More Perfect Union MPU
---
MAIN WWW More Perfect Union
orig faiz shakir
1 22 26 REALLY GOOD VID ON TRUMP CORRUPT PILGRIM PRIDE JBS
SEE BALLROOM Trump's Corporate Colluders - More Perfect Union
QUID PRO QUO ON TARIFFS, ALLUDE TO PARDONS
-=-=
MPU 10 26 MUSK STARLINK
GRABBED BEAD $ REWRITE RULES 700M$? 98%
-=-=
-=-=
-=-=
boguslaw
10 26
https://www.wired.com › story › us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism
US Law Enforcement Warns of 'Anti-Tech Extremism' as AI ... - WIRED
May 26, 2026As Americans stew over the looming risk of job-stealing AI and data centers in their back yards, the feds are raising the alarm about a new category of threat, documents obtained by WIRED show.
no lnx
in the wake of attacks on CEOs, a nationwide protest movement targeting data centers, and increasing concerns about AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists.
More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.
This new effort follows President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and "anti-capitalism” beliefs. Earlier this month, Trump's counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, released a public counterterrorism strategy claiming that left-wing extremists are one of the three top counterterrorism priorities facing the United States.
Featured Video
Hundreds Of Millions Of iPhones Can Be Hacked With A New Tool Found In The Wild
Taken together, these Trump administration directives have commandeered the domestic surveillance apparatus to surveil and criminalize speech and assembly that challenges the ideology of the White House. A new focus on anti-technology extremism adds an unreported category to already public designations under a presidency that has heavily invested political and material capital in AI and data center proliferation.
Among the documents in the tranche obtained by WIRED is a New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report that warns of widespread upheaval in response to AI adoption. Of particular note is a novel term for what the bureau purports to be an emerging extremism threat.
"The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City," the report reads. The term "anti-tech violent extremism" does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category.
In the same Intelligence Bureau assessment, analysts also describe a novel threat emerging in the wake of the arrest and trial of Ziz Laota, an extreme rationalist who allegedly led a small cultlike group, three members of which have been charged with murder, tied to an obsessive ideology focused on the existential risk posed by AI.
While the Zizian ideology is extremist in nature, a less extreme version of the same fears surrounding the cataclysmic potential of AI are a common concern among AI alignment experts, machine learning engineers, and even frontier AI companies. Nonetheless, the Intelligence Bureau warns that "paranoid views regarding AI" may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zizians' trial, thanks to their "attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI is imminent," and belief that "humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality, or face existential consequences for failing to do so."
The NYPD intel assessment follows the department’s collaboration with the FBI last year to monitor the Signal chat of an activist group coordinating volunteers to monitor public hearings at immigration courts in New York. According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the FBI surveilled activists as part of a broader investigation into "anarchist violent extremist actors," one of the threat categories named in the new counter terrorism strategy.
Created in the wake of 9/11, 80 fusion centers now pockmark the country and serve as go-betweens for federal intelligence agencies and state and local law enforcement. In addition to concerns about portions of the American populace disturbed by the rapid proliferation of AI, these centers are also gathering and circulating “intelligence” about alleged threats to data centers.
A Western Pensylvania fusion center, for example, claimed that "adversarial actors, including state-sponsored entities, criminal groups, and extremists, such as homegrown violent extremists or environmental extremists, may target US data centers" and that "these actors could also exploit the strategic importance of data centers to the US economy, using them for activities like cryptocurrency mining or leveraging third-party entities, such as front companies, to gain access to US data and infrastructure."
A report from the Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center warned that AGAAVEs—anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists—influenced by government-related grievances and conspiracy theories, have engaged in pre-operational planning targeting data centers and other critical infrastructure facilities to disrupt government operations. But in the breakdown of Suspicious Activity Reporting indicators, the intelligence report lists activities that could easily be carried out by peaceful protesters, legal experts say.
"These intelligence reports are part of a long tradition of agencies identifying protest or even simply having strong opinions as precursors to violence," Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tells WIRED. “Suspicious activity reports are incredibly unreliable, often about vague or innocent behavior, issued under permissive standards. These reports, often received in large volumes, allow officers to inject their own biases and see what they want to see in the facts.”
Among the vaguely defined activities flagged by the Northern Virginia intelligence center as suspicious are "expressed/implied threat," "observation/surveillance," "photography," "testing/probing of security," and "attempted intrusion."
“The FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” the FBI wrote in a statement to WIRED. “We have no additional comment.”
Meanwhile, the same intelligence center also circulated a report in March showing monitoring of constitutionally protected events and demonstrations related to critical views on technology. These events included multiple "Tesla Takedown" protests against Elon Musk’s ransacking of the US government and a “Break Up With Tech Rager" sponsored by Eject Elbit, an activist group organizing to halt investment in the Israeli weapon’s manufacturer Elbit.
In addition to intelligence analysts working inside fusion centers and federal law enforcement agencies, open source intelligence companies that contract with federal law enforcement agencies appear to be scouring the web for what they claim to be anti-technology sentiment as well. In January 2025, SITE Intelligence circulated bulletins to fusion centers alleging that conversations in a "neo-Luddite" Discord server had turned violent, with one user of the group called for violence against tech CEOs and power plants.
“SITE is a for-profit private intelligence firm that monitors social media for its law enforcement customers. It promises to do an incredibly difficult if not impossible job, consistently mining social media written by anonymous posters, full of in-jokes, slang, different languages, vagueness, and so on, to deliver credible information that can predict threats,” Reynolds says. “Instead, this type of activity tends to focus on people's views about things like policing, abortion, economic inequality, vaccines, or any other hot-button topic of the day.” (SITE told WIRED post-publication that its customers do not direct what it monitors.)
“By narrowing our OSINT focus exclusively to communities with a proven link to real-world harm, even trolling remarks have an informative value, demonstrating sentiment within a community toward a target, and our reports have shown a notable spike in online threats advocating for sabotage against data centers, which is a true cause for concern,” Rita Katz, founder of SITE, tells WIRED in an email.
The documents obtained by WIRED also show that fusion centers are currently keeping tabs on in-person assemblies. The Northern Virginia center generated a report about demonstrations at local civic events, including the Arlington County budget meeting and the Fairfax County School Board meeting. Across the country, town halls and budget committee meetings have been among the chief forums for local residents to express their dissent with data centers being built in their neighborhoods.
According to Data Center Watch, a project by AI security firm 10a Labs that tracks opposition to data centers, hundreds of organizations across 42 states have organized to block data center construction in their towns and counties. These efforts are often contentious. In California, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, state and local police have removed or arrested speakers at town halls who criticize data centers, in one case before they were even allowed to speak.
Under US law, domestic terrorism is not a stand-alone crime that is brought to bear during trial. Instead, domestic terrorism laws allow for targeting and surveillance of extremists, with charges sometimes bearing terrorism enhancements and sometimes excluding them altogether. This has led to protesters and activists being surveilled under domestic extremism provisions while being charged with crimes like criminal trespass and vandalism.
The zeroing in on anti-tech activity by federal agencies is evident in an invitation to a lecture by extremism researcher Mauro Lubrano circulating in fusion centers across the country. Lubrano has emerged as one of the foremost experts on anti-technology extremism. He is the author of Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology, which describes three main strains of a newly minted threat matrix: insurrectionary anarchists, eco-extremists, and ecofascists.
