News
America Spends $71 Billion Annually Subsidizing Tax-Exempt Religion
A new report by a research team at the University of Tampa finds that tax-exempt religious organizations are subsidized by the U.S. government — meaning, you and me — to the tune of $71 billion each year. As a rule, religious organizations and many of their their employees — such as ministers, priests, rabbis, etc. — can be exempt from paying local, state, and federal taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, investment taxes, etc.
“What we found suggests that religious institutions, if they were required to pay taxes the same as for-profit corporations do, would not have nearly as much money or influence as they enjoy in America today,” the report, published at the Council for Secular Humanism, states:
Do religions engage in charitable work that addresses the physical needs of the poor? Many do, but that is not their primary focus. Religions are quick to trumpet when they do charitable work—ironically for Christians, since the Bible explicitly says not to (Mathew 6:2). But they don’t do as much charitable work as a lot of people think, and they spend a relatively small percentage of their overall revenue on such work. For instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS or Mormon Church), which regularly trumpets its charitable donations, gave about $1 billion to charitable causes between 1985 and 2008. That may seem like a lot until you divide it by the twenty-three-year time span and realize this church is donating only about 0.7 percent of its annual income. Other religions are more charitable. For instance, the United Methodist Church allocated about 29 percent of its revenues to charitable causes in 2010 (about $62 million of $214 million received). One calculation of the resources expended by 271 U.S. congregations found that, on average, “operating expenses†totaled 71 percent of all the expenditures of religions, much of that going to pay ministers’ salaries. Financial contributions addressing the physical needs of the poor fall within the remaining 29 percent of expenditures. While these numbers may be higher as a percentage of income than typical charitable giving by corporations, they are not hugely higher (depending on the religion) and are substantially lower in absolute terms. Wal-Mart, for instance, gives about $1.75 billion in food aid to charities each year, or twenty-eight times all of the money allotted for charity by the United Methodist Church and almost double what the LDS Church has given in the last twenty-five years.
In other words, you are paying a lot more in taxes to subsidize the salaries of people whose work you may not agree with, and whose work, should it have to be done by the government, in many cases, wouldn’t need to be. How much is $71 billion dollars? A quick Google search returned these findings. The annual budget for the state of Florida. The entire budget — including all the food stamps issued — for the Agriculture Department in 1993. The entire amount the nation of Thailand will spend on infrastructure in the next ten years. Or, this:
The New Bottom Line coalition has estimated that the big banks could write down the principal of underwater mortgages at a one-year cost of $71 billion saving underwater families an average of $543 per month, pumping billions into the economy and creating one million jobs. The banks have the money – this year’s compensation pool is projected to be more than double that.
Considering the heightened political activity religion in America has taken in the past few years alone, including organized and intentional flouting of laws and IRS rules regulating their tax-exempt status, it’s time Americans come to the realization that there is no need for — nor are we in a position to continue to subsidize — tax exemption for religious organizations any longer. To the LGBT community, TaxTheChurches.org writes:
This issue should be a no-brainer for you. You know where all the prejudice, injustice, hatred and discrimination in our culture is rooted, don’t you? The Judeo-Christian bible teaches that you are an “abomination.” Who you love, and how you love, is therefore wrong, abnormal, amoral, unnatural and evil – as opposed to right, normal, natural or good – by virtue of your immoral “choice.” You are demonized by an increasingly intolerant “Christian” culture, and denied basic human rights by these fundamentalist zealots that YOU subsidize with YOUR taxes. Think about this the next time you take a good look at your pay stub or your tax return.
Hat-tip: Zack Ford at Think Progress
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Over half of Americans disapprove of the job Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts is doing, according to a new Gallup poll.
In a poll taken this month by Gallup, 53% of American adults disapprove of the job Roberts is doing, compared to 38% who approve and 9% with no opinion. This is the highest disapproval rating since Gallup started asking the question.
It’s also the first time his disapproval rating has been higher than his approval rating. The last time the question was asked was in December 2023, where 46% disapproved compared to 48% approval. Even that was a huge step down from December 2021 when 60% approved and 34% approved.
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When broken out by demographics, 67% of Republicans approved of the job Roberts was doing, compared to 21% disapproval. Only 16% of Democrats approved while 78% disapproved, and among Independents, 35% approved while 57% disapproved.
The poll was conducted via telephone between December 1-15, and had a sample size of 1,016 adults across America. The margin of error was 4%.
