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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.

Emily McCloskey and Jenna Grande
emily@patrioticmillionaires.org; jenna@patrioticmillionaires.org
“The money that investors like me make passively from our wealth should not be taxed any less than the money millions of Americans make through their sweat.”
Today, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced landmark legislation that would ensure millionaires and billionaires, who earn most of their money passively through investments, pay the same tax rates as working people. The bill would also move to close common loopholes used by the super rich to avoid paying their fair share in taxes.
Following the bill’s introduction, Morris Pearl, the Chair of Patriotic Millionaires and a former Managing Director at BlackRock, released the following statement:
“For decades, we have been playing a game of Economic Jenga where we pull from the bottom and the middle, load it all on top, and then wonder why the whole thing is about to fall down. We end up with an unfair system that allows for oligarchic wealth to concentrate in the hands of a few individuals. That’s because right now in America, our tax code makes people who have jobs and work for a living pay far higher tax rates than people who make money from investments or inheritances. The money that investors like me make passively from our wealth should not be taxed any less than the money millions of Americans make through their sweat. By closing major loopholes, the Equal Tax Act would ensure that the ultra rich pay income taxes just like all Americans who work for a living and have taxes deducted from their paychecks every week. The Patriotic Millionaires are thrilled to see Senator Markey take this important step forward in reducing historic, extreme, and democracy-destabilizing levels of economic inequality in America.”
Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03) previously introduced the House companion bill in September 2025. The bill addresses the first of three key components from Patriotic Millionaires’ legislative platform, The MONEY Agenda.
For more information about the Equal Tax Act, access a one-pager about the bill HERE. To access the full text of the legislation, see HERE.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489These robots, known as "quadrupeds," are being used to patrol the sprawling energy-sucking complexes, which are increasingly being met with protest around the country.
As Americans grow fed up with the rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence data centers into their communities, tech companies are embracing a novel solution to protect their energy-sucking behemoths from danger: Even more robots... robot dogs, to be exact.
According to a report from Business Insider on Monday:
As companies pour billions into sprawling industrial campuses for cloud and AI computing, some data center operators are experimenting with four-legged bots—about the size of large dogs—that can patrol fences, inspect equipment, and flag any issues before they turn into costly outages.
These robots, known as "quadrupeds," are being used to patrol the complexes, which can sometimes reach the size of multiple football fields.
According to Fortune, tech companies are already pouring nearly $700 billion into building data centers across the US and are now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more to enlist mechanical canines as security forces.
One model from Boston Dynamics, known as "Spot," can cost anywhere from $175,000 to $300,000. And while the technology may seem futuristic, Spot and other quadrupeds like it have already been enlisted in law enforcement and public safety for years.
Another company—Ghost Robotics—advertises its quadrupeds for "reconnaissance, intelligence, and surveillance use by the military."
With more than 5,000 data centers now in the US and 800-1,000 new ones in the process of being built, Michael Subhan, the chief growth officer for Ghost Robotics, told Business Insider he expects boom times are ahead for his industry.
As data centers expand their reach at breakneck speed, there may be more interlopers for the programmable pooches to sniff out.
Due to skyrocketing energy costs and water shortages in places where large data centers have been built, the sites of proposed projects from Illinois to Minnesota to South Carolina have drawn crowds of dozens and even hundreds of demonstrators in recent weeks.
"I’m extremely creeped out," said one journalist in response to the staged video between the Israeli prime minister and the US ambassador. "Just going to go ahead and say it."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday posted a video of himself showing off what he said was a list of kill targets to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
In the video, Netanyahu informs Huckabee that he recently "erased" two names off the punch card, while noting that there are "many more to go."
Huckabee then expresses relief to Netanyahu that his name is not on the punch card, to which Netanyahu replies that the former Republican Arkansas governor was on a "list of the good, good guys."
Netanyahu then says that he's "proud to stand shoulder to shoulder" with the US military in "getting rid of these lunatics" that the two countries started bombing more than two weeks ago in Iran.
"We're wiping them out," the Israeli prime minister boasts.
"I love it," Huckabee responds. "Thank you, mister prime minister."
Crossing names off the list is good - doing it shoulder to shoulder with our American friends is even better.
Good to see Ambassador @GovMikeHuckabee. Always a pleasure.
