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A day after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency - in an attempt to circumvent Congress and redirect taxpayer money to fund 230 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border - the designation has been beset with political and legal challenges. Video: President Trump on Feb. 15 outlined the legal battles he thinks his national emergency declaration will face in the coming days.
Amazon, the e-commerce giant helmed by the world's richest man, paid no federal taxes on the profit of $11.2 billion last year, according to an analysis of the company's corporate filings by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a progressive think tank. Thanks to a variety of tax credits and a significant tax break available on pay handed out in the form of company stock, Amazon actually received a federal tax rebate of $129 million last year, giving it an effective federal tax rate of roughly -1 percent.
A disabled infantryman who served three tours in Iraq and was exploited by a Department of Veterans Affairs official looked across a courtroom and called on the man to think hard in prison about what he had done. "You took an oath to serve veterans. You took an oath to serve your country. But money and greed corrupted you," Chris Burke, 51, of Herndon, Virginia, a former U.S. infantry member who served three tours, told James King in federal court Friday at King's sentencing hearing.
The rollout of the progressives' Green New Deal has been less than smooth. One major reason: the release of an FAQ that listed "economic security" for those "unwilling to work" as one of the program's goals. "Unwilling"? The now-retracted FAQ made other eyebrow-raising claims, but conservatives pounced on that word in particular. Of a piece with the usual complaints about welfare as a reward for laziness, it was called extreme, absurd and, in one florid instance, a "Communist Manifesto, 21st Century."
NEW YORK - There is a shame for any serious artist in being understood. Many artists cultivate a mystique precisely to avoid being explained away. But resistance to being too well known comes into conflict with a desire to communicate and express oneself, to belong, to be loved. Frida Kahlo, one of the 20th century's great artists, gives us occasion to think about this paradox. We know her. We love her. The exhibitions keep coming. And, inevitably, we think we understand her. We don't.
An employee opened fire inside an Illinois warehouse - killing five people and wounding five police officers - after finding out that he had been fired, authorities said. Gary Martin, 45, shot several employees Friday, the same day he learned he had been terminated from his job, and immediately began shooting at police officers after they arrived at the warehouse in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, Police Chief Kristen Ziman told reporters. Martin, who was armed with a Smith & Wesson handgun, was killed about an hour later.
Federal prosecutors on Friday called Paul Manafort's tax and bank fraud "serious, longstanding, and bold" but did not recommend a specific punishment for his convictions in Virginia. Federal guidelines call for President Donald Trump's onetime campaign chairman to spend 19 to a little more than 24 years in prison, the prosecutors noted Friday in a sentencing memo filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. They said the range was properly calculated by Manafort's probation officer.
WASHINGTON - February's 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court vote to block a restrictive Louisiana abortion law from taking effect provided some measure of consolation to women's rights advocates who feared the court's new conservative majority would immediately act to restrict access to the procedure.
Authorities are responding to multiple casualties in Aurora, Ill., Friday afternoon, including several police officers, after a gunman opened fire inside a business. The suspect was apprehended, according to the City of Aurora. "We are told that multiple people have been struck by gunfire," a spokesman for the Kane County State Attorney's Office wrote in an email Friday afternoon.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump said Friday, Feb. 15, that he will declare a national emergency as a means to circumvent Congress and build additional border barriers. He is seeking to secure about $6.5 billion more in funding than Congress has approved. "I'm going to be signing a national emergency," Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.