The Supreme Court under Roberts has frequently come under fire, particularly when it comes to cases involving President Donald Trump. While the court has not always sided with the president—on Tuesday, it ruled against him in the case about deploying the national guard to Chicago—public perception is that the Court is in Trump’s pocket.
In June 2024, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called the Roberts Court the “most corrupt in American history.” A September 2021 Gallup poll saw the full Court’s approval rating hit a record low of 40%.
A month after Ocasio-Cortez made her comments, the Court made one of its most controversial rulings—deciding that Trump had immunity from prosecution for any acts made in an “official” capacity as president. The Court ruled 6-3 in that case along ideological lines, with Roberts himself writing the court’s opinion.
Experts were shocked that the Court even took up that particular case, as there had been no contradiction in lower court rulings about the limits of presidential immunity.
“Let’s not beat around the bush, decision by the Supreme Court to hear the Trump immunity case is outrageous and, at its heart, fundamentally corrupt,” author and legal expert David Rothkopf wrote at the time the Court decided to hear the case. “The Appeals Court decision was bullet proof and there is no case Trump has any sort of immunity. The decision not to hear it until late April makes further significant trial delays likely. They are deliberately delaying the trial without any reasonable legal reason to do so. This is a political decision and, in my estimation, an ugly one.”
The CEO of a anti-hate group is allowed to stay in the United States after a federal judge stopped his deportation.
Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons among other Trump administration officials. Ahmed requested a restraining order so he can fight the administration in court.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Trump administration announced an order to revoke his visa, along with the visas of four other Europeans, over claims of digital censorship. Following the announcement of the government’s intent to deport him, Ahmed alleged that the government was targeting him “as punishment for the research and public reporting carried out by the nonprofit organization that Mr. Ahmed founded and runs, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (“CCDH”), which studies the content moderation policies of major social media companies, including Elon Musk’s company, X Corp.,” the lawsuit read.
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“In other words, Mr. Ahmed faces the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest, punitive detention, and expulsion for exercising his basic First Amendment rights.”
District Court Judge Vernon S. Broderick ruled in favor of Ahmed; in addition, Broderick also ruled that Ahmed cannot be arrested and detained before his case can be heard, according to the BBC.
“The federal government can’t deport a green card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say,” Roberta Kaplan, Ahmed’s lawyer, told the BBC.
Ahmed’s anti-hate group was formed to combat disinformation and antisemitism online. In the past it’s collected evidence of racist and extremist content on X since Elon Musk bought the platform. X previously filed suit against CCDH in 2023 over its reporting, alleging the data collected by the group was based on “incorrect, misleading and outdated metrics,” according to the Straits Times.
The anti-hate group has recently criticised ChatGPT amid reports of the program being linked to suicides, murders and self-harm.
On Friday, Ahmed accused the tech industry of urging the administration to retaliate against him.
“This has never been about politics,” he told The Guardian. “What it has been about is companies that simply do not want to be held accountable and, because of the influence of big money in Washington, are corrupting the system and trying to bend it to their will, and their will is to be unable to be held accountable.”
“There is no other industry, that acts with such arrogance, indifference and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people,” he added.
The visa bans announced on Tuesday also targeted former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Global Disinformation Index CEO Clare Melford and Anna Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, according to The Hill.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” Rubio tweeted Tuesday. “Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.
Today, @StateDept will take steps to…
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) December 23, 2025
Of the five, Ahmed is the only one who actually lives in the United States. The others, as of this writing, remain barred from entering the United States.
Image via Reuters
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shared a bizarre tweet Friday using an old Christmas special as an excuse to slam migrants.
“Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids,” Miller wrote. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.”
Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids.
Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) December 26, 2025
The 1967 Christmas special can be seen on YouTube. The show is a variety show featuring not just the two famous crooners, but their semi-famous offspring, including Deana, Ricci and Dino on the Martin side, along with Nancy and Frank Junior on the Sinatra side.
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It’s not clear what in the special would have made Miller think about “infinity migrants” coming to America, but both Martin and Sinatra were first-generation Americans with parents who came to the U.S. from Italy.
Miller is an anti-immigration hardliner, and has been called the “architect” of the Trump administration’s immigration policy by Reuters. Earlier this month, he condemned the children of migrants—people like Sinatra and Martin—on Fox News.
“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” Miller said, according to the New York Times, “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”
Miller is in favor of more ICE raids, and called the protests in California this summer an “insurrection” and “all the proof you need that mass migration unravels societies,” according to Forbes. In his role as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, he set a quota of 3,000 arrests a day for ICE.
Image via Reuters
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