Lubrano's book identifies followers of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, German anarchists, Mexican eco-extremists, and far-right fascists in the Terrorgram Collective as distinct but aligned components of an emerging tech extremism movement. In Lubrano’s analysis, these groups are united by the fact that they have all plotted or carried out acts of violence in furtherance of their ideological goals.
‘Nightmare Scenario’: Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads
By Matt Burgess
Lubrano said he was not surprised that his lecture turned up in a fusion center but cautioned that any anti-tech extremism framework must be exercised carefully. “I hope the warning I, along with other colleagues, raised is being acknowledged. While anti-technology violence is unacceptable, it should not be used as an excuse to securitize AI and emerging technologies, thereby silencing those who are critical of the current trajectory,” Lubrao tells WIRED.
But Spencer Reynolds says that, despite the real if limited threat posed by these groups, a category like “anti-tech extremism” could be drawn so broad as to ensnare peaceful data center protesters, AI skeptics, and anyone with a bone to pick with technology that permeates modern life.
“As people continue to organize for a better future, we're likely to see more surveillance and criminalization of this opposition, just as we have of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and environmental movements in recent decades,” Reynolds says.
A January 2025 DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report furthers this perspective by attempting to connect Luigi Mangione—the alleged assassin of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson—with Kaczynski. “Law enforcement reports that the individual may have drawn inspiration from Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and his anti-technology beliefs,” the report reads, without offering further evidence. It concludes with a warning alleging that executives “are at a heightened risk for targeted acts of violence or threats of violence” when they are “perceived as taking advantage of individuals of lesser means.”
But perhaps the clearest-cut example of how nonviolent critiques of technology can be swept up along with threats is found in an open-source report circulated by SITE Intelligence in April 2025. The report flags a video from the progressive nonprofit More Perfect Union on the destructive effects of a data center to nearby residents in Georgia. Nothing in the video advocated for violence against property or people. But thanks to fusion center targeting, the advocacy group is now circulating among US intelligence and law enforcement across the country as a potential threat vector.
-=-=
-=-=
pgm more $ for admin than services?!
every diff state gets billed for each query over and over
Sep 8, 2026
The biggest welfare scam in the country is run by a consulting giant. Deloitte has made over $6 billion running error-prone eligibility systems that make it harder for Americans to get the healthcare and food aid they rely on. We investigated the big business of welfare.
The People Abusing Welfare Are Not Who You Think
-=-=
9 26 crypto
Could A Bitcoin Crash Wipe Out Your Savings? These Elites Are Betting On It. (ft. Ben McKenzie)
Sep 2, 2026
Crypto companies have already spent $200 million to rig the midterms. If they get their way, crypto scammers will keep ripping off Americans and endangering your life savings. It’s a giant wealth transfer machine, and the Trump family is making billions off it.
Could A Bitcoin Crash Wipe Out Your Savings? These Elites Are Betting On It. (ft. Ben McKenzie)
-=-=
7 26
How A Single Shell Company Drained $1.6 Billion From The Pentagon - YouTube
0:00
Five days after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2024, great. These are our friends.
0:05
5 seconds
We have thousands of friends on this his son Don Jr got a new job as well as a partner at a little known private investment fund called 1789 capital.
0:15
15 seconds
since the election, the companies in that fund have won billions in federal government contracts. leading up to Trump's second term.
0:22
22 seconds
These are what Don Jr and Eric's estimated net worth were, respectively.
0:26
26 seconds
These numbers have changed drastically in the two years since, and I want to talk about Because we found that when you follow the money far enough, it stops going out and instead moves in a circle.
0:39
39 seconds
By the end of this video, we're going to add it all up, and the number is going to shock you.
0:48
48 seconds
When Trump announced he was running again, Don Jr found a partner, a man named Amid Malik.
1:46
1 minute, 46 seconds
February 2025, both brothers became advisers to a company called Domino Holdings through dominance.
1:53
1 minute, 53 seconds
They bought stakes in a US construction company called Skyline Builders, using a shell company called American Ventures.
1:59
1 minute, 59 seconds
Skyline then merged with Cove Cars Capital, a mining company sitting on a tungsten deposit in Kazakhstan.
2:05
2 minutes, 5 seconds
Tungsten is critical to military equipment like armor piercing ammunition, hypersonic weapons, and F-35 engines.
2:12
2 minutes, 12 seconds
The sons invested in August 2025.
2:15
2 minutes, 15 seconds
One month later, Kazakh President Tokayev personally told Trump he was awarding the project to Cove CAS over competing bids from China and Russia.
2:23
2 minutes, 23 seconds
Trump and Marco Rubio gave direct assistance, according to the company's own investor presentation filed with the SEC.
2:30
2 minutes, 30 seconds
the project has been secured, up to $1.6 billion in U.S. government backed financing. we've only just scratched the surface.
2:40
2 minutes, 40 seconds
The Trump Suns also co-founded crypto and bitcoin companies that attracted hundreds of millions in investments from foreign governments. incredibly proud to be part of the crypto industry.
2:48
2 minutes, 48 seconds
More Perfect Union reported on this crypto network in a previous investigation. in the crypto industry. Now I'm going to walk you through a few more companies.
2:56
2 minutes, 56 seconds
And what happened to each of them after 1789? Capital invested. And I'll add it all up right here as we go.
...
2:30
2 minutes, 30 seconds
the project has been secured, up to $1.6 billion in U.S. government backed financing. we've only just scratched the surface.
2:40
2 minutes, 40 seconds
The Trump Suns also co-founded crypto and bitcoin companies that attracted hundreds of millions in investments from foreign governments. incredibly proud to be part of the crypto industry.
2:48
2 minutes, 48 seconds
More Perfect Union reported on this crypto network in a previous investigation. in the crypto industry. Now I'm going to walk you through a few more companies.
2:56
2 minutes, 56 seconds
And what happened to each of them after 1789? Capital invested. And I'll add it all up right here as we go.
3:02
3 minutes, 2 seconds
In July 2025, 1789, invested in a company called Hadrian Automation.
3:09
3 minutes, 9 seconds
Hadrian was founded in 2020 and had no significant government contracts.
3:13
3 minutes, 13 seconds
Eight months later, it won a $900 million Navy contract to build automated submarine factories and an $80 million Army contract.
3:22
3 minutes, 22 seconds
That's $980 million total, all to a company that had never won a major government contract before.
3:28
3 minutes, 28 seconds
Don Jr's fond invested in Here's another one. Firehawk aerospace, whose entire government contract history fits in a single line.
3:37
3 minutes, 37 seconds
It had just one contract in 2022, and then 1789 invests and suddenly there winning Air Force and Space Force deals worth $8.9 million, plus a land gift in Oklahoma.
3:49
3 minutes, 49 seconds
And sometimes the perk goes beyond the money.
3:52
3 minutes, 52 seconds
1789 invested in reflection AI in 2025, and by May 2026, it became one of only eight AI companies in the country allowed to deploy inside Pentagon classified networks.
4:05
4 minutes, 5 seconds
Here's a company called Andrew that makes the autonomous weapons systems that define modern warfare, like drones and AI powered surveillance towers, and after 1789, invested.
4:15
4 minutes, 15 seconds
In June of 2025, the company won a $367 million border surveillance contract and a $23.9 million Army deal.
4:24
4 minutes, 24 seconds
It also has a potential 20 billion. Yes. Billion with AB.
