The U.S. imposed direct sanctions against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday, freezing his U.S. assets and barring Americans from conducting business with him. The sanctions came a day after a vote that expanded his powers, giving the international community fresh concerns that Venezuela is creeping from democracy to dictatorship.

“By sanctioning Maduro the United States makes clear our opposition to the policies of his regime and our support for the people of Venezuela,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said during a press briefing at the White House on Monday. “As we continue to monitor this situation we will continue to review all of our options.”

U.S. officials reportedly considered enacting additional measures against Maduro, including banning imports of Venezuelan oil. But in the end, officials worried that halting imports of Venezuelan crude, which makes up about 10 percent of all U.S. oil imports, would unfairly punish regular Venezuelans. Maduro joins three other heads of state directly under U.S. sanctions: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Robert Mugabe, the 93-year-old president of Zimbabwe.

On Sunday, Venezuelans voted in a referendum on whether or not to dissolve the country’s legislative body, the National Assembly, for a new, 545-member Constituent Assembly, entirely composed of Maduro loyalists. Maduro’s opponents–not to mention Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Panama–saw the vote as illegitimate. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, slammed the vote on Twitter:

Maduro’s sham election is another step toward dictatorship. We won’t accept an illegit govt. The Venezuelan ppl & democracy will prevail.

— Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) July 30, 2017

Opposition leaders in Venezuela, and millions of citizens, fear that the Constituent Assembly will be a vehicle for Maduro to re-write the constitution, giving him broader, incontestable powers.

Those powers are already bearing fruit. Early Tuesday morning, two prominent Maduro critics, Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, were reportedly taken from their homes by SEBIN, Venezuela’s intelligence service. The opposition leaders’ families posted on social media detailing their arrests.

Lopez’s wife, Lilian Tintori, tweeted early Tuesday: “They just took Leopoldo from the house. We do not know where he is or where he is being taken. Maduro is responsible if something happens to him.”

And in a video statement, Ledezma’s daughter said: “He was in pajamas. We don’t know where he was taken. A group of men came with their faces concealed and in camouflage and they took him. They have kidnapped him once again. We hold the regime responsible for his life and physical integrity.”

Lopez and Ledezma are among Maduro’s most vocal and influential critics. Lopez was detained in early 2014 for allegedly inciting anti-government protests. He was released from military prison to house arrest last month. Ledezma, the former mayor of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital and the center of political unrest in recent months, is also a leading opposition figure.

As Maduro looks to cement his power, Venezuelans are growing increasingly desperate, struggling to obtain basic necessities like food and water. Since protests ratcheted up in April, at least 125 people have died; 10 people were reportedly killed during protests on Sunday. Maduro seems unfazed by the mounting unrest, the plight of his people, and the condemnation of the international community.

“If the empire’s threats and sanctions don’t intimidate me, nothing scares me,” Maduro said on state television after Sunday’s vote. “Issue all the sanctions you want, but the Venezuelan people have decided to be free and I have decided to be the president of a free people.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Federal officials visited Denver and Colorado Springs this week, holding a number of private meetings with local representatives about Colorado’s legal marijuana system and its sizable black market. The federal fact-finding mission comes as pro-marijuana advocates across the country worry about a fresh crack-down on marijuana users and sellers by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The first meeting took place in Denver on Tuesday. According to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper’s marijuana adviser Mark Bolton, representatives from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Domestic Policy Control, and the State Department attended the closed-door session.

“Our purpose was to convey to them the strength of our regulatory system and our enforcement system and our policies and practices,” Bolton, who was also present at the meeting, told The Cannabist. He added that the federal officials saw the meeting “as an educational opportunity.”

Colorado’s attorney general, Cynthia Coffman, also met with the federal officials. Coffman and Hickenlooper, in a joint statement, said the meeting “focused on sharing Colorado’s experience creating and executing a robust and effective regulatory and enforcement system, and our continuing efforts to protect public health and public safety.”

In April, Hickenlooper joined three other governors from states that have legalized marijuana in asking Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to consult them “before embarking on any changes to regulatory and enforcement systems.”

