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Katya Schwenk is a reporter with the Lever based in Phoenix, Arizona.
As Elon Musk and DOGE take a sledgehammer to federal agencies, corporate interests are mounting a coordinated effort to dismantle state-level rules and regulations, from environmental and consumer protections to worker safeguards.
As Donald Trump works to undermine the Social Security Administration, his ultrarich Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, was just approved for a giant tax break on a $484 million capital gains sale.
The GOP’s budget reconciliation bill includes a ban on state-level artificial intelligence regulations that could undermine efforts in several states to rein in pricing consultants like RealPage, a company that helps landlords use AI to “optimize” rent hikes.
An aviation industry clearinghouse is collecting data on air travelers from billions of flights — and selling it to Trump’s immigration enforcers.
As Donald Trump tries to bar almost all refugees from entering the US, his administration wants to use federal funds reserved for at-risk refugee populations to facilitate an influx of white South Africans.
Donald Trump’s nominee to regulate retirement savings, Daniel Aronowitz, wants to protect employers and retirement fund managers from lawsuits alleging they fleeced retirees with exorbitant fees — a rule change his company could profit from.
Bowing to the chemical industry lobby, the Environmental Protection Agency has quietly hid data that mapped out the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities across the US.
“Price optimization” consultants are helping clients capitalize on Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout by using surveillance pricing tools, while Republican FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is reversing efforts to keep them in check.
Private equity firms are increasingly gobbling up the companies that fix planes for commercial airlines, preying on an industry with already weakened oversight and further stoking the fears of aviation safety advocates.
In California, an antitrust lawsuit is arguing that the insurance companies that underwrite bail bonds have for decades illegally colluded to keep bail bond premiums artificially high across the industry.
The new GOP spending bill includes a $485 million budget hike for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That likely means a windfall for the shadowy aviation contractors carrying out ICE’s deportation flights.
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.