4:28
4 minutes, 28 seconds
Army consolidation deal in the works so big a number that it totally dwarfs everything else on this list, but we can't even count it.
4:36
4 minutes, 36 seconds
So I'll just do 367 million plus 23.9 million.
4:56
4 minutes, 56 seconds
of all of these, there's one example that stands apart because this is one where we have proof the white House directly intervened.
5:03
5 minutes, 3 seconds
Falcon elements, a three year old startup with 30 employees that makes rare earth magnets.
5:08
5 minutes, 8 seconds
In August 2025, 1789, invested in Vulcan as a part of a $65 million funding round.
5:15
5 minutes, 15 seconds
Three months later, the Pentagon gave them a $620 million loan.
5:21
5 minutes, 21 seconds
Rare earth magnets are vital to military technology, and as the name suggests, they are rare. China has complete dominance over the industry.
5:30
5 minutes, 30 seconds
Both Democrats and Republicans have tried to change that. So Trump isn't the first to consider a loan of this sort.
5:39
5 minutes, 39 seconds
it went out without competitive bids without the technical disclosures that are used to verify whether a project is even viable before public money goes in.
5:50
5 minutes, 50 seconds
That was waived.
5:51
5 minutes, 51 seconds
the push for this loan came directly from Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade adviser and a close personal friend of Don Jr.
5:57
5 minutes, 57 seconds
So close that Don Jr visited Navarro in prison and was one of the few people Navarro's latest book was dedicated He's a friend legitimately can't believe that this is happening to him,
6:08
6 minutes, 8 seconds
One Pentagon employee told ProPublica that the call came, quote, from the white House.
6:12
6 minutes, 12 seconds
We have to get this done, Staff worked late nights for weeks to push the loan through when deals like this normally take months.
6:20
6 minutes, 20 seconds
the time of 1789, investment Vulcan was valued at around 200 million. After the Pentagon loan, the valuation jumped to nearly $2 billion.
6:29
6 minutes, 29 seconds
technically, this one's alone.
6:30
6 minutes, 30 seconds
Not a contract, but it's still $620 million of our tax money going to a three year old startup with fewer employees than your local target, with no competitive process in a phone call from the white House to push it through.
-=-=
-=-=-=
mpu 8 26
Meet the Silicon Valley Billionaire Ruining The World
---}:
7 26 We Talked to a Trump Whistleblower. What He Saw Will Shock You.
Jul 7, 2026
There's a set of MAGA lobbyists in DC who can get you anything you want from the White House, legal or not. Ticketmaster, Paramount, crypto companies — they're all exploiting this pay-to-play system.
KROGER REALPAGE UNITED HEALTH AMAZON GGL LINA KHAN // JDV?!
GAIL S ROGER ALFORD BOSS
1:33
1 minute, 33 seconds
[Liz Scheltens] For the last 40 years, across administrations from both parties, politicians have mostly been content to let corporations keep getting bigger and more powerful.
1:43
1 minute, 43 seconds
But in recent years, something has started to shift. [Anchor] The federal government is suing to block the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history...
1:52
1 minute, 52 seconds
...arguing that it would reduce the number of supermarkets, which would mean higher prices.
1:55
1 minute, 55 seconds
Today, the Justice Department and eight states sued software company RealPage, alleging it illegally helped landlords unfairly fix prices and raise rents throughout the country.
2:07
2 minutes, 7 seconds
At the end of the first Trump administration, there were very large and significant monopoly cases that were brought against Facebook and against Google.
2:16
2 minutes, 16 seconds
[Liz Scheltens] When Lina Khan took over the Federal Trade Commission under President Biden, she and her colleagues in the Department of Justice continued those suits, and filed dozens more.
2:26
2 minutes, 26 seconds
[Anchor] Department of Justice has launched an antitrust probe into UnitedHealth. The move is part of the Biden administration’s push to lower drug prices.
...5:15
5 minutes, 15 seconds
We want him in a very high capacity. Mike Davis. Mike. Thank you, Mike. Where is Mike? Mike is great.
5:24
5 minutes, 24 seconds
Mike Davis actually recommended Gail Slater to President Trump for the top antitrust job. Davis has denied the threatening phone call.
5:32
5 minutes, 32 seconds
But it is true that a couple of weeks after the election, he started getting big checks from corporations like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, who wanted him to use his connections to push their mergers through.
5:42
5 minutes, 42 seconds
[Roger Alford] His salary is $300,000 a month. He has a contingency fee of over $1 million for any successful mergers.
5:51
5 minutes, 51 seconds
They hire this lobbyist and the lobbyist starts talking to higher-ups, saying, you like us, we're on your team.
5:59
5 minutes, 59 seconds
Just tell them to drop the case. [Liz Scheltens] And they did.
6:02
6 minutes, 2 seconds
DOJ sources told the Wall Street Journal that a couple of weeks after the threatening phone call, Gail Slater's boss, quote, “placed a document on her desk.”
6:11
6 minutes, 11 seconds
It was a settlement deal written by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s own lawyers. It was a genuine shock.
6:19
6 minutes, 19 seconds
When Gail Slater asked her boss what would happen if she refused to sign it, he told her, quote, “She was too difficult to fire, but he would fire her deputies.” She signed, and then he fired them anyway.
6:32
6 minutes, 32 seconds
And we all basically strongly suggested that that was inappropriate. And as a result of that, I was terminated.
6:39
6 minutes, 39 seconds
[Anchor] Shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, they're up more than 12%, after the DOJ gave the green light for the proposed $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.
6:48
6 minutes, 48 seconds
This is oligarchy in action: company gets sued, they hire a million-dollar fixer with the president's ear to leverage his loyalty and make sure that the suit goes away.
6:58
6 minutes, 58 seconds
They get a sweetheart deal, and then, when someone like Roger Alford gets in the way, they make sure he gets fired.
7:04
7 minutes, 4 seconds
This type of, let's call it, pay-for-play politics hadn't happened since Watergate. They're dropping cases because they decided someone's a friend.
7:13
7 minutes, 13 seconds
That's not the rule of law. That's the opposite of the rule of law.
7:16
7 minutes, 16 seconds
A few months later, one of America's most hated companies decided to try the same play for themselves.
7:24
7 minutes, 24 seconds
[Anchor] Outrage over Ticketmaster and Live Nation gouging consumers on big concerts.
...
7:50
7 minutes, 50 seconds
A bunch of state attorneys general signed on to the suit as well, including Phil Weiser of Colorado and Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee.
7:57
7 minutes, 57 seconds
I mean, there was tremendous evidence of very aggressive, almost mafia-like tactics.
8:02
8 minutes, 2 seconds
We had some witnesses, they would get a phone call and it was basically like, “Hey, nice arena you have there.
8:08
8 minutes, 8 seconds
Be a shame if anything happened to it.” You know, we have the internal conversations laughing about how dumb their customers are and how great it is that they can rip ’em off.
8:16
8 minutes, 16 seconds
[Anchor] The messages between two ticketing directors saying, “These people are so stupid.” Another message saying, “Robbing them blind, baby.”
8:25
8 minutes, 25 seconds
[Liz Scheltens] When President Trump took office in 2025, his Department of Justice decided to continue the Ticketmaster suit. Ticketmaster thought they would try the same play as Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
8:35
8 minutes, 35 seconds
They hired Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager, as a fixer. They donated to Trump's inaugural fund.