Thus far, Sessions has expressed a personal animus for marijuana, but has not taken any drastic measures to enforce federal law over state law. Marijuana is banned at the federal level, while eight states and D.C. have fully legalized cannabis.

In the second meeting, on Wednesday in Colorado Springs, federal officials, including representatives from the DEA, met with the city’s mayor, John Suthers. Local officials were criticized for holding the meeting in private, which they did because the meetings “include sensitive investigative information,” according to a statement from Suthers.

“The folks that came out didn’t want it public; there’s no reason for it to be public,” Suthers told KKTV 11, a local news station that reported the meetings. Suthers added he believes the officials visited Colorado, which legalized marijuana in 2012 “to find out what law enforcement and other regulatory agencies’ view is toward marijuana regulation in Colorado.”

Both meetings come the week before the Justice Department is set to release a report on violent crime, immigration, and drug trafficking. It is unclear if the meetings, which also featured discussions about Colorado’s black marijuana market, are related to that report.

Meanwhile, a Denver-based research company reported this week that Colorado has collected over $500 million from marijuana taxes since legal sales began in January 2014.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Despite protests in the street and pleas from Capital Hill, President Donald Trump has yet to reveal the amount he has–or has not–paid in taxes. But he plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code, and on Wednesday, he announced a one-page tax plan to accomplish that. Here is what you need to know.

What’s New?

In short: a range of tax cuts and some efforts to simplify the filing process. Trump’s tax plan, which will likely receive heavy edits as it makes its way through Congress, would reduce the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three–10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent. The proposal does not yet specify the income thresholds for each bracket. Currently, people in the top income bracket are taxed at a rate of almost 40 percent and those in the lowest bracket pay 10 percent, which would remain the same under Trump’s plan. While Americans overall would likely receive some sort of a tax break, the wealthiest Americans would benefit the most.

In addition, Trump’s plan would lower the corporate tax rate–and make it apply to small mom-and-pops and giant multinationals alike–from 35 percent to 15 percent. That would put the U.S., which currently has the highest corporate rate of any industrialized nations, in line with Germany and Canada, and slightly below Britain.

Another major change included in the plan: killing the “death tax,” aka the inheritance or estate tax. As of 2014, the U.S. inheritance tax–up to 40 percent for some estates–was the fourth highest in the world. Trump’s plan would scrap that tax–which supporters say is a key tool for redistributing income, and critics say unfairly steal from the rich–entirely.

What About the Debt?

Under Trump’s proposed tax overhaul, the national debt would skyrocket. At a press conference unveiling the plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the plan “will pay for itself with growth.” Since the revenue from taxes would drop, the government would need to find other ways to obtain money to pay for its various obligations. But a variety of nonpartisan budget think tanks and analysts projected that previous versions of Trump’s plan would cause the federal deficit to balloon.  

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget–a think tank that focuses on fiscal responsibility–predicts that the plan would add $3 to $7 trillion to the deficit over a decade. That would contradict Trump’s vociferous critiques of the rising debt under the past few administrations. History does not bode well for self-paying tax cuts–the idea that tax cuts would spur enough economic growth to balance out revenue lost due to lower rates. President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981, for instance, contributed to the deficits that would follow.

What Do the Experts Think?

Bernard Baumohl, the chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group: “The effort to introduce more fiscal stimulus into the economy is genuinely underway […] But the bare bones plan we saw unveiled [on Wednesday] is already conceptually flawed and unlikely to go far in Congress. The final product will bear no resemblance to the principal points highlighted in today’s meager release. Certainly, the first step in this process was unimpressive.”

JPMorgan Chase Analyst Jesse Edgerton: “Although the plan’s lack of detail makes estimating its revenue effects uncertain, we suspect the plan would be scored as dramatically increasing deficits, making likelihood of its passage through Congress slim […] the recent announcement is likely best viewed as an opening offer in a negotiation with many rounds to go.”

Economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the Congressional Budget Office under former President George W. Bush: “Passing genuine tax reform would include structural changes. As long as those are not included, it is not reform. This bill as presented would add to the deficit. Growth alone cannot account for the loss of revenue from tax cuts. This means it cannot pass the reconciliation process and will not be able to become law.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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