'Mission accomplished'

'A mounting global assault on free speech'

'Brandon bravely battled cancer for more than three years'

'Party wants to move on'

'A person familiar with the process'

Books book reviews Home Renovation Can Be a Nightmare: Cherie Priest’s It Was Her House First A horror ghost story that finds the right balance between personal drama and supernatural thrills. By Tobias Carroll | Published on August 7, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Are we living through the birth of a new subgenre: HGTV horror? Andrew F. Sullivan and Nick Cutter’s The Handyman Method told the story of a seemingly idyllic family who move into a house that needs some renovations—and which gradually immerses them in the aftereffects of an eldritch bargain. Sarah Pinsker’s Haunt Sweet Home is set against the backdrop of a reality show involving haunted houses. And the plot of Cherie Priest’s new novel is set into motion when Ronnie Mitchell, mourning the death of her younger brother, buys a run-down home in present-day Seattle and gets to work fixing it up. The title of this novel is It Was Her House First, and it’s very clear from the outset who that “her” refers to. Ronnie is one of two narrators here; the other is a detective named Bartholomew Sloan, whom we first encounter in 1932. Sloan is mourning the death of his friend Oscar Amundson, who has just been hanged for the murder of Oscar’s wife, a silent film star named Venita Rost. Sloan’s narration also hints at a tragic outcome for Oscar and Venita’s daughter Priscilla. The detective inherits Oscar and Venita’s house, where he discovers a letter from Venita, telling him several things, chief among them that she framed her husband for her own murder. Oh, and the gin Bartholomew is sipping? Well, it’s poisoned. Exit Bartholomew, presumably—except that this isn’t the kind of novel where a mere death by poisoning is enough to clear someone off the board. By the time Ronnie purchases the house decades later, the place abounds with restless spirits, two of whom have spent the bulk of their afterlives silently loathing one another. It Was Her House First is a haunted house story, yes, but it’s also a lot more complicated than that. Both of the novel’s narrators are haunted by their complicity in the death of an innocent. We’ll get to Bartholomew’s case soon enough. In Ronnie’s case, she accidentally started a fire that led to the death of her brother Ben. If Ben had opted to use the bedpan rather than go to the bathroom, or if he’d brought his phone to the bathroom with him, he’d likely have been fine. But he didn’t, and so instead of his terminal cancer killing him, smoke inhalation was the cause. Ronnie blames herself largely because she’d been taking anti-anxiety medication, which caused her to worry less about things like leaving the dryer running when leaving the house. As Ronnie begins renovating the house, Ben’s fiancée Kate assists her—and, no, Ronnie hasn’t shared any of this with her. As she phrases it:  Lying to Kate by omission doesn’t torment me, it’s just something I think about every now and again, especially when I’m alone and it’s quiet and the night is settling in around me—in a place that’s loud like those machines were, in Ben’s room. I think about telling her, and then I remember that I mostly want her to know so that I’ll feel better, having unburdened myself. One of the qualities ghosts have in this novel is a kind of telepathy, and Bartholomew is able to glean knowledge of this from her. What’s less clear is what he can do about it, as the dead’s ability to communicate with the living is seriously limited. And there’s a wild card in all of this as well, a young man who introduces himself as Coty Deaver and becomes fast friends with Ronnie and Kate. Bartholomew is quick to tip us off that Coty has an agenda of his own, and it won’t be long before Ronnie learns more about Coty’s past as well. He mentions that he’s a descendent of Bartholomew’s, which is true, but his designs on the house are less altruistic than making new friends. There’s a sort of third narrator present in the novel as well: Venita Rost, whose journal Ronnie finds and reads, and in doing so learns more about the way in which Bartholomew became part of Oscar and Venita’s lives and how that gradually fell apart. It’s the scenes set in the first half of the 20th century that Priest’s novel becomes something more than a traditional