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Faith Leaders Blast GOP's Attacks on Poor and Tax Cuts for the Rich
"We are releasing this powerful report to expose for the American people how immoral, dangerous, and insane the administration's proposed economic decisions are," said Bishop William Barber.
Mar 05, 2025
Leaders from various faiths came together in Washington, D.C. on Christians' Ash Wednesday to share an open letter and report calling out efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and Republicans in Congress to rip resources away from the working class to fund tax giveaways for the ultrarich.
"Budgets are moral documents," said Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, in a statement. "We are releasing this powerful report to expose for the American people how immoral, dangerous, and insane the administration's proposed economic decisions are and how they are going to hurt people."
"At this critical moment in our nation's history, we need a government that promotes unity and love towards all members of the human family, not division and hatred," added Barber, whose group released the report in partnership with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
"The Trump-GOP agenda would tilt the playing field even further away from poor and low-income people in favor of the wealthy and big corporations."
The report—titled The High Moral Stakes of the Policy Battles Raging in Washington—explains that "social safety net and housing programs are under attack from two fronts," pointing to both Republican lawmakers' pursuit of cuts and Elon Musk, the unelected leader of Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The document details attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. It also warns that other "vital" initiatives such as the early childhood education program Head Start and federal rental assistance "could be on the chopping block."
EPI president Heidi Shierholz said that "as this report shows, these cuts will be profoundly destructive to incomes and economic security for this country's most vulnerable households—and they are being done for the sole purpose of providing tax cuts that will go overwhelmingly to the wealthiest households."
"This is an upside-down agenda that literally takes from struggling families to line the pockets of billionaires," she stressed. "We stand against this—and we stand for moral economic policies that lift up the most vulnerable, strengthen our communities, and ensure prosperity is shared by all."
Specifically, the GOP aims to extend expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that, as the report notes, "delivered huge windfalls to the rich and large corporations and contributed to the exploding wealth and power of our country's billionaire class."
"The Trump-GOP agenda puts recent improvements in the U.S. unemployment rate, low-income workers' real wages, and labor protections at risk. They have already rolled back some gains and indicated opposition to raising the federal minimum wage," the report continues, highlighting that while some states have higher hourly rates, the nationwide minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009.
The publication also blasts Trump's anti-immigrant policies, emphasizing that "immigrants are a vital part of our communities and economy," and the president's mass deportations "would devastate undocumented and authorized immigrants and citizens alike."
The document concludes with a section on Trump's "alarming moves toward more widespread use of the U.S. war machine both around the world, and within the United States," citing his declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border, attempt to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development, and proposed takeovers of the Gaza Strip, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.
"This report's data make clear that the Trump-GOP agenda would tilt the playing field even further away from poor and low-income people in favor of the wealthy and big corporations," said IPS executive director Tope Folarin. "We will see more families go hungry, lose healthcare, and struggle to pay rent while Republicans give huge tax windfalls and unprecedented political power to the wealthiest Americans and throw more tax dollars into the machines of war and mass deportation."
Former IPS director John Cavanagh, who is now a senior adviser, joined faith leaders outside the U.S. Supreme Court in D.C. for a gathering to discuss the new report and the letter, which Barber read to the crowd and which can be signed on his group's website.
"We write to issue this call for repentance and truth-telling because our most basic moral commitments have been betrayed by our political leaders," the letter declares. "We have struggled to realize a republic committed to equality and freedom for all of us."
"We write today to confess that we have become subject to the tyranny of technology," it continues. "Awed by the possibilities of progress and the promise of limitless growth, our political leaders have allowed corporate power to go unchecked for decades. Our courts have ruled that corporations should be treated like people while everyday people have been increasingly treated like things. In the richest nation in the history of the world, poverty has become epidemic as the fourth leading cause of death."
"As people of faith, we stand together in the public square to say, 'We repent.' We are not afraid of the false god of efficiency, and we will not bow to any tyranny that claims control of our common life," the letter states. "We invite our colleagues to assemble on the town square, at city hall, or on the state house lawn in communities across this land and join this call. As we have in Washington today, we invite communities to study the report on the true state of our nation."
