Most Americans assume that once you buy your car, pay the sales tax, register it, and keep up with routine fees, you have met your financial obligations as a vehicle owner.

Unfortunately, that is far from reality in many parts of the country.

Yearly taxes based on fluctuating and often overestimated valuations create financial unpredictability that families cannot plan for.

The most glaring example right now is Virginia, where residents are dealing with a yearly tax system that feels less like responsible public policy and more like a state-sponsored shakedown.

Number crunch

A Virginia man recently opened his annual vehicle property tax bill to find a stunning total: some $4,500. He wasn’t being penalized for late fees, accidents, or violations. There were no repairs included. This wasn’t registration or insurance. It was simply a tax for owning vehicles he had already paid off.

The state assigns an assessed value to each vehicle, applies a rate of $2.35 per $100 of that value, and charges the owner every single month the vehicle remains titled in his name. This is just for owning the car. Nothing more.

What most people don’t realize is that the government is the one deciding what your vehicle is “worth” — not you, not the market, and definitely not an actual buyer.

Market markup

In states that impose yearly vehicle property taxes, the valuation is created by your local tax assessor or commissioner of the revenue. They rely on industry databases like NADA Guides, J.D. Power, and Black Book to determine a “fair market value,” even if that value has nothing to do with your vehicle’s real condition or current market demand.

That means your car’s official valuation can increase even as it ages, simply because the guidebooks reflect a national trend or a temporary spike in used car prices. The state then taxes you on that number, regardless of whether you could actually sell your car for it.

Owners can appeal these valuations, but anyone who has tried knows the process is frustrating and rarely successful. To dispute the number, you have to prove high mileage, major mechanical problems, or accident history — all while the county defends its valuation because those inflated numbers generate revenue. You can own a dented, high-mileage car and still get taxed as if it were pristine. That disconnect is part of what makes the system feel so unfair.

Doubly taxing

This entire setup creates a perpetual double-taxation model. When you buy a vehicle, you pay sales tax up front. Depending on the state, that can be significant. But in states like Virginia, you pay again every single year for as long as you own it. Registration fees, insurance requirements, state inspections, emissions testing, fuel taxes, and local add-on fees layer on top of that. For families with multiple drivers, or rural residents who depend on vehicles to get anywhere, these recurring charges become a major burden.

And now, the federal government wants to add another layer.

The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee has introduced a proposal to impose new annual federal taxes on all registered vehicles: $200 per year for electric vehicles, $100 for hybrids, and $20 for every other passenger vehicle. These fees would apply indefinitely, regardless of driving habits, condition, income level, or vehicle necessity. The proposal is expected to raise around $7 billion per year, but even that only fills about one-third of the current shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund.

What’s worse is that the same bill delivers an average tax cut of $278,000 over ten years to the top 0.1% of earners. Everyday Americans pay more to keep driving, while the wealthiest see the biggest benefits. This imbalance is fueling much of the outrage behind the current debate.

RELATED: Avoid these 9 car-rental rip-offs

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

Human cost

Historically, gas taxes funded the nation’s highway system because they acted as a logical user fee. The more you drive, the more fuel you buy, and the more you contribute to maintaining the infrastructure you actually use.

The problem is that gas taxes haven’t been adjusted for inflation since 1993. As vehicles have become more fuel-efficient, the revenue stream has fallen behind. Instead of modernizing the system or transitioning toward a fair mileage-based model tied to real road usage, policymakers have increasingly leaned on ownership-based taxes — the least fair approach of all.

The human cost of these policies rarely gets attention. For many Americans, a vehicle isn’t a luxury; it’s the only way to get to work, take kids to school, make doctor appointments, or care for elderly relatives. Yearly taxes based on fluctuating and often overestimated valuations create financial unpredictability that families cannot plan for. They also disproportionately hurt the same people who rely on older vehicles because they can’t afford new ones.

Return to fairness

There are far better solutions available. Policymakers could update fuel taxes to reflect inflation, adopt a realistic and privacy-protected mileage-based approach, streamline wasteful transportation spending, and prioritize projects that genuinely improve infrastructure safety and efficiency. All of these would create a transparent model where people contribute based on actual use, not on arbitrary valuations created in government offices.

