Government power showed up in three very different forms today: taxation, domestic military deployment, and overseas airstrikes.
The stories are not identical, and they should not be treated as if they are. But each raises the same baseline questions: What is the government doing? What evidence supports it? Who is affected? And where is accountability when the consequences become real?
NYC can resume its luxury second-home tax rollout
New York City can continue implementing Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax while a court challenge moves forward.
The surcharge targets luxury secondary residences: certain one- to three-family homes valued at $5 million or more, plus condos and co-ops valued at $1 million or more. The city has projected that the policy could generate about $500 million annually.
The term pied-à-terre generally refers to a second home, often maintained in a city by someone whose primary residence is elsewhere. In this case, the policy is intended to raise revenue from high-value properties that are not their owners’ main homes.
A Staten Island judge initially halted the rollout after homeowners challenged the city’s implementation, arguing that notifications about eligibility caused confusion. An appellate court has now temporarily stayed that order, meaning the city can move forward while the broader legal questions are litigated.
That distinction matters. The appeals court has not yet declared the tax lawful. It has only allowed the rollout to resume during the appeal.
There are two debates happening at once. The first is about policy: Should cities tax ultra-luxury second homes to generate revenue and address inequality? The second is administrative: Did the city communicate accurately and clearly with the people affected?
Support for progressive taxation does not require pretending that implementation problems do not matter. People have the right to understand whether they are subject to a tax, why they are subject to it, and what process is available to contest an error.
Trump targets CAP over National Guard findings
President Trump is threatening legal action against the Center for American Progress after the progressive think tank released a report arguing that National Guard deployments did not reduce violent crime in the cities it examined.
The report, authored by CAP Associate Director of Public Safety Chandler Hall, is titled “The Trump Administration’s $1.7 Billion National Guard Deployments Fail To Reduce Urban Crime.” Hall said the analysis reviewed multiple cities, datasets, and time periods and found no measurable post-deployment effect on violent crime.
Trump strongly rejected the report. In a Truth Social post, he called CAP’s research a “Radical Left SCAM,” said crime had fallen since he took office, and said he intended to file a lawsuit.
It is entirely possible for crime to decline while a Guard deployment is underway. That, by itself, does not establish that the deployment caused the decline.
This is a basic question of causation. To credibly claim that an intervention produced an outcome, policymakers need to show more than two events occurring at the same time. They need to account for prior trends, local conditions, policing changes, seasonal effects, data quality, and other factors that might explain the outcome.
The Major Cities Chiefs Association has reported broad crime declines through June in the cities included in its data, homicides down more than 17 percent and robberies down more than 16 percent. Those numbers are meaningful. But they do not resolve the narrower question of whether National Guard deployments caused the declines.
The financial stakes are substantial. CAP placed the estimated cost of the deployments at $1.7 billion, and The Washington Post has reported that the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., could cost an additional $1.4 billion through the end of Trump’s term.
If federal officials want to expand the use of military forces in American cities, voters deserve transparent evidence that the policy works, a clear explanation of its costs, and honest accounting of its effects on local autonomy.
Pentagon report: 153 civilians killed in Yemen
A Pentagon assessment says U.S. strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 more in 2025.
The unclassified assessment, obtained by the Associated Press, was sent to Congress as part of the Pentagon’s annual civilian-casualty reporting. A Pentagon official told AP that the report would be formally submitted in the coming months.
According to reporting on the assessment, the civilian deaths were linked to U.S. military operations in Yemen, part of a campaign aimed at Houthi forces amid attacks on shipping and the broader regional conflict.
The official count is a marked increase from the Pentagon’s previous assessment, which counted two civilian deaths and two injuries linked to U.S. operations in 2024.
That increase should demand scrutiny, not only of individual strikes, but of the civilian-protection systems meant to prevent or mitigate harm. Civilian casualty reporting matters because it forces governments to publicly acknowledge the human consequences of military action.
There may be national-security reasons for countering armed groups that attack commercial shipping and regional targets. But a military objective does not automatically answer the questions that follow: Was the strike necessary? Was civilian harm minimized? Were the intelligence assessments sound? What happens when the systems designed to protect civilians fail?
A number should not be allowed to obscure its meaning. One hundred fifty-three civilians means 153 individual lives lost, people with families, friends, histories, and at one point futures.
The accountability test
These stories are connected by more than the fact that they appeared in the same news cycle.
New York’s tax fight is about the state’s power to raise revenue and redistribute burdens. The CAP dispute is about the federal government’s power to send military forces into American cities and claim credit for public-safety outcomes. The Yemen report is about the United States’ power to use force abroad and its obligation to account for civilian harm.
In each case, rhetoric is not enough.
A tax needs a lawful and competent rollout. A security intervention needs evidence, not just a political narrative. Military action requires a serious reckoning with the lives harmed in its execution.
The public deserves policies that can withstand legal, factual, and moral scrutiny.
