June, 08 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jayson O’Neill, (406) 200-8582
62% Of Big Oil, Gas, And Mining Corporations Score Small Business Bailout Funds
Trump’s small business administration releases new data underscoring sector’s success.
Helena, MT.
A new analysis by Accountable.US finds that over 62% of 'Mining' corporations that include oil and gas, and related activities have received nearly $4.5 billion in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds through the Trump administration's Small Business Administration (SBA).
"The PPP was supposed to help small businesses keep their doors open and their employees on payroll through the pandemic. While more than 100,000 of those small businesses have shuttered, the Trump administration has bailed out Big Oil and polluting corporations - many of which have long track records of environmental violations or worse and are compensating their CEOs millions of dollars," said Jayson O'Neill, Accountable.US spokesperson.
The new SBP report on approvals under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) showed $4,467,023,832 going to 20,389 or 62% of the 'Mining' corporations operating in the United States, including oil and gas, and related activities. The number of private 'Mining' establishments is estimated to be 32,795 as of the 3rd quarter of 2019 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recently available data.
The number of corporations in the sector that had been approved for relief funds intended for small businesses nearly doubled since the last SBA report. A previous analysis by Western Values Project, an Accountable.US project, found that 34% of the sector had cashed in on some $3.9 billion from the program.
A former member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve's recent opinion piece published in the New York Times openly questioned the Trump administration's insistence on bailing out Big Oil, coal, and other polluting industries. The piece cited a survey of more than 200 finance ministers, central bankers, and economists that unequivocally recommended investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Trump administration is doing the exact opposite by handing out billions to these polluting corporations through not only PPP funds but also tax credits, royalty cuts, lease suspensions, and soon low-interest loans through the Federal Reserve. And, the Trump administration is adding insult to injury by superseding state and tribal rights, gutting regulations, and fueling unchecked natural resource development. Legislation introduced by Senate and House lawmakers that would prohibit the Trump administration from bailing out big oil corporations has been thus far ignored by leadership in both chambers.
The ongoing tracking project by Accountable.US at TrumpBailouts.org documents the billion-dollar corporations and other large corporations that have received taxpayer assistance under the CARES Act, and what advantages and assets they had going into the COVID-19 crisis that most small businesses could never access.
Previous, controversial PPP grantees include a foreign-owned uranium mining corporation with ties to the Trump administration, oil corporations that spent millions on stock buybacks, an Indiana-based coal corporation with a former Trump official as its lobbyist, at least two companies that market their ability to ship U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas, major luxury hotel chains, a fashion model agency, and even the L.A. Lakers.
Learn more about the special interests fueling the Trump administration at Accountable.US and the administration's ongoing efforts to carve out more big oil and coal bailouts at WesternValuesProject.org, an Accountable.US project focused on public lands conservation.
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Democratic Lawmakers Demand Probe Into DHS Warrantless Location Tracking
“Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time."
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Over 70 Democratic US lawmakers on Tuesday demanded a new investigation into warrantless purchases of Americans' location data by Department of Homeland Security agencies—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which critics say violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unwarranted search and seizure.
In a letter to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, 72 congressional Democrats led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) wrote, "Public contracting documents indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently resumed buying Americans’ location data from a shady data broker" after the agency "ended a previous program to purchase Americans’ cellphone location data in 2023, following an investigation by your office and scrutiny from Congress."
"Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time," the lawmakers' letter states. "It is for that reason that ordinarily, the government must obtain a warrant from a judge in order to demand such data from phone or technology companies."
While the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the government from searching or obtaining Americans' private information without a warrant, federal agencies have circumvented the proscription by buying sensitive personal data from private brokers.
"Public reports indicate that ICE has resumed its location data purchases, even though DHS has yet to adopt all of the recommendations from your prior review," the lawmakers noted in their letter.
The letter continues:
ICE issued a no-bid contract to the surveillance company PenLink in 2025, which included licenses for its location tracking product, Webloc, according to press reports. Webloc was developed by the controversial surveillance company Cobwebs Technologies, which was combined with Nebraska-based PenLink as part of a $200 million private equity deal in 2023. Cobwebs gained notoriety when Meta banned the company in 2021, as part of a crackdown on surveillance mercenaries after detecting the company’s customers targeting activists, opposition politicians, and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico.
ICE is now stonewalling congressional oversight into its purchase of location data. Sen. Wyden’s office requested a briefing from ICE soon after this contract was revealed in the press, in October, which was scheduled in December, for February 10, 2026. One day before that briefing was to take place, ICE canceled it with no explanation and without any offer to reschedule.
"Given DHS’ failure to adopt a policy for the use of commercial data, coupled with ICE awarding a no-bid contract to a shady data broker that is likely violating federal law, we urge you to open another investigation into the purchase," the lawmakers wrote.
The letter asks:
- Whether ICE and other DHS components are purchasing illegally obtained location data about Americans;
- If so, why does DHS not have policies in place to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to contractors that have invaded Americans’ privacy in violation of federal law;
- How ICE and other DHS components have used location data and whether they have used it to investigate Americans for engaging in constitutionally protected activities, including protesting or monitoring ICE operations;
- Whether ICE and other DHS components are auditing employee access to commercial location data to identify likely patterns of abuse; and
- Why has DHS still not adopted a policy for the use of commercial location data, as you recommended in 2023?
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently explained, ICE has spent $5 million on Webloc and Tangles, another location and social media surveillance product made by PenLink.
