Politics
In key congressional race, Republicans criticize Democrat's Central Valley real estate deal
![In key congressional race, Republicans criticize Democrat's Central Valley real estate deal In key congressional race, Republicans criticize Democrat's Central Valley real estate deal](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d04046e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3936x2066+0+279/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F70%2F48%2Fae283f22455e98ed8818322b6995%2Fla-photos-1staff-20190912-sacramentopol-robertgourley-2535.jpg)
When the federal government closed Castle Air Force Base in Merced County in the 1990s, the dilapidated buildings and vast expanse of aging tarmac left behind seemed more like a liability than an opportunity.
But by 2018, the old runways that once carried B-52 bombers had found a new and unexpected customer: Google, which was testing its experimental self-driving vehicles there, far from the prying eyes of Silicon Valley.
At the urging of then-state Assemblyman Adam Gray, California gave Merced County $6.5 million that year to expand the self-driving testing program at the old base.
A few years later, Gray invested there, too.
In 2022, a company in which Gray is a minority owner bought four apartment buildings on the former base from Merced County, according to a Times review of business filings, property records and Gray’s financial disclosures. Gray’s link to the real estate deal has not been previously reported.
The sale closed for $600,000 in August 2022, records show, and the property is now valued at more than $2.5 million. Gray’s representatives said that the investment shows his interest in providing affordable housing, and that renovations have been so costly that he has yet to make money.
Nonetheless, the real estate deal in rural Atwater, Calif., has come under scrutiny as Gray, a Democrat, fights to unseat first-term Rep. John Duarte (R-Modesto). The race in California’s 13th Congressional District is a bitter rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Gray by the second-closest margin in the nation: 564 votes.
The race is among the handful of contests across the U.S. that are seen as pivotal in determining which party controls Congress after the November election.
Republicans have questioned the timing of Gray’s purchase, which closed four months before he left the Legislature and less than a year before California officials awarded nearly $50 million in new funding for the site. The 2023 grant from the California State Transportation Agency helped Merced County build out a rail hub on the base site to handle cargo loaded onto trains from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
“Gray’s self-serving scheme reveals his true colors as a Sacramento politician who lines his own pockets at the expense of Valley families’ trust and hard-earned dollars,” said Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives.
Petersen accused Gray of “mixing taxpayer money with personal profit” and said the apartment deal should be investigated.
Far from Gray lining his pockets, his campaign and company said, the old Castle Air Force Base apartments have required so much renovation that Gray has actually lost money.
Ben Rodriguez, Gray’s campaign manager, said the allegations were false and “intended to distract voters from John Duarte’s disastrous record.”
“While Adam Gray has brought back real help for families across this district, Duarte is making things worse for families every day he spends in Congress,” Rodriguez said.
Gray is a minority owner in Gemenii LLC, the company that owns the apartment complex at the base. Gemenii is a subsidiary of a family-owned residential and commercial construction company of which Gray is also a member, the firm said.
Gray learned about the Castle Air Force Base apartments about six months before the sale, when “partners that own other properties at Castle” approached him with the idea of renovating the 80-unit complex to provide affordable housing, the company said.
The four spartan buildings, once barracks for airmen, were in disrepair, and three were vacant. Merced County had classified the property as surplus and assessed the buildings and the 5.3 acres of land beneath them at $400,000 to $600,000, the company said.
When the county received “no other competitive offers,” the firm said, Merced County sold the buildings for $600,000.
The firm has since spent millions on renovations, “exactly as intended by Merced County when the property was sold in an open and public sale process,” company attorney Richard Marchini said in a written statement.
Gray was still representing the Modesto area in the state Assembly when the sale closed.
A Google Waymo autonomous vehicle navigates the roads inside the company’s facility on the property of the former Castle Air Force Base, which is now a municipal airport, in Atwater, Calif. in 2017.
(San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images )
Gray has a 30% stake in the firm that owns the apartments, the company said. His name does not appear in the company’s state business filings.
Gray first disclosed his investment in his 2022 Form 700, the financial disclosure that California lawmakers are required to file annually with state ethics officials.
Government experts said it did not appear that Gray’s real estate deal broke the law.
But, they said, elected officials who invest in real estate must be aware of the appearance of conflicts of interest, particularly when investing in their districts.