8:41
8 minutes, 41 seconds
And they hired Mike Davis, the same fixer who got Hewlett Packard Enterprise their sweetheart deal.
8:48
8 minutes, 48 seconds
Davis went after Roger Alford's boss, Gail Slater.
8:52
8 minutes, 52 seconds
[Roger Alford] Once it became clear that Gail Slater was going to resolve these cases on the merits and wasn't going to listen to Mike Davis based on arguments other than the merits, he turned on her.
9:02
9 minutes, 2 seconds
He directly lobbied the president of the United States to get someone who was committed to enforcing antitrust laws on the merits to be removed.
9:10
9 minutes, 10 seconds
[Anchor] The head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division is out.
9:14
9 minutes, 14 seconds
Gail Slater was fired today from the role after months of tension with the Trump administration. [Liz Scheltens] The moment Gail Slater's firing hit the news, Live Nation’s stock price skyrocketed.
9:24
9 minutes, 24 seconds
Shareholders were anticipating big payouts on the backs of consumers. [echo] Robbing them blind, baby. And then, two weeks after she was fired...
9:32
9 minutes, 32 seconds
[Anchor] The Justice Department has reached a settlement with Live Nation in its antitrust case. Not everyone is on board. The proposed settlement didn’t even rise to the level of a slap on the wrist.
9:41
9 minutes, 41 seconds
[Liz Scheltens] Live Nation wouldn't have to sell off Ticketmaster, just a handful of venues.
9:46
9 minutes, 46 seconds
So it looked like the same play had worked again: get sued, hire a fixer, get a sweetheart deal.
9:53
9 minutes, 53 seconds
But there was one wrinkle for Ticketmaster.
9:56
9 minutes, 56 seconds
From my perspective, this was not a sufficient settlement to take care of Tennessee consumers.
10:01
10 minutes, 1 second
A bunch of those state AGs decided to continue with the suit, even after the Department of Justice settled.
...
10:51
10 minutes, 51 seconds
[Phil Weiser] The president put up a social media post and said, let the deal through.
10:55
10 minutes, 55 seconds
Now, we don't know exactly what happened behind those scenes, but I want to underscore how unusual that is.
11:01
11 minutes, 1 second
There was no DOJ investigation when the country's largest real estate brokerage, Compass, wanted to buy its rival Anywhere.
11:08
11 minutes, 8 seconds
Now, they're free to saddle middle-class homebuyers with even more junk fees in a housing market we can already barely afford.
11:16
11 minutes, 16 seconds
Compass even hired Mike Davis, the same fixer that got HPE and Live Nation their deals.
11:22
11 minutes, 22 seconds
But nothing has made the corruption more clear than the Department of Justice's recent approval of the merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers.
11:31
11 minutes, 31 seconds
The deal puts one of Trump's top political donors at the head of a media empire that will include CNN, CBS and HBO.
11:40
11 minutes, 40 seconds
And according to the Wall Street Journal, the staff attorneys in the antitrust division were leaning toward suing to prevent this merger.
11:48
11 minutes, 48 seconds
But again, they were overruled by the top brass at the Department of Justice.
11:53
11 minutes, 53 seconds
State AGS are teaming up to challenge the HPE, Nexstar, and Compass mergers in court, and they're considering whether to do the same for Paramount.
...
4:12
Hewlett Packard Enterprise looking to buy Juniper Networks.
---
nspm 7
Jun 25, 2026 MPU
We Uncovered A New Government Watchlist. Are You Their Next Target?
You could end up on a watchlist for fighting back in the class war. The feds now consider opposition to data centers, inequality, and Big Tech as potential domestic terrorism. We uncovered how the FBI is colluding with corporate America to surveil ordinary Americans.
...
do not need judge warant, just the pattern says
4:18
4 minutes, 18 seconds
health insurance rates isn't about to commit an act of political violence, they're being targeted by the same powers used to target lunatic assassins.
4:26
4 minutes, 26 seconds
It’s unusually open about what they're targeting.
4:29
4 minutes, 29 seconds
And on the list are things like anti-Christian sentiment, anti “traditional family” sentiment, anti-Americanism. What about anti-capitalism?
4:37
4 minutes, 37 seconds
Is that on the list? Yes. Anti-capitalism is also on the list.
4:40
4 minutes, 40 seconds
Anti-tech sentiment has also shown up in federal law enforcement documents as a focal point of surveillance.
4:46
4 minutes, 46 seconds
Ken told me that these extremely broad and vague categories aren't just talking points, but massive dragnets to swoop up all kinds of speech and dissent.
4:54
4 minutes, 54 seconds
So, this is telling the Justice Department, the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, all these agencies, hey, guys, we have to focus on this.
5:01
5 minutes, 1 second
And what we're focused on is that list of so-called indicators that I was describing before.
5:06
5 minutes, 6 seconds
They’re supposed to tell you, or the administration says it's supposed to tell you, what will portend future acts of terrorism.
5:13
5 minutes, 13 seconds
this is something on which, people are being promoted, resources are being allocated at the field office level in all 52 FBI field offices across the country.
5:22
5 minutes, 22 seconds
NSPM-7 is a public record, but confidential documents Ken obtained show how it's been interpreted by intelligence agencies to become a guiding force in intelligence collection.
5:31
5 minutes, 31 seconds
So I was leaked a copy of the Department of Homeland Security's strategy.
5:35
5 minutes, 35 seconds
And it had a new term: “class-based or economic grievances.” They were worried about terrorism as defined by class-based or economic grievances, typically, when you have a counterterror approach that's supposed to be focused groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS.
5:49
5 minutes, 49 seconds
This is something that you don't want to be deploying against U.S. residents or U.S. citizens.
...
no judge warrant
fusion ctrs
---
jackson hole richest cty
We Went To The Richest Town In America. It’s Not Where You Think.
---
5 26 Billionaires’ Shocking Plan To Silence Working-Class Voters
May 18, 2026
50% of voters say being forced to show a passport would be a barrier to voting, according to a new poll we conducted. Billionaires like Elon Musk, the Uihleins, and Leonard Leo are funding Trump’s attempts to take over elections and nullify your vote.
...
4:59
4 minutes, 59 seconds
According to our poll, 66% of working-class voters said that the $130 fee for a new passport would be difficult for them to afford.
5:08
5 minutes, 8 seconds
And 47% of working class voters say that it would deter or prevent them from voting.
5:15
5 minutes, 15 seconds
It'd be tough on middle-class voters, too: 53% say it would be cost prohibitive, and 36% say they wouldn't be able to vote.
5:22
5 minutes, 22 seconds
And for what?
5:23
5 minutes, 23 seconds
The number of noncitizens voting in American elections is essentially zero, but since 2020, a subset of activists has become obsessed with the idea.
5:32
5 minutes, 32 seconds
All of the groups that had been built up into this election denial infrastructure started almost simultaneously talking about the myth of noncitizen voting.
5:41
5 minutes, 41 seconds
And it was very clearly a coordinated effort, very likely a funder-driven effort, to coordinate around this single line of messaging.
5:50
5 minutes, 50 seconds
[Cassie] Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center took us down the funder rabbit hole– because while the giant, gaping loopholes in campaign
5:57
5 minutes, 57 seconds
finance law make it intentionally difficult for people to follow the money, there are some big names that you really need to know.
