April 22, 2025 · View in browser

The administration’s lack of transparency about tariff exemptions has experts concerned that some firms might be winning narrow carve-outs behind closed doors. “It could be corruption, but it could just as easily be incompetence,” one lobbyist said.

Just weeks after creating a $50 million tax credit to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling, Idaho has shut down a program that helped tens of thousands of public school students pay for laptops, school supplies, tutoring and other educational expenses, Audrey Dutton reports. 

The Republican leading the push to defund Idaho’s Empowering Parents grants said it had nothing to do with the party’s decision to fund private schools. But the state’s most prominent conservative group, a strong supporter of the private school tax credit, drew the connection directly.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation, on its website, proposed adding the $30 million that fueled Empowering Parents to the newly created tax credit, paying for an additional 6,000 private and homeschool students to join the 10,000 already expected to benefit from the program.

More recent reporting on school vouchers from ProPublica:

• In Arizona, well-off families benefit more than those in lower income brackets from the steering of public funds to private schools
• In the Wild West of school voucher expansions, states rely on untested companies, with mixed results
• On a mission from God: Inside the movement to redirect billions of taxpayer dollars to private religious schools 

A Wisconsin teenager accused of murdering two family members and plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump was inspired by Terrorgram, a white supremacist network that operated on the Telegram messaging and social media platform for half a decade, according to federal court records. The teenager has not entered a plea yet. 

The Terrorgram community, which has been linked to about three dozen criminal cases around the globe, including at least three mass shootings, was profiled last month in stories and a documentary produced by ProPublica and FRONTLINE.

Over the past six months, however, the network has been disrupted as authorities in Canada, the U.S. and Europe have arrested key Terrorgram influencers and community members. But the violence hasn’t stopped.

A Telegram spokesperson said, “Telegram supports the peaceful exchange of ideas; however, calls for violence are strictly prohibited by our Terms of Service and are removed proactively as well as in response to user reports."

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