A civic rebellion against property taxes is emerging in the United States.
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| “Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.” |
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
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| Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor |
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| Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor |
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Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Here are today’s top stories: |
- A civic rebellion against property taxes is emerging in the United States. Public K–12 school spending now exceeds $1 trillion annually, and citizen groups say they’ve had enough.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a new congressional map that could add four districts favorable for Republicans ahead of a high-stakes midterm election this year.
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A special election for the Michigan state senate today will decide control of the state’s upper legislative chamber.
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Iran carried out strikes on an Emirati oil port amid a U.S. operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on May 4, testing the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump stopped short of saying that the pact has been violated.
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A poster on a bookcase inside Ron Shumate’s home in Springfield Township, Ohio, on April 21, 2026. (Glenn Hartong for The Epoch Times) |
MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio—At a petition table inside a Cleveland area gun show on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, citizens talk of an American Dream derailed. There’s the elderly couple who paid off their mortgage decades ago but can’t afford the property taxes on their home. Their local government, theoretically, can seize the property and auction it off to someone else if the annual bills remain unpaid. Then there’s the recent retiree who took a part-time job at Lowe’s to pay property taxes on his rental property and avoid raising his tenants’ rent.
Add empty nesters who can’t downsize to smaller houses because interest rates are too high, farmers describing an impossible situation, and recent college graduates groaning about moving further away from home to an affordable place.
Show goers, guns and ammo in hand, pause at Beth Blackmarr’s table on their way out and share with her those concerns. If 413,000 residents throughout the Buckeye State sign a petition before July 1, a public vote to eliminate local property taxes will appear on the November ballot.
If the signature count falls short, whatever is collected can be applied the following year, or however long it takes, said Blackmarr, media coordinator and a main volunteer for the 3,000-plus member Citizens for Property Tax Reform group. “We are really hurting in Ohio,” she told The Epoch Times. “People never thought they’d be in this situation.” Ohio isn’t alone. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia already have limits on annual local property tax levy increases, and leaders in Florida and Texas are pursuing additional legislation to limit government “flexibility” in how it raises revenues, according to a September report from McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm whose clients include state and local governments. Schools, already strapped for cash, hang in the balance. School districts struggle with declining student enrollment, unfunded mandates, state and federal aid loss largely due to skyrocketing Medicaid costs, and spiking employee health insurance costs.
On the local level, mayors and town boards face similar challenges as they try to continue providing public safety, utilities, and infrastructure services. Fed-up homeowners say it’s high time to try another way to pay their community’s civil servants, perhaps through higher sales tax or state income tax rates, along with slashing administrative bloat in schools and city halls.
“Let the state find a way where 100 percent of the population pays for education,” Ron Shumate, one of Blackmarr’s volunteers from suburban Cincinnati, told The Epoch Times. “They give profit-making businesses a break, but not us.” (More)
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President Donald Trump on May 4 touted his economic policies, from tax cuts and tariffs to deregulation, at a White House event for small-business owners from across the country. He said the United States is thriving despite conflict in the Middle East.
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The federal government is taking steps to tackle what it described as the overprescribing of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at an event focused on “mental health and overmedicalization.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court took the unusual step of making its recent ruling to limit the use of race in redistricting effective ahead of the usual 32-day waiting period.
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The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Minnesota over the state’s climate lawsuit against major energy companies.
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Federal law enforcement should target drug cartels and their supply lines, and Americans should work to create a drug-free nation, the office that is tasked with fighting drug addiction said in its updated strategy. “We will take the fight to the enemy with a relentless offense,” Sara Carter, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in a letter accompanying the nearly 200-page strategy document. “The era of containment has failed.”
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- Video game retailer GameStop has proposed buying eBay in a $55.5 billion cash-and-stock deal.
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A Washington-based human rights organization today filed a federal complaint against the National Education Association, alleging that the teachers union discriminated against its Jewish members and promoted a hostile environment throughout K–12 public schools.
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Officials from the Chinese consulate in Vancouver met with a city hall official in April to pressure the city not to allow Shen Yun to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which is owned by the City of Vancouver.
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is recovering from pneumonia but is still hospitalized in “critical but stable condition,” his spokesperson said Monday.
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Amid Changing Political Winds, Latin America Is at a Turning Point—by Conrad Black (Read)
- What Killed Spirit Airlines—by Jeffrey A. Tucker (Read)
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Beijing Cannot and Will Not Take the IMF’s Sage Advice—by Milton Ezrati (Read)
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Dancer Xiuxian Yin (R) accepts a proclamation from the city of San Marcos, Calif., on behalf of Shen Yun Performing Arts, from Councilmember Danielle LeBlang. (NTD Television) |
Yin Xiuxian’s father was detained in a labor camp at the time Yin was born—not because he had committed a crime, but because he refused to give up his faith in Falun Dafa while living in communist China.
Three days after Yin’s birth, police barged into their home and threatened to also arrest his mother, Zhang Wanxia, if she didn’t renounce her faith. Before Yin turned 2, they followed through—a group of police raided the house and dragged the mother away from her crying son to illegally detain her. She was kept at a brainwashing center for more than six months.
Later, in September 2003, Zhang was illegally sentenced to two years of forced labor. Because she refused to renounce her faith, her sentence was extended by one month beyond her initial term. At the labor camp, she suffered brutal persecution, including 15 days of sleep deprivation and prolonged torture, including being hung up by handcuffs.
Yin’s childhood was marked by family separation. He stayed with his paternal grandparents and remembered they were living under constant fear and anxiety due to the Chinese authorities’ persistent harassment. They never knew whether his parents might return home that day or when the next home raid might occur.
Yin told The Epoch Times that what happened on his seventh birthday epitomizes what his childhood was like. Back then, he was still too young to understand why his family was persecuted by Chinese authorities.
That morning, Yin excitedly asked his father if he could please buy him a birthday cake—a big one if possible. His father agreed, and that evening Yin waited for his father to come home from work. (More)
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Thanks for reading 🙏 Have a wonderful day! |
—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li. |
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