When a city starts taxing speech, freedom itself is on trial. Jeff Dornik joins guest host John Hayward of Breitbart News on The Alan Nathan Show to expose Chicago’s shocking new plan to tax social media platforms 50 cents per user per month. Framed as a “budget fix,” this move reveals a far darker intention—to regulate communication, silence dissent, and monetize control. As governments grow desperate for revenue and power, their reach into digital life becomes the next frontier of tyranny. This conversation exposes how taxation is being weaponized against truth and freedom online.
Tune into The Jeff Dornik Show LIVE every Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm ET. Subscribe on Rumble and never miss a show. https://rumble.com/c/jeffdornik
Subscribe to my Pickax account today and get my hard-hitting, uncensored email newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. https://pickax.com/jeffdornik
Big Tech is silencing truth while farming your data to feed the machine. That’s why I built Pickax… a free speech platform that puts power back in your hands and your voice beyond their reach. Sign up today: https://pickax.com/?referralCode=y7wxvwq&refSource=copy
Tune into The Jeff Dornik Show LIVE every Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm ET. Subscribe on Rumble and never miss a show. https://rumble.com/c/jeffdornik
Subscribe to my Pickax account today and get my hard-hitting, uncensored email newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. https://pickax.com/jeffdornik
Big Tech is silencing truth while farming your data to feed the machine. That’s why I built Pickax… a free speech platform that puts power back in your hands and your voice beyond their reach. Sign up today: https://pickax.com/?referralCode=y7wxvwq&refSource=copy
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Back to the Allen Nathan Show. I'm your guest host
today John Heyward, Deputy Nashary editor at breitbarton News. The
City of Chicago is looking at a rather large budget
shortfall one point two billion dollars to be exact, and
part of their plan for coming up with the money
to cover that budget shortfall is to impose a new,
first of its kind, first in the nation, tax on
(00:29):
social media. They're going to try taxing social media somehow
as though it were cigarettes. Basically, they compared it to
taxing nicotine, and they think they can raise some thirty
million dollars with this plan, even though critics say it
is blatantly unconstitutional and will never survive a legal challenge. Here,
what's to talk about it is Jeff Dornick, founder and
CEO of Pickaxe, the groundbreaking social media platform built on
(00:52):
the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of reach,
and author of the book Following the Leader. Welcome to
the Allen Nathan Show.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, good morning.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
How's it going doing well? My first blush at looking
at this is that it sounds like crazy talk. I
can't believe anybody in Chicago thinks they can legally do
this to tax social media platforms, especially in the highly
discriminatory way that they're talking about doing it with exemptions
for smaller platforms they have less than one hundred thousand users,
and then they're going to start picking and choosing who
(01:22):
pays a tax and who doesn't. This is going to
get thrown out of court like a used piece of
tissue paper, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, I would assume so, But I think I don't
think that they really care whether it gets thrown out
or not, because because to them, it's all about, you know,
positioning themselves as taking on the big tech billionaire oligarchs.
Whether or not they actually you know, will see anything
come to fruition or not is an entirely different manner.
But then they can go back to the base. They
can fund raise, and then they can say, oh, the
(01:48):
rigged courts are working against us, they're fighting against you,
you know, donate to our campaign and then that way
we'll continue to fight on your behalf against all these
people that are taking your money. So that's really what
all of this is, in my opinion, is just them
jogging for position in order to fundraise to their insane
leftist base.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Now the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, when he was
trying to justify the tax, he said, just like we
tax other addictive vices that are bad for our health,
like nicotine and tobacco, it is far past time to
tax social media companies the same way. Besides the legal
challenge that would be presented by this, that is a
heck of a leap in logic and reasoning to say
that social media is comparable to nicotine. You know that
(02:30):
it's it's an objectively bad or unhealthy thing like that.
That is a huge stretch.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, it's definitely a stretch. And also on when you're
dealing with something like nicotine and tobacco, that's not a
constitutional right to freedom of speech is a constitutional right,
and so adding a tax onto onto a constitutional right
of being able to free have free discourse, I think
would be easily thrown out in a court of laws
(02:57):
simply because you know, that would be adding a restriction.
You know, if you look at the First Amendment, they
had two main principles when it came to free speech.
