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Personal income tax rates won't increase in New York's state budget, a move that never seemed to gain much traction in the talks and a development that disappoints progressive advocates who had called for the increase.

The budget is expected to be finalized this week and is more than a month late.

Progressives this year had organized an effort to once again increase taxes on the highest income earners in New York in order to fund a variety of safety net programs in the state.

"This year was a critical opportunity to address growing inequality in New York," said Carolyn Martinez-Class, a campaign manager for the Invest in Our New York campaign. "The budget could have generated billions of dollars in sorely needed new public funds by raisingtaxes on New York's wealthiest residents and corporations and investing those dollars directly into our communities a move that poll after poll shows is widely popular with New York residents, regardless of political affiliation."

Lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul have agreed to a $229 billion budget that will include a handful of tax increases: Taxes on cigarettes will increase by $1 per pack and a "modest" increase in a mobility tax will go toward funding mass transit in the New York City area.

But broad-based tax increases, especially on upper income earners, never seemed to gain much attention in the negotiations even as Democratic lawmakers called for higher tax rates on those who make $5 million and above.

New York closed out the fiscal year in April with a budget surplus estimated to be at more than $8 billion. A tax hike this year on wealthy New Yorkers would be the second tax hike in three years.

Hochul, however, never embraced the calls for income tax rates to rise in the state.

Fiscal watchdogs and Republican lawmakers had opposed tax increases as well, calling them unnecessary and potentially counterproductive.

"You know the New York motto is Excelsior, right? It means 'ever upward.' I guess this means under one party rule, that means our taxes are going ever upward," Republican Assemblyman Robert Smullen said last month.

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New York's budget won't hike income tax rates, disappointing ... - Spectrum News

After the indictment of Donald Trump, a chorus of progressive celebrities clutched pearls in fits of moral superiority claiming nobody is above the law."

These were the same progressives who spent years pushing the phony Russian Collusion narrative along with other false narratives to destroy Trump and his family. This comes despite the Rasmussen Poll of American voters, taken after the indictment, showing Trump went from trailing Biden 45-42 before the indictment to overtaking Biden by seven points (47-40) after the indictment

Reasoned politicians like even Trump haters Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are clear this indictment is politically motivated and unfair. This is an outrageous double standard already undermining the law and our republic. Let me explain.

First, its critical to understand the forces bringing this indictment and what its about. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office promising to indict Trump even before seeing evidence. Famed Professor and author Victor David Hanson summarized some of the critical reasons this indictment was unjust and political: At least two left-leaning federal and state prosecutors (and the FEC) previously have passed on the same evidence Bragg is now using for his indictments. They have explained that such a prosecution is infeasible because of statutes of limitations, because of a state attorney improperly appropriating the role of a federal prosecutor, and because non-disclosures agreements are a fact of life and not strictly illegal.

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Hanson continued, Braggs chief witness Michael Cohen is a felon and confessed liar, with a deep personal hatred of Donald Trump -- a fact well known to all potential prosecutors.

Despite his get Trump campaign promises, even Alvin Bragg initially decided the case could not be brought. In that decision, Bragg was slammed by the left. However, after Trump announced for president, the indictment came. The indictment alleges that Trump paid porn star Stormy Daniels through his lawyer Michael Cohen for her to sign a non-disclosure agreement to silence the allegations.

Trumps business records show the payments as legal expenses. The misdemeanor records-keeping charge was turned into a felony by Bragg by alleging this misdemeanor was a felony by covering up a felony. To convict, this appears to require proving that the sole reason Trump tried to keep the alleged affair secret was for the campaign. Not his wife, family or business. Nancy Pelosi spoke for most on the left in claiming Trump has the right to prove his innocence (while facing over 130+ years in prison).