6:05
6 minutes, 5 seconds
[Brendan] A lot of the national groups get their money from billionaires like Dick Uihlein or Elon Musk, or wealthy, powerful individuals who control a lot of money, like Leonard Leo.
6:16
6 minutes, 16 seconds
You might recognize Leonard Leo as the guy who picked Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices.
6:21
6 minutes, 21 seconds
[Brendan] Leonard Leo, who controls over $1 billion, has groups like the Honest Elections Project and Save Our States, which have been playing an important role, at least in helping to advance messaging and policy development.
6:34
6 minutes, 34 seconds
This January, the Honest Elections Project released a big game plan that literally outlined each of the steps that Trump has pursued,
6:41
6 minutes, 41 seconds
including serious restrictions on mail-in voting– Tell me about mail-in ballots.
6:45
6 minutes, 45 seconds
–you know, the method that Trump both constantly rails against and uses himself. I used a mail-in ballot, you probably said. Yeah, I did. You know why? Because I'm President of the United States.
6:54
6 minutes, 54 seconds
There are also foundations like the Bradley Foundation, and all of these organizations collectively pour, tens and at this point, hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting these broad national groups.
7:05
7 minutes, 5 seconds
[Cassie] The Bradley Foundation is a Wisconsin-based organization that put more money than anybody into election denialism and voter suppression.
7:13
7 minutes, 13 seconds
They were a big sponsor of the Only Citizens Vote coalition, a who's who of billionair-funded, anti-voter organizations– over 80 in total, a lot of them involved in Project 2025.
7:24
7 minutes, 24 seconds
[Brendan] They help craft legislation, they provide testimony when legislation that would undermine the freedom to vote is moving in state legislatures or sometimes in Congress.
7:35
7 minutes, 35 seconds
They're more of the experts in the room.
7:37
7 minutes, 37 seconds
Back in 2024, Only Citizens Vote created model anti-voter legislation in partnership with the massive corporate lobby group ALEC.
7:45
7 minutes, 45 seconds
Leading the way on that legislation was Cleta Mitchell.
7:48
7 minutes, 48 seconds
She's a Federalist Society member, OG election denier, and most importantly, on the board of the Bradley Foundation.
7:54
7 minutes, 54 seconds
[President Trump] All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000 plus votes.
7:57
7 minutes, 57 seconds
Cleta Mitchell now has her own group called the Fair Elections Fund, which helps to coordinate many of these efforts, as well as seed money to state-based groups, some of which are themselves associated with the Election Integrity Network.
8:09
8 minutes, 9 seconds
[Cassie] Ok, here’s another big name: the Election Integrity Network, which brings us down another rabbit hole.
8:15
8 minutes, 15 seconds
The Election Integrity Network is fueled by just a few big players, including the Conservative Partnership Institute and Citizens for Renewing America.
8:24
8 minutes, 24 seconds
The Conservative Partnership Institute is funded by Trump donors.
8:28
8 minutes, 28 seconds
It's run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and gets its money from big players like the Koch linked Donors Trust Fund,
8:35
8 minutes, 35 seconds
a group funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby, and, of course, the Bradley Impact Fund Foundation.
...
---
SEE MAHA
We Uncovered A Conspiracy To Poison Your Food
Fundraiser
More Perfect Union
3.31M subscribers
527,745 views Mar 20, 2026
Four former chemical lobbyists control America’s pesticide regulations, letting pesticide companies pump the country full of toxins. For every 1 meeting with an environmental group, the EPA met 25x with corporate interests. We revealed the corporate lobby poisoning America:
---
---
...
6:49
6 minutes, 49 seconds
Thiel and Epstein exchanged a number of emails and seemed to be close, both personally and professionally.
6:54
6 minutes, 54 seconds
From investment advice, Thiel told Epstein not to invest in Spotify and only gave him a maybe to investing in Thiel's own company, Palantir.
7:01
7 minutes, 1 second
Eventually, Epstein invested millions in Thiel's venture capital fund, Valar Ventures,
7:07
7 minutes, 7 seconds
which means that Epstein had holdings in Stash Financial, Anduril, the autonomous killing machine company,
7:14
7 minutes, 14 seconds
something called Brat Inc, and other big tech companies.
7:18
7 minutes, 18 seconds
But Thiel's venture funds don't have a problem getting investors. So, we still need to figure out what Epstein truly offered, and we'll get to that.
7:26
7 minutes, 26 seconds
Reid Hoffman also frequently communicated with Epstein. Again, both about money, and just chillin'. Epstein advised Hoffman on large luxury purchases,
7:36
7 minutes, 36 seconds
tried to wrangle him into the DAF scheme, and Hoffman was generally one of Epstein's ins to Silicon Valley.
7:43
7 minutes, 43 seconds
In 2015, Hoffman invited Epstein to an intimate dinner with himself, Musk, Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, some neuroscientists, and a few others.
7:52
7 minutes, 52 seconds
Just months before over half that table would go on to found OpenAI. And AI was an interest of Epstein's.
7:58
7 minutes, 58 seconds
But this dinner epitomizes an important point here. The network.
8:02
8 minutes, 2 seconds
After PayPal, Hoffman created LinkedIn. [Anand] Reid Hoffman, an Epstein associate and founder of LinkedIn, has talked about in the future,
8:10
8 minutes, 10 seconds
your career will be the network, not a job hierarchy. And he, like Epstein, embodied the network.
8:17
8 minutes, 17 seconds
The network itself, not the individual people, is the key here. It's how they were all connected and what they all do for each other. And we can see that by using a new light.
...
10:56
10 minutes, 56 seconds
"hey, man, you shouldn't be doing all this stuff." In our networked age, there is a sense that if you can get yourself to the heart of a network like this,
11:04
11 minutes, 4 seconds
the world is your oyster. And at the same time, if you fall out of the network, it is a kind of death.
11:11
11 minutes, 11 seconds
We, the regular people, obviously shouldn't be emulating everything we see in these emails, but if we want to defeat this elite network, there's one thing we do need to do.
11:21
11 minutes, 21 seconds
When you actually see the way they're functioning in this network, they're all on the same team.
11:24
11 minutes, 24 seconds
There's this very powerful network of people who lobby and buy power and buy access and rig the world against regular people. And we're down here thinking that the guy two doors down from us is the biggest obstacle to our progress.
11:38
11 minutes, 38 seconds
And, in fact, the guy two doors down from me was often just another of their victims. The Epstein network has billions of dollars: power, connections, planes, art, homes.
11:48
11 minutes, 48 seconds
But the most important thing they have is, and I'm sorry if this sounds corny, but it's class solidarity. And the story of this network doesn't end with Epstein's death.
11:56
11 minutes, 56 seconds
The Epstein class is still entrenching themselves into all aspects of our lives, taking us to a pointless war and trying to shape the elections that will determine America's future.
12:06
12 minutes, 6 seconds
We're still living in the Epstein network's world today.
12:08
12 minutes, 8 seconds
Leon Black's son, Ben Black, who Epstein hosted a birthday party for and who Epstein hired a portrait artist for, is today in charge of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation,
12:19
12 minutes, 19 seconds
a government body established during the first Trump administration that provides loans, capital, and insurance to American corporations abroad using taxpayer dollars.
12:29
12 minutes, 29 seconds
That includes insurance for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a focal point of the Iran War.
