Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company’s profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting “the largest tax cuts in American history,” not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.“Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill,” the report states.Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.“Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents,” Unrig Our Economy’s report observes.The report also points out that Bresnahan “owned stock in every single one” of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.“This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk,” the report notes.Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy’s campaign director, said in a statement that “one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks.”“Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report,” said Tal. “Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations.”
California county’s planned America 250 celebration for the Fourth of July ignited backlash after Democrats added equity rules for sponsors and DEI programming, while America's founding is sidelined.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) blasted Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, as the “king of the dirtbags,” highlighting growing tensions within the party after another socialist won a congressional primary in Colorado. After a sweeping win from Melot Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District over Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and […]
Birthright citizenship ruling only a surface level setback, with the court granting president’s multiple power grabsThe symbolic and high profile defeats cannot obscure a more uncomfortable truth.The US supreme court – a vital cog in the US constitutional framers’ vision of an intricate system of checks and balances aimed at reining in an excessively assertive president – has made Donald Trump stronger than ever, and shows little inclination to stop. Continue reading...
The California DMV is moving forward with plans to share driver’s license and state ID data through an outside network, which could help ID illegal immigrants.
Justice Samuel Alito's legal reasoning in a landmark voting rights case was mocked as "braindead" and blamed on his presumed consumption of conservative media.The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law by a 5-4 vote allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the majority opinion finding that grace periods still met statute's requirement that voters make their choice by election day."That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote — as it is in Mississippi," Barrett wrote. "But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward."Alito authored the dissent, where he complained that "majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity," and one particular argument stood out to critics."What the election-day statutes demand is that this authoritative choice be made on election day," Alito wrote. "If ballots received after election day are added to the set of ballots that dictate the election’s outcome, the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated."Many legal experts disagreed and faulted Alito's logic in the case."Alito’s dissent in the vote counting case makes perfect sense if you think of it from the perspective of a braindead Fox News viewer who thinks Dems are 'cheating' when more vote get counted and a Republican lead in the count is erased," argued writer Adam Serwer."Alito sounds a little bit like someone who fell in love with the chatbot here," pondered reporter Ted Mann. "The votes are inanimate. The voters are not.""Alito's argument – that counting ballots after Election Day means 'the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated' – is some of the dumbest reasoning I have ever seen," opined MS NOW's James Downie. "The 'choice' doesn't occur at the time of counting!""If you vote in person at 8:59 PM on Election Day but you ballot isn't counted until one or two days later, the choice was still made on Election Day," noted author and podcaster Doug Gordon. "Why would a ballot postmarked on Election Day but not received until one or two days later be any different? (Answer: Because Alito has brain worms.)""Alito 100% thinks that the 'blue shift' in vote counting represents a dynamic change in the outcome," wagered New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. "To borrow from @kalimurray.bsky.social this is not a smart man.""I would love Alito to explain to me how he thinks elections worked in the 1790s," challenged civil rights lawyer Johsua Erlich.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the Supreme Court of giving President Donald Trump "power unknown even to the English Crown."The 6-3 ruling Monday in Trump v. Slaughter wiped out a 91-year-old precedent that let Congress protect the heads of independent federal agencies from being fired at will."In holding otherwise," Sotomayor wrote in dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, "the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.""Perhaps worst of all, the Court today forgets its place," she continued. "Today's majority, however, decides that it knows better: better than even Hamilton, Story, Webster, Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Rehnquist.""Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions," she wrote. "The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow."The ruling guts the independence of more than two dozen federal agencies — including the bodies that police Wall Street, protect workers, and regulate airwaves. Trump can now fire their leaders for any reason, or no reason at all."In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty," Sotomayor wrote, calling the decision "egregiously wrong."The court issued a separate 5-4 ruling the same day, preserving the Federal Reserve's independence, for now.
