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Rep. Schiff on Trump pushing for pardons: ‘Extreme nature’ of his narcissism’ | CNN Politics

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Rep. Schiff on Trump pushing for pardons: ‘Extreme nature’ of his narcissism’  | CNN Politics
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Walt Disney cuts diversity category from executive pay scheme

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Walt Disney cuts diversity category from executive pay scheme

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Walt Disney has replaced diversity and inclusion as a standalone metric in setting executive pay, following volleys of criticism from conservative politicians who accused the entertainment group of pushing a “woke” agenda.

In an internal memo sent on Tuesday, the company said it was updating “how our values are embedded in our leader compensation programmes”. A new metric, “talent strategy”, was added to its executive pay scheme to replace the “diversity and inclusion” category, though it said “important concepts” from the old plan would remain in place. Its other performance categories, “storytelling and creativity” and “synergy”, were unchanged.

Disney is also removing advisories that it plays ahead of some old films, such as Dumbo and Peter Pan, which warn viewers they “include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples or cultures”, said a person familiar with the matter. However, the advisories will be moved to a box along with other details about the film.

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The moves, which were first reported by Axios, come after other large corporations backed away from DEI programmes since the election of Donald Trump as president in November. Meta, McDonald’s and Target are among the groups that have scrapped their diversity and inclusion programmes. Goldman Sachs on Tuesday abandoned diversity rules for initial public offerings.

Disney, which has a large and active base of LGBT+ employees, positioned its shift as an adjustment rather than a wholesale scrapping of DEI policies. It promised to keep hiring processes “barrier-free” and vowed to “purposefully champion a culture where everyone belongs”.

In 2022, Disney came under withering attack for its response to a Florida law to restrict discussion of sexual or gender identity in primary schools — critics labelled the proposal “Don’t Say Gay”.

Disney’s LGBT+ employees initially criticised the company, which operates huge resorts and amusement parks in Florida, for not taking a stand against the bill. But when the group eventually opposed the proposal, the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took actions to claw back Disney’s 50-year-old ability to run the property around its theme parks. The publicity around the episode made the company a target for conservative activists seeking to row back DEI initiatives.

Since his return to the company in November 2022, Disney chief executive Bob Iger has sought to tamp down impressions that the company is pushing a political or social agenda.

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“What I’ve really tried to do is return to our roots, which is to remember we have to entertain first. It’s not about messages,” Iger said at a 2023 conference.

He said Disney had “lost sight of what their number one objective needed to be . . . if you can infuse it with positive messages, have a good impact on the world, fantastic. But that should not be the objective.”

Anti-DEI campaigners and Republican politicians — including Trump — have hit out at Disney for featuring queer and minority characters in its films. The president in December told supporters that former Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter had “got out of Disney because they went woke”.

“He didn’t want woke Donald Duck, right?” Trump said. Disney ousted Perlmutter in 2023.

In 2022, the Pixar film Lightyear attracted criticism from conservatives who were angered by the inclusion of openly gay characters. Last year, Pixar removed transgender themes from a streaming series called Win or Lose.

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In a sign of the delicate line it has to walk between employee concerns and an array of complex political pressures, Disney also on Tuesday announced it was changing the name of an employee group to appear more inclusive. The “B” in the group once known as the Business Employee Resource Groups has been changed to Belonging.

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HUD is bracing as DOGE seeks to cut waste, fraud. Union leaders have a suggestion

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HUD is bracing as DOGE seeks to cut waste, fraud. Union leaders have a suggestion

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development building is seen in Washington, D.C.

Alastair Pike/AFP via Getty Images


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The Trump administration is asking employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to justify hundreds of contracts across the agency. One email sent Monday afternoon included a spreadsheet to fill out asking whether a contract was “critical,” whether it had a DEI component and if the contractor was competent.

The email also asked for a name on each form, a “contract champion within the bureau who will personally vouch for the answers.” It was sent by Scott Langmack, senior adviser to Government Efficiency, and said it was “urgent” that answers be sent by end of day Tuesday, Feb. 11.

The request has added to worries among workers that HUD might be the next target for major downsizing by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a unit in the Trump administration led by Elon Musk.

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During his first term, President Trump repeatedly proposed dramatic cuts to HUD’s budget, though they did not pass Congress. The conservative policy agenda Project 2025 calls for reigning in HUD’s “bureaucratic overreach” and transferring its functions to other agencies, states and localities.

The agency manages rental assistance for millions, provides funding to house homeless people, helps lower-income families buy homes, and builds and repairs affordable housing.

HUD contracts include services such as property management, inspections and appraisals on housing it oversees, credit analysis for its mortgage insurance arm, and research on how its programs perform and ways to improve them.

One department staffer also said future funding grants are now effectively on pause, and that permission is needed to move ahead with anything. “It’s impossible to plan in this totally chaotic environment,” this person said.

Another worker said the idea that entire parts of HUD might be wound down was “devastating.” A third said leadership was reminding people that the agency’s work is important and bipartisan, but the erosion of support for government aid has been demoralizing.

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All three employees asked that their names not be used because they feared for their jobs.