Dan Schnur, the former head of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said that Gray’s real estate investment at the site being bookended by the award of taxpayer funds seemed “suspicious.”
“Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, but the best way to receive the benefit of the doubt is to earn it,” Schnur said. “A public servant ought to be aware of how these things might be perceived.”
After Gray lost his run for Congress in 2022, he filed a federal financial disclosure with the House in which he did not disclose the real estate investment or his stake in the LLC that owns the buildings.
His campaign said that Gray did not mention the apartment complex investment because there was no revenue to report, but that he disclosed his position in the parent company.
In a new filing made public this month, for Gray’s second run for Congress, he said he received between $100,000 and $1 million from the LLC that owns the apartments in 2023, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in the first half of 2024.
Those figures represent the company’s total revenue, rather than Gray’s, and were listed “out of an abundance of caution,” the campaign said.
Gray has not received any income from the business in 2023 or 2024, the campaign said, and the investment has not made a profit.
The former air base, now called Castle Commerce Center, covers about 3 square miles. It’s home to miles of empty roads, as well as dozens of private and government tenants, including a federal prison, a post office, Merced’s commercial airport and Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company.
After Gray helped secure the $6.5-million grant for the self-driving car testing site in 2018, Merced County converted vast stretches of unused tarmac at the base into a testing hub. There are now full intersections with traffic lights and signage and a 2.2-mile test freeway with on- and off-ramps where vehicles can practice driving in urban environments.
The site, operated by an Ohio-based company, has hosted two dozen companies from Silicon Valley and major automotive firms.
In the midst of that boom, Merced County’s supervisors continued selling portions of the base as surplus land. That included the 5.3-acre site and the 80-unit apartment complex, which the board sold on a 4-0 vote in May 2022 to Gemenii.
At the time of the sale, the land was valued at $465,000, and the structures were valued at $135,000, according to tax records provided by the company.
The company took out an $885,000, 30-year mortgage at the end of 2022, and a $3-million, 15-year mortgage in June of this year, to finance renovations at the building, the company said.
Two buildings have been gutted and renovated so far, a process that included asbestos removal and replacing windows and appliances, the company said.
The renovated buildings are now valued at more than $2 million, while the underlying land value has risen by $9,300, according to tax bills provided by the company.
The increase in value is “directly connected to the material financial efforts of Gemenii to revitalize the property,” the firm said. Any developments at the air base site, the company said, “have had no impact on the property’s value.”
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Politics
Harris' push for electric vehicles suffers another blow after automaker backtracks: 'Unwanted and unworkable'
![Harris' push for electric vehicles suffers another blow after automaker backtracks: 'Unwanted and unworkable' Harris' push for electric vehicles suffers another blow after automaker backtracks: 'Unwanted and unworkable'](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/Vice-President-Kamala-Harris-price-fixing09.jpg)
The car industry is backing away from rolling out electric vehicles in favor of hybrid options, indicating more defeats to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force EV sales on American buyers.
Ford announced last week that the car giant is changing its electric vehicle strategy and backing away from its planned all-electric, three-row SUV, instead favoring the creation of hybrid vehicles for its next rollout of three-row SUVs.
“Our focus here is to remake Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and durable business, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford vice chair and chief financial officer, said on a call with media Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”
The announcement is a blow to left-wing electric car initiatives, many of which have been promoted by Harris across her last three and a half years as vice president.
KAMALA HARRIS MOCKED FOR GUSHING OVER A ‘YELLOW SCHOOL BUS’: ‘THEY REALLY CAN’T LET HER TALK IN PUBLIC’
Ford’s announcement is another defeat to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force EV sales on American buyers. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
“It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to ram electric vehicles down everyone’s throat was unwanted and unworkable. The mandates forced on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s industrial base, destroy American jobs, and make us more dependent on Communist China,” Republican Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett told Fox News Digital in reaction to Dearborn-based Ford’s move last week. “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect the rights of consumers to purchase the vehicle that meet their needs and their family’s budget, not the social engineering agenda of bureaucrats in Washington.”
AUTO INDUSTRY EXPERTS WARN BIDEN’S EV MANDATE MAY LIMIT GAS CAR OPTIONS IN THE FUTURE
Fox News Digital examined Harris’ record and involvement with the electric vehicle push and programs amid her vice presidency, and found the Democrat has had a heavy hand in promoting the end to traditional gas-powered vehicles. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, after President Biden exited the race amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and 81 years of age.