🇮🇱🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/FZrZN03IZI
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 17, 2026
Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky expressed disgust at the two men being so jovial about matters of life and death.
"PM Netanyahu and US Ambassador Huckabee amuse themselves with a kill list," she wrote. "Yes, really."
Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone expressed a similar sentiment.
"I’m extremely creeped out," Andreone wrote. "Just going to go ahead and say it."
"Maybe—and stick with me here, Marco—the fact that the United States has had a near-total embargo on Cuba since before the Beatles’ first album might have something to do with its struggling economy?" said one critic.
As Cuba works to restore electricity to millions of people plunged into darkness across the fuel-starved island, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday blamed Cuba's socialist government for the nation's economic crisis—a crisis largely caused by 65 years of US economic embargo and exacerbated by President Donald Trump's tightened fuel blockade.
"Suffice it to say that the embargo is tied to political change on the island," Rubio told reporters at the White House. "The law is codified, but the bottom line is, their economy doesn’t work. It’s a nonfunctional economy."
"That revolution—it's not even a revolution, that thing they have—has survived on subsidies," he added. "They don’t get subsidies anymore, so they’re in a lot of trouble, and the people in charge, they don’t know how to fix it, so they have to get new people in charge."
Rubio—whose parents fled the island during the rule of pro-US dictator Fulgencio Batista—dismissed Cuba's proposed economic reforms, including opening the country to investment from Cubans living abroad.
“Cuba has an economy that doesn’t work in a political and governmental system that can’t fix it. So they have to change dramatically," he said. "What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So they’ve got some big decisions to make over there."
Rubio added that although the Trump administration is currently focused on its war of choice in Iran—one of 10 countries attacked during the two terms of the self-proclaimed "president of peace"—the US would "be doing something with Cuba very soon."
The US has been doing something with Cuba since the 19th century, when it invaded and seized the island from Spain. In the 20th century, it supported successive dictatorships and, after the Fidel Castro-led revolution ousted Batista, imposed an economic embargo on the island that has been perennially condemned by an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states for 33 years.
In addition to the embargo—which Cuba's government says has cost the nation's economy more than $200 billion in inflation-adjusted losses—the US tried to assassinate Castro many times and supported the militant Cuban exiles who launched the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Other Cuban exiles carried out numerous terror attacks targeting Cuba's economy—and sometimes innocent civilians.
In language reminiscent of the US imperialists who conquered the island in 1898, Trump told reporters Monday, “I do believe... I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba.”

This, after Trump said last month ahead of talks with Cuban officials that he might launch what he called a "friendly takeover" of the island. The president has also boasted about the tremendous economic suffering caused by his illegal embargo and fuel blockade, which is widely unpopular and has been called a form of "economic warfare."
“Officials in the US must be feeling very happy by the harm caused to every Cuban family,” Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said Monday.
In Havana, residents hardened by decades of privation carried on the best they could without power. Some struggled in the dark.
“The power outages are driving me crazy,” 48-year-old Dalba Obiedo told The Associated Press. “Last night I fell down a 27-step staircase. Now I have to have surgery on my jaw. I fell because the lights went out.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel last week acknowledged that high-level talks with US representatives were underway. Recent reporting by Drop Site News cited an unnamed White House official who accused Rubio—a longtime advocate for regime change in Cuba—of trying to sabotage the talks.
Some observers believe that Trump wants Díaz-Canel to face a similar fate as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—who was kidnapped in January during a US invasion and is now jailed in the United States—while others warn that the United States cannot be trusted in talks, pointing to recent accusations by Oman's foreign minister, who said American negotiators duplicitously scuppered an Iran peace deal that "was within our reach."
However, instead of regime change, Trump may be seeking what some observers are calling regime compliance, which is likely why he did not move to oust Maduro's subordinates. Unlike Venezuela, Cuba has no oil, but it was once was a magnet for US investment—both legal and otherwise.
Last week, a trio of Democratic US senators introduced a war powers resolution to stop Trump from attacking Cuba without the legally required authorization from Congress. Numerous war powers resolutions concerning Iran, Venezuela, and the dozens of boats Trump claims—without providing evidence—were transporting drugs from South America have all failed to pass the Republican-controlled Congress.