While the left is clutching pearls, they throw rocks from the most fragile glass house. Bill and Hillary Clinton grossly violated federal law repeatedly. This goes beyond Bill Clintons affair and perjury felonies in the Lewinsky matter. I quote Victor David Hanson again: Trump did not violate federal law, as did Hillary Clinton, by destroying federally subpoenaed emails and devices in order to hide evidence ... sending classified government communications on her own, through an unsecured home-brewed server ... hiring through three paywalls a foreign national, who is prohibited from working on presidential campaigns, to compile a dossier to smear her presidential opponent ... hiding her payments (as 'legal services') to Christopher Steele through bookkeeping deceptions ... Bill Clinton, use(d) a crony to search out a high-paying New York job for a paramour in order to influence her testimony before a special counsel ... Bill Clinton, received a $500,000 'honorarium' for speaking in Moscow while his wife, our secretary of state, approved a longstanding and lucrative desire of the Kremlin for North American uranium to be sold to a Russian consortium.

As to the Bidens, Trump did not, as the Bidens did, set up a family consortium to leverage monies from Ukraine, Russia, and China, on their shared expectations that he might soon run for and be elected president and become compromised ... Joe Biden (is mentioned) in family business communications as a recipient of a 10% commission on such payoffs ... Joe Biden, removed presidential papers without any authority to declassify them and (left) them scattered and unsecured in a garage.

Liberal icons John Brennan and James Clapper, and Andrew McCabe (among many others) committed federal felonies lying to Congress under oath. The list is long.

History has shown that political persecution through the law destroys nations. The late Roman Republic lasted hundreds of years but fell apart primarily due to the cycle of political legal persecution. We counsel developing countries against what is happening now with this indictument. Through censorship of the right in academia and big tech and the biased echo chambers of the mainstream media, progressives believe they are morally superior to conservatives and can act with impunity. With that belief, unequal application of the law seems justified for them, and feel safe doing so. This is delusional.

According to the New York Post, at least two non-federal DAs are looking to indict the Bidens, and there is plenty of evidence through Hunters laptop for those charges.

The left is destroying the law and republic. Its time we turn to God and speak the truth in demanding this stop now.

Bill Connor, a retired Army Infantry colonel, author and Orangeburg attorney, has deployed multiple times to the Middle East. Connor was the senior U.S. military adviser to Afghan forces in Helmand Province, where he received the Bronze Star. A Citadel graduate with a JD from USC, he is also a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Army War College, earning his of strategic studies. He is the author of the book "Articles from War.

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COMMENTARY: Progressive double standards - The Times and Democrat

The Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church finalized Saturday the departure of 264 churches.{p}{/p}

The United Methodist Church (UMC) saw the departure of more than 200 member churches.

More than 100 of those churches are based in Tennessee.

That's according to Knoxville's WJHL.

The Holston Conference now has 578 churches after starting Saturday with 842.

WJHL reports the number represents 31% of churches in the conference, which stretches from the Chattanooga metro area to the Blacksburg, Virginia area in the northeast.

According to the UMC's website, the Holston Conference of The United Methodist Church is comprised of 842 congregations, organized in nine districts, and located in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and North Georgia.

On Saturday the UMC called a special session of the Holston Conference, which acts as a kind of umbrella organization for the UMC, where delegates considered all the disaffiliation requests in a single vote, which passed.

The departures are the culmination of a years-long rift between more traditional congregations and those that are more moderate or progressive, particularly around issues of sexuality.

We have reached out to local UMC pastors in our area for their comments.

This story will be updated as we hear back from local faith leaders and learn more information.

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Rifts between conservatives, progressives intensify at United Methodist Church - WTVC

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.

This coming Friday night, April 28, Princetons Center for Jewish Life (CJL) will host Israel Shabbat. This highly divisive event was last hosted in 2019, forcing many liberal Zionist, non-, and anti-Zionist Jewish students who then felt alienated from their religious communal space to host an alternative Sabbath meal. Dozens of students also signed an open letter condemning the event. This scenario is repeating itself again this year, with students who do not feel comfortable celebrating Israeli nationalism over Shabbat dinner relegated to another space for the evening. Leftist Jews on campus, as well as those who identify as liberal Zionists, advocated against the CJL hosting Israel Shabbat on the grounds that it is unnecessarily divisive and alienating. Once again, these same parties are asked to step aside as the CJL panders to its right-wing students and donors. The CJL is superimposing a celebration of an apartheid state, in which Jews possess elevated legal status compared to that of Palestinians, and onto what should be a communal religious observance.