ghost story, weaving in larger supernatural forces in a way somewhat reminiscent of (but relatively distinct from) Stephen King’s Bag of Bones. [Spoilers follow.] Buy the Book It Was Her House First Cherie Priest Buy Book It Was Her House First Cherie Priest Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Bartholomew, it turns out, was a reasonably good detective who made a bargain with some sort of eldritch being for even greater success. Venita discovered the source of his power and disrupted it, and he conducted a new ritual in the hopes of re-establishing his contract with a being from beyond. It was into this ritual that Venita and Oscar’s daughter Priscilla—who’d become fond of her parents’ friend and periodic houseguest—wandered and was accidentally killed, a moment that haunts Bartholomew long after his death. The specific details of the bargain and the ritual are left vague, which is intentional; Bartholomew himself alludes to it as the kind of bargain that one is not permitted to speak of after it takes place. That the bargain persists beyond death acts as a kind of MacGuffin that attracts unsavory figures to the house. And it gives Ronnie and Bartholomew a shared guilt over their feelings of responsibility for the death of an innocent. There are degrees of responsibility, though, and Bartholomew’s guilt feels more deserved than Ronnie. One death involved a chain of accidents and bad luck that could have easily been averted; one involved an accident arising from a bargain with powerful supernatural forces. The guilt arising from these two incidents is similar; the circumstances that led to them are not. For all that Bartholomew’s story brings in larger uncanny forces, the conflicts of It Was Her House First are rooted in human emotions: Resentment, guilt, and jealousy all play parts. While the narrators’ parallel guilt seems to be setting up a larger moment of convergence that doesn’t come, Priest also keeps all of her characters endearingly messy. These are people (alive and dead) whose problems won’t simply go away with one cathartic conversation or act, and this novel doesn’t pretend otherwise. Aside from those characters, It Was Her House First has plenty of charm to recommend it as well, from its lived-in depictions of Seattle to its forays into silent film history, given Venita’s career. It largely finds the right balance between personal drama and supernatural thrills; if its readers get a good sense of what it takes to renovate a house with great bones, so much the better.[end-mark] It Was Her House First is published by Poisoned Pen Press. The post Home Renovation Can Be a Nightmare: Cherie Priest’s <i>It Was Her House First</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Romantasy Read an Excerpt From The Cruel Dawn by Rachel Howzell Hall A sweeping romantasy where gods bleed, realms fall, and one woman stands between salvation and ruin. By Rachel Howzell Hall | Published on August 7, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Cruel Dawn, the second book in Rachel Howzell Hall’s Vallendor romantasy series, out from Red Tower Books on August 19. Kaivara Megidrail was once worshipped as the Grand Defender of Vallendor—until betrayal, punishment, and exile left her Diminished. Now, the realm she abandoned teeters on the edge of collapse. Monsters roam free. Gods whisper in shadows. And one man—Jadon Wake, prince, blacksmith, liar—may be the key to her salvation… or her final ruin.Haunted by the past, hunted by divine enemies, and armed with only fractured Memories and an unrelenting will, Kaivara must choose: reclaim her power and face the truth about Jadon, or watch Vallendor fall to a traitorous god’s rising. One day, I will wake up to a kiss instead of a kill. I will stretch and sing instead of crouching and growling. Maybe tomorrow will be that day because today, right now, an otherworldly being with the shrewd blue eyes of a man, the cupped ears of a man, and the sharp teeth, short fur, and claws of a bear roars at me. “You have no business here.” The creature sounds like he chews rocks and picks his teeth with burned splinters. I slowly reach for my back scabbard and pull out one of my two swords, the one with the wine-colored handle etched with moths. The one with the blade as black as night. Fury. A gift from the blacksmith. My heart wants to think about that blacksmith and figure out how I feel about him. Do I love him? Do I hate