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Super rich individuals in President Donald Trump’s economic policy team will not have the interests of working-class Americans in mind when they make important decisions, a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness warns. The report examines the net worth of Trump’s economic policy advisers, which includes nominees to lead the Treasury and Commerce Departments and individuals who will serve…
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Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States put on display fascism’s 21st-century iteration — a combination of oligarchic power and ultranationalism unlike anything in recent memory. It was a shameful spectacle for a country that deems itself to be the world’s greatest democracy and the leader of the so-called free world. Trump was flanked by billionaire tech moguls…
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President Donald Trump’s return to the White House comes almost exactly 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates for corporations and billionaires to pour unlimited money into elections. At Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the front row included several of the world’s richest and most powerful men, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai. Their collective net worth is over $1 trillion. For more on money in politics and the legacy of Citizens United, we speak with Brendan Fischer, the deputy executive director at Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. “Democrats and Republicans have both embraced super PACs and embraced the megadonors that fund them, but Trump is taking this to another level,” says Fischer, who notes that about 44% of Trump’s election was funded by just 10 megadonors.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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An Oxfam report published Monday shows that the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires surged three times faster in 2024 than the previous year, rising by $2 trillion as efforts to combat global poverty remained stagnant. The findings come hours before the U.S. is set to inaugurate President-elect Donald Trump, a billionaire whose campaign for a second White House term was backed by the…
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Conveners of the demonstrations have spoken to the variety of Trump’s promised attacks on working people. “Trump is planning to wage war on immigrant families through a brutal mass deportation campaign,” said Claudia De La Cruz, who ran on a socialist platform in her campaign for president against both Harris and Trump, on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “We will stand up and say NO to these attacks. Trump is a billionaire, was elected with the help of other billionaires, and runs the government on behalf of the billionaire class.
The post Over 80 US Cities To Hold Protests On Trump’s Inauguration Day appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Money in U.S. politics is nothing new, but the scale of crass intervention in 2024 by mega-billionaire donors through super PACs was unprecedented. Now, corporate elites are indicating they could exert new levels of direct influence within the incoming Trump administration. Elon Musk, worth over $430 billion, has rightly dominated this story. After spending nearly $300 million toward electing…
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The ultra-rich have donated a record-shattering amount of funds to the 2025 Trump-Vance Presidential Inaugural Committee, with contributions from major corporations like Apple, Chevron, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Google, Pfizer, Microsoft and the pharmaceutical lobby. On Monday, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos will attend Trump’s inauguration with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and a slew of other wealthy individuals tapped to join the new White House administration. “What’s even more concerning than the total amount being spent is the size of the donations that are coming in from corporations and billionaires, all of whom — just about all of whom — want something from the Trump administration,” says Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist, who is pushing for new legislation to regulate donations to the inauguration ceremony. “They are buying influence with the Trump administration, so we’re going to see scandal after scandal follow this inauguration. And reform often comes on the heels of scandal.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In the narrative of mainstream U.S. media, oligarchs — super-rich, politically connected individuals with influence over the state — exist only in post-communist countries and post-colonial societies in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Their power is seen as a foreign, un-American deviation from capitalism. In reality, however, the United States’ own oligarchs are thriving. The U.S.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has flamed Elon Musk and the right over his support of H-1B visas, saying that the program in its current form is another tool for corporations to exploit workers and line billionaires’ pockets with the fruits of the abuse. “Elon Musk is wrong,” Sanders said on social media on Thursday. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and…
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Vivek Ramaswamy is the billionaire Republican politician and failed presidential candidate whom Donald Trump appointed to lead the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), alongside co-chair Elon Musk, the richest oligarch on Earth (who brands himself a libertarian anti-government crusader, while his companies receive billions in US government subsidies).
Ramaswamy sparked something of a civil war among US conservatives with a puerile Twitter post lamenting how US popular culture upholds jocks over nerds.
The post Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy Is A Wall Street Speculator appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Some of the largest, most powerful companies in the United States are racing to finance President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund as they attempt to court favor with the incoming administration, which has promised a further reduction of the corporate tax rate. The Wall Street Journal earlier this week identified “at least 11 companies and trade associations that are backing the…
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The good times — for America’s super wealthy — are now rolling way past good. Our richest have in 2024 enjoyed their best year ever. No other nation’s deepest pockets have watched their fortunes grow as large or as fast.
