Page 1 of 4 Next
Katya Schwenk is a journalist based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Smart Communications has made a killing from charging prison inmates for emails and phone calls. A messy legal struggle for control of the prison-tech empire is exposing the big business of profiting off mass incarceration.
Donald Trump has announced the new chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Jonathan McKernan, a former banking regulator who’s pushed to approve bank megamergers that harm consumers and that the CFPB has previously fought to prevent.
Donald Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general, officials who provide independent oversight of federal agencies. At least five of them worked at agencies with previous or ongoing investigations of Elon Musk’s business practices.
Amid dangerous droughts, Arizona officials have attempted to address groundwater shortages by limiting development in the Phoenix metro area. Real estate interests have launched a dark money legal campaign to overturn the precedent-setting regulations.
Every year, dozens of accidents occur at high-risk chemical facilities. The chemical industry is pushing Donald Trump’s EPA to delete a public database that at least lets residents know whether a potential disaster could take place in their backyard.
Kyrsten Sinema accepted tens of thousands of dollars from crypto companies while in Congress. Now she’s leveraging those ties as a new adviser to Coinbase, the $73 billion crypto exchange platform.
On day one of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed a blizzard of executive orders. Nearly two-thirds of them came straight from Project 2025, the corporate-backed right-wing policy blueprint that Trump disavowed on the campaign trail.
On Wednesday, Jared Kushner doubled his stake in a financial firm that stands to gain from turbocharging illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory — just before the announcement of a cease-fire deal that Kushner may have helped advise on.
In California, policymakers have long warned that continued development in high-risk wildfire zones was magnifying fires. But real estate interests have lobbied hard against any development restrictions, helping exacerbate the fires raging in Los Angeles now.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s support and Joe Biden’s failure to intervene, private equity is inching ever closer to tapping into the trillions of dollars sitting in Americans’ retirement savings plans.
After decades of consolidation, just four firms now control at least 97% of the $68 billion frozen potato market. A new spate of antitrust lawsuits accuses them of brazen price-fixing.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, with plans for mass deportations and heightened surveillance of undocumented immigrants, the private equity firms that make money from immigration enforcement stand to profit handsomely.
Kamala Harris stayed silent during the election as big Democratic donors attacked chief antitrust regulator Lina Khan — at the same time Khan’s agency launched an investigation into the employer of Harris’s brother-in-law and top advisor.
Now that a Trump White House is on the horizon, private prison companies and corporate interests are anticipating a return on their lobbying efforts to place millions of immigrants under electronic surveillance.
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is a former airline industry lobbyist who has voted to make it harder to impose safety regulations on airlines. The industry is already celebrating his nomination.
Political betting markets, which facilitated more than $3 billion in total election-related bets during this election season, are poised to win big from Trump administration ties and policies.
Wall Street CEOs are courting both the Trump and Harris campaigns. If their effort succeeds, a new rule that makes it easier for customers to change banks will almost certainly be on the chopping block.
Last year, Arizona voters passed a ballot measure that requires dark money groups funding political advertising to reveal the source of their money. Now it has become the target for corporate interests trying to limit campaign finance laws.
Republican senator Mike Lee is blocking the appointment of the head of the Office of Government Ethics until after Inauguration Day. The tactic is meant to give Donald Trump the power to handpick his own ethics overseer if he wins the election.
If Donald Trump wins the election and keeps his promise to appoint Elon Musk to a prominent government position, Musk could reap one of the largest personalized tax breaks in US history — on top of the massive tax cuts Trump wants to give billionaires.