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.
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.
Texas is currently one of 35 states with robust legal protections against SLAPP suits. New Texas resident Elon Musk is banding together with entrenched fossil fuel interests in a campaign to roll these protections back.
The Biden administration barred two fossil fuel executives from taking board seats at Exxon and Chevron after finding they had schemed to fix oil prices. Now Trump wants to let them off the hook — after they donated millions to the GOP this past election.
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.
Stellantis used the Trump administration’s tariffs as an excuse to lay off nearly 1,000 workers. Two weeks later, the automaker announced a $2.26 billion payout to its shareholders.
“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.
Donald Trump’s nominee for Internal Revenue Service director, Billy Long, just had his six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors whose firms are under scrutiny by the IRS for potential tax fraud.
In Florida, the GOP-dominated state legislature is rapidly advancing a suite of bills allowing employers to underpay sub-minimum-wage workers — including children.
Nonprofit hospital chains are buying up billions of dollars’ worth of real estate across the US, dodging property taxes using their charity status.
This week, Delaware passed a bill that would shield tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk from litigation. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, helped write the law.
Large egg farmers as well as Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary are blaming egg shortages and high prices in part on state-level regulations that prohibit crates and cages for chickens. The Department of Agriculture’s own data contradicts this story.
Although on the campaign trail Donald Trump proposed capping credit card interest rates, his administration is withdrawing support for a Colorado state law that would impose such caps.
The Trump administration has issued a blanket ethics waiver to venture capitalist David Sacks, the president’s new special advisor for AI and crypto. The waiver clears Sacks to work on regulatory issues directly related to his financial holdings.
Google is jacking up the monthly price for its cloud-based software. If all users paid that standard increase, it would mean an additional $7.2 billion in monthly revenue for the company.