Virginia’s situation has become a flash point because it reflects a national trend: Americans feel squeezed, and they are increasingly questioning why the government continues to charge them — year after year — for something they already own. Vehicle property taxation may look like easy revenue on paper, but it is deeply disconnected from economic reality and from what drivers need to stay mobile and financially stable.

Ending annual vehicle taxation isn’t a radical idea. It’s a return to fairness and common sense. When you’ve already paid sales tax, kept up with registrations, and followed every rule required to drive legally, the government should not be allowed to treat your car like a permanent ATM. The pushback we are seeing now is long overdue, and lawmakers would be wise to pay attention.

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Vice President JD Vance appears to have struck a nerve on the left and among foreigners with his recent comments about the fallout of mass migration. Rather than rebut Vance’s claims, liberals have instead attacked his family and called for their removal from the country.

“Mass migration is theft of the American Dream,” Vance wrote in an X post on Sunday that has received a great deal of attention from Indian media outlets. “It has always been this way, and every position paper, think tank piece, and economic study suggesting otherwise is paid for by the people getting rich off the old system.”

Accompanying the vice president’s comments was a video of a self-identified construction company owner in Louisiana discussing the positive impact of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

‘You have to send Usha, her Indian family, and your biracial kids back to India.’

“So we’ve had ICE and DHS down in Louisiana for about a week now,” said the 27-year-old entrepreneur who said his last name was Flores. “I’m seeing firsthand just the shockwave them boys are sending across this state. No immigrants want to go to work. None of ’em even want to ride in a truck like mine with a ladder rack on it — and it is so amazing. I’ve gotten more calls in the last week than I’ve gotten in the last three months.”

The entrepreneur suggested that the recent demand for citizen labor “just shows you how bad the problem is down here in Louisiana.”

RELATED: JD Vance is right to hope his wife becomes a Christian

Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

Vance has repeatedly sounded the alarm about wage suppression and other consequences suffered by American-born citizens as a result of the mass migration enabled by previous administrations.

At an October Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, Vance noted that “thanks in part to the Biden border invasion but also thanks in part to a lot of bad immigration policy, right now, we have let in too many immigrants into the United States of America.”

The Pew Research Center indicated that as of January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. — the largest number ever recorded. Over 15% of all U.S. residents and 19% of the U.S. labor force were immigrants.

Vance noted that the evidence was “pretty clear” that many of the over one million migrants who legally enter the U.S. annually “are actually undercutting the wages of American workers” and that the H-1B visa has effectively allowed companies to pay a discount on what they would have paid an American citizen.

Like his statements in October, Vance’s Sunday remarks about the theft of the American dream enraged activists and interlopers.

Among those prickled by Vance’s remarks was Wajahat Ali, a former columnist at the Daily Beast and contributor to the New York Times, who recently suggested that it was futile to send antipathetic foreigners packing because they supposedly enjoy too strong a foothold in the U.S. owing to chain migration, miscegenation, and their fecundity.

Ali, responding to Vance’s “theft of the American Dream” post, wrote, “That means you have to send Usha, her Indian family, and your biracial kids back to India.”

“Let us know when [sic] buy the plane tickets,” continued the son of convicted fraudsters who immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan. “You must lead by example.”

Usha Vance — a Yale Law School graduate who served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts — is, like her three children, an American citizen born in the United States. Additionally her immigrant parents aren’t a pair of low-skilled laborers who came to suppress working-class wages but are rather a high-skilled couple — a mechanical engineer father and a molecular biologist mother.

Whatever example would be set by removing Vance’s family members would have nothing to do with the point the vice president was making. Nevertheless others joined Ali in strategically lumping Vance’s U.S.-born family members in with the low-skilled foreign-born horde and/or calling for their removal from the country.

The popular U.K.-based X user @AdameMedia, for instance, wrote, “Your wife and children are stealing the American dream.”

Vance’s office did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

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When Colorado high school senior Sophia Shumaker was offered the chance to paint a design of her choice on her senior parking spot at the school, Shumaker didn’t hesitate to include her religion.