12:34
12 minutes, 34 seconds
Meaning a guy Epstein helped commission a painting of will decide which corporations get your tax dollars.
12:42
12 minutes, 42 seconds
As midterm elections approach, the Epstein network is plotting to seize further control of our government.
12:47
12 minutes, 47 seconds
Reid Hoffman has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to oppose progressive candidates in Democratic primaries.
12:54
12 minutes, 54 seconds
He often uses donor-advised funds to make those donations, a tactic Epstein recommended to him in 2016.
13:01
13 minutes, 1 second
And it's possible we wouldn't have today's AI intrusion into our lives without Epstein.
13:07
13 minutes, 7 seconds
While I wasn't able to find any direct ties between Epstein and the heavy hitters like OpenAI or Anthropic, he did fund early AI research,
13:14
13 minutes, 14 seconds
including bankrolling the researchers who coined generative AI and AGI.
13:18
13 minutes, 18 seconds
He also made early investments in the infrastructure behind AI, like data center build-outs, that he never got to see come to fruition.
13:26
13 minutes, 26 seconds
Looking at these members of the Epstein class shows us that the conspiracy at the heart of our country's biggest problems aren't just about one man.
13:34
13 minutes, 34 seconds
It's about a network, a club of elites across every major industry,
---
---
boho
We Investigated A Secret Club For Billionaires - More Perfect Union - Democratic Underground Forums
---
SUBSTACK
Why BlackRock Wants to Buy Your Power Company
Utility costs are soaring from the AI boom — and asset managers want to cash in.
Sep 25, 2025
Sep 18, 2025
---
The World’s Biggest Banks May Be Benefiting from the ICE Warehouse Craze
DHS is likely overpaying for warehouses owned by some of the world’s largest financial institutions.
Apr 7
---
4 26
How Billionaires Cracked the Food Stamp Cheat Code
3.21M subscribers i am one
809,634 views Feb 12, 2026
mcD kroger, doordash? fedex ups, dollar gen tree; home dept, temp agy? ADDUS homecare illinois
Your taxes subsidize Amazon and Walmart poverty wages. These are trillion dollar companies, but 33% of Amazon workers need public assistance and 25% of Walmart workers need SNAP to survive. We investigated how corporations are taking advantage of workers—and all of us. Read more of our analysis here: https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/yo...
https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/your-tax-dollars-are-subsidizing
*By Donald Shaw and David Moore
Public records obtained from state agencies show that some of the most profitable and powerful companies in the U.S. are also among the largest employers of workers who rely on food assistance.
In state after state, data received by More Perfect Union through open records requests list giant retailers and gig-economy companies among those with the most workers enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), giving a window into how taxpayer-funded public assistance is being used as de facto wage subsidies for some of the wealthiest American corporations.
We requested data from all 50 states, and after nearly two months of correspondence received information from four: Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington. An additional state, Massachusetts, released similar information to the Boston Globe last year, and is also analyzed in this report. Most of the other states either flatly rejected our requests or said they did not maintain such records, while Texas referred the request to its attorney general, and Utah requested a fee of $5,652 for the data.
In each of the states for which we have data, two companies are among the top four employers of SNAP recipients: Amazon and Walmart. Ranked by revenue, Amazon and Walmart are also the two largest companies in the world.
Amazon’s reliance on public subsidies for its underpaid labor force has been well known for years. In 2023, researchers at the University of Illinois conducted a survey of Amazon warehouse workers across 42 states and found that 33% of those surveyed had used public assistance programs in the previous three months, including 23% who had used SNAP. Eighty-nine percent of the survey respondents said they work at least 30 hours per week, the threshold used by the Internal Revenue Service for determining if someone is considered a full-time worker.
Walmart not only relies on SNAP to make up for its low wages, but it also benefits more than any other company from people using food stamps to buy their groceries. According to a Numerator survey covering the 12 months ending July 31, 2025, Walmart is the largest retailer for SNAP benefit redemption in the U.S., receiving 25.8% of all SNAP dollars.
Other companies that frequently appear at the top of the state lists include McDonald’s, DoorDash, Uber, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General. The dollar stores accept SNAP, so are double-dipping in the same way as Walmart. DoorDash and Uber have fought efforts to reclassify their workers as employees through aggressive lobbying and political spending, most notably spending tens of millions of dollars each in 2020 to pass a California ballot proposition that exempted app-based drivers from a recently enacted state law designed to grant them employee status and minimum wage protections.
Here’s what we heard back from the states that responded:
In Colorado, self-employed workers make up the largest portion of SNAP recipients, followed by Amazon, Walmart, and several of the other companies that frequent the top state lists. The Denver-based grocery chain King Soopers is also near the top of the list, with more than a thousand employees in the state on food stamps.
The data we received from Illinois is current as of Jan. 30, 2026 and shows that the home health care company Help at Home tops the list with more than 5,000 employees on SNAP, followed by Walmart with about 4,500.
In Michigan, the top employers of SNAP participants are Walmart, supermarket chain Meijer, Amazon, and McDonald’s. Close behind them is the Michigan-based Corewell Health.
In Washington, where the state minimum wage is the highest in the country, supermarket chain Safeway tops the list of employers with SNAP recipients in their workforce, followed by home health care intermediary Public Partnerships and temporary staffing company Express Employment.
Massachusetts did not respond to our public records request, but the Boston Globe obtained data from the state earlier this year and found that, beyond the usual suspects, other top SNAP beneficiary employers include grocery store Stop & Shop, social services organization Tempus Unlimited, and non-profit healthcare company Mass General Brigham.
Watch More Perfect Union’s video reporting on this issue.
---
yt 1 26
omg
397,988 views Jan 26, 2026
When OpenAI sent someone to Tyler Johnston's house, they wanted every text and email he had on the company.Tyler runs an AI watchdog, and he's just one of the people getting subpoenaed.This is just the beginning of the AI industry's aggressive new political strategy. ----- More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people.
...(Host) Tyler Johnston runs a small AI watchdog.
0:12
Last summer, he was out when he received an unusual text from his roommate.
0:17
(Tyler) “There's someone at the door with documents for you.”
0:19
(Karen) It was a man with subpoenas from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
0:23
(Tyler) They were asking for every former employee that we had spoken to and what we said to them,
0:27
every congressional office that we spoke to, every potential investor that we spoke to.
0:32
(Karen) Tyler is just one of many advocates suddenly being targeted.
0:36
As public demands to regulate the AI industry have escalated —
0:39
(Reporter) AI could put millions of Americans out of work.
0:41
(Reporter) — Concerns around safety for kids.
0:44
(Reporter) Customers could see their bills increased by 20 bucks each month.
0:47
(Reporter) AI clips of fake reports even reaching the Oval Office.
0:51
(Karen) its biggest players are going to political war.
0:54
(Alex Bores) They started texting my constituents.
0:57
(Rebecca) Google was involved, Meta was involved, OpenAI was involved.
1:00
The AI industry broadly is ready to play hardball.
1:03
(Karen) So I started investigating their tactics.
1:06
I found an aggressive playbook trying to silence critics, kill
1:10
legislation, and remake government in their interest.
1:14
I wanted to know: what are AI companies so afraid of?
1:18
They can't have any flies in the ointment, which also means no regulation and no guardrails.
1:22
(Karen) And what does it mean for the rest of us if they get what they want?
1:30
When OpenAI subpoenaed Tyler,
1:32
it tucked in an expansive demand that hinted at its real agenda.