According to EFF:
Webloc gathers the locations of millions of phones by gathering data from mobile data brokers and linking it together with other information about users. Tangles is a social media surveillance tool which combines web scraping with access to social media application programming interfaces. These tools are able to build a dossier on anyone who has a public social media account. Tangles is able to link together a person’s posting history, posts, and comments containing keywords, location history, tags, social graph, and photos with those of their friends and family. PenLink then sells this information to law enforcement, allowing law enforcement to avoid the need for a warrant. This means ICE can look up historic and current locations of many people all across the US without ever having to get a warrant.
There have been several attempts to solidify restrictions on government purchase of Americans' personal data in recent years, most notably the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act (FANFSA), which failed to pass.
Last month, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act, which would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but is also intended to protect Americans from warrantless spying, including by closing the data broker loophole that lets law enforcement buy their way around the Fourth Amendment.
Also last month, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) led 13 Democratic lawmakers who sent a separate letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem seeking answers about ICE's use of PenLink surveillance technology "designed to collect and analyze cellphone location data across entire neighborhoods."
"Mass surveillance of entire communities or city blocks raises serious questions about data privacy and potential violations of civil liberties," Brown wrote.
"Americans should be able to trust their government to uphold the Constitution and respect fundamental rights," she added. "Instead, DHS appears to be engaging in broad surveillance practices to monitor entire communities, violating Americans’ fundamental civil rights and civil liberties to punish dissent and advance the president's cruel and unconstitutional mass deportation agenda."
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Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have been pushing for their H.Con.Res.38 since shortly before Trump bombed Iranian nuclear facilities last June. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Saturday attack has ramped up demands for Congress to pass that resolution, along with S.J.Res.59, introduced last year by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
Those resolutions, expected to receive votes this week, were already facing uphill battles in both Republican-controlled chambers, and all-but-certain vetoes if they ever made it to Trump, whose administration claims "Operation Epic Fury" is about preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, while critics around the world accuse him and Netanyahu of engaging in an illegal regime change war.
At least six US service members and hundreds of Iranians are now dead. Despite the rising death toll, the Democrats behind the new proposal—Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Greg Landsman (Ohio), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.)—made clear that they oppose a swift end to the conflict.
"There is a concern that the Khanna-Massie war powers resolution currently requires the immediate withdrawal of US forces, even while Iran is actively targeting American troops, assets, embassies, and our allies across the region," they said in a statement. "It is vital that we allow for a safe transition, that protects our service members, embassies, and allies, not a potentially precarious withdrawal."
While proposing a 30-day window for ending the conflict—absent an authorization for the use of military force or a formal declaration of war from Congress—the six Democrats also said that "an open-ended commitment by the administration and the recent implication from the secretary of defense that ground troops may be engaged are both unacceptable."
Politico called the new measure "a sign of how some Democrats are struggling to reconcile their opposition to the Trump administration's military action with a desire to appear hawkish on national security—even in a largely symbolic capacity."
The outlet also noted that when asked about the latest proposal during a Tuesday news conference, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said that "our focus is on the resolution that will be on the floor this week."
"We'll continue to make the strongest possible case," Jeffries added. "There is going to be very strong Democratic support for the war powers resolution across the ideological spectrum."
Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser at the grassroots group Demand Progress, was far more critical, declaring that "of course Democrats who raced to applaud Trump's illegal war in Iran, and in one case was pardoned by him, would draft a pro-war war powers resolution meant to sabotage the real war powers resolution receiving a vote this week."
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Republican senators said they were seeking to end an "unfair inflation tax on everyday Americans." But nearly all the benefits of their proposal would go to the wealthiest 1%.
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Two leading Republicans are pushing for the Trump administration to issue another $200 billion tax cut, primarily to the wealthiest Americans, without congressional approval.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tim Scott (R-SC) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to use executive authority to lower the federal tax on capital gains—the profits from selling stocks, bonds, real estate, and other investments.
The senators have proposed that capital gains taxes should be “indexed for inflation." As the Post explained:
The plan pushed by Cruz and Scott has been sought by conservatives for many years. Under current law, an investor who bought $100 worth of stock in 1990 and sold it today for $300 would currently owe capital gains taxes on the full $200 in profit. But the $100 investment in 1990 would be worth roughly $230 in today’s dollars after accounting for inflation. Under the Cruz-Scott proposal, the investor would only owe taxes on that $70, rather than the full $200.
The senators called on Bessent to "eliminate" this "unfair inflation tax on everyday Americans."
According to Federal Reserve data from 2025, the richest 1% of Americans owned about half of all stocks, while the poorest 50% owned only 1%.
Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which enacted massive cuts to social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) last summer, is already estimated to funnel more than $1 trillion to the top 1% of earners over the next 10 years, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
It is unclear whether Bessent would even have the power to change how gains are taxed without an act of Congress, or if Bessent has any interest in doing so. But the vast majority of the benefits from Cruz and Scott's proposal, if enacted, would likely go to the rich as well.
When the Trump administration first considered indexing capital gains taxes to inflation back in 2018, the Penn Wharton Budget Model projected that 63% of the benefits would flow to the richest 0.1%—those making tens of millions per year—while 86% would go to the top 1%.
Those in the bottom 90% of earners would see just over 2% of the overall benefits, with those in the bottom half receiving basically nothing.
According to the Post, the senators view lowering capital gains taxes as part of a GOP bid to "improve its economic approval rating with voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections," in which the party is expected to take a walloping, according to current polls.
Voters have not responded kindly to previous bills that handed lavish tax breaks to the rich. At the time of its passage, the OBBBA was one of the least popular pieces of legislation in modern history, with several polls showing nearly a 2-to-1 disapproval rating.
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