“I originally wanted to choose the parable from Luke 15 of the shepherd and the 99 sheep, but then I kind of altered it to a backwards fish,” Shumaker tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

“The backwards fish is kind of what people in the Bible used to draw in the dirt when they couldn’t really talk about religion and they wanted to know if the other people were Christians,” Shumaker explains.

“It was against the rules to do Christian imagery,” she adds.

“When she was told she couldn’t do the original design … she decided to do the backwards fish sort of in somewhat of a protest of not being able to do the original design,” First Liberty attorney Keisha Russell chimes in.

“They said just because of the religious imagery and the Bible verse, it probably wouldn’t get approved and stuff like that. And so, I didn’t want to go through all the hassle, and so I just changed the design completely to kind of symbolize my Christianity, but I don’t think they really knew what it was,” Shumaker says.

When Shumaker told her mother that she had to change her design because it promoted her religion, her mother decided to reach out to First Liberty — which had taken on a very similar case in the past.

“They said they would take our case, and then the news got involved, and then they sent the letter to my school, and within a couple days the case was over. And it got approved, and I got to repaint it,” Shumaker tells Stuckey.

“The other different thing about this case was that throughout the district, other seniors were allowed to put religious things on their parking spaces. So, now you have this sort of inconsistent policy being applied differently, which makes the case very difficult for the school district,” Russell chimes in.

“It’s harder for them to say, ‘Oh, we’re controlling this. This is just government speech,’ when clearly they’re not. And so, when we wrote the letter, we included all of that, and we just said, ‘Look, we’d like to resolve this amicably with a letter, but we are willing to sue you if you continue to violate her rights. And so, we’re asking you to change your policy and let Sophia paint what she wanted to paint,’” she continues.

After the news got involved, the school “relented,” and “not only did they let Sophia repaint her spot, but they changed their entire policy” and removed the religious restrictions, Russell explains.

“So, really, really great outcome in this case,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has narrowly avoided a costly disaster.

When Meta bought the rights to more land in Bellevue, Washington, in 2020, it brought the company’s potential footprint in the area up to more than 3 million square feet. After five years of expansions, subleases, and plan changes, Zuckerberg’s company had to decide if it wanted to dive fully into the expansion it was offered or stay with what it had.

‘The way for Washingtonians to fight back is to build a bolder Washington.’

Newly released details about Meta’s plans in Bellevue’s Spring District now confirm that the tech company has avoided disaster by about a month. As reported by Downtown Bellevue, Meta is returning the rights for several blocks in the district to developer Wright Runstad & Co., which is considered turning the land into apartment buildings, instead of offices.

With Meta using only around 700,000 square feet of its current land leases, the relinquishment comes on the cusp of massive new corporate taxes that seem to be on the horizon from a state Democrat, who is openly socialist.

State Rep. Shaun Scott (D) hopes to counteract tax cuts by the Trump administration by issuing a new corporate payroll tax that will affect the largest companies in the state, including Amazon, Microsoft, and, of course, Meta.

Scott is a Democratic Socialist, according to a report by Axios, and is certainly living up to the “socialist” part of his title with the new 5% tax.

His proposal would tax private companies where employees earn more than $125,000 per year, with the new tax applying to salaries above that threshold. Any company with more than 50 employees, a payroll in excess of $7 million, and gross receipts over $5 million will also be taxed.

The tax would raise $5.5 billion over two years, according to Komo News.

RELATED: The price tag on Mark Zuckerberg’s bid for ‘superintelligence’ will blow your mind. Will the product?

Photographer: Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The tax reportedly comes in direct response to money lost from the Republicans’ H.R.1, aka the Big Beautiful Bill Act, which claimed from the outset that it would “reduces taxes.”

Scott is, in effect, proving the bill to be true with his proposal.

“The way for Washingtonians to fight back is to build a bolder Washington: a Washington that defends the programs that people depend on, while the other Washington defunds them,” he said, according to the Olympian.

The bill would take effect on July 1, 2026.

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Sanctuary politicians have apparently been ignoring orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement for months, effectively allowing criminal illegal aliens to be released back onto the streets — and the Department of Homeland Security is not happy about it.