The livestreamed event was followed by a march to the U.S. Capitol to deliver the documents to congressional leadership.
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'A Death Sentence': Legislature Overturns El Salvador's Metal Mining Ban
One group called it "the biggest attack on water, health, and life in El Salvador," highlighting "opposition from churches, universities, social organizations, and the majority of the population."
Dec 23, 2024
In a win for Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has dubbed himself "the world's coolest dictator," the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on Monday overturned the Central American country's 2017 ban on metal mining.
Bukele has fought to reverse the historic ban since taking office in 2019. Despite a prohibition in the Salvadoran Constitution, he ran for and won a second term in February, after his Nueva Ideas (New Ideas) party purged the judiciary.
Reporting on Monday's mining reversal, the Financial Timesnoted that "Bukele's party and its allies hold 57 of 60 seats in the legislature, and all 57 voted to overturn the ban while giving the Salvadoran government sole authority over mining activities."
As the British newspaper detailed:
He has claimed that El Salvador sits on gold reserves potentially worth $3 trillion, citing an undisclosed study, although that has been treated with skepticism by experts.
There has been limited exploration in El Salvador. El Dorado, the most advanced of more than two dozen exploration projects prior to the ban, was once estimated to hold 1.4 million ounces of gold, which would be worth roughly $3.6 billion today, without considering production expenses.
El Salvador's gold belt runs across its northern provinces and the watershed of the Lempa River, which is the small and densely populated country's main source of water.
In a statement earlier this month, the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) warned that "El Salvador's 2017 prohibition against metallic mining is a widely popular measure and overturning it would be a death sentence for the small and densely populated country with its scarce water sources, many of which are already contaminated."
"The historic ban, passed in a unanimous 70-0 vote by El Salvador's Legislative Assembly in 2017, was the result of a decadelong campaign to value life over transnational mining corporations' pursuit of profits," IPS explained. "The campaign was ultimately supported by a wide coalition of civil society organizations, educational institutions, some business sectors, legislators and ministers from across the political spectrum, as well as two archbishops. They were all persuaded by substantial evidence of gold mining's destructive effects, and the deleterious impacts of cyanide used in gold mining."
"The struggle also cost the lives of several beloved water defender activists who stood up to the mining companies in Cabañas: Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, student Juan Francisco Durán Ayala, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, who was eight months pregnant when murdered, and whose 2-year-old child witnessed and was wounded in the attack," the group added.
The IPS statement came in response to a November 26 ruling that ordered a retrial for the Economic and Social Development Association of Santa Marta (ADES) "Santa Marta Five" water defenders—Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Teodoro Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega—a development the group denounced.
ADES forcefully condemned the mining ban reversal on social media Monday, calling it "the biggest attack on water, health, and life in El Salvador," and pointing to "opposition from churches, universities, social organizations, and the majority of the population."
The Salvadoran group also shared images of opponents who gathered outside the Legislative Assembly on Monday.
Luis Gonzalez, one of the environmentalists outside the building,
toldReuters, "We oppose metals mining because it has been technically and scientifically proven that mining is not viable in the country."
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New Campaign Urges Biden to Commute Sentence of 'Public Hero' Who Leaked Trump Tax Data
Patriotic Millionaires and Revolving Door Project are leading the push for Biden to reduce IRS whistleblower Charles Littlejohn's prison term.
Dec 16, 2024
Update:
Patriotic Millionaires senior vice president for tax policy Bob Lord and Revolving Door Project senior researcher Kenny Stancil on Wednesday published commentary in Rolling Stone highlighting the campaign urging Biden to commute Littlejohn's sentence. This, a day after the campaign launched a website where people can add their voices to the chorus of calls for commutation.
Earlier:
With just over a month left in U.S. President Joe Biden's term, a pair of advocacy groups this week launched a campaign urging the outgoing Democrat to commute the sentence of an Internal Revenue Service contractor serving five years in prison for exposing tax dodging by wealthy Americans including Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
The campaign, which is a collaboration between the Revolving Door Project and Patriotic Millionaires, is planning a week of action to push Biden to commute the five-year sentence of Charles Littlejohn—who was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty in October 2023 to unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information to media outlets—to 10 months, the maximum term of imprisonment he was supposed to receive under the federal guidelines.