1:37
(Tyler) They wanted every single document and text message and email
1:41
that we had that in any way related to OpenAI's restructuring.
1:45
(Karen) Founded as a nonprofit by Elon Musk and Sam Altman,
1:48
OpenAI had for years been raising billions of dollars
1:52
from investors through an internal for-profit arm.
1:55
Then, the nonprofit board attempted to fire Sam Altman,
1:58
and investors panicked that they could lose all their money.
2:02
(Catherine Bracy) In the wake of that, Sam Altman made some promises to his investors
2:05
that they would remove the power and control of the nonprofit from the for-profit entity.
2:11
(Karen) But many advocates, including Tyler and Catherine, stood in the way.
2:16
(Tyler) We released an open letter.
2:17
This was an open letter that was asking seven relatively simple questions, not opposing the restructuring
2:22
in any way, but asking for more transparency about what their plans were.
2:26
(Karen) But failure to restructure could force OpenAI
2:28
to give up $20 billion from its investors.
2:32
The company turned its influence operations into high gear
2:36
under the leadership of a man named Chris Lehane.
2:39
Whoever ends up winning on that ends up building the AI rails
2:43
for the world. Like, that is a bit of a zero sum game.
2:48
(Karen) Lehane began his career in Washington, earning the nickname
2:51
‘Master of Disaster’ in part for helping the Clintons navigate the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
2:57
He then pivoted to Silicon Valley, working at Airbnb and with the crypto industry.
3:02
(Tyler) I think that OpenAI brought him on because they knew that they needed someone
3:06
who was willing to be as fierce as possible.
3:09
(Karen) Lehane stacked his team with former staffers and confidants of Gavin
3:13
Newsom, Bill de Blasio and Kamala Harris.
3:16
OpenAI hired a lobbying firm run by Republican operative
3:19
Jeff Miller, who has deep ties to President Trump.
3:22
It launched new philanthropic efforts, underscored its economic importance to California
3:28
and threatened to leave the state if the restructuring was blocked.
3:32
With Elon Musk also suing OpenAI for abandoning its mission,
the company began to accuse its critics of being his puppets.
3:39
They were essentially implying
3:43
that we were a front for their competitors.
3:47
(Karen) The aggressive tactics paid off.
3:49
The subpoenas
3:50
also revealed that this is just the beginning.
3:54
I would have been happy to swear to the court that we are not funded by Elon Musk....
Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems. To support our independent journalism, subscribe, donate, and follow our other pages through the links below:
- Help fund our reporting: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mpu...
- Substack: https://substack.perfectunion.us/
- TikTok:
/ moreperfectunion - Twitter:
/ moreperfectus - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/moreperfectu...
- Facebook:
/ moreperfectus - Instagram:
/ perfectunion - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@perfectunion
- Website: https://www.perfectunion.us
---
More Perfect Union is a nonprofit education, advocacy, and journalism organization with a mission to build power for the working class. We tell the stories of working class Americans by covering politics, policy, labor, business, and economics news through a class lens. We pair our reporting with activism to win policy fights that support families and the working class.
The organization is made up of More Perfect Union Action (EIN: 85-3190605), a 501(c)(4) organization that covers policy fights, electoral stories, and ballot initiatives to empower the working class within the political process and More Perfect Union Foundation (EIN: 85-3189807), a 501(c)(3) organization that creates educational content, publishes investigative reports on corporate accountability, and advocates for working class issues.
WHO WE ARE
Our editorial team is committed to putting working people at the center of the stories we tell.
- Faiz Shakir |formerly Bernie 2020, ACLU, Senator Harry Reid
- Nico Pitney | formerly NowThis, HuffPost
- Joshua Miller-Lewis | formerly Bernie Sanders
- Malea Stenzel Gilligan | formerly Bernie 2020, National Wildlife Federation, VoteVets, Wellstone for Senate
- Megan Herschlein |formerly NowThis
- Chai Dingari | formerly New York Times, HuffPost
- Jordan Zakarin | formerly NBCUniversal
- Nicole Bardasz |formerly Ed Markey
- Sam Delgado | formerly Texas Democratic Party
- Jodi Clemens | formerly Bernie 2020, People’s Action
- Anthony Mascorro | formerly Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
- Gerald Lane | formerly NowThis
- Sean Morrow | formerly NowThis
- Eric Gardner | Writer and former business consultant
- Brooke Shuman | formerly HuffPost, Interference Archive
- Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen | formerly Sunrise Movement
- Savannah Fortune | formerly Texas AFL-CIO
- Shaun Kennedy | formerly Jetpac
- Maddie Moore | TikTok Content Creator
- Josh Potash | formerly Slow Factory
- Sydney Guthrie | formerly National Geographic
- Court Fuller | formerly Inequality Media with Robert Reich, Public Citizen
- Katie Nixdorf | formerly Insider, Inc.
- Andrew Rivera | formerly New York Times, NowThis
- Paul Blest | formerly Vice News
- Samuel Black |Emmy award-winning filmmaker spitzer al j frontline
---
PAY ATTENTION: Corporations Are Destroying Democracy | Faiz Shakir
60,579 views Dec 6, 2025 Defending Democracy with Marc Elias
Marc Elias sits down with Faiz Shakir, founder of More Perfect Union and former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, for a deep dive into the future of Democratic messaging, media, and grassroots organizing. Faiz breaks down three core elements of constructive, pro-worker populism, how political organizing is empowering Americans to advocate for workplace justice, and how independent media is stepping into the vacuum left by legacy outlets. More Perfect Union:
/ moreperfectunion
---
---
452,390 views Oct 28, 2025
doj anti trust cfpb 1on 3 cases dropped, stock price way up, apple tariffs
...Trump had just announced huge tariffs on all kinds of goods coming from
4:25
foreign countries, tariffs that would raise Apple's cost of doing business by billions.
4:30
Weeks later, after Tim Cook met with Trump, the White House
4:33
announced tariff exemptions for smartphones, computers and chips.
4:37
You know, the things that Apple makes.
4:39
So a $1 million donation for Apple and billions in savings.
4:43
I guess that's what economists would call a return on investment.
4:46
To me it just looks like a bribe with extra steps.
4:49
Microsoft, you guessed it, also got in on the action
4:53
with a $750,000 donation.
4:56
And like Google, they got the FTC off their back–
4:58
a major antitrust case against them dropped for a huge merger they did in 2023 with Activision.
5:04
Amazon reached a big settlement with the FTC for essentially tricking consumers
5:09
into signing up for Amazon Prime,
5:11
a case the FTC could easily have won.
5:14
So why would they suddenly settle?
5:17
Are you starting to see a pattern yet?
....
Trump used to say that Big Tech is a horrible thing for our country. Now, he’s cozy with Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Silicon Valley. What changed? We analyzed all the donors to Trump’s inauguration and uncovered a massive corruption and influence-buying scheme. ----- More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.
---
---
[### Sam Black
[### Samuel Black (@potter_black) / X
X · potter_black
3K+ followers](https://twitter.com/potter_black?lang=en)
Filmmaker & journalist @MorePerfectUS. Prev. work @FrontlinePBS @Showtime ... Murrow Award for News Documentary. Quote. Square profile picture · FRONTLINE.