The DHS reported on Monday in a press release that Democrat politicians have repeatedly defied ICE by ignoring arrest detainers.

‘We are calling on Governor Pritzker and his administration to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in Illinois’ custody.’

The press release singled out Illinois and Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, one of the most vocal political opponents of ICE operations under President Trump.

The press release stated that 1,768 criminal illegal aliens have been released in Illinois alone since January 20, 2025.

RELATED: Sec. Noem fires back after Gov. Pritzker begs to pause ICE and CBP operations for Halloween

Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The crimes committed by these illegal aliens include homicide, assault, burglary, robbery, dangerous drug offenses, weapons offenses, and sexual offenses, according to the press release.

There are currently 4,015 aliens in Illinois’ custody, the majority of whom have committed crimes such as those listed above.

“Governor Pritzker and his fellow Illinois sanctuary politicians are releasing murderers, pedophiles, and kidnappers back into our neighborhoods and putting American lives at risk,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

“We are calling on Governor Pritzker and his administration to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in Illinois’ custody,” McLaughlin continued. “It is common sense. Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans.”

In September, ICE demanded that leaders in sanctuary states like California, New York, and Illinois cooperate with the federal agency to keep criminals off the streets.

ICE also warned these states that it would “engage with the Department of Justice and other federal partners to pursue all appropriate measures to end their inadvisable and irresponsible obstruction of the apprehension and removal of criminal illegal aliens.”

Previously, Illinois and New York sent ICE responses that “underscored their refusal to honor ICE detainers.” California did not respond, according to ICE.

According to its website, ICE issues immigration detainers to law enforcement to ask them to hold suspects for up to 48 hours longer than their scheduled release.

ICE issues these arrest detainers after it has already established probable cause that suspects are removable, usually on account of convictions for other crimes such as homicide, sexual assault, burglaries and robberies, and drug and human trafficking.

ICE makes it clear that honoring arrest detainers helps guarantee safety for both the public and law enforcement officers: “When jails, prisons, or other confinement facilities agree to honor immigration detainers, ICE officers can take custody of removable aliens in a safe, controlled environment instead of at-large in the community.”

DHS’ Monday press release included nine mug shots of the “worst of the worst” criminals who had previously been released in Illinois after their detainer requests were ignored by state officials.

The criminal illegal aliens either are now in ICE custody or have been removed from the United States.

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Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has some interesting ideas on how law enforcement should be utilized.

Crockett was speaking on the “Grounded” podcast when she was asked about the presence of military vehicles in cities like Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

‘They are not trained to deal with civilians in that way.’

Host Jon Tester wanted to hear Crockett’s thoughts, asking the congresswoman if she thought it was good or bad to have military presence in those cities.

“I think it’s terrible,” the politician replied. “First of all, you know, I’m like, how is it that we have a government that is hostile towards its people? Because that’s what it is. I mean, we are in the midst of a hostile government takeover, and it is our government that is, like, bringing the hostility.”

Crockett prefaced her remarks, made in September but now going viral, by saying that she would need to go into “legal mode” to explain how agencies like ICE and the United States Armed Forces are being misused by the Trump administration.

It was during that portion of her statements that Crockett made the odd claim about how local law enforcement is supposed to operate:

“I want to be clear that, like, law enforcement isn’t to prevent crime. Law enforcement solves crime. OK? That is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to solve crimes, not necessarily, um, prevent them from happening per se.”

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett claims Republicans ‘LOVE’ her

In addition to those views, Crockett claimed she does not believe the “average person” understands the different types of training that various law enforcement or military agencies undergo.

“So literally ICE is not trained to go out and do what they’re doing,” the 44-year-old stated.

However, not only do ICE’s Enforcement and Removal operations teams train for “arrest, detention, and removal of aliens,” but the American Immigration Lawyers Association even called ICE agents “among the most highly trained federal law enforcement officers in the United States” in 2018.

Moreover, the St. Louis native said she worried about the U.S. military’s “readiness” due to the Trump administration “not doing smart things” with its allies. She then cited “different training” and different missions as being the reasons why she believes ICE and the National Guard are being misused by Trump.