Stretching back to her Senate career, Harris was one of the original co-signers of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey’s, D-Mass., 2019 Green New Deal legislation, which worked to establish a blueprint to shift the nation to 100% “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed in the Senate.
![Kamala Harris and Joe Biden](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/harris-biden-rally.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden on the campaign trail together. (Getty Images)
After the Biden-Harris ticket won the 2020 election, Harris continued spearheading climate change initiatives, most notably taking charge of the Clean School Bus program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as a provision under the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill, and allocated $5 billion for the program. The EPA has since made $1 billion in grants available to help deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses to school districts across the nation.
FORD CANCELS PLANS FOR ELECTRIC THREE-ROW SUV
Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan were touted by the federal government as the point people for the program, but it has only delivered 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month.
“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of those buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we are announcing nearly $1 billion to fund clean school buses across the nation. As part of our work to tackle the climate crisis, the historic funding we are announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and America’s workforce.”
![Vice President Kamala Harris in a blue suit stands at the podium](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/Vice-President-Kamala-Harris-price-fixing09.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
Amid the bus plan rollout, Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses – comments that were subsequently mocked on social media.
“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there,” Harris said in the rambling remarks.
Critics quickly shot back that Democrats “really can’t let [Harris] talk in public about anything.”
FORD’S PROFITS GETTING EATEN UP BY EVS
“Democrats have been hiding Kamala, but she just had a press conference and talked about yellow school buses and my goodness they really can’t let her talk in public about anything,” OutKick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time.
“Selina Meyer,” The Federalist author Eddie Scarry tweeted, referencing Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on the HBO comedy “Veep.”
Republican activist Matthew Foldi tweeted, “Find yourself someone who loves you as much as Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams and yellow school buses.”
CNN contributor Mary Katherine Ham also joked, “Please sing Wheels on the Bus, please sing Wheels on the Bus.”
Harris was in fact caught on camera awkwardly singing “the wheels on the bus go round and round,” in another viral moment.
Harris was also charged with helping lead the “Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan” in December 2021, to ensure 50% of car sales were electric vehicles by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration further cracked down on the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history – it would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric.
“Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead,” Biden said in March of the plan.
The $7.5 billion federal program, which was part of 2021’s infrastructure bill, aimed to install half a million EV charging stations across the nation, but has only produced as many as eight federal charging stations as of May.
FORMER AUTO EXECUTIVES WARN ELECTRIC VEHICLE PUSH HAPPENED ‘TOO SOON AND TOO FAST’
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was confronted with the lack of charging stations in May on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” when host Margaret Brennan grilled him as to why only up to eight stations had been installed.
“Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the secretary said. “There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states.”
“Seven or eight, though?” Brennan said with a laugh.
“Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers,” Buttigieg said. “And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”
![EV paradise or charging hell? Alarming electric car secret exposed](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/1-EV-paradise-or-charging-hell-an-electric-car-is-plugged-into-a-charging-station.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Electric vehicle plugged in at a charging station. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Car industry leaders have long argued that the push by Democrats – most notably the Biden-Harris administration – for EVs was rolled out too quickly and will likely fail.
“The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a colossal amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it sound like everybody’s next vehicle was going to be an EV,” former Ford, Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. “And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it just plain wasn’t going to happen.”
“And yes, it did come too soon and too fast,” he added.
Earlier this year, data found that electric vehicles were eating into Ford’s profit margin. Ford Model e, the company’s EV division, had a net loss of $4.7 billion last year – with $1.6 billion of that in the last quarter – and Ford’s chief financial officer John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that both “the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles.”
BIDEN FINALIZES CRACKDOWN ON GAS CARS, FORCING MORE THAN HALF OF NEW CAR SALES TO BE ELECTRIC BY 2030
![Biden during a DNC stage test](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-2167464838.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
President Biden participates in stage testing ahead of the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Ford, which is the second-largest EV brand in the nation behind Tesla, said last week when announcing its shift in its EV strategy that it will face a $400 million write-down of “certain product-specific manufacturing assets” for canceling the EV SUV.
Fox News Digital reached out to Ford Sunday for additional comment on its future with EVs, but did not immediately receive a reply.