Two HUD union leaders with the American Federation of Government Employees expressed similar concerns. But mixed with that was also hope that DOGE scrutiny could lead to much-needed change in the agency.

“If we really want to get to the bulk of fraud, waste and abuse, let’s take a close look at a federal procurement system, because this has been broken for years,” said Antonio Gaines, president of AFGE National Council 222.

HUD’s union has been alleging fraud, waste and abuse since last year

Gaines knows the stereotype that federal workers are lazy and said front-line employees take the blame for a slow bureaucracy. But often, he said, they are hamstrung by decisions made higher up.

One such decision, he said, was implementing a new tool for inspecting public housing that has been disastrously slow and clunky to use. “The app is woefully dysfunctional, but we spent $40 million on it already,” Gaines said.

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Last year, AFGE Council 222 filed a complaint with HUD’s Inspector General and members of Congress. It said the app made it impossible for HUD to inspect nearly all of its five million housing units across the country every five years, as required by law.

There hasn’t been much response so far. But Gaines hopes that will change now that DOGE has asked for a review of all contracts.

“This is something that really will shed light on the lack of oversight.” said Erik Jetmir, the legislative and political chair for Council 222.

On the other hand, both officials said, it’s too early to know which way things will go. The Trump administration “can just as easily take a look at the contracts and replace them with loyalists and cronies,” Jetmir said.

Gaines was surprised that Trump and Musk, who “consider themselves to be elite business people,” had not made a business case for dramatic downsizing. “They’re making a political case for it, and I think that’s very dangerous,” he said.

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HUD staff feel stressed and left in the dark

Several HUD employees said they’ve been given almost no information on what changes to expect. One called the situation a “nightmare.” A union survey this month found 80% of respondents reported very high stress levels.

Gaines said the Trump administration’s repeated digs at federal employees — like saying public sector jobs are “lower productivity” — are offensive. And the offer to pay people for months to sit home and do nothing? “It seems to me that is the epitome of fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Several people expressed a visceral fear of getting fired. There is also worry about how many people might choose to retire or leave if the Trump administration’s offer is upheld in court. One source was concerned that losing many people in the same department could make it tough to “carry out our mission.”

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UK to change ‘unintended’ non-dom hit to overseas bank accounts

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UK to change ‘unintended’ non-dom hit to overseas bank accounts

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UK ministers are expected to reverse a technical element of Labour’s non-dom tax changes relating to money held in overseas bank accounts as they steer legislation to enact the October Budget through parliament.

A provision in the Finance Bill would have meant non-doms who stayed in the UK past April incurred tax on money moved through overseas bank accounts which they had earned in prior years when they had been exempt from UK taxes, according to lawyers.

A Treasury official on Monday said changes to reverse the effect of the provision were pending ministerial sign-off.

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The Treasury said: “We are committed to engaging with stakeholders to ensure the non-doms reforms work as well as possible. As is usual we are considering any technical comments on the legislation as part of this process.”

The expected change would be the latest tweak to chancellor Rachel Reeves’ move to abolish non-dom status, which also introduced tax on offshore trusts and made non-doms’ worldwide assets liable to inheritance tax.

Last month Reeves announced a minor change to the controversial policy, which tax advisers say has spurred an exodus of the wealthy, to make it easier for non-doms to bring back foreign income and gains at a favourable tax rate.

For years, the UK offered non-doms — wealthy foreigners resident in the UK — the opportunity to avoid British taxes on their overseas income and gains by claiming the “remittance basis”, which meant they only paid UK taxes on monies brought onshore.

As part of her Budget, Reeves abolished the remittance basis so non-doms who remain in the country have to pay tax on new foreign income and gains, like ordinary UK-domiciled taxpayers.

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But foreign income and gains previously earned by non-doms under the remittance basis are meant under Labour’s plans to remain untaxed unless brought into the UK.

As part of the non-dom changes in the Finance Bill, the UK would have applied statutory, rather than common-law, rules about capital gains tax to debts. This change would mean debts were considered as situated wherever the creditor is resident.

Money in bank accounts is considered debt owed to the account holder, so making a deposit in a foreign bank account would create a new debt, which the provisions would have classed as bringing the money back into the UK and therefore incurring tax.

The Treasury official said the planned amendments to the Finance Bill would avoid this outcome. They did not specify what change would be made.

Christopher Groves, a partner at law firm Withers, said it was “obviously wrong” if the change meant money put into a bank account anywhere in the world by a non-dom would be treated as having been brought into the UK.

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Groves added he thought the change was most likely to be an “unintended consequence” rather than a strategy: “I think that the first draft of the legislation is not perfect, which, given how complicated it is, is not hugely surprising.”

Dominic Lawrance, a partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, told HMRC in a letter earlier this month that it was “astounding” if a non-dom who had used the remittance basis became liable for tax “by transferring cash to a non-UK bank account in his or her name”.

Professional bodies Step, which represents lawyers and accountants, and the Chartered Institute of Taxation have both made representations to HMRC to warn about the change.

The CIOT wrote that “there should not be such different and complicated rules introduced at this late stage to determine what is a taxable remittance”.

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