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Big Tech Favoritism on Display with CEOs Set to Join Trump at China Summit
Sixteen Big Tech CEOs will be joining President Trump on his upcoming summit with president Xi Jinping in China this week, according to media reports. The Big Tech executives in attendance are expected to include Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook.
In response, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman issued the following statement:
“It’s telling that when Donald Trump wants to put technology on the agenda for discussion with China, he turns to the Big Tech executives who are his donors, flatterers and enablers, rather than policy experts who might represent the national interest instead of corporate interests.
“Big Tech companies have spent at least $653 million cozying up to President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress – including donations to Trump’s inauguration, his gaudy ballroom and his political committees, pricey settlements of bad-faith lawsuits filed by Trump, and Amazon’s sponsorship of the Melania documentary. Big Tech executives’ participation in Trump’s China visit is yet another example of how they are getting back far more than they ever paid in.“
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Backed by 80% of Voters Under Age 45, El-Sayed Up by Double Digits in Michigan Poll
"Seems like Third Way jumped into this race and leaned into identity politics in a way that just polarized the electorate further" in El-Sayed’s favor, said one commentator, "given he’s solely focused on healthcare."
May 12, 2026
In the Democratic US Senate primary race in Michigan, a big swing—particularly among voters aged 18-44—toward former public health official and Medicare for All advocate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was found Tuesday in the latest poll by a research firm that six months ago had seen the progressive candidate in distant third place.
Twenty-eight percent of primary voters said they were supporting El-Sayed in a poll released by Mitchell Research and Communications, while 18% said they were backing US Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who has the support of Democratic leaders and the powerful pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Seventeen percent of voters said they were supporting state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8).
The poll showed an inversion of the result found by Mitchell in November, when El-Sayed was trailing his two opponents by eight points and Stevens and McMorrow were separated by just three points.
Mitchell polled 405 likely primary voters between May 1-7, around the time that El-Sayed appeared with US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a rally as part of the senator's Fighting Oligarchy Tour. He drew loud applause for condemning AIPAC for its persistent conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel, and spoke about his strong support for expanding the Medicare system to everyone in the US.
The poll also came after a weekslong controversy that was promoted by centrist think tank Third Way, with the support of both Stevens and McMorrow, targeting El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer and commentator who's been outspoken in his condemnation of Israel.
With the controversy largely in the rearview mirror despite some lawmakers' continued fixation on Piker, the new poll suggests the criticism of El-Sayed didn't land in Michigan—particularly among voters in younger demographics arguably more likely to have heard of Piker, who gained notoriety by sharing political commentary while playing video games online.
Among voters under the age of 45, El-Sayed had 80% of the support in the poll released Tuesday.
The other two candidates in the race barely registered among voters in the demographic, with 4% supporting Stevens and 3% backing McMorrow. The primary race has been called a "millennial showdown" by local media, with the three candidates ranging in age from 39-42.
The poll comes after numerous surveys have found that Israel—the issue that Third Way attempted to center in the election—has plummeting support among voters, following its yearslong assault on Gaza. Last October, nearly half of Democratic voters in swing districts, including in Michigan, said in a poll that they would vote against a candidate funded by AIPAC.
Meanwhile, Medicare for All—the proposal that's a key focus of El-Sayed's platform—was supported by 78% of Democratic voters, along with 71% of Independents and 49% of Republicans in a survey by Data for Progress late last year.
Rotimi Adeoye, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, said the poll suggested that Third Way had "jumped into this race and leaned into identity politics in a way that just polarized the electorate further in El-Sayed’s favor, given he’s solely focused on healthcare."
"If you are spending any time as a candidate not talking about housing, healthcare, the economy, groceries, and dedicating a second or a millisecond talking about Hasan Piker or the identity politics topic of the day on Twitter, you're losing," said Adeoye.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America and a former speechwriter under the Obama administration, summed up the poll results succinctly.
The survey, he said, showed a "Third Way bump" for El-Sayed.
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Warren Warns Bipartisan Bill Would 'Turbocharge Donald Trump's Crypto Corruption'
"In just one year in office, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone, and yet this bill stunningly includes zero provisions to prevent that."
