WALTON 2

oops, see walmart 2

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CBS JUN

Walmart heiress Christy Walton's advertisement in The New York Times over the weekend has led some consumers to threaten a boycott of the retailer.

The ad promoting a nationwide anti-Trump protest has prompted backlash against Walmart despite the company distancing itself from the full-page ad.

"The advertisements from Christy Walton are in no way connected to or endorsed by Walmart. She does not serve on the board or play any role in decision-making at Walmart," the company said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

Walton has also made clear that she paid for the ad herself, and that it represents her own views.

The ad calls on people to participate in the "No Kings" protest slated to take place across the U.S. on June 14, the same day a military parade celebrating the Army's 250th Anniversary is set to take place in Washington, D.C. The date of the nationwide protest was selected to draw attention away from the military demonstration, organizers said.

Calls for boycott

But as Ms. Walton, a billionaire, encourages the public to participate in peaceful demonstrations against the Trump administration, supporters of President Trump are urging shoppers to boycott Walmart.

"It may be time to #BoycottWalmart. #ChristyWalton, heiress of @Walmart has lost her mind in thinking she can fund revolutions against the American people/consumers," wrote X user Shaughn_A.

Kari Lake, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees service media networks, shared an image of the ad on X and wrote, "Do you shop at Walmart?"

Rep. Anna Pauling Luna, a Republican from Florida, also weighed in on the ad online, tying it directly to the retailer.

"Walmart heiress Christy Walton is funding full page color ads in the NYT for 'No Kings Day,' a nationwide counter protest scheduled for Trump's birthday, organized by far-left group Indivisible. Looks like the Walmart dynasty is big mad about China Tariffs," she wrote.

Mr. Trump and Walmart have clashed before. After Walmart said tariffs would force it to hike prices on some goods, the president posted on social media that the retail giant should "eat the tariffs" instead of raising prices for consumers.

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WIKI 6 25

Christy Ruth Walton (née Tallant;^[1][2] born February 8, 1949) is an American billionaire heiress and philanthropist. She is the widow of John T. Walton, who was one of the sons of the Walmart founder Sam Walton.

In June 2005, her husband died in a homebuilt ultralight plane crash,^[3] making her the main heir to his fortune of US$18.2 billion. Forbes listed Christy Walton as the richest woman in the world for several years.^[2][4] Her net worth was estimated to $41.7 billion in March 2015,^[4] the bulk of which came from her shares in Walmart, but also from First Solar, in which her husband had invested. In November 2015, an analysis of court documents by Bloomberg revealed that the bulk of her husband's wealth had been transferred to her son, Lukas Walton, resulting in an estimated net worth of approximately US$5 billion.^[5]

Philanthropy

Profiled by Condé Nast Portfolio magazine in The Giving Index, she is ranked as the highest female philanthropist according to the amount she gives as a percentage of her wealth. At a then estimated $16.3 billion net worth, she contributed a total of $3.5 billion cumulatively between 2002 and 2006.^[6]

Non-profit organizations in which Walton is actively serving include the national association of trustees and staff, corporate giving officers, and individual donors of The Philanthropy Roundtable. The San Diego Natural History Museum, where she is a board member, as well as the San Diego Zoological Society and the Mingei International Museum are also institutions to which she makes donations.^[6] In 2006, Walton donated her own old Victorian home which was built in 1896 for former National City, California postmaster Oliver Noyes and is of historical significance, to the International Community Foundation - Center for Cross-Border Philanthropy. Since her donation, she has endowed $4 million towards the edifice's preservation.^[6]

Additionally, she supports her family's own charitable foundation, the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, which prioritizes education and benefits institutions of higher education such as the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, and several other colleges, community trusts, universities and foundations. In 2007, her family's foundation donated as much as $1.6 billion.^[6]

Variety reported on March 2, 2009^[7] that Christy Walton had set up a production company called Tenaja Productions to finance a film adaptation of Bless Me, Ultima, a popular Chicano coming of age novel. Filming wrapped in Santa Fe, New Mexico in late 2010.^[8] The film premiered at the Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas on September 17, 2012,^[9] and received a general release in February 2013.^[10]

Politics

Walton backed The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super-PAC, which ran ads in battleground states.^[11] She donated $20,000 to The Lincoln Project in January 2020 and a further $10,000 in May 2020.^[12]

Walton backed No Kings Day, a nationwide anti-Trump protest on June 14, 2025, placing a full-page ad in The New York Times to promote it.^[13]

Christian-right media outlets, which function as an unofficial public relations operation for President Donald Trump, set out this week to smear in advance the ‘No Kings’ protests being held across the country on Sat. June 14 to protest Trump’s authoritarianism and defiance of the law and Constitution.

