Taxpayers Are Still Paying for Jared Kushner to Pretend to Be Important

If you only got your news from Donald Trump’s new social media website (a.k.a blog), or by watching the speeches he gives to wedding guests and random passersby at Mar-a-Lago like an old man shouting at an empty blender, you might think he was still president. In fact, he is not, but the U.S. is still paying for Secret Service protection for all of his adult children and their families. Which is why when former first son-in-law Jared Kushner took a little trip to the Middle East last month, it cost taxpayers nearly $13,000.

The Daily Beast reports that federal documents show the State Department coughed up at least $12,950 for Ivanka Trump’s husband’s security detail to accompany him during a stay the Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi between May 5 and May 14. It’s not clear what Kushner was doing in Abu Dhabi, but we assume it was related to the “Abraham Accords Institute for Peace” that he recently founded after pretending to solve the conflict in the Middle East. (Yes, it appears that despite reading 25 books on the matter, Kushner did not actually bring stability to the region, which is shocking considering his “breakthrough” deal, hailed as the Trump administration’s “biggest foreign policy achievement,” made little to no mention of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Or that one review of his plan read, “The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing.”)

While $13,000 sounds like a large chunk of change for taxpayers to cover for an extremely wealthy private citizen, it was actually a lot less than what Americans had to fork over for Kushner’s last overseas visit as first son-in-law, which cost taxpayers at least $24,335 in hotel fares alone, not including the tab for flights, local transportation, and meals, as well as salary and overtime for Kushner’s Secret Service detail, per the Daily Beast. Or the sum the U.S. is expected to shell out for the entire Trump clan over the next few months. As The Washington Post wrote in January, “The perk for the Trump family is expected to cost taxpayers millions of dollars and further stress the elite federal security force, which in the past four years had to staff the largest number ever of full-time security details—up to 42 at one point, according to former senior administration officials.”

As the Daily Beast notes, it is “virtually unheard of” for former administration officials, like Jared and Ivanka, to keep their Secret Service protection after they leave office, just as it is “highly unusual,” per The Washington Post, for a president to provide 24-hour security to so many adult family members, particularly the kind who take personal trips all over the world, in addition to travel related to their work at the Trump Organization. According to the Post, “from 2017 to 2019, government records show, Trump family members took more than 4,500 trips that required Secret Service to travel alongside them, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.” When Jared and Ivanka spent a weekend in the Dominican Republic in 2018, for example, taxpayers spent more than $58,000 of public funds on room and board, the Daily Beast noted.

While Trump is said to have regularly complained about Secret Service agents being too short or too overweight for his liking, and Javanka refused to let their detail use their half a dozen toilets, other family members treated the people protecting their lives with a little more respect. Like Vanessa Trump, who wisely traded in Don Jr. for an agent, and Tiffany Trump, who reportedly dated one of hers, a claim she strongly denies. 

Report: Bill Gates’s kids might not have to scrape by on mere $10 million inheritances

The fourth-richest person in the world has famously said he plans to give away virtually all of his wealth and leave his three children basically destitute with just $10 million apiece—but thanks to the divorce, their fortunes might be changing. Per Page Six:

Divorce experts say there’s a clue in Melinda Gates’s blockbuster divorce filing that she’s angling to change her three children’s inheritance—after her estranged husband, Bill Gates, has repeatedly said he’s leaving them a mere $10 million apiece. Melinda has taken the highly unusual step—according to experts—of naming top trust and estate lawyers as her representatives in her divorce filing, along with the customary matrimonial legal eagles. High-profile divorce attorneys Harriet Newman Cohen and Martha Cohen Stine point out that Melinda has “well-known trust and estate lawyers involved in the case,” and that it’s “most unusual for trust and estate lawyers’ names to be listed on a divorce filing.”

Bill Gates has said his kids will get a “minuscule” portion of his vast wealth. Worth $130 billion, the Microsoft mogul plans to leave just $10 million to each of his kids—Jennifer, 25, Rory, 21, and Phoebe, 18. During a past Reddit talk, the billionaire stated, “I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them,” and, “Some people disagree with this but Melinda and I feel good about it.” Said Newman Cohen: “Bill Gates proudly announced to the world he was leaving $10 million to each of his three children, and that the rest of the billions will be left to charity…now that Melinda has control—maybe she wanted to leave more to her children than $10 million each. Maybe she didn’t agree.”

