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For Immediate Release
September, 28 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Sam Quigley, sam@patrioticmillionaires.org
Patriotic Millionaires on Trump Tax Returns: The American People Should be Pissed Off
"This is evidence of the rot in our tax system, which is designed to allow rich people to avoid paying their fair share."
WASHINGTON
Yesterday, the New York Times released a bombshell report on President Trump's taxes, showing that he paid no federal income taxes for 10 of the last 15 years, and that in 2016 and 2017 he paid only $750 a year. While this level of tax evasion is certainly unusual, it's a symptom of a tax system that offers the rich countless loopholes to legally avoid paying taxes.
In response to this report, Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director of BlackRock, Inc., issued the following statement:
"It seems obvious that Trump has committed some amount of criminal tax evasion, but that's not the biggest issue here. The real problem is a system that provides such absurd loopholes to the ultra-wealthy in the first place, and a deliberately underfunded IRS that lacks the capacity to properly prosecute rich people's criminal tax evasion. Trump's case may be particularly egregious, but he's far from unique.
This is just evidence of the rot in our tax system, which is designed to allow rich people to avoid paying their fair share. This has been the case for decades, but the tax code is even more skewed in favor of the rich and powerful after Trump was able to rewrite the entire tax code to his liking in 2017 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The American people should be angry about President Trump's tax evasion, but that's not all. They should be much more angry about how much of what Trump did is legal.
The American people should be more angry about how many other millionaires and billionaires are able to avoid supporting the country that made them rich in the first place.
Most of all, the American people should be pissed off about the fact that instead of offering them health care, or affordable childcare, or financial support during a pandemic, their government instead prioritizes protecting the wealth of the rich, powerful, and selfish."
For more information, email Sam Quigley at Sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489LATEST NEWS
Supercharged by Trump-GOP Tax Cuts, US Billionaire Wealth Surges Past $9 Trillion for First Time
"This broken political and economic system takes from the vast majority of Americans and consolidates wealth in the hands of a privileged few. It cannot stand."
Jun 16, 2026
The collective wealth of US billionaires reached a record $9.24 trillion this month—an increase of around $2.2 trillion compared to the same time last year—while millions of Americans struggled to afford groceries, healthcare, and other basic necessities as inflation driven by President Donald Trump's illegal Iran war eroded their wages.
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) published an analysis Tuesday detailing the explosion of billionaire wealth and noting that "over the last 12 months, US GDP (unadjusted for inflation) rose just 6%, meaning this wealth expansion is not trickling down to broad-based prosperity." AFT's billionaire wealth total includes the net worth of Elon Musk, who reached trillionaire status last week with the public debut of his rocket company, SpaceX.
According to AFT's analysis of Forbes data, Musk's wealth has grown by nearly 205%—roughly $863 billion—over the past year. Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, is the second-wealthiest billionaire in the US, with a net worth of roughly $301 billion—up 118% compared to last year.
In addition to the growing chasm between the richest Americans and everyone else, AFT observed that wealth is increasingly concentrated at the very top even among the wealthiest, whose fortunes are largely tied up in stock appreciation that is not taxed unless shares are sold.
"America’s 15 centi-billionaires and now one trillionaire alone make up 43% of all billionaire wealth—an astounding $4 trillion—and their wealth is growing over twice as fast as fellow billionaires in the past year," the group noted. "Just these top 16 billionaires hold more wealth today than every US billionaire combined in September of 2020, less than six years ago."
AFT attributed skyrocketing billionaire wealth in part to tax cuts that Trump and congressional Republicans showered on the ultra-wealthy in 2017 and again in 2025.
"Nearly halfway into Trump’s second administration’s second year in office, with GOP majorities in the House and Senate, the ultra-wealthy and billionaires have been rewarded with massive tax giveaways and policies funded with cuts to affordability programs that has resulted in millions losing access to healthcare and food," David Kass, ATF's executive director, said in a statement.
"This broken political and economic system takes from the vast majority of Americans and consolidates wealth in the hands of a privileged few," Kass added. "It cannot stand.”
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"If Israel has evidence against Abu Safiya, it should indict him and present that evidence," said the editors of Israel's oldest daily newspaper. "If it doesn't have evidence against him, it needs to release him."
Jun 16, 2026
Defenders of Palestine, human rights, and the rule of law denounced the Israeli Supreme Court's rejection Tuesday of an appeal from Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Gaza hospital director imprisoned by Israel for 535 days without charge or trial and allegedly tortured by his captors.
In its decision, Israel's highest court cited a 2002 law allowing the government to detain people it classifies as "unlawful combatants" without charging them with a criminal offense or prosecuting them as prisoners of war.
The Times of Israel reported that because the Supreme Court's decision was based on classified intelligence, it will not be publicly released.
Israel claims Abu Safiya—a 52-year-old pediatrician who was the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia when he was abducted on December 28, 2024 during one of multiple Israeli sieges and assaults on the facility—is a colonel in Gaza's Military Medical Services. Israeli officials cited the service's own records and a 2016 photo showing the doctor wearing a uniform and seated beside members of Hamas, which carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
However, supporters of Abu Safiya, human rights groups, and many medical organizations contend that "colonel" is a state medical corps rank rather than a combat command role, and note that Hamas' political wing rules Gaza. They point to positions and organizations like the US surgeon general and US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps—which is one of the nation's eight uniformed services but not part of the military—as illustrative of the concept.