Elon Musk, of course, perfectly embodies this unprecedented surge in the personal wealth of America’s wealthiest. Musk has entered 2024’s last two weeks with a net worth spilling past $450 billion, nearly half a trillion dollars. Over the last 12 months, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index neatly notes, Musk’s wealth has doubled.
The post Ghastly Glimpses Of America’s Most Rich-People-Friendly Year appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Congressional Democrats on Friday continued to target billionaire Elon Musk and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for forcing a last-minute scramble to prevent a government shutdown shortly before the winter holidays. “I’m ready to stay here through Christmas because we’re not going to let Elon Musk run the government,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.
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Donald Trump is a master of populist demagoguery. He knows exactly when to turn up the volume on his most controversial ideas, and he knows when to dial down again and present an image of “business-as-usual.” In throwing red meat to his base — through committing to mass deportations, promising to eliminate huge swathes of the federal government, and handing the Justice Department over to…
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From coast to coast, school districts are proposing closures, as pandemic-era funds have long since dried up and gentrification has driven families out of increasingly unaffordable neighborhoods. Yet in a time when budget cuts threaten public education nationwide, Seattle organizers have shown that communities can fight back — and win. After initially proposing in spring to close up to 21…
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After the hottest summer in recorded human history — along with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, flooding and wildfires — why isn’t there a greater push for action on climate change? One reason is that big oil, gas and coal companies — and their allies in Congress — block the urgent action that’s required. They do this in part by denying basic climate science, and in many cases…
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For most working Americans, paying their share of the taxes that fund Medicare is an unavoidable fact of life. It’s so automatic for many workers that they may not even realize it takes a bite out of every paycheck. In theory, everyone is required to contribute to the country’s health insurance program for seniors, no matter how poor or rich, from cashiers to CEOs. Not on Wall Street. There…
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In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump suggested that he would fast-track and approve nearly any permit request made to the U.S. government if a person or corporation made a $1 billion “investment” in the treasury. “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits…
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Driven largely by the accumulation of massive wealth by the richest people in the United States, the Swiss wealth manager UBS said Thursday the assets of billionaires around the world more than doubled over the past decade. Between 2015-24, the total wealth of billionaires increased by 121%, from $6.3 trillion to $14 trillion. Meanwhile, the MSCI AC World Index of global equities…
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New Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings from Elon Musk show that he spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars of his own money in order to help Donald Trump win the 2024 election — and provided a significant amount of funding to a political action committee (PAC) whose sole aim was to deceive voters. The bulk of Musk’s spending was for America PAC, his own super PAC that engaged in…
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The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new “government efficiency” commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more. For the first time since Trump announced plans to create…
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In the wake of the reelection of Donald Trump, some of the richest people in the world saw their net worths soar as stock prices rapidly shot up. “What was different about this election was how central billionaires were in the entire political discourse,” says The Lever’s David Sirota, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the outsized role of the super-rich in U.S politics, pointing out that both…
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday selected Susie Wiles, a longtime GOP strategist who has spearheaded the Republican leader’s campaign operations since 2021, to serve as White House chief of staff, saying in a statement that she helped “achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history.” But Trump’s team didn’t mention in its announcement that Wiles worked as a…
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The 10 richest people in the world saw their wealth increase by a record margin just one day after former President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, a sign that already wide wealth disparities will likely grow even wider over the next four years due to Trump’s stated economic goals. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, those 10 individuals saw their wealth rise by up to $64 billion…
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In the wake of the reelection of Donald Trump, some of the richest people in the world saw their net worths soar as stock prices rapidly shot up. “What was different about this election was how central billionaires were in the entire political discourse,” says The Lever's David Sirota, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss the outsized role of the super-rich in U.S politics, pointing out that both Trump and Kamala Harris campaigned heavily with billionaires, including Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. “These people are not giving money simply out of the goodness of their hearts. They want things. They have policy demands,” Sirota says. “The investors, the donors, like billionaires, are looking for a return on their investment.” Sirota, who previously worked as a communications adviser and speechwriter for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, also explains how Elon Musk's influence on Trump’s campaign is a preview of the power he could wield if he ends up appointed to the Trump administration.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.