RELATED: Far-left Democrat spent thousands on luxury travel, including limousines and posh hotels, filings show

“Local law enforcement, whether it’s your local municipal police, your sheriff’s deputies, your state troopers, they are trained completely differently. They are the ones that are trained in investigatory work. They are the ones that are trained on how to testify in trial, how to pull a case together. Same thing with, like, your FBI, your DEA, and that kind of stuff,” Crockett went on.

The congresswoman then boldly claimed that those who signed up for the military do not have the training to deal with civilians.

“We are taking those that signed up for the service in whatever capacity, and we are now putting them on the streets and having them with guns. They are not trained to deal with civilians in that way. That is not what they are trained to do. Like, when you sign up for any military, you are a trained killer. You are trained for war, not for going and policing our streets. All right?”

Not only are civilian interactions common practice in training operations for U.S. military members, per official training documents, but the District of Columbia National Guard specifically trained for civilian interactions as recently as May 2024 under the Joe Biden administration.

The training noted the D.C. National Guard as having a long history of supporting operations in D.C. and that the training would help the entity “continue to support local law enforcement agencies in the metropolitan area.”

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President Donald Trump’s work to dismantle the administrative state has reached a tipping point that could have major implications for the future. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments that will determine President Trump’s firing power at federal agencies, specifically at the Federal Trade Commission.

On Monday, the court will hear arguments that will challenge a 90-year-old precedent from Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

A Supreme Court decision in President Trump’s favor could rewrite the bounds of presidential power over the administrative state.

The case before the court came after President Trump fired Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter over email in March. Trump did not cite any legal reasoning for Slaughter’s firing, even though Humphrey’s Executor states that an FTC commissioner may be fired only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

RELATED: Trump fires Biden Fed governor for possible ‘criminal conduct’ — but Lisa Cook is desperate to cling to power

Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images

Trump has also fired employees at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Trump has been challenged on other high-profile firings in recent months, including those of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and a copyright official at the Library of Congress, Shira Perlmutter. They have both successfully avoided losing their positions thus far.

Though the FTC is likely to be treated differently because of the precedent, a Supreme Court decision in President Trump’s favor could rewrite the bounds of presidential power over the administrative state.

The court currently has a 6-3 conservative majority. Three of the justices were appointed during Trump’s first term.

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President Donald Trump torched Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia on social media after her highly anticipated “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday.

For years, Greene was Trump’s biggest cheerleader in Congress, coming to bat for the president on nearly every political cause. Their unique alliance crumbled in November after Trump made a shocking move to withdraw his endorsement of Greene.

‘Her new views are those of a very dumb person.’

Greene maintained that the split was due to her demand for the unconditional release of the Epstein files, while other reports suggest she wanted to pursue higher office and Trump discouraged her from doing so, leaving the Georgia Republican jaded. Greene promptly announced that she was resigning from Congress and stepping down in January.

While Trump continues to harshly criticize his former ally, Greene has been making the rounds in various outlets with which she has been combative in the past. Her appearance on “60 Minutes” on CBS garnered even more backlash from Trump and his supporters.

RELATED: ‘Do I have to stay until I’m assassinated?’ Marjorie Taylor Greene lashes out over calls to finish her term

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

During the interview with host Lesley Stahl, Greene remarked on the increase in death threats against her and her family, saying they were “directly fueled by President Trump.”

Trump said the real reason Greene and the MAGA movement parted ways was because she was “jilted.”

“Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas are, NOW, really BAD – She sort of reminds me of a Rotten Apple!” Trump wrote in a Monday Truth Social post. “Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person.”

Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it quits after ‘traitor’ branding by Trump

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Trump described Greene as “a very poorly prepared Traitor, who in her confusion made many really stupid statements” to Stahl.

Trump went on to criticize the new ownership of the “60 Minutes” program and to demand an apology from “Trump hating” Stahl for her contentious interview with him during his first term, just before the 2020 presidential election.

“Stahl … still owes me an apology from when she attacked me on the show (with serious conviction!), that Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP FROM HELL was produced by Russia, not Hunter himself (TOTALLY PROVEN WRONG!),” Trump wrote.

“My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor,” Trump continued, referring to Greene, “it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air.”

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