IMDb
https://www.imdb.com › name](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2898294/)
Sam Black. Producer: Client 9. Sam Black is known for Client 9 (2010), Fault Lines (2009) and Kingdom of Silence (2020).
[### Sam Black
Al Jazeera
http://america.aljazeera.com › profiles › sam-black](http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/b/sam-black.html)
Before coming to Al Jazeera, Samuel worked at Jigsaw Productions, the film company of Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney. He worked on documentaries such as "We ...
---
1 24 really good 15 min vid
oreskes
exxon solar
morano stossel kyoto tobacco playbook singer
air pollut no health risk inhofe snowball watters? apoc frog in my pool
206b$ not all spent on smoking but still good eg for us
Bonta darren woods BS agw is ONE of ther problems in world, reduce envir footprint ad BS
meritless distraction API lawsuit
---
an 2 23
ahead of former President Donald Trump's Wednesday visit to East Palestine, Ohio—where a Norfolk Southern-owned train transporting carcinogenic chemicals derailed on February 3, prompting a mass evacuation and release of pollutants—progressive critics highlighted the key role his administration played in making the fiery crash and its toxic aftermath more likely.
During his speech, Trump—considered a leading GOP presidential candidate for 2024 despite spearheading a deadly coup attempt following his 2020 loss—criticized how President Joe Biden's administration has responded to the environmental and public health disaster unfolding in East Palestine, a poor rural town of about 4,700 people located a few miles west of the Pennsylvania border.
But as critics noted beforehand, the Trump administration's gutting of train safety rules at the behest of railroad industry lobbyists was instrumental in creating the conditions for the derailment and ensuing chemical spill and burnoff, which has provoked fears of groundwater contamination and air pollution.
"He should be apologizing to that community for his administration rolling back rail regulations," progressive stalwart Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator, tweeted prior to Trump's address.
philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch made a similar point in an opinion piece published earlier this week.
"If residents of East Palestine—a**modern news desertof downsized or disappeared news sources, which allows misinformation to fester—truly knew the reality, a delegation of townsfolk would likely greet Trump with tiki torches and pitchforks," Bunch wrote, comparing the former president's visit to "the tendency of a criminal to return to the scene of his crime."
Bunch noted that "Trump acted specifically to sabotage a nascent government effortto protect citizens from the growing threat posed by derailments of outdated, poorly equipped, and undermanned freight trains that were increasingly shipping both highly flammable crude oil from the U.S. fracking boom as well as toxic chemicals like the ones that would derail in East Palestine."
"Trump had been in office for less than a year when he moved to killthe 2015 rule change initiated by the Obama administration that would have required freight trains to upgrade the current braking technologythat was developed in the 19th century for state-of-the-art electronic systems," wrote Bunch, who pointed out that this came after Norfolk Southern and other rail carriers donated more than $6 million to Republican candidates in 2016 and spent millions more on lobbying.
"With the investigation into the East Palestine wreck still in its early phases, it's not clear if the modern brakes—originally required for installation by 2021—could have prevented the toxic derailment or whether the specific Obama rule would have applied," Bunch continued. "But experts do believe the new brakes could have mitigated the wreckage—and thus the release of so many hazardous chemicals."
"The rule reversal wasn't the only time that Team Trump sided with Big Rail over the forgotten Americans who live on the wrong side of their tracks," he added. "In 2019, for example, the Trump administration moved to not strengthen but relax regulations on shipping fracked natural gas through communities like East Palestine. The same year, Trump's White House also killed an Obama-era proposal that would have required two crew members in freight-train locomotives."
Ahead of Trump's visit,More Perfect Union also argued on social media that the ex-president's "attempt to portray himself as a friend of the town and as someone who would have stood up to Norfolk Southern... couldn't be further from the truth."
As the progressive media outlet observed, the Trump administration "withdrew multiple rail safety recommendations and moved toward a 'self-regulatory approach' where rail companies could do as they pleased."
"It's no surprise that the Trump years were filled with dangerous deregulation," More Perfect Union asserted, describing his decision to nominate top rail industry executives to lead the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as "a prime example of the revolving door between business and government."
"The Trump approach to the rail industry was to let the companies do what they wanted, which was to avoid regulations, slash jobs, and extract profit," the outlet continued. "This approach, and rail companies' greed, has led to over 1,000 derailments each year. Some are massive catastrophes like East Palestine. But every single one is harmful. And if the industry isn't regulated and forced to change, we'll soon be seeing more disasters."
When Trump "pretends to care about rail workers, or the people of East Palestine, we can't believe him," More Perfect Union added. "His record tells a very different story, the story of his own role in creating this problem in the first place."
Even some conservative critics of Trump have questioned the sincerity of his visit.
"It's clear that it's a political stunt," Ray LaHood, a Republican ex-member of Congress who led the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) during former President Barack Obama's first term, told Politico on Wednesday. "If he wants to visit, he's a citizen. But clearly his regulations and the elimination of them, and no emphasis on safety, is going to be pointed out."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wasted little time in doing exactly that, calling the GOP's indignation "fake" soon after Trump announced his travel plans.
Bunch acknowledged that "it's beyond hypocritical for Trump to bring his Harold Hill-huckster shtick to East Palestine when residents are still experiencing headaches and breathing foul air from the kind of catastrophe he didn't lift a finger to stop from the Resolute Desk."
"But also it's a bit baffling why Biden or his Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—who seems to be channelinghis inner McKinsey & Co**. these days—haven't gone to Ohio," he argued. "Especially when Trump and any other Republicans hoping to make political hay off of East Palestine's misery are coming to town empty-handed."
"None of the anti-Biden critics on this issue have offered a solution, because they can't," wrote Bunch. "The only fix for the kind of runaway abuses of modern capitalism that cause these environmental catastrophes isgovernment regulation, aided by empowering worker safety with strong unions—two things that the Trump-led GOP has opposed at every turn."
Even in the wake of the disaster, Republican lawmakers have refused to demand stronger regulations, as HuffPost reported:
:{:{Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), a vocal Biden critic who represents East Palestine, on Tuesday dismissed immediate calls for stricter rail regulations, saying actions toward accountability will hinge on the findings of a National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] investigation into the derailment}::{.}:
'That will dictate whether there are laws, regulations that need to be changed, whether there were rules that were violated,' he said during a news conference in East Palestine. 'We don't know any of that yet, and we won't know that until NTSB releases its report.'}:
Hours before Trump spoke, Buttigieg announced that he plans to travel to East Palestine on Thursday. His visit is expected to coincide with the publication of the NTSB's preliminary report about its ongoing probe into the crash.
On Tuesday, Buttigieg unveiled DOT's recommendations for improving the safety of the nation's rail system, though an inter-union alliance of rail workers immediately criticized the plan as inadequate.
Given the scale of the problems—and in light of the transportation secretary's ongoing refusal to exercise his authority to reinstate previously gutted rules along with his consideration of an industry-backed proposal to further weaken the regulation of train braking systems—union leaders have called for nationalizing the railways and implementing their proposed solutions.
Turner, for her part, emphasized that she has "been outspoken about the two years the Biden administration had [to] fix these problems."
"The Trump administration is at fault, as is the Obama administration," Turner contended, referring to the fact that the latter's regulations were also watered down in response to industry pressure.
"The Ohio GOP is to blame as well," she added, echoing recent reporting on Norfolk Southern's campaign to influence state-level lawmakers and officials. "Failure at every level of government and multiple administrations led to this."
---