On Monday, the campaign letter to Biden from four tax law professors calling on Biden reduce Littlejohn's sentence, which the experts called "particularly harsh in comparison with some recent sentences meted out to blatant tax evaders."
The letter asserts that Littlejohn—who gave The New York Timesinformation on Trump and shared with ProPublica data on Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others—acted "out of a sincere belief in the public's right to know."
"I've been a tax lawyer for 40 years. For the past decade, I've been pretty outspoken about the various maneuvers that the ultra-rich deploy to avoid tax," Bob Lord, the senior vice president for Tax Policy at Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement. "But despite my best efforts, I fully recognize that no technical explanation that I could give about any of the myriad tax loopholes that the rich exploit would ever stick in the public conscience the same way that Charles Littlejohn's leaks did about billionaires like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos paying $0 in income tax."
"Littlejohn did break the law, but at the end of the day, he actually did the country a great service by exposing the full degree to which our tax code privileges the wealthy and well-connected," Lord added. "And if lawmakers are inspired by Littlejohn's leaks to finally take meaningful steps to reform our tax system and rein in extreme wealth, he will have undoubtedly done more to save American democracy than harm it."
University of Michigan law professor Reuven Avi-Yonah, the letter's lead signer, has called Littlejohn a "public hero."
According to the professors:
There are many cases that involve massive tax evasion and do not lead to a criminal indictment. Consider for example the case of Alon Farhy, who transferred more than $2 million to a sham foreign entity, which then transferred the funds to a bank account in the name of a Belize-based corporation Mr. Farhy created solely for that purpose. Mr. Farhy's scheme violated a variety of tax-related obligations beyond his duty to correctly report and pay the income tax he owed. The [U.S. Department of Justice] entered into a nonprosecution agreement with Mr. Farhy immunizing him from criminal prosecution in exchange for paying his taxes plus interest and penalties.
"Many other cases involving tax evasion do not result in jail time," the letter notes. "For example, Raj Mukhi ran a business that manufactured and sold professional uniforms in many countries. He was indicted in 2014 for hiding the proceeds in a private bank based in Zürich. He pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false tax return and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account and was sentenced to three years of supervised release."
"Even if there is a prison sentence, it is usually much shorter than five years," the professors stressed. "To mention just some cases from this year, an Oklahoma man who instructed a payroll company working with his business to falsely characterize over $2.6 million as reimbursements rather than income was sentenced to 30 months."
"An Indiana woman who electronically filed false income tax returns for clients that reported fictitious businesses and also filed a false tax return for herself that underreported gross receipts from her business was sentenced to 21 months," the letter adds. "A New Jersey man was sentenced to 29 months for evading taxes and not filing income tax returns while earning over $2.5 million in wages. All of these cases involve conduct that is much more culpable and less public-spirited than Mr. Littlejohn's."
"There is a big difference between leaking tax information and tax evasion in the size of the universe of potential violations and the number of violators escaping punishment," the professors said. "The universe of potential violators leaking tax information is infinitesimal compared to the universe of potential tax evaders. And the number of potential violators escaping punishment for leaking tax information is close to zero, whereas the number of evaders escaping punishment is huge."
As his term winds down, Biden has issued approximately 1,500 commutations and 39 pardons, including controversial clemency for his son Hunter Biden and Michael Conahan, a former Pennsylvania judge convicted in a "kids-for-cash" scheme in which he and a colleague funneled thousands of juveniles into private detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks.
With the looming return of Trump—who presided over more federal executions during his first term than numerous presidents did over several preceding decades—advocates are pushing Biden to commute the sentences of 40 federal death row inmates. Advocates are also calling on Biden to pardon figures including Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier and environmental attorney Steven Donziger.
Earlier this month,
Politico Magazinereported that Biden is weighing preemptive pardons for numerous public officials who could be targeted by Trump—who has vowed to exact revenge on his political enemies—during his second term. Kash Patel, Trump's pick to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has threatened to prosecute the president-elect's political opponents and journalists.
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