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.”
Trump v. Barbara may ultimately come to be remembered not as the final word on birthplace citizenship but as another constitutional detour waiting to be corrected.
The president made $2.2bn last year, with plenty of help from his own political decisions. This is called corruption, folksPeople in the US: share your views on Trump’s earnings in his second termIn financial disclosures released on Tuesday, Trump reported earning more than $1bn last year from his several cryptocurrency ventures.All told – including other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets – Trump made at least $2.2bn last year, as opposed to the roughly $622m his businesses raked in in 2024, before he returned to the presidency. Continue reading...
Despite a deadly heatwave sweeping through Europe, the US president’s ineptness has created reason for optimism on the climate crisisSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereTwo real-life climate-themed movies are playing in parallel across the globe. They are about the world today, but they are also a snapshot of the future. The first is a slow-building horror story; the second, a feelgood summer hit. Both are worth watching.Horror films are suddenly box-office gold, so let’s start there. The World Health Organisation says the extreme, record-breaking heatwave blanketing Europe has killed more than 1,300 people. But everyone knows that number will end up a dramatic understatement. Continue reading...
The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship this week. The Times said the decision "capped a more than decade-long effort by Mr. Trump to use the issue as a political tool." A relief, to be sure, but no cause for celebration. A plain reading of the 14th Amendment would bring anyone to the same decision. The court was split, however, with some justices unable to resist the temptation to dehumanize immigrants by calling them "foreign birth tourists." The majority didn't check the president, though that's how most people will see it. A more accurate interpretation would be that it encouraged him, or some future authoritarian, to try again. Change a few things, including who's on the court, and a plain reading of the 14th Amendment won't matter anymore. All it would take to destroy equal citizenship would be five rogue justices pretending that history didn't happen and words don't have meaning.The high court can't be allowed to continue in its present form, not when it profanes the Constitution, perverts the rule of law, and comes within a hair of transforming America into de jure apartheid state. It has already legalized corruption. It has already gutted the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday, it said that the US Congress (meaning we, the people) has no rights which a Republican president is bound to respect. All things being equal, it's only a matter of time before the current court finds a way to turn "white makes right" into law. The Republican won't stop it. Will the Democrats?I can't say I'm encouraged after reading Dana Milbank's latest. A former Post columnist who now writes for NOTUS, Milbank wanted to know if the unitary executive powers amassed by Trump and blessed by this court can be used to launch what he called "a new Progressive Era, in which a Democratic president imposes by executive fiat government run health care and many other ideas liberals have long dreamed about but lacked the votes to enact." Milbank interviewed "veterans of previous Democratic administrations and liberal policy wonks" to ask "what would it look like if the next Democratic president wielded power the way Trump does?" The answer, Milbank said, is like "an embryonic Project 2029," though no one called it that. "The advocacy arms of the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for American Progress and other influential groups on the left are already assembling lists of ways a Democratic president could use the breathtaking executive power Trump has seized."On that list are some golden nuggets. They include (and here I'm quoting Milbank almost verbatim): creating a government-run health insurer; seizing patents from drug makers that developed their products with government funding; establishing government-run grocery stores; cutting off funds for businesses that don’t significantly raise their wages; taking “golden shares” in, or other forms of government control over, frontier AI firms, banks, pharmaceutical firms and others; dismantling the Department of Homeland Security; and breaking up media monopolies like Paramount's merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. I'm sampling what is a truly mouth-watering list of progressive objectives, but two aspects stand out from the full list. One is that it's limited to policy. Two is that there's nothing on the list about reforming the Supreme Court. Indeed, there does not seem to be awareness among Milbank's sources that the Supreme Court will strike down every one of these policies if given a chance, no matter how good or popular they might become. Worse, a kind of magical thinking seems to be driving the debate. None other than Neera Tanden suggested what's good for a Republican is good for his Democratic successor in the eyes of the court. "Trump has discovered, or created, powers that no president has ever had that have been sanctioned by a rightwing Supreme Court,” said the head of the Center for American Progress. “Trump has widened the aperture of the powers the federal government has.” That aperture, Tanden said, can be used by a Democrat to "create a kind of new social contract.”Not if John Roberts has anything to say about it. It doesn't matter how much "Trump has widened the aperture of the powers the federal government has." The next Democratic president can't change America without changing the court. It is not politically neutral. It does not serve the law. It is profoundly corrupt. And only a fool would forget that what this court gives, this court can take away. It must be held accountable for its impunity for the law, same as everyone. So expand its number, impose term limits, strip its jurisdiction, throttle its budgets – whatever it takes, because there will be no new dawn as long as there's a rightwing supermajority that's prepared to veto it.
