5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Economy
'Make Corporate Complicity Unprofitable': Boycott Targets Companies Tied to ICE
"We cannot out-organize a fascist administration while simultaneously bankrolling the companies profiting from its cruelty," said the head of Beyond the Ballot.
Nov 25, 2025
A Gen Z-led advocacy group fighting for working-class priorities on Tuesday announced a boycott campaign targeting major corporations "that enable, profit from, or directly collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the broader racist policies of the Trump administration."
Beyond the Ballot launched "Not With My Dollars: ICE Out of My Wallet" as President Donald Trump's violent crackdown on immigrants in diverse communities across the United States continues and just days before Black Friday kicks off the winter holiday shopping season.
"We cannot out-organize a fascist administration while simultaneously bankrolling the companies profiting from its cruelty," said Victor Rivera, the organization's executive director, in a statement. "Every dollar spent at a complicit corporation is a dollar funding the abduction and disappearance of our neighbors. It’' time to make corporate complicity unprofitable, for good."
The group is taking aim at e-commerce behemoth Amazon and its grocery subsidiary, Whole Foods; tech giants Dell and Microsoft; Home Depot; streaming platform Spotify; and retail chain Target. The boycott webpage explains the reason each is listed, actions shoppers should take, and the campaign's demands. In some cases, it also offers alternative companies.
Target is under fire for its "broad range of cooperation with the Trump administration's racist policies." The campaign is calling on the company to not only publicly commit to refusing collaboration with ICE but also immediately reinstate its scrapped diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Spotify is on the list for airing ICE recruitment ads—a decision that also recently prompted a boycott call from the group Indivisible.
The campaign site calls out Home Depot because it has "repeatedly allowed ICE agents to patrol and detain workers and customers in its parking lots and stores, usually without presenting judicial warrants or establishing probable cause," and demands an end to those practices.
The group is urging Microsoft to end its "$19.4 million contract with ICE to provide artificial intelligence capabilities and processing data." The Dell section highlights that it has provided $18.8 million to "support the office of ICE's chief information officer through the purchase of Microsoft enterprise software licenses," and similarly calls for terminating that contract with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Amazon section states:
REASON: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the digital backbone of ICE's machinery, selling the cloud power that helps track, target, and tear families apart.
ACTION: Stop shopping on Amazon where possible; cancel Prime subscriptions if feasible; push universities, unions, nonprofits, and campaigns to move off AWS when and where feasible, and to issue statements condemning Amazon’s role in corporate-sponsored mass deportations.
DEMAND: End all ICE/DHS immigration enforcement contracts and data hosting that enable deportations; adopt a binding human-rights policy banning support for immigration policing.
ALTERNATIVES: Bookshop.org and local bookstores; direct-from-brand purchasing; cooperatives; independent retailers.
The site also stresses that "every dollar spent at Whole Foods directly strengthens Amazon, whose AWS platform is the digital backbone of ICE's machinery, powering the tools used to track, target, and tear families apart."
While the campaign is beginning just before Black Friday, boycott organizers aim to ensure it will "not disappear" after this week.
"Unlike other consumer boycotts, Not With My Dollars is designed for long-term pressure and escalation," Beyond the Ballot said. "To be removed from the boycott list, each targeted corporation must fulfill the specific demands outlined for its company. Anything less is not accountability, just more corporate PR."
"If you bankroll a violent, unaccountable agency that terrorizes our communities, you will not do it with our money," the group added. "Across the country, poor and working-class migrant families are facing a wave of state-sponsored abductions, violence, and political policing under the fascist Trump administration. Corporations that choose to partner with, advertise on, bankroll, or provide critical infrastructure to ICE are not neutral; they are complicit."
Keep Reading
Show Less
A Global Message to TikTok: Stop Your Profit Model of 'Toxic and Addictive' Content for Kids
"TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
Nov 25, 2025
A group of digital activists is set to deliver a message to social media giant TikTok on Tuesday to clean up its "toxic and addictive" business model.
The petition, which has more than 170,000 signatures and is being circulated by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, will be delivered to TikTok's office in Dublin, Ireland by activists Mary Kate Harten and Trinity Kendi of Ireland; Abril Perazzini of Argentina; and Noe Hamon of France.
In the petition, Amnesty accuses TikTok of becoming "a space that is more and more toxic and addictive," and can potentially harm the "self-image, mental health, well-being of younger users."
Amnesty International campaigner Zahra Asif Razvi said that the petition is demanding that TikTok completely redo its business model to be built around user safety.
