election campaign, billboards and A.I.-generated social media posts warned Hungarians they were in danger of being overtaken by Ukraine and only Orban could protect them. It should have seemed absurd — it was absurd — but outlandish xenophobic and antisemitic propaganda had served Orban well for years. It didn’t work against Peter Magyar — probably because so many Hungarians got to see him in person, many of them repeatedly. This is another lesson of his success: Old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering.

In his inaugural speech to Parliament, broadcast on giant screens set up around the square, Peter Magyar said that voters had handed him a mandate “not just to change the government, but to change the system. To start over.”

Magyar enumerated the ways in which Orban had damaged Hungary: a stalled economy in which a third of the population lives in poverty, inadequate health care, low-quality schools, child welfare institutions plagued by abuse, an atmosphere of hatred and fear. Orban’s regime had “stolen from the common good of the Hungarian nation — from the pockets of the Hungarian people, and from the tables of Hungarian children and the elderly,” Magyar said, “an estimated 20 trillion Hungarian forints,” or some $65 billion, over the last decade and a half.

Previous opposition politicians had described Orban’s regime as “corrupt,” a relatively mild term suggesting some aberration from the government’s intended function. Peter Magyar made no such accommodation. Borrowing a term coined by Balint Magyar, he has called it a mafia state — a fundamentally criminal enterprise. Third lesson: Don’t mince words.

Instead of shrinking away from direct confrontation, he fortified himself against it. By getting elected to the European Parliament, in 2024, he secured immunity from prosecution in Hungary. When rumors circulated of an intimate video that would be used to blackmail him, he went on the offensive, accusing Orban of using “Russian-style kompromat” (no video was released). Knowing that he would probably be blocked from registering a new political party, he took over one that had become dormant. Even more important, instead of trying to build coalitions among other parties, he focused on conscripting as many actual people as possible, from across the political spectrum, ultimately building a giant organization capable of taking down Orban’s political monopoly.

One could say — and some have — that Magyar won at least in part because he was a former insider of Orban’s Fidesz party. But my interlocutors in Hungary emphasized that Magyar’s credibility lay in the fact that he was not a member of the old opposition, whose policies had led to the discontent that made Orban’s rise possible and whose timidity had helped perpetuate Orban’s power. That’s a lesson, too: The person best positioned to break the power of Donald Trump would not be an anti-Trump Republican but an outsider to the Democratic establishment, someone who can credibly claim that Trump didn’t happen on his watch — a Graham Platner rather than a Thomas Massie.

For all his tireless work over the last two years, Magyar did not create his political machine from scratch. Like Zohran Mamdani, Magyar excelled at converting potential supporters into campaign volunteers. An existing news distribution service provided an initial skeleton of the organizing network. A panoply of grass-roots protest movements joined, too. On the day of Magyar’s inauguration, a parallel, smaller commemoration organized by the city of Budapest celebrated those organizations. One by one, people took the microphone to give a short speech about their cause and their part in the electoral victory: teachers who had organized against a unified state-dictated curriculum; a young man who spoke up against abuses in the child care system; a high school student persecuted for reciting an anti-Orban poem; organizers of Budapest’s L.G.B.T.Q. Pride celebration. The speakers stayed onstage, gradually forming a crowd of the kind — the many kinds — of ordinary Hungarians who had ended the Orban era.

That’s a fifth lesson: Grass-roots organizations that have little or no connection to electoral politics — in the United States, that might be the networks formed by the No Kings rallies, ICE-resistance groups and so on — can matter as much as or more than those already focused on winning votes.

Another lesson lies in the issues that motivated Magyar’s voters. Hungary’s economy is a mess, but post-election polling by Median, an organization that had predicted election results with uncanny accuracy, shows that voters saw corruption as the most important issue by far. Asked why they thought Orban had lost, 49 percent cited corruption, and only 18 percent thought it was the “worsening economic situation, rising cost of living.” The next three reasons cited were “lies” (15 percent); “fearmongering, war rhetoric” (11 percent); and “people got fed up” (10 percent). In other words, Hungarians seemed to see the damage that Orbanism had done to the nation as more important than any harm they felt they had suffered as individuals. They were united by a sense of moral outrage — “value choices,” as one person close to the incoming government described it to me.

Polls have consistently shown that even Fidesz voters generally want Hungary to stay in the European Union. Some surely just want the ease of travel and residency, but others probably have in mind the loftier ideals of the E.U., such as the rule of law, human rights and the essential purpose of the E.U., which is peace.

Hungary is one of the poorer countries in the union, and in the early years of his regime, Orban was able to use E.U. membership to secure funding, and thereby power, even as he railed against the Brussels bureaucracy. But in 2022, the European Union started withholding funding, citing corruption. And in 2024, after Hungary ignored a European Court of Justice ruling that compelled it to process asylum applications, the court ordered Hungary to pay 200 million euros and imposed a daily fine of 1 million euros. (When Orban refused to pay, Brussels deducted the money from E.U. funds earmarked for Hungary.) These actions didn’t just hurt the Hungarian economy — they also allowed Magyar to draw a causal connection between Orban’s policies and the well-being of ordinary voters. One of his major campaign promises was to unlock E.U. funding.