Newman Cohen added, seemingly seriously, that the mid-8 figure sums are “tantamount to disinheriting the children.”

And speaking of small fortunes…

Andrew Cuomo’s side gig as an author, which he picked up in the middle of the pandemic, reportedly earned him a nice chunk of change, according to The New York Times:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was expected to earn more than $5 million from his book about leading New York during the coronavirus pandemic, according to figures released by his office on Monday, as investigators continued to look into his use of state resources to write and promote the book. The governor received the bulk of the money last year, $3.12 million, and under the contract, he is set to be paid another $2 million in installments over the next two years, state officials said.

The windfall book deal, which dwarfed the governor’s salary of $225,000, was reached last year after Mr. Cuomo rose to national prominence for televised news briefings during the pandemic’s uncertain early phase, when New York was the nation’s epicenter.

In March, Cuomo’s publisher reportedly cancelled promotion of the book, called American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic, and plans for a paperback edition after it emerged that senior aides to the governor had “rewritten a state Health Department report on nursing home fatalities to hide the number of actual deaths.” That sort of thing is usually frowned upon and is probably not the kind of lesson one should be teaching people.

The Supreme Court’s conservatives may get to take a whack at Roe v. Wade soon

The court agreed on Monday to hear a major abortion case next term that could affect the landmark decision, an extremely worrying development given that just three liberals sit on the bench at this time. Per CNN:

Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which then Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, signed into law in 2018, made exceptions only for medical emergencies or cases in which there is a “severe fetal abnormality,” but not for instances of rape or incest. A federal judge in Mississippi struck down the law in November 2018, and the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in December 2019. After being rescheduled for the court’s consideration in conference over a dozen times, the case could present a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The case will thrust the court—with a 6-3 conservative majority—directly into the culture wars at a time when states across the country are attempting to pass more restrictive measures. South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Idaho have codified bans this year on abortion at the onset of a fetal heartbeat. Also this year, Arkansas and Oklahoma have enacted near-total abortion bans, and Montana banned the procedure at 20 weeks. None of the bills have gone into effect, either because of court actions or later effective dates. “This will be, by far, the most important abortion case the Court will have heard since the Casey decision in 1992,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “If states are allowed to effectively ban abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, as the Mississippi law in this case does, then pregnant women would have a far shorter window in which they could lawfully obtain an abortion than what Roe and Casey currently require.”

While she’s certainly not the only conservative whom people who believe in a woman’s right to choose should be worried about, Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation process last year was uniquely chilling when it came to the topic of abortion. The justice refused to say if she saw any problem with “subjecting women who get abortions to the death penalty,” claiming, “as a sitting judge and as a judicial nominee, it would not be appropriate for me to offer an opinion on abstract legal issues or hypotheticals.” In other words, she apparently sees a hypothetical scenario in which it would be appropriate to subject women who get abortions to the death penalty. And while she made a big show of insisting during her confirmation hearings that a judge should not bring their “personal feelings” into their rulings—and is apparently writing a whole book on the topic—her feelings about abortion seem to have very much made their way into her rulings to date. She has written that the procedure is “always immoral.” She dissented in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing to uphold an Indiana law requiring doctors to notify the parents of a minor seeking an abortion. And she dissented in the case of Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing in favor of a law requiring that fetal remains be buried or cremated. Separately, she once signed a letter calling for the end of the “barbaric” Roe v. Wade.

“Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the group challenging the Mississippi law in court, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Elsewhere!

Biden to Send U.S.-Authorized Vaccines Abroad for First Time (Bloomberg)

California to Keep Mask Mandate in Place for Another Month (Bloomberg)

Israel-Hamas conflict hurtles into its second week as cease-fire talks struggle (Washington Post)

Child cash benefit will begin hitting millions of parents’ bank accounts July 15 (Washington Post)

Trump Has Blown Off Rudy Giuliani’s Pleas for Help as Feds Circle (Daily Beast)

Michael Burry of The Big Short reveals a $530 million bet against Tesla (CNBC)

The GOP Is Blaming Biden for Chick-Fil-A Sauce Shortage (IBT)

Disputed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Inventor Responds to Frito-Lay’s Claims: “I Was Their Greatest Ambassador” (Variety)

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