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Luke Goldstein is a reporter with the Lever. He is an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC, who was most recently a writing fellow at the American Prospect and was with the Open Markets Institute before that.
The Trump administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued guidance yesterday prohibiting states from wiping medical debt from consumers’ credit ratings. The move could exacerbate the crippling effects of skyrocketing medical costs.
Following an industry trend, fast-food chain Shake Shack recently updated its terms of use agreement to include a binding arbitration agreement and class-action waiver denying customers their legal right to take the company to court.
After years of pushing sensationalized claims about foreign threats, Silicon Valley’s military start-ups are set to score billions in funding for drones and AI-powered weapons in the nearly $1 trillion defense budget.
The airline industry is lobbying to weaken a new safety rule that would force airlines to address serious flaws in potentially thousands of Boeing planes. They have industry-connected allies in the Trump administration who could help them get their way.
Most major corporations — from airlines to social media platforms — now aspire to become unregulated banks. Bankification today accounts for the highest profit margins in the US economy, crippling productive capacity and setting the stage for the next crash.
Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is asking corporations to identify state laws that “burden industry.” Corporate lobbies are responding to the request with wish lists of consumer protection laws they want the administration to preempt.
Homebuilding giant Lennar has a large stockpile of houses it can’t sell at current asking prices. Instead of lowering home prices for the public, the company has launched an e-marketplace catering to wealthy investors and corporate landlords.
Epic Systems, the largest electronic health records company in the US, is pushing users of its ubiquitous online health portal MyChart to sign away their rights to sue the company if it mishandles their sensitive information.
Live entertainment giant Ticketmaster recently inserted language into its user agreements that steers customer lawsuits into a corporate-friendly private justice system, just months after a federal judge ruled its use of such processes was illegal.
As regulators crack down on noncompete agreements that bar workers from finding better jobs, employees across the country are increasingly bound by a new form of “stay-or-pay” contract that indebts them to their bosses.
Led by Delta, many airlines are now working with AI firms to expand the industry’s use of big data for price setting. Using new surveillance techniques, these firms exploit consumer privacy to set “personalized” prices to jack up fares.
A secret lobbying effort by Hewlett Packard Enterprise has pushed Donald Trump’s Justice Department to reverse course on the tech giant’s $14 billion megamerger and led to the ouster of top department prosecutors.
The Department of Justice keeps changing its story about documents related to the politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, offering contradictory reasons for refusing to release the files.
Congressional Republicans have delivered on the pro-Israel organization AIPAC’s wish list in the latest military spending bill, including tens of millions of dollars a year for the Israeli military to develop AI technologies.
Lawmakers have inserted a line into Donald Trump’s new budget bill that would reward Wall Street firms with billions of dollars in new tax breaks when they load up companies with debt and proceed with pay cuts, factory closures, and layoffs.
Despite their reservations about the impacts of crypto on consumers and the financial system, Democratic Party operatives and crypto industry advocates are secretly coordinating to push Democratic senators to back the pro-crypto GENIUS Act.
The US Senate is poised to pass a financial deregulation bill ensuring that when a bank goes out of business, the savings of cryptocurrency owners would be made whole before those of other bank customers.
Mining was banned in northeastern Minnesota due to the irreversible damage it would do to the state’s fresh water. A last-minute provision to the Republican budget bill will allow a Chilean magnate with ties to the Trump family to mine the protected lands.
To the dismay of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the law currently prevents Big Tech companies from opening banks. But if Congress passes the GENIUS Act, tech firms may start issuing private currencies and forcing us to use them.
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.