February, 20 2024, 02:14pm EDT
Capital One Takeover of Discover Portends More Predatory Credit Card Interest Rates and Junk Fees
Government watchdog Accountable.US calls the major announcement Capital One will buy out Discover Financial Services — merging two of the biggest U.S. credit card companies — nothing but a raw deal for American consumers. The proposal comes on the heels of a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finding Capital One is among largest credit card issuers that offer cards with a maximum purchase APR over 30 percent, needlessly costing American families an extra $400 to $500 per year. The CFPB found lack of competition “likely contributes to higher rates at the largest credit card companies” – a problem that can only get worse under this proposed anti-competitive merger.
The deal also portends more junk fees, including higher service charges and late fees. Capital One boasted of $4.9 billion in profits after the company raked in nearly $1.7 billion from “service charges and other customer-related fees.”
“Banking giants like Capital One have long exploited the lack of competition to price-gouge families with predatory credit card interest rates and hidden junk fees. Even less competition under this merger means these companies will have less incentive to check their greedy practices that nickel and dime consumers into the billions of dollars.
"Federal regulators should take a hard look into whether this deal runs afoul of antitrust rules at the expense of consumers. It’s a reminder why the Biden Administration’s ongoing efforts to crack down on excessive and hidden junk fees from big banks are a critical step towards lowering costs for Americans,” added Zelnick.
READ MORE ON THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S COST-LOWERING INITIATIVES:
Accountable.US is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes corruption in public life and holds government officials and corporate special interests accountable by bringing their influence and misconduct to light. In doing so, we make way for policies that advance the interests of all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
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National Park Service Grants Free Access on Trump's Birthday—And Ends It for Juneteenth, MLK Day
Critics have ripped the decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Dec 05, 2025
"Why is MLK Day not worthy of a fee-free day anymore?"
That's what Kati Schmidt, communications director for the National Parks Conservation Association, wondered in an email to SFGATE, which reported Thursday on the National Park Service's recently announced free admission days for 2026.
"That has become a day of service throughout the country as well as celebrating an American hero who has several park units celebrating his legacy," Schmidt noted of the federal holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. each January.
In addition to MLK Day, three other previously free days were left off the US Department of the Interior's announcement last week about "resident-only patriotic fee-free days." Visitors will now have to pay park fees on National Public Lands Day, the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act—which President Donald Trump signed in 2020—and Juneteenth.
cool that the official position of the administration appears to be that black people don’t really count as americans
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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 5, 2025 at 8:20 AM
In 2021, Congress passed and then-President Joe Biden signed legislation designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. After returning to the White House in January, Trump declined to recognize it on this past June 19.
As SFGATE reported:
"This policy shift is deeply concerning," said Tyrhee Moore, the executive director of Soul Trak Outdoors, a nonprofit that connects urban communities of color to the outdoors. "Removing free-entry days on MLK Day and Juneteenth sends a troubling message about who our national parks are for. These holidays hold profound cultural and historical significance for Black communities, and eliminating them as access points feels like a direct targeting of the very groups who already face systemic barriers to the outdoors."
Moore told SFGATE that his organization works to push back against "these kinds of systemic attempts that disguise exclusion as administrative or political decisions."
"Policies like this reinforce inequalities around access and visibly show how systems can create obstacles that keep communities of color from feeling welcomed in public spaces," he said.
Olivia Juarez, public land program director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos, said in a statement that "we condemn the omission of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Juneteenth, National Public Lands Day, and the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act from the list of free entrance days."
"The Great American Outdoors Act permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which enhances outdoor recreation access for all people from national public lands to neighborhood parks," she pointed out. "These observances are patriotic days that celebrate freedom and safety in the outdoors. They should be celebrated as such by removing a simple cost barrier that can make parks more accessible to low-income households."
Other critics have ripped the free day decisions as "truly disgusting" and "literally the sort of thing dictators do."
Journalist Jennifer Schulze said: "I love our national parks but don't go on his birthday. Find a state park to visit instead."
Along with the free admission changes, the Trump administration is under fire for putting the president's face on the new "America the Beautiful" annual passes—a display that may be illegal—and for hiking prices for foreign visitors to national parks.
Utah-based Juarez and GreenLatinos California state program manager Pedro Hernández both denounced price hikes for noncitizens—a move that notably comes as the administration pursues Trump's promise of mass deportations.
"By imposing higher fees on people without state-issued ID," Hernández said, "the Trump administration is advancing a xenophobic policy that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations like international students, newly arrived immigrants, and families seeking asylum."
"This approach eviscerates the true meaning of public lands and sends a clear, exclusionary message that our most cherished national parks have become yet another pay-to-play system," he added. "People should be welcomed—not priced out from our public lands."