him? I don’t know, and I don’t have time for any of that right now. At this moment, all I care about is how this fucking incredible sword that he forged must save me from this rock-chewing, splinter-gnawing asshole thundering toward me from the canyons. I push up from my knees into a crouch. I’m not ready to fight the foul-smelling threat bearing down on me, but I have to be. “Get out of my desert,” he snarls. “This is Vallendor,” I snarl back. “My realm, and no one tells me where I can or cannot be. Especially an aburan who holds no title to—” The beast roars again. My skin goose-pimples, and my knees quake. One day, a kiss instead of a kill… I lift my sword and wait for him to get closer… closer… He charges, but I wait, and I wait, and then… I swing. Teeth bared, the aburan successfully ducks my swipe—but he doesn’t expect my blade’s quick return. Fury finds the otherworldly’s neck and pushes through that fur and bone like a hot stone through snow. Beheaded, the body of the aburan topples to the dirt, surprise bright in his beady human eyes. Yeah, I’m also surprised to be here, sir—especially since I don’t even know where we are. Last time I opened my eyes to a strange new world, I ended up chasing a thief through a dying forest. She’d stolen my clothes and ran into a crummy little village filled with unhappy people who tried to kill me. Didn’t turn out so good for them in the end. Didn’t turn out so good for me, either. Buy the Book The Cruel Dawn Rachel Howzell Hall Buy Book The Cruel Dawn Rachel Howzell Hall Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Before being attacked, I’d opened my eyes to the world around me, sprawled on my belly in a sea of red dirt filled with mysterious shoeprints too big to be the average human’s. Now, I return to peer closer at those one… two… three pairs of prints, each a different size. Who made these prints—and why are they so close to my face? I squint at the dead beast’s feet. Bare. Bear. He didn’t make any of these tracks left in the red dirt. I sneeze—sand in my nose—then scan the desert in front of me. Jagged-edged craters filled with red dirt and glistening white bones. Sheer walls rise up there and end as plateaus. Goats with curled horns climb on barely there crags and ledges. Long-legged hares hop from one underground den to the next. Yellow lizards big as hounds, with three heads and three jaws strong enough to crack boulders, sun themselves on rocks. A pack of gray wolves with wings too small to fly slurp from a muddy watering hole. I can smell that water way over here. Smells like dead things. Musty things. Shitty things. Every creature that I see glows amber­. That’s right. I can tell who is sick and dying by the glow they emit, and in this realm, that soft light burns amber. But none of these animals at the watering hole or resting across boulders made these tracks. With a shaky hand, I touch the amulet still hanging from my sweaty neck. The moth’s gold chain still shines bright. Her ruby-crusted wings twinkle, but the stone thorax stays as dark as the night. Dead as it may appear, this amulet still gives me power and proves that I’m no ordinary Vallendorian. At least she’s mine. Chasing her all over Vallendor again is not how I aim to spend my time. What’s that smell? I sniff the air. Smells like… dead things riding upon a living thing. The air warms—whatever lurks here hasn’t come to welcome me to this part of the realm. Good. I push to sit up on my knees. My body creaks beneath my rose-gold armor, tarnished and gunked-up. Dried gore from humans and beasts covers my breastplate, vambraces, and gauntlets. Beneath my tunic, my bones feel as shattered as stardust with my armor now just a fancy casserole dish holding me together. My bloodred hooded cape, though, remains unspoiled, free of dirt and blood—a benefit of the protective wards stitched into its fabric. The ground beneath my feet vibrates. Whatever lurks here has decided to come visit, and I feel its presence before I see— He rushes toward me. A shrill cry shatters the silence. My gaze snaps to the sky above me. A flash of color blinks against the ginger-and blue-tinted sky. With those shimmering metallic gold-and-blue wings that span the width of a river and curved crimson beak… A daxinea! She cries again, then says, “Come, Lady!” How about “no, thanks.” I chased another pretty thing across the realm—that thief’s name was Olivia—and that adventure landed me