HEY JOE BIDEN, HOW MANY EV CHARGING STATIONS HAVE YOU BUILT? 3 LESSONS FROM THIS MONUMENTAL SCREWUP
As Democrats continue championing the frenzied electric vehicle push, former President Trump has vowed to end the Biden administration’s “mandate” increasing the sales of electric vehicles.
![Donald Trump pointing, smiling](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/GettyImages-2166909285.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Former President Trump laughs while responding to a queston from a reporter after his remarks on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one. Thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now, and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car,” he said from the RNC in Milwaukee last month.
Trump again discussed electric vehicles in his interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk earlier this month. Musk’s Tesla is the nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Trump explained that Musk’s cars are “incredible,” but that fossil fuels are deeply intertwined with even building EVs and that the U.S. needs to “drill, baby, drill.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the state of EVs just days after she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, but did not immediately receive a reply.
Fox News’ Kristen Altus and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Politics
VP Harris' tiebreaker votes in Senate were key to inflation-boosting Biden policies: expert
![VP Harris' tiebreaker votes in Senate were key to inflation-boosting Biden policies: expert VP Harris' tiebreaker votes in Senate were key to inflation-boosting Biden policies: expert](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/07/Kamala-Harris-Israel.jpg)
When giving a farewell speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, President Joe Biden referenced Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Guess who cast the tie-breaking vote? Vice President soon-to-be President Kamala Harris, and now it’s the law of the land,” Biden said of the $739 billion spending bill that passed the Senate by 51-50 thanks to the Harris vote in August 2022.
However, since Harris – now the Democratic presidential nominee – cast the tie-breaking vote as president of the Senate, the cost of rent has climbed 13%. In comparison, the cost of new mortgages climbed 36% in those two years, according to estimates assembled by Americans for Tax Reform.
Further, the cost of baby food shot up by 13%, while frozen vegetables increased by 14%. The ATR, a conservative-leaning group, crunched numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. The cost of transportation, butter, bread, flour, and breakfast cereal all increased by single digits since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
HARRIS’ ECONOMIC PLAN PROPOSES TO FIX ‘PRICE GOUGING’ AND GO AFTER ‘EXCESSIVE PROFITS,’ BUT WHAT DEFINES THIS?
Baby food and frozen vegetables are two household grocery items seeing double-digit inflation under the Biden-Harris watch, critics say. (iStock)
Over the last two years, some prices such as gas, transportation, energy, chicken, and milk declined, according to the ATR’s numbers.
However, since Biden and Harris took office in January 2021, prices for every sector measured by ATR’s stats leaped by at least double digits. New mortgage rates since Biden-Harris came into office skyrocketed by 156% and rent shot up by 22%.
Gas has gone up by 35%, energy has gone up by 33%, and transportation increased by 28%.
The cost of eggs has increased by 53%, baby food has gone up by 30%, frozen vegetables are up 28%, bread is up by 24% and the cost of milk is up by 17%.
Shortly after becoming vice president in March 2021, Harris also cast the tie-breaking vote on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which also led to printing more money amid rising inflation.
CONNECTICUT FAMILY FORCED TO LIVE IN A HOTEL DUE TO SURGING HOUSING COSTS
![Gas prices on shell gas pump](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/05/1200/675/gas3.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Both gasoline and energy prices have gone up significantly since January 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the two biggest legislative drivers of inflation: the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act. She also supported the Biden-Harris regulatory regime which imposed additional costs on households,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told Fox News Digital.
“And now she vows to make matters worse by imposing a long list of tax increases,” Norquist continued. “She has endorsed a carbon tax, a 44.6% capital gains tax, and a 28% federal corporate tax rate, higher than China’s 25% and the EU [European Union] average of 21%. Americans will have even less take-home pay.”
The Harris campaign didn’t respond to inquiries for this story, but the Democratic National Committee responded by pointing to former President Donald Trump’s economic record during his last year in office during the COVID-19 pandemic.
DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd said Trump would give a tax cut to billionaires if elected, and said he “left office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover.”
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Floyd referred to a statement in June by 16 Nobel economists that endorsed then candidate Biden’s economic plan, and argued Trump’s proposals would lead to inflation.