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‘Pretty Explicit White Nationalism’: Trump National Security Strategy Document Leaves Critics Aghast
One critic described the document as "a pretty explicit defense of using the state as a means of enforcing white supremacy."
Dec 05, 2025
The Trump administration on Thursday released its official National Security Strategy, and many critics noted that it was loaded with rhetoric frequently used by white nationalists.
Some of the most inflammatory rhetoric in the document is aimed at US-allied European countries that supposedly face "the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure" within the next 20 years.
In particular, the document accuses the European Union of enacting policies "that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence."
The document goes on to claim that "should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," while emphasizing that US policy is to help "Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation."
Jon Henley, Europe correspondent for the Guardian, noted in a Friday report that the document "appears to espouse the racist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory, saying several countries risk becoming 'majority non-European.'" Henley added that the document "underscores the Trump administration's clear alignment with Europe’s far-right nationalist parties, whose policies centre on attacking supposed EU overreach and excessive non-EU migration."
Scott Horton, legal affairs and national security contributor to Harper's and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, wrote on Bluesky that the document "reads like something written by Vladimir Putin," given its depiction of Europe as being "degenerate and... racially adulterated through the in-migration of dark-skinned people."
Progressive activist Max Berger argued that the document "contains some pretty explicit white nationalism." He pointed to the document's support for dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as a way to restore "a culture of competence."
Berger also flagged a section in the document that named "ending mass migration" as the top US national security priority, which he described as "a pretty explicit defense of using the state as a means of enforcing white supremacy."
Edmund Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times, also took note of the administration's emphasis on "competence and merit" in the document. This is ironic, Luce continued, because "this administration personifies the opposites" of those traits.
Journalist Michael Weiss argued in a post on X that the document shows that it is now official US policy to promote and assist far-right parties in Europe.
"[US Vice President] JD Vance's intervention in Germany's election, on behalf of [far-right party Alternative für Deutschland], was not a one-off," he wrote. "It is now ingrained in the U.S. National Security Strategy... Europe is be treated as enemy terrain to be destabilized by America's enabling of far-right parties."
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Global System 'Rigged for the Wealthy' Delivers World With 'More Billionaires Than Ever'
New annual report on "ambitions" of billionaires by wealth management giant UBS shows just 2,919 individuals have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion.
Dec 05, 2025
A new assessment by the international wealth management giant UBS this week shows that the number of billionaires in the world has reached new heights and that the acceleration of inherited wealth represents a new chapter for the ultra-rich in the 21st Century.
The latest UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report, unveiled Thursday, details how just 2,919 individual billionaires have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion. The number of billionaires in the world is up nearly 9 percent from the previous year. In the United States—where nearly a third of those on the list reside—924 billionaires hold a collective $6.9 trillion in wealth.
The assessment by UBS—which surveyed its own billionaire clients as part of the survey, now its eleventh edition—emphasizes a surge of inherited wealth among the billionaire class. According to the report:
In 2025, 91 heirs (64 of them male and 27 female) inherited a record USD 297.8 billion. That’s 36% more than in 2024, despite fewer people inheriting overall. Globally, inheritance bolstered the number of multigenerational billionaires, with some 860 multi-generational billionaires now overseeing total assets of USD 4.7 trillion. That’s up from 805 with USD 4.2 trillion in 2024.
Across the world, multi-generational billionaires are slowly extending down the generations, with the number of second-generation billionaires growing by 4.6% in the 2025 report, the number of third generation
by 12.3%, and the number of fourth generation and beyond by 10%.
The growing number of billionaires, including a rapidly increasing share who inherited their wealth rather than generating it themselves, says UBS, "heralds a new era" for the ultra-rich as "the great wealth transfer is intensifying as heirs inherit more than ever before.
The coming decades, the report notes, "will see growing numbers of billionaires and centi-millionaires as the Great Wealth Transfer continues to accelerate. Billionaires are estimated to transfer approximately USD 6.9 trillion of wealth globally by 2040, with at least USD 5.9 trillion set to be passed to children—either directly or indirectly through spouses."
Of the $6.9 trillion currently held by US billionaires, the report estimates that $2.8 trillion of that wealth will be passed down to heirs over the next 15 years.
"The world has more billionaires than ever because of a system that’s broken for workers and rigged for the wealthy and CEOs who already make 285 times what workers do," said the AFL-CIO in response to the report.
The union federation says that organized workers winning better collective bargaining is the first step needed to "level the playing field" for working people, while others see the surging fortunes of the ultra-wealthy as just more evidence that taxing the rich must remain at the top of the economic and political agenda both at the national level and internationally.
With the UBS report showing that 91 of the new billionaires created this year arrived at their financial status through inheritance, Hal Singer, economics professor at the University of Utah, said, "That's 91 additional reasons for a wealth tax."
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