here, standing over a now-dead aburan. Not trying to do that again. But the bird won’t leave me alone. “You must go there, Lady!” But where is “there”? And who left these tracks? “Hurry, Lady!” I swipe Fury’s bloody blade across the fallen aburan’s fur and stow her in the sheath beside the Adjudicator’s sword with a platinum hilt and engraved silvery-blue blade. Arbiter. Judge. Truth. Mediator. Justice. Life. Death. I won her in a fight against Elyn Fynal the Adjudicator at the Sea of Devour. I take a step, but my breath comes short and fast. I want to vomit even though my stomach is empty. My tongue feels dry and swollen, and it’s cut. The blood I’m now tasting reminds me that I’m not whole, that I’m imperfect, that my situation remains… complicated. With great care, I take tiny steps to the cliff’s edge and look out. I stand above a realm on the verge of destruction. Thorny shrubs and acacia trees. Red dirt tufted with spiky grass. Sandy columns that used to be mountains before harsh winds scraped them down. Way out there, the land shimmers—but it’s a trick. This place has no treasures. This place has no hope or any promise. That shimmer? Those are bleached bones and broken glass. Of all places in the world, Elyn swept me here, the ass-crack of Vallendor. My knees wobble and my head spins. The need to vomit surges in my throat. Another cry from the soaring daxinea. “Come, Lady!” I need to sit for a moment. Those gray windwolves, though, blink their golden eyes at me, ready to lunge for my neck. Sitting means surrendering. I can’t surrender. According to Elyn, I made Vallendor this way, destroying the realm out of selfishness and frustration. You are the one who will destroy the world. But I didn’t destroy this daxinea. My heart swells to see her beauty and color bright against this landscape of desperation. The creatures down here in the canyons also watch the bird. The wolves with stunted wings flick their pink tongues across their bladed teeth. “Hungry, so hungry.” “Don’t touch that bird or else,” I warn them. “You think your wings are little now.” The wolves blink at me, then drop their shaggy heads back down to the muddy pond. One thinks, “She will fail.” Another thinks, “We will wait.” Yes, I was defeated in battle against the army of Syrus Wake, the Emperor and so-called Supreme Manifest of Vallendor. I remember confronting the traitor, Danar Rrivae. And I remember him. Jadon Ealdrehrt—no, Jadon Wake. The blacksmith. The prince. My lover. A liar. My foe. He’d asked me, Kaivara Megidrail, Grand Defender of Vallendor, Lady of the Verdant Realm, and Destroyer of Worlds, to be the empress to his emperor, as though this realm belonged to him. As though I trusted any word he uttered. As though he hadn’t betrayed me. Yeah, he betrayed me—I remember that most of all. But none of these memories calm my stomach, clear my head, or heed the call of the daxinea currently soaring over me. Nor do my titles or anger at the blacksmith tell me why I still feel like I’m being watched even after slaying an aburan. I take one last look around, and then I say, “Lead on,” to the daxinea. I follow her over the rocks and down the hillside. I scramble across scrapple and squeeze through slots. I rest because I get dizzy and the world keeps swooping, the edges of my vision fading. But I don’t sit down. Sitting means surrender. I take a moment to scan my surroundings again. No aburan. No humans. No one follows me, yet this big world feels cramped with too many pairs of eyes. Sometimes as I walk, the daxinea blots out the daystar and casts shadows across the land. Sometimes she circles, but she never slows even as the terrain climbs, and pebbles become rocks, and thorns grow to the size of a man’s hand. I gape at the sharp red rocks stabbing the sky, at those three-headed lizards and tiny-winged wolves lurking from their dens and rocks. My muscles ache as though I’ve fought every creature in this realm. The daxinea picks up speed. I run to catch up with her again and— Roars. Growls. Women screaming. Men shouting. Children shrieking. Supreme, help us! Supreme, hear our prayers! Supreme, have mercy! The cries and roars echo throughout the canyons and roll over this desert. Humans in distress. Fuck. Here we go again. Excerpted from The Cruel Dawn, copyright © 2025 by Rachel Howzell Hall. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Cruel Dawn</i> by Rachel Howzell Hall appeared first on Reactor.