“Economists have called Donald Trump’s plan an inflation bomb that would sell out working families to double down on tax giveaways for the ultra-wealthy,” Floyd told Fox News Digital.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Politics
Opinion: The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative playbook that would overhaul much of the federal government under a second Trump administration, has sparked fear and concern from voters despite the former president’s attempt to distance his campaign from the plan. But while Project 2025 might seem radical, most of it is not new. Instead, the now-famous document seeks to reanimate many of the worst racial, economic and political instincts of the Reagan Revolution.
Project 2025 begins with its authors (one of whom stepped down last month) boasting of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 publication “The Mandate for Leadership,” which helped shape the Reagan administration’s policy framework. It hit its mark: Reagan wrote 60% of its recommendations into public policy in his first year in office, according to the Heritage Foundation. Yet the 900-plus-page Project 2025, itself a major component of a new edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” does not contain any analysis of the economic and social price Americans paid for the revolution the Heritage Foundation and Reagan inspired.
If today’s economic inequality, racial unrest and environmental degradation represent some of our greatest political challenges, we would do well to remember that Reagan and the Heritage Foundation were the preeminent engineers of these catastrophes. Perhaps no day in Reagan’s presidency better embodied his policy transformations or the political ambitions of the Heritage Foundation than Aug. 13, 1981, when Reagan signed his first budget.
This budget dramatically transformed governmental priorities and hollowed out the nation’s 50-year pursuit of government for the common good that began during the New Deal. Once passed, it stripped 400,000 poor working families of their welfare benefits, while removing significant provisions from another 300,000. Radical cuts in education affected 26 million students. The number of poor Americans increased by 2.2 million, and the percentage of Black Americans living in poverty rose to a staggering 34.2%.
Of course, this was just the beginning of Reagan’s war on the poor, the environment and education. Following a Heritage Foundation plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s operating budget would fall by 27%, and its science budget decreased by more than 50%. Funding for programs by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that provided housing assistance would be cut by 70%, according to Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, By America.” Homelessness skyrocketed. And, as Project 2025 proposes, Reagan attempted to eliminate the Department of Education but settled for gutting its funding in a manner that set public education, in the words of author Jonathan Kozol, “back almost 100 years.” As funding for these issues nosedived under Reagan, financial support for the “war on drugs” skyrocketed and the prison population nearly doubled.
All the while, protections provided to the wealthy ballooned. Tax rates on personal income, corporate revenue and capital gains plummeted. For example, the highest income tax rate when Reagan took office was 70%. He would eventually lower it to 33%.
To ensure that wealth would be a long-lived family entitlement, Reagan instituted a 300% increase in inheritance tax protections through estate tax exemptions in his first budget. In 1980, the exemption stood at $161,000. By the time Reagan left office in 1989 it was $600,000. Today it is $13,610,000. This means that today nearly all wealthy children enjoy tax-free access to generational wealth.
And beginning during Reagan’s presidency, the number of millionaires and billionaires multiplied, increasing 225% and 400%, respectively, while the poverty of Americans across racial lines intensified. Even white males were more likely to be poor following Reagan’s presidency. Today poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S., even though this is the wealthiest nation in the world.
If we feel like we live in a country that isn’t working for anyone who isn’t wealthy, these are some of the core reasons why. Looking back at the Reagan era and the Heritage Foundation’s original “Mandate for Leadership,” we must remember that our domestic wounds are largely self-inflicted, results of buying into racial, economic and environmental lies that continue to be sold. It is precisely the types of policies that devastated the nation during the Reagan administration that Project 2025 now seeks to resuscitate. Perhaps the only truly new thing Project 2025 suggests is using more authoritarian means to enact its agenda.
History has hinges, moments that change the trajectory of nations. The greatest progress in our country has almost always emerged during turbulent times. It is up to the United States’ most committed believers to close the door on terror and trauma and open one that leads to new democratic possibilities.
Our current moment represents more than an election. It is a turning point that has the potential to transform the United States for generations to come. We don’t need the version of the past that Project 2025 is trying to sell us. It didn’t work for most Americans then, and it won’t work for most of us now. But perhaps Project 2025 is the push the Democratic Party needed. While the Republican Party veers further into authoritarianism, Democrats must be equally determined to develop a truly equitable democracy and bind the wounds of a deeply divided nation.
Joel Edward Goza, a professor of ethics at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the forthcoming book “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America.”
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