Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission who were fired earlier this month by President Donald Trump without a specific cause, are suing Donald Trump and FTC leadership over their oustings. The lawsuit sets up a potential showdown regarding presidential authority as it relates to independent agencies. […]
Advertisers Finally Return to X in Effort to Cozy Up to Trump Administration
After Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed its name to X, advertisers left in droves due to the harmful and hateful content that Musk allowed to proliferate on the platform. Nothing has changed about the content—if anything, it’s getting worse—but the brands are coming back, according to Bloomberg, because suddenly their money might purchase them […]
Acting Head of SEC Was Only Commissioner Who Didn’t Vote to Sue Elon Musk
Just before Donald Trump took office in January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly held a vote on whether the agency would sue Elon Musk for alleged violations of securities law related to his purchase of Twitter. According to Reuters, four commissioners—three Democrats and one Republican—voted to move forward with legal action against Musk. […]
IRS Might Soon Share Addresses of Undocumented Taxpayers with ICE
For years, the US Internal Revenue Service has assured undocumented workers that they could file taxes without fear of their information leading to their deportation. It appears the agency will no longer be able to make that promise. According to the Washington Post, the IRS is close to completing a deal with Immigration and Customs […]
Trump’s Treasury Removes Sanctions on Crypto’s Favorite Money Laundering Service
Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency “mixer” designed to make it more difficult to track cryptocurrency transactions, was sanctioned by the Biden administration and made illegal due to its usage in facilitating some significant laundering schemes. But Donald Trump, the crypto president, has brought it back. The United States Treasury Department announced Friday that it will lift […]
Trump Threatens to Defund the NYC Subway
There are few things scarier to the conservative mind than mass transportation in a major metropolitan city. To that end, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is demanding New York City officials provide a list of actions that they will take to reduce crime on the city’s subway system or […]
Amtrak CEO Steps Down as Trump and Musk Threaten to Privatize Company
The latest victim of the Trump administration’s obsession with the appearance of efficiency is the guy who made the trains run on time. Stephen Gardner, the Chief Executive Officer of Amtrak who held the post since 2022, abruptly announced that he would be stepping down from his role Wednesday in the wake of Donald Trump […]
Trump’s FTC Deletes Blogs Critical of Amazon and Microsoft
For a brief period, maybe even just a second, it seemed as though the populism built into the Donald Trump campaign just might preserve the Lina Khan theory of Big Tech regulation at the Federal Trade Commission. Turns out, not so much. Wired first reported that more than 300 blog posts critical of companies like […]
Bill Gates Is Giving Up on Climate Change as Trump Drains the Woke Out of Washington
As if there was any doubt, we can go ahead and officially add climate change to the list of things that we can’t count on billionaires to figure out for us. According to the New York Times, Breakthrough Energy, a joint venture between Bill Gates and a handful of other billionaires who at least nominally […]
How Trump’s Trade War Will Make Your Groceries Even More Expensive
Life these days is expensive. The lingering effects of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and extreme weather shocks throttling the supply chain have conspired to make many everyday necessities much less affordable. Rising food costs in particular have become a source of financial stress for millions of U.S. households. […]