Hungary joined the European Union in 2004. The E.U. flag — 12 gold stars on a blue background — adorned the facade of the Hungarian Parliament building alongside the nation’s red, white and green standard. But Orban’s politics, like the politics of most autocrats, was the politics of grievance. Under his regime, the E.U. flag was removed and replaced with the flag of the Szekelys, a Hungarian minority that found itself living in Romania when World War I’s victors redrew the region’s borders. Orban’s symbolic gesture helped fan resentment against the E.U. and what he claimed were a new generation of attacks on Hungarian sovereignty.

Peter Magyar scheduled his inauguration for Europe Day — the 76th anniversary of the declaration that created the road map for a united continent. Before he was sworn in, the European flag was raised again. But the Szekely flag remained, signaling that Magyar seeks to represent all Hungarian citizens, including those who supported Orban. In some U.S. coverage, Magyar has been labeled centrist or right-of-center. What his politics actually are — and this is another lesson of his victory — is pluralist. (snip-MORE)

Exclusive: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Explains the Mission Behind Housing Initiative to Help Black and Brown Families

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke exclusively to The Root about “Block by Block,” which targets Black and brown communities most impacted by housing disparities.

By Phenix S Halley Published May 29, 2026

Since New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stepped into office in January, he’s unveiled ambitious policies that aim to address systemic issues that many leaders before him often neglected. Now, his administration has launched a new “Block by Block” housing plan to confront the city’s deep racial inequities in housing.

The proposal focuses heavily on the Bronx, where Black residents disproportionately face unsafe buildings, displacement, and limited affordable housing access. Mamdani argues the housing crisis is inseparable from systemic racism, pledging stronger tenant protections, aggressive action against negligent landlords, and major investments in affordable housing. He spoke with us in an exclusive interview about why “Block by Block” matters and why it’s time for political leaders to address the elephant in the room: protecting and uplifting Black and other disenfranchised groups through real policy.

The Root: During your 2025 campaign, some Black voters voiced concerns that they wouldn’t be a priority. Although “Block by Block” addresses some of those concerns, targeted at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and Black communities in the Bronx, how do you continue to ensure the most disenfranchised people have direct access and remain a priority?

Mayor Zohran Mamdani: I think the cost-of-living crisis is the most pressing issue in our city. And it is a crisis that every New Yorker faces. It’s also a crisis that has not been borne evenly across the city. Black New Yorkers have faced such pressure to afford life in this city that we have seen manifest in 200,000 Black New Yorkers being pushed out of the city, the population of Black children and teenagers declining by 19% over a recent period of time. It is incumbent upon us, if we want to fight to continue to preserve “the gorgeous mosaic,” as [former Mayor] David Dinkins once described our city as, to invest in everything that we can to make this city more affordable.

“Block by Block” is a vision to not only preserve the little affordability that we have in this city, but also hold on to that affordability to ensure that it becomes a reality for far more New Yorkers. We know that public housing is one of the few places where working-class New Yorkers can find a way to make ends meet in the city, yet it’s one of the few places that has been left out of any conversation around housing for decades. And that’s why we’ve made the decision to invest $5.6 billion into public housing, which is the largest investment any mayor has made in decades, so that we can actually ensure that we not only continue to provide this kind of affordability, but that it comes with a habitability as well, so that New Yorkers are not forced to accept conditions that frankly go beyond what any person should have to agree to.

The Root: If you can do this in 100 days, why do you think past mayors and other political leaders across the U.S. haven’t addressed disparities in housing on a larger scale? Are there any risks involved with prioritizing people of color?

Mayor Mamdani: I’ll give you an example of public housing:
The Reagan administration made sweeping cuts to public housing. It began a chapter in our city and our country’s history of disinvesting in one of the most critical ways for working-class people to afford to live in the cities they help build.

Too often, in our politics, we’ve cited the immense cost as a justification for inaction. We have said, “Well, NYCHA has a capital backlog of about $80 billion; therefore, anything is just a drop in the bucket.
So we are going to continue to rely on the federal government to take the lead here. We know full well that Republican administrations and Democratic administrations have not addressed this issue, that waiting is not an answer. And so we have decided to take the lead ourselves and show that the city is committed to this in a way that goes beyond the rhetoric of past administrations and starts to translate that into a new reality for current NYCHA residents.

The Root: Outside of “Block by Block,” what are you most proud of in the first 100 days of your administration?

Mayor Mamdani: I am most proud of our vision for Universal Childcare. 
We delivered more than $1 billion, thanks to a partnership with Governor [ Kathy] Hochul. And that is money that allowed us to add 2,000 additional seats for childcare for three-year-olds and, now for the first time in New York City history, free childcare for two-year-olds. 
And the reason I’m most proud of this is that in New York City, childcare costs $20,000 per child, and that’s considered a good deal. And when we deliver universal and high-quality childcare at no cost to families across the city, it transforms their ability to build a life here, and that’s exactly what we want to be doing.