"If you feel pain, You are alive. If you feel other people's pain, you are a human being."
- Leo Tolstoy
To be included in the offsetting process, an individual had to be under 70 and have taxable income or a tax loss of $50,000 or more. In December 2022, the ATO removed both criteria.
After Robodebt, why did the ATO remove a protection for people over 70?
The US Is Implementing The NATO 3.0 Concept In Asia Through AUKUS+
“Peace through strength” continues its disastrous world tour.
Whistleblower Brendan Lyon’s court win clears path to challenge big four liability shield
Trump Administration Is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Elections To Entrench the Imperial Presidency
“The Center for American Progress publishes a new report by Michael Sozan and Ben Olinskyon Trump’s efforts to meddle in upcoming elections. They detail 15 specific tactics, including “installing election deniers in key government positions,” “gutting key agencies and essential election security programs,” “sharply curtailing voting by mail,” preparing to “purge” voters by “weaponizing federal databases and demanding personal voter information,” and more.
In the 18 months since Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump and his administration have seized unprecedented executive branch power to implement extremist and unpopular policies. Now, to lock in that power and escape accountability, the administration is waging an unconstitutional effort to subvert voters’ will in the November 2026 midterm elections.
For decades, political scientists who study backsliding democracies around the world have identified a crucial tactic used by would-be authoritarians: Once they have dismantled traditional checks and balances and weaponized government against their perceived political enemies, they move to disrupt and control elections to ensure that they and their allies remain in office. The right to freely and fairly vote for elected leaders is the most fundamental feature of a democratic republic. It is the mechanism through which all other rights are ultimately protected and through which the government derives its legitimate authority.
As the United States marks 250 years of democratic self-governance, that right—and the republic it sustains—faces the gravest threat from within. This report is the third in a Center for American Progress series documenting how the Trump administration planned and then built an imperial presidency.
This report revisits earlier analyses, which detailed the steps that the administration was taking to aggregate power, create a strongman presidency, and implement a far-right policy agenda. The report then documents how the administration, through a multipronged plan across 15 interlocking tactics, is working to subvert elections and manufacture victories in the midterms—all in service of consolidating the administration’s unprecedented power.
These tactics include, but are not limited to, weaponizing federal departments controlled by loyalists, erecting massive hurdles for eligible Americans to register to vote and to cast their ballots, triggering a mid-decade gerrymandering crisis that severely disadvantages Black and Latino voters, assailing state and local election administrators, and musing publicly about deploying National Guard troops and federal agents to polling places or demanding that state officials not certify elections. The stakes are stark:
A sitting president and his administration have created a near-constitutional crisis involving the very elections that have sustained U.S. democracy.”
Lawsuit: Early access fee for Trump Truth Social posts unconstitutional
Freedom of the Press Foundation: “New York, Aug. 12, 2026 — President Donald Trump’s scheme to charge $100,000 per month for advance access to official government announcements on Truth Social violates the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept.
The plaintiffs — represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP — are asking the court to bar Trump and White House employees from carrying out this unconstitutional plan. In 2021, Trump launched Trump Media & Technology Group. In 2022, Trump Media released Truth Social, a social media platform over which Trump could exercise complete control.
Since returning to office, Trump has used his Truth Social account as his primary means of communicating with the public and making official announcements, encompassing everything from agency appointments and firings to military actions and foreign policy.
Last month, the CEO of Truth Social’s parent company announced Truth API, a service that would provide investors early access to “market-moving” messages from the president and other officials on the platform for up to $100,000 per month. At the same time, its CEO announced that the company would take steps to stop users from systematically gathering posts from the platform.
Truth API launched Aug. 1 and has already signed up 10 customers. Granting preferential access to Trump’s public statements to paid subscribers violates the First Amendment, which guarantees Americans equal access to the president’s public announcements. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from imposing extortionate or unreasonable conditions on the availability of government benefits.
A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago,” said FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern. “Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them. This brazen grift targets not only the markets but the First Amendment. It cannot stand.” “Nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements,” said The Intercept’s Chief Legal Officer David Bralow. “Through this litigation, The Intercept and its journalists are proud to hold the line on a fundamental proposition: Public information belongs to the public.”
