Julia Rock is a reporter for the Lever.
Instead of pushing a promised public health care option or expanding Medicare or any of the other health reforms the United States desperately needs, Joe Biden’s health care reform draws from proposals from for-profit health insurance companies.
Corporate Democrats are backing off a chance to push for a new round of $2,000 survival checks. And some of them are even floating tax breaks for the wealthy instead. We should rally against this backsliding.
New York legislators are requesting a review of pension investments flowing to Wall Street firms whose executives funded groups that boosted the Republicans who tried to overturn the election.
Corporations are being lauded for halting PAC donations to the Republicans after the Capitol riot — but they are not shutting down the $500 million pool of cash that bankrolled authoritarian extremists.
Corporate-backed conservative groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and companies like Chevron have all issued statements decrying Wednesday’s occupation of the Capitol — without acknowledging the role they played in helping elect the politicians who egged on and fueled the attempt to overturn the presidential election.
Companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup that paid speaking fees to Joe Biden’s Treasury and State nominees also have business before the departments they are set to run — potentially a serious conflict of interest.
In a major sop to business interests, a Senate proposal would allow corporations to avoid COVID-related lawsuits from workers and patients. Corporate immunity is the last thing we need.
The stimulus bill currently under consideration in Congress does not include direct payments to the millions of workers struggling to survive. That’s an outrage — and, as a further slap in the face, the legislation subsidizes defense contractors.
Trump regulators are trying to pull off a last-minute scheme to undermine a rule designed to prevent fossil fuel companies from bribing government officials. It’s a fitting final act for a corrupt administration that’s set back the fight against climate change by decades.
As economic trouble mounts, Trump officials are letting Wall Street banks pay out billions in dividends to shareholders. Bankers are taking self-serving risks with the world economy, because they know that if anything goes wrong, they’ll be bailed out.
Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo has presided over one of the deadliest COVID outbreaks in the country — as she also helped protect nursing home corporations from accountability. Now she may be picked for Joe Biden’s top health care job.
A group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers just joined together to shield their corporate donors from lawsuits when they kill more workers. If this legislation passes, corporations won’t be held to account for their criminal actions during coronavirus.
Comcast received $1 billion in government subsidies. But it’s still imposing new data fees on customers reliant on the internet due to COVID. Thanks to a massive lobbying effort and ties to Joe Biden, the telecom giant might very well get away with it.
Joe Biden’s first national security hires have been consulting for defense contractors or working for industry-funded think tanks. The picks are of a piece with Biden’s entire career of backing US imperialism rather than bucking it.
Tucker Carlson pitches himself as a tribune of the people. But new documents reveal that he and other media elites get paid top dollar to speak at fancy conferences hosted by private equity firms, some of the most rapacious, anti-worker actors in American capitalism.
Joe Biden says confronting climate change is one of his top priorities. But today, he appointed as his liaison to the climate movement a congressman who has raked in big money from the fossil fuel industry while voting to help oil and gas companies.
Never Trumpers are pushing the narrative that their efforts, like the Lincoln Project, played a key role in securing Joe Biden’s victory. All you have to do is take a cursory glance at the numbers to see that isn’t true at all.
Donald Trump’s Labor Department just issued a rule freezing farmworkers’ wages, even as his administration predicts a big increase in agribusiness profits. It’s a parting reminder that, for all its populist bluster, the Trump administration has been an enemy of working people.
There’s still much we don’t know, but we can take some key lessons from the elections last night: Democrats’ weak economic message helped Trump, the Lincoln Project embarrassed itself, a ton of grassroots money was set on fire, Americans don’t love Obamacare, and the Democratic courts’ strategy failed.
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are trying to stop ballots from being counted by flooding the courts with lawsuits and sowing doubts about mail-in ballots. We can’t let them steal this election.