It was freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Both of those were individual rights. Not necessarily, we always
assume that freedom of the press is for you know,
licensed credential journalists and things like that, And it was
really your ability to write out your grievances on a
(03:18):
piece of paper, go down to your local printing press,
print out pamphlets, and then distribute it freely without restriction.
If and I think the founding father would say, like, look,
if a government was trying to impose a tax on
those pamphlets, that would be a restriction on your freedom
of the press, and that would be the same thing
applicable here.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Out of curiosity, where would Pickax fall into this. It's
one hundred thousand users, I think in Chicago that gets
you an exemption. Do you think you have one hundred
thousand users over there? Would you be affected by this tax?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah? Well, so technically speaking, the tax would be for
one hundred the firste hundred thousand users would be exempt,
but they're only counting people that are in that district,
so it's not across the entire country. It just be
cargo residents. So you know, we would definitely not fall
under under those that kind of a tax or anything
like that. But even even if we did, we would
(04:08):
we would definitely fight that in a court for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Another dubious assumption of plans like this is that you
can drop taxes like this on companies and they'll just
smile and pay it without making any attempt to recoup
it in any way. And if you wrap it up
taxes on social media companies, sooner or later they're going
to pass those taxes onto end users. They're going to
get to the point where you can't have this service
for free anymore, because we can't provide it for free anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Right, there's definitely that problem in you know, I live
out here in communist California, and we're dealing with a
lot of craziness with like Gavin Newsome and all that,
adding regulations onto social media platforms and all that. And
the problem that you face is that you have these
these companies and these tech companies that you know have
users across the entire country, and then you have like
one state that that tries to basically limit or restrict
(04:54):
free speech, or one city in this case when it
comes to like Chicago, and you know it will have
implications far and wide because as a company, it would
be extremely difficult. You'd have to hire so many different
people in order to oversee all the different kinds of
legislation in Chicago versus this city, versus this county versus
the state. So what they'll do is they will just
look at the lowest common denominator past, you know, past
(05:16):
regulations within the company or in order to just streamline
things and make things easy. So then what ends up
happening is legislations passed in these specific localities will have
nationwide impact.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
It seems like the political class entire life now has
been trying to figure out ways to tax online activity.
Ever since that first became a thing, there have been
wars waged in politics over how we can squeeze more
tax out of online resources and how we can limit
it and censor it and prevent people's exposure to ideas
the political class doesn't like. Seems like that's just a
never ending battle. And this is the latest chapter in
(05:51):
watching politicians look at that sea of online money and say,
how do I get my fingers on some of that loot?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Well? Yeah, And if you notice, dude, these these threats
of of taxes didn't come before Elon bought X. And
that that's the reality of it is that is that
when Elon bought X, he kind of it was kind
of a middle finger to the establishment and to the
government who was using these social media platforms in order
to drastically censor speech that they didn't like and so
(06:18):
and so. You know, up until that point, it was like, yeah,
we'll let these guys give a pass because guess what,
they're restricting the speech that we want. That's perfectly fine.
But now you're starting to see these companies are realizing, oh, well,
that's not what the public wants, that's not what the
Trump administration wants. So now they're all all claiming to
be free speech platforms are heading in that direction. And
then so then now the Democrat the Democrats are using
taxes as a weapon to try to get them back
(06:39):
under their control. Uh, because they're they're going road, because
they realize that if they want government contracts, they want
they want to do business with the federal government, then
they have to play with Trump. And so I think
that this is just you know, they're using taxes to
be weaponized against these tech companies to try to bring
them back onto the fold of Democrat control. And that
(06:59):
because I think they're realize that they're losing a grip
open them.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Something tells me that if we establish the precedent that
a city can place a tax on social media companies
that are located in it, it wouldn't be very long
before somebody would say, let's tax people that are spreading disinformation,
or let's tax people a special tax if they're spreading
bad ideas or hate speech or something, and then off
we would go to the races with more content control taxes.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh yeah, for sure. You know, you know one of
the things we're dealing without out here in California, and
luckily it was challenged and I believable shut down. It
might be under appeal. I'm not sure, Like California, try
to make it to where social media platforms you would
have to keep track of misinformation on your side. Then
the final what misinformation is, but you would have to
keep track of it. You would have to submit your
protocols to the government, and then California would have to
(07:44):
approve of your decisions.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
That's something we need to talk about more. Whenever new
tax ideas are floated, a lot of enforcement, a lot
of regulation, auditing, you have to prove you're paying the
tax right. There's just a lot of bureaucratic room that
has created. Whenever you talk about taxing something, and that's
that's why is Reagan once said, the power to tax
is the power to destroy. Jeff Dornick, founder and CEO
of Pickaxe, host of The Jeff Dornick Show, and author
(08:08):
of the book Following the Leader. Thanks for joining us.