"These signatures represent a global demand for TikTok to replace its current business model of an app that is addictive by design with one that is safe by design," she said. "TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
The human rights group says that its own research released last month shows that TikTok prioritizes user engagement over safety, and will often send young users to videos featuring "depression, self-harm and suicide content" on its platform.
Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty International's researcher on children and young people's digital rights, explained that teen users who express interest in content related to mental health can be pulled into "toxic rabbit holes" that glorify self-harm.
"Within just three to four hours of engaging with TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, teenage test accounts were exposed to videos that romanticized suicide or showed young people expressing intentions to end their lives, including information on suicide methods," she explained. "The testimonies of young people and bereaved parents in France reveal how TikTok normalized and exacerbated self-harm and suicidal ideation up to the point of recommending content on 'suicide challenges.'"
Amnesty's petition comes one week after the American Psychological Association (APA) published research that accumulated data collected in more than 70 other studies and found that excessive use of short-form video apps such as TikTok and Instagram "is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults."
The research's findings were particularly troublesome concerning the impacts on young people's cognitive development, as they found that "repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning."
The APA's study found that having the ability to swipe away from videos that don't offer instant gratification "could support a pattern of rapid disengagement from stimuli that do not provide immediate novelty or excitement," and thus "may diminish attentional control and reduce the capacity for sustained cognitive engagement, as cognitive processing becomes increasingly oriented toward brief, high-reward interactions rather than extended, goal-directed tasks."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Vought Should Resign,' CFPB Workers Say of 'Pledge' to Be Nice to Wall Street Fraudsters
"What's next, 'Russell Vought Tells CFPB Examiners to Serve Tea to Their Wall Street Masters in Tiny French Maid Aprons'?"
Nov 25, 2025
“Why is Russell Vought showing the world his weird, creepy pledge of allegiance to big corporations? Have some dignity, Russell."
That's what Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Union member Alexis Goldstein said on Monday about the CFPB acting director's new "humility pledge" that examiners with the agency's Supervision Division will be forced to read to financial institutions before conducting reviews next year.
Several other CFPB Union members joined Goldstein in blasting Vought's pledge, including treasurer Gabe Hopkins, who said that "whoever wrote this has never even spoken to an examiner before, only been wined and dined by industry lobbyists."
The lengthy pledge states in part that the CFPB's "goal is to work collaboratively with the entities to review entities' processes
for compliance and/or remedy existing problems," and the agency "is doing so by encouraging self-reporting and resolving issues in Supervision, where feasible, instead of via Enforcement."
CFPB Union president Cat Farman inquired: "Is this fan fiction I'm reading? What's next, 'Russell Vought Tells CFPB Examiners to Serve Tea to Their Wall Street Masters in Tiny French Maid Aprons'?"
"Instead of traumatizing CFPB workers with his roleplay fantasies," Farman argued, "Vought should resign so we can finally do our jobs protecting Americans from Wall Street fraud again."
CFPB Workers don’t consent to Vought’s creepy “Humility Pledge” fantasy. nteu335.org/2025/11/24/c...
[image or embed]
— CFPB Union (@nteu335.bsky.social) November 24, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Vought—also the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, a role he previously held during President Donald Trump's first term—has unsuccessfully tried to shutter the CFPB completely this year.
As the New York Times reported Monday:
The new pledge is, for now, mostly symbolic. Mr. Vought halted nearly all work at the bureau shortly after his arrival in February, and bank examinations have not resumed. The agency's hundreds of examiners have been told to spend their time closing out all open matters; they are currently barred from initiating new ones.
And Mr. Vought has refused to request money for the consumer bureau from the Federal Reserve, which funds its operations. The bureau warned in court filings that it would run out of operating cash early next year.
In a Friday statement announcing the pledge, the Vought-led agency claimed that under the Biden administration, the Supervision Division "was the weaponized arm of the CFPB."
The agency added that "where these exams were previously done with unnecessary personnel, outrageous travel expenses, and with the thuggery pervasive in prior leadership, they will now be done respectfully, promptly, professionally, and under budget."
Given that Vought "stopped all supervision exams in 2025, refuses to fund CFPB, and says he's shutting us down by 2026," CFPB Union member Doug Wilson asked: "So how will we supervise banks in 2026 if CFPB is closed? How can bank exams be 'under budget' if there is no budget?"
Ripping Vought's pledge and press release as "incredibly disrespectful to Supervision's dedicated workers," fellow CFPB Union member Tyler Creighton said that the pair of documents also "misunderstands or misconstrues Supervision's prior work."