Should the 2026 Virginia General Assembly choose to conform state tax laws to the full set of new tax rules at the federal level, Virginia families and businesses might save as much at $1.4 billion annually. That is a fresh estimate from the Tax Foundation, which looked at the impact of full conformity in all 50 states. Jared Walczak is vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation and is well known and respected in Richmond, Virginia, where he worked as a legislative aide with a keen interest in tax matters. His team’s estimates are just that, and the Virginia Department of Taxation may be coming up with different numbers, but the Tax Foundation report can start the debate.  They might prefer we didn’t, but the time to press candidates for governor and for the General Assembly about these issues is now, before the November election. The recent good news about the state finishing yet another budget cycle with a healthy surplus should be part of the conversation. In his introduced budget in December, outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin could propose which of these provisions he would adopt.  Virginia’s default position on the income tax for years has been to conform to federal tax rules and definitions. Generally, conformity should be the goal because of how it simplifies tax compliance. But it has been more than a decade since Virginia was an automatic or “rolling” conformity state. The list of variances has gotten very long and may now grow again. Anticipating big changes under new President Donald Trump, the 2025 General Assembly inserted a firm commandment in the final budget making it clear that no federal changes adopted by Congress would be automatically adopted in Virginia, even those with minimal fiscal implications.  The Tax Foundation labels the commonwealth’s current position as “static conformity” and also reviews the other states’ postures. That will leave the next governor and the 2026 legislators with a long list of decisions to make, some of them on highly popular federal provisions such as the new individual deductions for tip income and overtime income.  The Tax Foundation takes a stab at providing a “score” on each of the provisions, an estimate on how much income tax the state would forego if the deductions also applied on state tax returns. The $1.4 billion total is about evenly divided between the individual provisions and various new or expanded business deductions. As Trump promised in his campaign, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act did create a new federal tax deduction for tip income. Taxpayers do not have to elect itemized deductions to claim the deduction for up to $25,000 in tip income, and the change starts with this current tax year. The Tax Foundation estimates that the same rule adopted for Virginia’s taxes would reduce state income tax revenue by $67.3 million. The new deduction expires after 2028. Another Trump promise was ending taxes on the first $12,500 of overtime pay, and that will have more widespread impact and could save Virginia’s workers an estimated $324 million on state taxes for 2025. Again, the federal deduction is allowed for those who take the federal standard deduction, but if and how Virginia would do it rests with the General Assembly.  The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s new deduction for auto loan interest also works for both itemizers and those taking the standard deduction. It does phase out at higher incomes. Should Virginia allow it for those taking the state standard deduction, the savings to taxpayers would exceed $88 million. With tariffs raising car prices, the pressure to adopt this in Virginia could be strong. One Trump promise not kept by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was to eliminate the federal tax on Social Security income. As proposed, that had no Virginia impact because Virginia already exempts Social Security benefits from tax.  But instead of eliminating the tax, Congress created a new, higher standard deduction for older taxpayers. Again, there is a phase out with higher incomes, but the new extra deduction is $6,000 per person or $12,000 for a couple, and the provision expires after 2028. That is something Virginia could also adopt, although there might be less pressure to do so because Social Security is already tax-free. Of the four individual provisions scored by the Tax Foundation, it would have the largest impact on Virginia, saving taxpayers almost $230 million. As with the other three, pressure from the voters will determine its fate. Those are not all the individual provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, just the four for which the Tax Foundation provided state-level estimates. Its full report mentions several more. One individual provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was followed closely changed the amount of state and local tax that can be deducted at the federal level from $10,000 to $40,000. State law places no such cap on those who itemize at the state level. But the new higher federal cap may cause many Virginians to return to the practice of using the itemized deduction tax method. If a high enough number of returns do so, that will cause a state tax revenue loss. The Tax Foundation made no estimate regarding that issue. On business income taxes, the Tax Foundation also looked at four of the many deductions or depreciation changes made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and their potential impact if Virginia conforms to them. These will be the focus of business lobbyists, probably with little attention paid by the public. That doesn’t mean they are not important, because many other states will adopt them and use them in recruiting employers.  The provision with the largest state impact is the expanded Section 168(k) full expensing rule, which allows businesses to write off investments immediately and not over time. It is something Virginia has previously rejected, and it would be a major policy change for Virginia to accept it. It would also prove a major business tax cut, estimated by the Tax Foundation at $397 million, the largest of the four that the Tax Foundation discussed.  The other three changes to business tax provisions include two that Virginia has adopted—but which it now must amend to stay in conformity—and one new deduction:  The recent shift to amortizing research and experimental expenditures under Section 174 is reversed, restoring immediate cost recovery for research and development costs. The Tax Foundation believes conforming to this would reduce tax revenue $254 million. A new Section 168(n) is created, providing first-year expensing for qualified production property (e.g., factories). The Tax Foundation scores this at $39 million, which appears low in a state with this much construction activity. The cap on the Section 179 expensing deduction for small businesses rises from $1 million to $2.5 million, which the Tax Foundation sees as a $21 million tax break for those firms in this state. There is one glaring difference in the aftermath of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act when compared to the similar 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made several federal tax changes that produced a potential windfall in new state tax revenue, money the state could reap by simply doing nothing.  The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was not that kind of tax reform, with no major provisions that eliminated deductions or raised funds to balance the many reductions.   We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. This piece originally appeared in “The Jefferson Journal,” a publication of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The post Virginians Could Save $1.4B a Year by Conforming to Trump Tax Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This article is a preview of Politics Editor Bradley Devlin’s interview with acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons on “The Signal Sitdown.” Watch the full episode on YouTube by clicking on the video above. Two months ago, violent riots broke out in America’s second-largest city after immigration enforcement officers served legal warrants, signed by a judge, to individuals in this country illegally.  The rioters, which the media assured you were “mostly peaceful,” laid siege to federal buildings, attacked law enforcement officers, lit cop cars on fire, and looted businesses for days—all while flying the flag of a foreign country. Of course, we’re talking about the Los Angeles riots, so we’ll let you guess what flag they were flying. These anarchists seemed well-organized and well-funded. Things got so out of control in Los Angeles, in fact, that the president called in 2,000 National Guardsmen and hundreds of Marines. Yet, somehow, just two months later, the country has completely moved on. But it’s really worth reflecting on the LA riots and what inspired them because if anarchists can destroy city blocks under a foreign flag, you actually don’t have a sovereign country. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons comes on “The Signal Sitdown” this week to do just that. Lyons is an Air Force veteran with over 25 years of law enforcement experience, and almost 20 of those years have been with ICE. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to enforcing federal law. And for Lyons and the agents under his command, the LA riots were just the tip of the iceberg. Since the Trump administration entered into office, attacks on ICE agents have increased over 800%. “It is the worst I’ve ever seen in my whole career in law enforcement,” Lyons told The Daily Signal about the attacks on ICE agents. “I get asked a lot of time, ‘What’s the one thing that keeps you up at night?’ It’s the violence and the attacks on officers, agents, and not only them, but their families.” Meanwhile, the number of attacks on ICE agents “just continues to rise,” Lyons said. And Democrats on the local, state, and federal level have cheered on, and sometimes participated in, these attacks—and that’s not an exaggeration.  ”Not only is it harmful to the mission, it’s harmful to the communities that they are supposed to be leading and supporting,” Lyons said of these politicians.  ”When you do have these, you know, really radical left mayors like Karen Bass or the mayor of Chicago or Mayor [Michelle] Wu in Boston that are just constantly out there stoking the fires and fears of what ICE isn’t doing,” Lyons told The Daily Signal, “all they’re doing is hurting their community as well as hurting the law enforcement mission.” Meanwhile, the corporate media has poured gasoline on the fire by lying about ICE’s efforts to enforce our immigration law at almost every turn. The stories Lyons shares show the real human cost for both ICE officers and the communities they serve when our political leaders fail to do their duty. It’s a fascinating—sometimes intense—conversation, and we hope you enjoy. The post ICE Director Blames ‘Radical Left’ Politicians for 800% Spike in Attacks on Agency appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Taxpayers spent $207 million to pay federal government employees not for their official government jobs but for hours worked for unions in the 2024 fiscal year, President Joe Biden’s final year in office. According to data exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal, federal employees worked 3.2 million hours for unions in 2024, about 11.25% of their overall work time. Federal employees can bill the taxpayer for working with unions by negotiating contracts, resolving disputes, or doing other work for the union. The Office of Personnel Management tracks how many hours employees bill the taxpayer for union work, and the OPM under President Donald Trump issued a March memo demanding the data. “During the Biden administration, federal agencies spent millions bargaining sweetheart collective-bargaining agreements that imposed significant costs on the American taxpayer while impeding effective and efficient agency operations,” acting OPM Director Charles Ezell wrote in the memo. “Agencies paid for both the costs of their and their unions’ bargaining teams.” Under Biden, the OPM had not released any data on taxpayer-funded union time, so this report represents the most recent update since the Trump OPM published fiscal year 2019 figures in October 2020. The fiscal year 2024 (Oct. 1, 2023-Sept. 30, 2024) total of 3.2 million hours represents an increase over the 2019 figure of 2.6 million hours, but a decrease from the 2016 figure of 3.6 million hours. Even so, the 2024 cost to taxpayers ($207 million) exceeded the costs in 2019 ($135 million) and 2016 ($177 million). In addition to payroll costs, the government also provides property, such as space and equipment, to unions, and pays expenses related to union time, such as travel, per diem, and equipment. In fiscal year 2024, the government provided $29 million worth of property to unions, an increase from the 2019 figure of $25 million. It also paid $2.5 million in 2024 expenses, a decrease from the $3.5 million in 2019. The Worst Offenders Some agencies cost taxpayers more than others. Bureaucrats in the Department of Veterans Affairs billed taxpayers $40 million for working 746,381 hours for unions, while those in the Department of Homeland Security charged $34 million for working 557,851 hours for unions, and those in the Defense Department charged $25 million for 432,843 union hours. (The VA announced this week that it would sever ties with unions.) Under Biden, the Office of Personnel Management billed the taxpayer $308,715 for 4,512 union hours. Some agencies did not provide data for fiscal year 2024, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. Secretary of State Marco Rubio closed USAID earlier this year, transferring its functions to the State Department. OPM did not clarify whether State included USAID totals in its 2024 report. USAID stood out in the 2019 report, because taxpayer-funded union time accounted for 50.1% of employees’ overall work time that year. Only State Department employees spent a higher proportion of their time doing work for unions in 2019, at 82%. FY24 TFUT Report August 2025Download What Kind of Work? OPM divides taxpayer-funded union time into four categories: Term Negotiations: Time union representatives use to prepare for and negotiate a basic collective bargaining agreement Mid-Term Negotiations: The time union representatives use to bargain over issues raised during the life of a term agreement Dispute Tesolution: The time used to file and process grievances up to and including arbitrations and to process appeals of bargaining unit employees to the Federal Labor Relations Authority or to the courts General Labor-Management Relations: The time used for activities not included in the previous three categories In fiscal year 2024, federal agencies paid for 195,000 hours of term negotiations, 62,000 hours of mid-term negotiations, 400,000 hours of dispute resolution and 2.5 million hours of general labor-management relations. The broader category accounted for more than 78% of all taxpayer-funded union time. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal government union, has filed at least nine lawsuits against the Trump administration, and bureaucrats may have used taxpayer-funded union time to help those efforts. Other unions that represent federal employees have also funded left-wing activist groups that are suing the administration. Why Taxpayer-Funded Union Time? President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal established much of the current federal administrative state, opposed unions in the federal government because he found the idea of public servants striking for more taxpayer-funded wages perverse. Yet later presidents allowed bureaucrats to unionize, and in compensation for giving up the right to strike, the government allowed unions certain benefits, such as taxpayer-funded union time. Republicans in the House and Senate, such as Sens. Mike Lee and Joni Ernst, have filed bills to ban taxpayer-funded union time. Ernst tried to fit a provision on the measure in the One Big Beautiful Bill, but the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that it did not fit the rules of budget reconciliation, by which a bill can pass the Senate without meeting the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster. The post EXCLUSIVE: Taxpayers Spent $207 Million to Pay Bureaucrats to Work for Unions in Biden’s Final Year appeared first on The Daily Signal.