D.C. GOP calls for end of federal income tax for city’s residents
by Kerry Picket · The Washington TimesThe District of Columbia Republican Party urged the end of the federal income tax for the city’s residents as the best counterargument to the Democrats’ push for statehood.
The Republicans said exempting the city from federal income tax would be “truly transformational” if President Trump supported it.
“Washington is not a state. It is the federal district, created to serve as the seat of the national government and ultimately governed by Congress. If D.C. remains under federal control, its residents should be treated more like residents of U.S. territories for tax purposes,” the city’s GOP said.
“In several U.S. territories, bona fide residents generally do not pay regular federal income tax on territory-sourced income, though the exact rules vary by territory.”
They said that if District residents are exempted from paying federal income taxes, it weakens the push for statehood and Democrats lose their most impactful slogan and clearest argument for adding two likely Democratic senators.
The Republicans also said that the lower tax burden would make the District drive up property values, attract families, professionals, entrepreneurs and retirees to the city, encouraging investment, homeownership and stronger neighborhoods.
“This is exactly the kind of move President Trump is uniquely positioned to make: bold, simple, pro-taxpayer, politically disruptive, and impossible for the Left to ignore,” the Republicans said.
Advertisement Advertisement
Calls for stronger school choice funding
The American Association of Christian Schools wants to strengthen the Education Freedom Tax Credit in the reconciliation bill.
Thirty states have indicated intent to participate or have formally opted into the federal tax credit initiative created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The EFTC is essentially a federal funding mechanism for school choice or policies that allow families to use public funding to send their children to non-public schools, such as private, charter, religious, homeschool or virtual schools.
Donors give to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs), which then award scholarships to K-12 students to attend schools of their choice.
Advertisement Advertisement
The American Association of Christian Schools now wants some technical clarifications added to the law to maximize donor participation and ensure the program’s long-term success as the nation’s first federal tax credit scholarship initiative.
“A truly national program better aligns with the federal nature of the tax credit and ensures all American students can participate without geographic barriers,” the group said.
SEC cheered for repeal of Biden-era climate rule
The Competitive Enterprise Institute hailed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement seeking to rescind the Biden-era climate disclosure rule.
Advertisement Advertisement
The SEC recently proposed the rescission of what the agency described as “overly burdensome and costly” rules that require companies to provide climate-related information in their registration statements and annual reports.
The commission’s proposal focuses on returning the agency to its core mandate – in line with its legal authority – and restoring a materiality-focused approach to securities regulation.
Kent Lassman, CEI president, called the action “the most important deregulatory step taken by the agency in more than 50 years.”
CEI senior fellow Richard Morrison said the Biden-era rule would have required public companies to make “subjective and disparaging disclosures about their own operations, created a rent-seeking bonanza for self-interested parties to the detriment of ordinary investors.”
Advertisement Advertisement
China pressed to end censorship of Tiananmen Square massacre commemorations
Beijing is intensifying efforts to erase the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre while strengthening social control throughout the country, Human Rights Watch said Monday, days before international activists are expected to commemorate the event.
“By burying the past, the Chinese government is also burying respect for fundamental rights in the future,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The government should cease censorship of the Tiananmen Massacre, allow commemorations, compensate the victims’ families and free those imprisoned for pressing for accountability and justice.”
Advertisement Advertisement
The massacre was precipitated by the peaceful gathering of students, workers and others in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and other Chinese cities in April 1989, calling for free expression, democratic reform and an end to corruption.
Between June 3 and 4 of 1989, the People’s Liberation Army soldiers opened fire upon and killed numerous protesters and bystanders in Tiananmen Square.
The days’ protests’ most well-known image is that of an unidentified man standing alone in defiance and blocking a column of Chinese tanks on June 5 and remains a lasting symbol of the events. He is now renowned as the “Tank Man,” and has never been identified.
Chinese authorities have long banned commemorations of the massacre on the mainland, but activists continue to gather annually.
On Dec. 28, 2025, in Beijing, the Public Security Bureau obstructed a New Year gathering of the Tiananmen Mothers for the first time since the victim advocacy group began holding such gatherings in 2009.
On May 27, 2026, the Tiananmen Mothers issued a statement, signed by 107 members, urging the Chinese government to “address, through lawful means and in a spirit of peace and reason, all the wounds and unresolved injustices left by those events, and to restore justice and dignity to every family that lost a loved one.”
• The Advocates column is a weekly look at the political action players who drive the debate and shape policy outcomes in Washington. Send tips to theadvocates@washingtontimes.com
Contact the author
Kerry Picket
Follow author updates Follow Click to follow. Manage followed authors