“The rejection of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s appeal and his continued detention without charge represent a profound moral and legal failure,” said Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, following the court's decision.
"Dr. Abu Safiya’s case is not an isolated one. It illustrates how judicial review proceedings for Palestinian detainees from Gaza have, in practice, become little more than a procedural formality," Abbas added. "Every month, hundreds of detention review hearings take place, yet to the best of our knowledge, they have not resulted in the meaningful reconsideration or revocation of detention orders—even in cases involving doctors and other medical personnel."
The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy said the high court's rejection of Abu Safiya's appeal "constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, which provide special protection for medical personnel during armed conflicts and prohibit their targeting or arbitrary detention for carrying out their humanitarian and professional duties."
"Dr. Abu Safiya remains held in solitary confinement at Nafha Prison under harsh and degrading detention conditions, while being denied necessary medical treatment and the most basic fundamental rights guaranteed to prisoners and detainees," the center continued, adding that it "holds the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the life and safety of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and calls for his immediate release, the provision of urgent medical care, and an end to the policy of arbitrary detention against medical and humanitarian personnel."
United Nations experts in March cited "reports that Dr. Abu Safiya has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, and that his health condition remains dire," as well as "flagrantly arbitrary" detention, in calling for his release. UN agencies, human rights groups, elected officials, and professional groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics are among those demanding that Israel free Abu Safiya.
Last week, Abu Safiya—who showed visible signs of his alleged torture—appeared remotely via video before the Supreme Court to demand his release following at least four major detention extensions or renewals.
“My detention is unjust and arbitrary, and I demand my immediate release,” he told the court. “I am a pediatrician who provides medical services and care to patients, the wounded and vulnerable people in the Gaza Strip.”
Abu Safiya was abducted while defying an Israeli forced displacement order by refusing to evacuate Kamal Adwan Hospital as long as patients were still being treated. In one of several Israel Defense Forces attacks on the facility, Israeli troops surrounded, bombarded, and then stormed the hospital over three weeks in December 2024, killing and wounding staff and patients while terrified children and other people were being treated inside.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike, and the doctor was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
As the invaders expelled Kamal Adwan's patients and staff, Abu Safiya sounded the alarm on the "catastrophic" conditions inside the facility, which, according to alleged victims and witnesses, included Israelis sexually assaulting women and girls as young as 13.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, sexual assault, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank. He was subsequently transferred to Ketziot Prison and then Nafha Prison in the Ramon Prison complex.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
According to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, al-Bursh was “likely raped to death."
Responding to the Israeli Supreme Court's decision, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis—an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights—said Tuesday on social media that "the heroic doctor's torture by Israel continues."
"They continue to torture Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya for the crime of not abandoning his patients," he added. "Without laying charges [or] offering him anything resembling due process, Israel is killing him slowly. One day, everyone will say they were against this."
On Monday, the editors of Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, asserted in an editorial that Abu Safiya's "continued detention, and that of the other doctors from Gaza, is an injustice and constitutes collective punishment for Gaza's residents, who need their service" amid an ongoing public health crisis.
"If Israel has evidence against Abu Safiya, it should indict him and present that evidence," the editors argued. "If it doesn't have evidence against him, it needs to release him, and all the other jailed doctors, promptly."
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"Is this what happens when you have zero scientists in your administration?" said one critic.
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National Park Service employees on Tuesday were seen pouring a bleaching agent into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, apparently to kill algae that had sprouted up shortly after the completion of a $14.2 million renovation commissioned by President Donald Trump.
The bleaching of the pool was spotted by CBS News journalist Bob Kovach, who posted video of workers dumping 12% hydrogen peroxide into the water.
This morning at the reflecting pool pic.twitter.com/uygkbcn7Mn
— bob kovach (@bkovoDC) June 16, 2026
The pool in recent days has turned a bright green due to algae growth, which threatened to spoil Trump's effort to make it appear "American flag blue" ahead of the celebrations of the country's 250th anniversary next month.
As noted by The New Republic, 12% hydrogen peroxide is strong enough to "cause problems if inhaled and burns if the chemical touches the skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
"Hydrogen peroxide is generally considered less environmentally destructive as its compounds readily break down in water," The New Republic added, "but the high concentration could nonetheless pose a risk to some of the pool’s frequent visitors, such as ducks or other birds."
Michael O'Brien, a Washington DC-based primary care pediatrician, expressed skepticism that the plan to dump bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the pool would succeed in fixing the algae problem.
"Y’all, not to be a huge nerd but for the reflecting pool you would need a minimum of about 8,000 liters of 12% hydrogen peroxide to reach the 50 parts per million concentration to kill algae," O'Brien wrote. "Is this what happens when you have zero scientists in your administration?"
NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic, upon seeing the chemical being dumped into the pool, remarked it was a "bad day to be a duck."
A Fox News reporter on the scene tried to put a good spin on the pool being green by pointing out that "there's pool guys cleaning it up," and then exclaiming, "No other president would do that!"
FOX: I'm here at the newly renovated reflecting pool. It's painted American flag blue. The Democrats will tell you there's green algae. There's pool guys cleaning it up. No other president would do that. pic.twitter.com/19MzxnEcq5
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 16, 2026
Trump's efforts to renovate the reflecting pool raised eyebrows even before it became overrun by algae. According to a Tuesday report in The Guardian, the pool was renovated by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which received a no-bid contract from the Trump administration after having "previously carried out work on a swimming pool at one of the president's golf clubs."
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