"Supervision's workers have always conducted examinations professionally, efficiently, conscientiously, and with a focus on remedying consumer harm," Creighton said. "We will continue to do so as soon as Donald Trump and Vought end their 10-month suspension of examinations and let us get back to work for the American people."
Another CFPB Union member, Steve Wheeler, highlighted that "they're trying to make it sound like it’s groundbreaking to send notifications of exams ahead of time and keep data pulls relevant to the examined area, when those are things we already do."
Originally proposed by now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the CFPB was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis via the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama.
Warren joined the CFPB Union members in calling out the new pledge, declaring that "Donald Trump is Wall Street first."
Union member Ravisha "Avi" Kumar pointed out that "under previous administrations, CFPB examiners protected consumers from banks, like Wells Fargo, that incentivized their employees to cut corners and overlook consumer harm. CFPB forced the banks to return that stolen money to consumers."
"Ironically, under this administration, Vought says he will incentivize examiners to rush jobs (cut corners) and stick to the surface (overlook consumer harm)," Kumar added. "How is that still consumer financial protection?"
The pledge announcement came a day after CFPB officials told staff that much of the agency workforce will be furloughed at the end of the year and that remaining consumer litigation will be sent to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
"This is Russ Vought's latest illegal power grab in his ongoing plan to shut down the CFPB and protect CEOs instead of consumers," said Farman. "CFPB attorneys are afraid DOJ will dismiss these cases."
"Vought's already helped Wall Street swindle $18 billion from Americans this year," the union leader continued. "If Vought is going to keep refusing to fund CFPB in order to illegally dismantle the agency, while he wastes over $5 million of CFPB's dwindling budget on personal bodyguards, then it's time for Congress to impeach and remove Russell Vought from power."
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Terrible for Renters': Trump DOJ Settles Price-Fixing Case With RealPage
"Far from stopping illegal practices," said one critic, "it gives a green light to algorithmic price-fixing across the economy."
Nov 25, 2025
The Trump Justice Department on Monday announced a settlement with the real estate software giant RealPage, which the federal government and multiple states accused of illegally facilitating collusion between landlords to drive up rents.
The settlement, which must be reviewed by a court, would require RealPage to "cease having its software use competitors’ nonpublic, competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices," among other mandates.
Abigail Slater, head of the DOJ's Antitrust Division, cast the agreement as a win for competition and for renters. But RealPage downplayed the settlement's impact on its business model, saying the deal's terms "bless the legality of RealPage’s prior and planned product changes"—alluding to the company's voluntary decision last year to let its customers remove nonpublic data when using the software to calculate recommended rents.
The company emphasized that the settlement does not include any financial penalties or admissions of guilt.
"What a total farce," Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, said in response to the DOJ announcement. "This sham settlement violates the first thing we tell every lawmaker: Fixing prices based on public data sets is still price fixing!"
"This is lipstick on a pig and terrible for renters," Hepner added.
The Justice Department initially sued RealPage last year under the Biden administration, accusing the company of running an "unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue management software that landlords use to price apartments."
"RealPage contracts with competing landlords who agree to share with RealPage nonpublic, competitively sensitive information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms to train and run RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software," the Biden DOJ said. "This software then generates recommendations, including on apartment rental pricing and other terms, for participating landlords based on their and their rivals’ competitively sensitive information."
The DOJ complaint used RealPage's own words against it, citing the company's description of its products as "driving every possible opportunity to increase price."
A White House report released late last year estimated that the kind of algorithmic pricing that RealPage enables cost renters across the US a total of nearly $4 billion in 2023 alone. The report characterized that estimate as conservative.
Basel Musharbash, managing attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel, warned following Monday's settlement announcement that "far from stopping illegal practices, it gives a green light to algorithmic price-fixing across the economy."
The states that joined the DOJ lawsuit were not listed on the settlement.
Last week, California, North Carolina, and other states announced a separate settlement with the apartment management giant Greystar, one of the companies that used RealPage software to set rents.
Under the state deal, Greystar agreed to pay $7 million in penalties and stop using RealPage’s software or similar products for pricing.
"Whether it's through smoke-filled backroom deals or through an algorithm on your computer screen, colluding to drive up prices is illegal,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Families across the country are staring down an affordability crisis. Companies that intentionally fuel this unaffordability by raising prices to line their own pockets can be sure I will use the full force of my office to hold them accountable."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular