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🐪 Happy Wednesday. A top FEMA disaster-response leader is doubling down on claims he once teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House, claiming “haters gonna hate.”
🔥 New in The Lever: To know a master manipulator like Jeffrey Epstein, do you have to be one?
STORIES TO GO
That’s a first. Today, President Donald Trump became the only sitting U.S. president to attend a Supreme Court oral argument; justices are weighing birthright citizenship.
Pay up. Amazon will pay $20.5 million to settle claims it harmed Oregon residents with nitrate-filled water runoff from data centers — without admitting any wrongdoing.
Blast off. Today, NASA is planning a historic flight launch that is set take astronauts further into space than ever before.
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The rich don’t want to tax the rich. As the speaker of the New York City Council blocks Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed tax increases on the ultra-wealthy, she’s hiding her family’s own multimillion-dollar portfolio. The Lever’s Luke Goldstein reports that Julie Menin and her husband hold a vast personal fortune, potentially worth tens of millions of dollars, including a $22 million Hamptons mansion, several luxury condos on the Upper East Side listed as their residence, and company private jets — none of which appear on her financial disclosure. Thanks to a loophole for spouses, Menin reported less than $500,000 in assets and other income.
✍️ While opposing property tax hikes or state-level tax increases, Menin has rolled out the city council’s own proposal which instead resorts to finding “savings” and potential spending cuts to balance NYC’s budget.
🤫 Council members have to submit their spouses’ financial information to the Conflict of Interest Board, but disclosure rules allow those holdings to remain confidential, a provision criticized by government accountability watchdogs for shielding members’ full portfolios.
💸 Menin’s husband, Bruce Menin, co-founded and runs a Miami-based real estate development firm called Crescent Heights, which has accomplished $14 billion worth of deals across the country, including New York. The firm owns two private jets listed under LLCs registered to the company.
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