I'm John Hayward, Deputy National Security editor for Breitbart News,
sitting in for Allen today. Thanks for joining us on
this hour of The Allan Nathan Show.
Back to the Allen Nathan Show. I'm your guest host
today John Heyward, Deputy Nashary editor at breitbarton News. The
City of Chicago is looking at a rather large budget
shortfall one point two billion dollars to be exact, and
part of their plan for coming up with the money
to cover that budget shortfall is to impose a new,
first of its kind, first in the nation, tax on
(00:29):
social media. They're going to try taxing social media somehow
as though it were cigarettes. Basically, they compared it to
taxing nicotine, and they think they can raise some thirty
million dollars with this plan, even though critics say it
is blatantly unconstitutional and will never survive a legal challenge. Here,
what's to talk about it is Jeff Dornick, founder and
CEO of Pickaxe, the groundbreaking social media platform built on
(00:52):
the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of reach,
and author of the book Following the Leader. Welcome to
the Allen Nathan Show.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, good morning.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
How's it going doing well? My first blush at looking
at this is that it sounds like crazy talk. I
can't believe anybody in Chicago thinks they can legally do
this to tax social media platforms, especially in the highly
discriminatory way that they're talking about doing it with exemptions
for smaller platforms they have less than one hundred thousand users,
and then they're going to start picking and choosing who
(01:22):
pays a tax and who doesn't. This is going to
get thrown out of court like a used piece of
tissue paper, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, I would assume so, But I think I don't
think that they really care whether it gets thrown out
or not, because because to them, it's all about, you know,
positioning themselves as taking on the big tech billionaire oligarchs.
Whether or not they actually you know, will see anything
come to fruition or not is an entirely different manner.
But then they can go back to the base. They
can fund raise, and then they can say, oh, the
(01:48):
rigged courts are working against us, they're fighting against you,
you know, donate to our campaign and then that way
we'll continue to fight on your behalf against all these
people that are taking your money. So that's really what
all of this is, in my opinion, is just them
jogging for position in order to fundraise to their insane
leftist base.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Now the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, when he was
trying to justify the tax, he said, just like we
tax other addictive vices that are bad for our health,
like nicotine and tobacco, it is far past time to
tax social media companies the same way. Besides the legal
challenge that would be presented by this, that is a
heck of a leap in logic and reasoning to say
that social media is comparable to nicotine. You know that
(02:30):
it's it's an objectively bad or unhealthy thing like that.
That is a huge stretch.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, it's definitely a stretch. And also on when you're
dealing with something like nicotine and tobacco, that's not a
constitutional right to freedom of speech is a constitutional right,
and so adding a tax onto onto a constitutional right
of being able to free have free discourse, I think
would be easily thrown out in a court of laws
(02:57):
simply because you know, that would be adding a restriction.
You know, if you look at the First Amendment, they
had two main principles when it came to free speech.
It was freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Both of those were individual rights. Not necessarily, we always
assume that freedom of the press is for you know,
licensed credential journalists and things like that, And it was
really your ability to write out your grievances on a
(03:18):
piece of paper, go down to your local printing press,
print out pamphlets, and then distribute it freely without restriction.