May 12, 2026
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned Monday that bipartisan cryptocurrency legislation set to come before a key committee later this week would do nothing to rein in brazen profiteering by President Donald Trump and his family.
“This bill puts investors, our national security, and our entire financial system at risk—and it will turbocharge Donald Trump’s crypto corruption," Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said following the release of legislative text for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. "In just one year in office, the president and his family have raked in at least $1.4 billion in gains from crypto deals alone, and yet this bill stunningly includes zero provisions to prevent that."
"The American people are watching," Warren added. "No member of the committee should support a bill that fails to stop the massive conflict of interests posed by Donald Trump and his family’s crypto ventures."
The Trump family's foray into digital assets and creation of what one outlet called a "global crypto cash machine" is largely responsible for the explosion of the president's net worth since the start of his second White House term. "In one form or another, crypto accounted for $3.02 billion of the president’s profits from August 2025 to January 2026," MS NOW reported earlier this month.
Warren and other Senate Democrats are pushing for the inclusion of ethics language that would limit government officials' ability to profit off digital assets, but a closed-door meeting on Tuesday ended without an agreement. Senators on the Banking Committee are set to meet Thursday to mark up the crypto measure, which supporters have billed as "comprehensive market structure legislation that establishes a clear regulatory framework for digital assets."
"This bill is the product of more than ten months of bipartisan negotiations and extensive engagement with regulators, law enforcement, academics, and industry," the Senate Banking Committee's Republican majority said in a statement Tuesday.
Last week, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen demanded in a letter to members of the banking panel that the bill "include prohibitions on federally elected officials, including the president, from engaging in any cryptocurrency venture." The group called on lawmakers to insert a ban on "any form of crypto issuance, ownership, sponsorship, promotion, endorsement, and/or profiteering by a federally elected official" and a divestiture requirement for officials with existing crypto holdings.
Public Citizen also urged lawmakers to "penalize crypto quid pro quo" by requiring fines or prison time for "any federally elected official, including the president, who, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally, including crypto-related transactions."
"President Trump’s expansive ventures into crypto already violate several existing laws," Public Citizen said. "Approving a bill that fails to confront these violations would explicitly declare that lawmakers countenance such infractions."
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Rural New Jersey Town Moves to Ban All Data Centers After Community Revolts
"This community came together in a way I never would've imagined to fight this thing," said one critic of the data center plan.
May 12, 2026
Leaders in the rural township of Andover, New Jersey are reversing course on a plan to allow for data center construction in their community after local residents angrily revolted against the project.
According to a Tuesday report from NJ.com, Andover Township Mayor Thomas Walsh Jr. has announced that the township council this week will hold votes on repealing two data center-related ordinances and on a proposed ban on the construction of data centers inside town borders.
While officials in Andover had initially been supportive of the data center project due to the revenue it would have brought into local government, furious opposition from residents convinced them to change course.
"We’ve had some discourse over a project that we were considering for the township that may have brought in quite a bit of revenue," Walsh said. "But we also agree that no project, no money is worth tearing it down at its seams."
Andover resident Ken Collins, an opponent of the data center, celebrated Walsh's decision to back down in an interview with News 10 New Jersey.
"I'm really astounded," Collins said. "I really can't believe this is happening. This community came together in a way I never would've imagined to fight this thing."
The township's reversal on data centers came days after a heated meeting in which one resident was forcibly removed by police after profanely berating local officials over their support for data center construction.
Andover police drew criticism after video showed the resident being body slammed to the ground while being removed, but Walsh said the officers' actions were completely defensible.
"[The police] showed great restraint all night, especially there,” Walsh said, according to News 12 New Jersey. “Those police officers, don’t forget, they don’t know what they’re in danger of. They think they’re in danger and they have to protect themselves."
Data centers have become political lightning rods in recent months, as residents across the country object to their massive resource consumption, which is leading to a major spike in utilities bills, as well as the noise pollution they generate.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year introduced a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
At the same time, Silicon Valley elites are planning to spend huge sums of money in this year’s midterm elections to prevent candidates who support AI regulation from winning public office.
Leading the Future—a super political action committee backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and other AI heavyweights—is spending at least $100 million to elect lawmakers who aim to pass legislation that would set a single set of AI regulations across the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
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