Though Israels apologists will claim that this is a celebration of culture, not politics, the question of whether to spend ones Friday night celebrating what multiple human rights experts, the Palestinian people, and an increasing share of the American Jewish population consider to be an apartheid state is deeply political.

The CJLs own policies claim that the organization will not promote racism or hatred of any kind. While they believe celebrating Israel does not promote racism or hatred for AJP and others in the context of the nation-state law, increased human rights violations, and the rise to power and prominence of ultra-right wing government officials (many of whom, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have credibly been called fascists), the choice to host events of this kind does cross the line. An unprecedented number of Israelis are in the streets protesting the threats this government poses to democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law not only for Palestinians, but for Israeli Jews themselves.

These facts make it harder and harder for the CJL to state that Israel Shabbat does not cross the line into promoting racism or hatred. The organization has repeatedly crossed this line recently, hosting far-right activist Dr. Ronen Shoval and allowing The Tory, a conservative student publication that routinely attacks Palestinian activism on campus, to host events in the building.

Additionally, in the wake of its accusations of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian campus speakers and attacks against attempts at pro-Palestinian student organizing, this event marks just the latest example of the CJL taking right-wing positions on political debates that sharply divide Princetons Jewish community. And yet, somehow, the CJL often maintains a reputation as a purely apolitical space for Jewish life and gathering. While the space undeniably serves as such for many students, it is long past time the student body collectively began to recognize the other clear purpose of this institution: advancing right-wing Zionist politics on Princetons campus.

Examples of the CJL behaving as a political actor with a distinctly Zionist agenda abound. The CJL hosts Israel Fellows, Israeli army veterans who work on college campuses across North America. According to the website of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which provides the fellows, their goal is to resist anti-Israel sentiment and activism in the context of an alarming rise in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in recent years. Not only do they conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism, but the fellows are also given a platform to spread this political message by teaching classes on Israel through the Jewish Learning Fellowships at the CJL. The very fact that these fellows work at the University also allows them to use Princetons institutional influence to spread Zionist talking points.

Hillel International, an organization of Jewish campus organizations that the CJL belongs to and partners with in order to bring in Israel Fellows, has a rule that it will not host speakers who support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel, a position that is both flagrantly anti-free speech as well as blatantly political in its goal to shut down any discussion of effective economic action against Israeli apartheid. There is also widespread documentation of Hillel Internationals allyship with reactionary right-wing groups and causes.

Both the CJLs affiliation with Hillel International and its own independent actions contribute to its political character, but that is not to say that there is no space for political organizations at Princeton. Plenty of student clubs are open about their political affiliations, and even groups that receive University funding such as the James Madison Program (JMP) or the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) make no serious effort to hide their politics, whether conservative or liberal. These organizations political goals and leanings are transparent, and students are able to understand them clearly and react accordingly. But the CJL has managed to operate outside of this paradigm. Non-, anti-, and post-Zionist Jews on this campus are left wrestling with the fact that we ostensibly have a space for Jewish life, but which is effectively an in-house dispensary of Zionist propaganda.

A collective shift of campus consciousness toward a re-understanding of the CJL and its goals would serve us all. If we acknowledge that the CJL is not a neutral space for Jewish life, but rather one with an obvious Zionist agenda, we can stop being shocked by each instance of the CJLs political activism and more effectively resist it. More importantly, we could begin questioning why the University is so insistent in supporting the CJL in its current form, despite the fact that it only caters to Princetons Zionist community, rather than its entire Jewish one.

We hope progressive students and allies Jewish and non-Jewish will join us this Friday night to celebrate Not Our Shabbat together.

The Alliance of Jewish Progressives

This op-ed, for which Emanuelle Sippy 25 and Ben Gelman 23 serve as official signatories, was written collaboratively by the members of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives. Sippy can be reached at emanuelle@princeton.edu and Gelman at bgelman@princeton.edu.

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Not in our name, not our Shabbat: the Alliance of Jewish ... - The Daily Princetonian

Incumbent San Antonio City Council progressives are sticking together this election season.

District 5 CouncilwomanTeri Castillo is backing District 1 and 2 freshmen Mario Bravo andJalen McKee-Rodriguez.

"A better San Antonio is possible," she said in a Tweet this morning encouraging people to vote early and re-elect herself, Bravo and McKee-Rodriguez.

Bravo in the downtown and near North Side District 1, McKee-Rodriguez in the East Side District 2 andCastillo in the near West Side District 5 were elected in 2021 as an assumed new progressive voting coalition. The endorsement comes even though Bravo sometimes took a back seat in his first term.

OnExpressNews.com: Your guide to the city of San Antonios May 6 election. Whats on the ballot, where to vote, key dates and more

Former District 7 Councilwoman AnaSandoval was known to vote in line with the progressives on council before she left office for a new job in January. But thecandidates in the District 7 race are less liberal thanSandoval was.

District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo (center) addresses the Mayor, City Council and City staff as they convene on Thursday, Apr. 13, 2023 for a day-long work session. During the session, the Mayor and City Council provided policy direction for service priorities for the Citys Fiscal Year 2024 Proposed Budget and Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan.

Some voters have remained concerned about Bravos abilities after an unprofessional outburst last year led tohis censure and a vote of no confidence from his council colleagues.

In September, Bravo berated former District 7 City Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, his former romantic partner, near the dais for not supporting his plan to use $50 million in excess CPS Energy revenue to weatherize homes instead of disbursing a roughly $30 credit to individual households. He told Sandoval that her lack of support was why he ended their relationship and didnt have children with her.

And during a council meeting, Bravo alluded to Sandoval so often that City Attorney Andy Segovia reprimanded him.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg temporarily suspended Bravo from his City Council committee assignments, and an independent investigator determined his actions violated anti-harassment and violence in the workplace policies.

After his council outburst, Bravo apologized and sought counseling.

Bravo was an Environmental Defense Fund project manager until March of last year when he decided to focus full-time on being a council member.

On ExpressNews.com: Mario Bravo had humbling lesson in his first term, but hes confident in re-election bid

Bravo and McKee-Rodriguez have found themselves in two of the most crowded city council races this season, facing off against six and nine challengers, respectively.

District 2 Councilperson Jalen McKee Rodriguez addresses the Mayor, City Council and City staff as they onvene on Thursday, Apr. 13, 2023 for a day-long work session. During the session, the Mayor and City Council provided policy direction for service priorities for the Citys Fiscal Year 2024 Proposed Budget and Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Plan.

Even so, the incumbents are garnering a lot of support.

Jeremy Roberts and Sukh Kaur, a couple of the strongest District 1 candidates, have raised tens of thousands of dollars for their campaigns. But with more than $57,000 cash on hand at the end of the most recent filing period, Bravo has about $10,000 more than Roberts andKaur combined.

McKee-Rodriguez has outraised each of his opponents, bringing in nearly $40,000 in contributions during the most recent reporting period, from Jan. 1 to March 27. Thats enabled him to hire a campaign team of almost a dozen paid staffers.

On ExpressNews.com: Jalen McKee-Rodriguez looks to make history by keeping District 2 seat

Castillo is facing the least opposition of council progressives with just two people challenging her. One of those opponents is Rudy Lopez, a retired civilian employee with the San Antonio Police Department. Castillo defeated Lopez in a runoff in 2021.

Castillo and McKee-Rodriguez among the very few council members to say they supportProposition A, also called the San Antonio Justice Charter. It would decriminalize abortion and marijuana, expand cite-and-release and ban some policing techniques. It also would create a citywide justice director to oversee the implementation of the policy changes.

On ExpressNews.com: How to vote early for San Antonios May 6 election. Well walk you through it.

Interim District 7 Councilwoman Rosie Castro, who is not seeking election in May, is the only other council member to back the proposition.

Bravo has not said if he is voting for or against the charter. He said there are parts of it he supports, such as the decriminalization of marijuana and a womans right to choose, but he is concerned that it would take away officer discretion when it comes to property theft and destruction.

Early voting started today and runs through May 2. Election Day is May 6.

megan.rodriguez@express-news.net

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Progressive Councilwoman Teri Castillo backs these incumbents - San Antonio Express-News