If and I think the founding father would say, like, look,
if a government was trying to impose a tax on
those pamphlets, that would be a restriction on your freedom
of the press, and that would be the same thing
applicable here.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Out of curiosity, where would Pickax fall into this. It's
one hundred thousand users, I think in Chicago that gets
you an exemption. Do you think you have one hundred
thousand users over there? Would you be affected by this tax?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah? Well, so technically speaking, the tax would be for
one hundred the firste hundred thousand users would be exempt,
but they're only counting people that are in that district,
so it's not across the entire country. It just be
cargo residents. So you know, we would definitely not fall
under under those that kind of a tax or anything
like that. But even even if we did, we would
(04:08):
we would definitely fight that in a court for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Another dubious assumption of plans like this is that you
can drop taxes like this on companies and they'll just
smile and pay it without making any attempt to recoup
it in any way. And if you wrap it up
taxes on social media companies, sooner or later they're going
to pass those taxes onto end users. They're going to
get to the point where you can't have this service
for free anymore, because we can't provide it for free anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Right, there's definitely that problem in you know, I live
out here in communist California, and we're dealing with a
lot of craziness with like Gavin Newsome and all that,
adding regulations onto social media platforms and all that. And
the problem that you face is that you have these
these companies and these tech companies that you know have
users across the entire country, and then you have like
one state that that tries to basically limit or restrict
(04:54):
free speech, or one city in this case when it
comes to like Chicago, and you know it will have
implications far and wide because as a company, it would
be extremely difficult. You'd have to hire so many different
people in order to oversee all the different kinds of
legislation in Chicago versus this city, versus this county versus
the state. So what they'll do is they will just
look at the lowest common denominator past, you know, past
(05:16):
regulations within the company or in order to just streamline
things and make things easy. So then what ends up
happening is legislations passed in these specific localities will have
nationwide impact.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
It seems like the political class entire life now has
been trying to figure out ways to tax online activity.
Ever since that first became a thing, there have been
wars waged in politics over how we can squeeze more
tax out of online resources and how we can limit
it and censor it and prevent people's exposure to ideas
the political class doesn't like. Seems like that's just a
never ending battle. And this is the latest chapter in
(05:51):
watching politicians look at that sea of online money and say,
how do I get my fingers on some of that loot?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Well? Yeah, And if you notice, dude, these these threats
of of taxes didn't come before Elon bought X. And
that that's the reality of it is that is that
when Elon bought X, he kind of it was kind
of a middle finger to the establishment and to the
government who was using these social media platforms in order
to drastically censor speech that they didn't like and so
(06:18):
and so. You know, up until that point, it was like, yeah,
we'll let these guys give a pass because guess what,
they're restricting the speech that we want. That's perfectly fine.
But now you're starting to see these companies are realizing, oh, well,
that's not what the public wants, that's not what the
Trump administration wants. So now they're all all claiming to
be free speech platforms are heading in that direction. And
then so then now the Democrat the Democrats are using
taxes as a weapon to try to get them back
(06:39):
under their control. Uh, because they're they're going road, because
they realize that if they want government contracts, they want
they want to do business with the federal government, then
they have to play with Trump. And so I think
that this is just you know, they're using taxes to
be weaponized against these tech companies to try to bring
them back onto the fold of Democrat control. And that
(06:59):
because I think they're realize that they're losing a grip
open them.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Something tells me that if we establish the precedent that
a city can place a tax on social media companies
that are located in it, it wouldn't be very long
before somebody would say, let's tax people that are spreading disinformation,
or let's tax people a special tax if they're spreading
bad ideas or hate speech or something, and then off
we would go to the races with more content control taxes.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh yeah, for sure. You know, you know one of
the things we're dealing without out here in California, and
luckily it was challenged and I believable shut down. It
might be under appeal. I'm not sure, Like California, try
to make it to where social media platforms you would
have to keep track of misinformation on your side. Then
the final what misinformation is, but you would have to
keep track of it. You would have to submit your
protocols to the government, and then California would have to
(07:44):
approve of your decisions.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
That's something we need to talk about more. Whenever new
tax ideas are floated, a lot of enforcement, a lot
of regulation, auditing, you have to prove you're paying the
tax right. There's just a lot of bureaucratic room that
has created. Whenever you talk about taxing something, and that's
that's why is Reagan once said, the power to tax
is the power to destroy. Jeff Dornick, founder and CEO
of Pickaxe, host of The Jeff Dornick Show, and author
(08:08):
of the book Following the Leader. Thanks for joining us.
I'm John Hayward, Deputy National Security editor for Breitbart News,
sitting in for Allen today. Thanks for joining us on
this hour of The Allan Nathan Show.
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