“As America prepares to honor the birthday of President Donald J. Trump on June 14,” began a screed that ran on the right-wing “America Faith” platform and was republished by the Pentecostal-oriented Charisma News—not even bothering to sustain the official fiction that Trump’s military parade is more about honoring the armed forces than a presidential exercise in self-glorification.

The diatribe was written by right-wing southern California pastor Phil Hotsenpiller, who founded American Faith after Trump was defeated in the 2020 election.

In this week’s column, Hotsenpiller warned of the “disturbing agenda” of the No Kings rallies: “to crush Donald Trump’s influence, undermine constitutional authority, and destabilize American sovereignty.”

“Let’s be clear,” wrote Hotsenpiller, “this is not about preserving democracy—it’s about preventing Trump from returning to power.”

Huh? Trump has already returned to power and is flagrantly abusing that power. That’s why Americans are rallying to defend the rule of law and the constitutional checks and balances Trump’s team is working so hard to dismantle.

Hotsenpiller spun a conspiracy theory about the “Walton-Weingarten Nexus”—WalMart heiress and philanthropist Christy Walton and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, two “dangerous” women “merging to push a vision of America that looks more like socialist Europe—or communist China—than a constitutional republic.”

“June 14 is not just a protest,” Hotsenpiller ranted. “It’s a declaration of war—against populism, against Trump and ultimately against the America our Founders envisioned.”

While MAGA religious leaders portray themselves as the voice of American Christians, many Christians and other faith leaders are urging Americans to participate in peaceful No Kings protests—and have been on the front lines this week protesting the brutality of the administration’s militarized anti-immigrant operations.

Trump has threatened “very heavy force” against anyone who protests his parade. No Kings organizers have not planned an event in D.C., encouraging locals to join a flagship rally in Philadelphia, participate in Virginia or Maryland events, or take part in DC Joy Day.

American Faith hosted the ReAwaken America Tour, a traveling cavalcade of far-right conspiracies, Christian nationalism, and pro-Trump propaganda. Last year, Hostenpiller’s Influence Church hosted Christian nationalist MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, who used the occasion to rail against seminaries “infiltrated with wokeism, social justice nonsense” and “overly feminine ‘pastor-men.’” Hotsenpiller has also teamed up with MAGA musician Sean Feucht.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/propublica-nobody-actually-knows-rich/

series: The Secret IRS Files](https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files)

Inside the Tax Records of the .001%

Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.

Thanks to an analysis of its unprecedented trove of IRS data, ProPublica is revealing the 15 people who reported the most U.S. income on their taxes from 2013 to 2018, along with data for the rest of the top 400.

The analysis also shows how much they paid in federal income taxes — and it demonstrates how the American tax system, which theoretically makes the highest earners pay the highest income tax rates, fails to do so for the people at the very top of the income pyramid. The top 400 earners pay noticeably lower tax rates than the merely rich; and, if you include payroll taxes, a married couple making $200,000 a year could end up paying higher tax rates than a person making $200 million a year. (The full analysis is here; it includes selected names beyond the top 15.)

Names That Won’t Surprise You

Scan the names on the list of the top 15 income earners and you’re certain to recognize several names — or at least the names of the companies they founded. Bill Gates hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft for over a decade, yet he still earned the most during the years we studied, reporting an average yearly income of $2.85 billion — and an effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Steve Ballmer, his former colleague, is also a well-known public figure, both for his time as Microsoft CEO and his current ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team. Ballmer’s average annual reported income of $1.05 billion landed him in the 10th spot on the list, and his effective federal income tax rate was 14.1%. The other side of the PC/Mac wars is represented here by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Her average reported income of $1.57 billion ranked fifth-highest; she paid an effective tax rate of 14.8%. (ProPublica sought comment from everyone mentioned in this article. Nobody disputed the numbers cited here. Unless otherwise noted, representatives for people named in this article either declined to comment, declined to comment on the record or did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another well-known billionaire sits just below Gates on the list: Media and tech mogul and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, with an average reported income of just over $2 billion, paid an effective income tax rate of 4.1%, by far the lowest rate among the top 15. (A spokesperson told ProPublica for an earlier article that Bloomberg “pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” and cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving.)

The presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — either the first- or second-wealthiest person in America, depending on the day — won’t shock most people, but Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.

Who Are These Others and Why Are They Paying Higher Tax Rates?

Tech billionaires dominate the top 15, buthedge fund managers account for a full third of the names on this list, and some of their incomes were just as huge. Most of them paid relatively high effective tax rates, especially compared to most of the tech sector representatives. Hedge fund managers often make their money through short-term trades, which are taxed at a much higher rate than when tech titans cash in on long-term investments.

The highest-earning hedge funder is Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based firm Citadel. From 2013 to 2018, he reported an average income of nearly $1.7 billion, putting him fourth on the list. Griffin paid a tax rate of 29.2% during these years. (A spokesperson for Griffin said the tax rates in the IRS data “significantly understate” what Griffin pays, because they were lowered by charitable contributions and do not reflect local and state taxes. He also said Griffin pays foreign taxes, which aren’t included in IRS calculations of effective tax rate.)

Israel Englander, co-founder of Millennium Management, paid at a 30.8% rate, while the co-founders of Two Sigma Investments, David Siegel and John Overdeck, paid tax rates of 31.6% and 34.2%, respectively.

Some of this variation in rates reflects how people structure their businesses under tax law. Income earned by publicly traded corporations is taxed at the company level. When it’s passed on to big shareholders, such as tech billionaires, it can come in the form of dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. By contrast, the income from some manufacturing companies and hedge funds flows directly to company owners, who pay taxes on it, resulting in higher effective tax rates on average.

Where Are the Heirs?

Lists of the world’s wealthiest individuals are always heavily populated by heirs, ranging from descendents of old money to scions of more recently minted fortunes. Dozens of heirs made ProPublica’s list of 400 biggest income earners. Descendents and relatives of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, claim 11 spots.

The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, also have multiple members in the top 400. Perhaps the best known is Betsy DeVos, who served as U.S. secretary of education during the Donald Trump administration. With a reported annual income of $112 million, she was the 389th-highest earner in this period.

Much like the tech titans who top the list, most of these heirs get their income from dividends or long-term investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their effective tax rates ranged from as low as 10.6% for Betsy DeVos to a high of 23% paid by Walmart heir Tom Walton.

Don’t Forget the Deductions

Another key way that some top earners reduced their tax liability was to claim significant deductions, often in the form of large charitable contributions. This is particularly true for wealthy investors who are able to make their donations with shares of stock. Thanks to a generous provision of the tax code, they can then deduct the full value of the stock at its current price — without having to first sell it and pay capital gains tax.

Michael Bloomberg achieved a tax rate of 4.1% from 2013 to 2018 by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion,mostly through charitable contributions. From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $400 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes. The 2018 tax overhaul limited that deduction to $10,000 — but also introduced a huge new deduction for pass-through companies that Bloomberg benefited from.

Wait — What About the Celebrities?

The earnings of actors, musicians and sports stars are a subject of nonstop scrutiny in the media, yet few celebrities cracked the list of the top 400 earners, which would have required them to report annual incomes of at least $110 million.

ProPublica’s trove has data on many celebrities. One who came close to the top 400 is basketball superstar LeBron James, who averaged $96 million a year in reported income. Grammy-winning singer Taylor Swift also came within reach of the top 400, averaging $82 million in reported income during these years. Actor George Clooney would have had to double his average income of $55 million to crack the top 400.

THE TOP 15

Here are the details on the top 15 income earners. Read the full analysis of the top 400 here.

For the full list of America’s top 400 income earners and their tax rates, along with our methodology, click here.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bernie-sanders/

'The Walton family is the real welfare queen': GAO report details how taxpayers subsidize corporate giants' low wages

Diane Ravitch

The Walton Family Plot to Privatize the Public Schools of Arkansas

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