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Amazon Says New Texas Data Center Won't Raise Utility Bills—But It Will Supercharge Pollution
"Instead of building a modern, clean energy source to power its increased AI-driven electricity demand, Amazon chose to invest in a massive natural gas power plant to fuel its giant Texas data center."
Aug 10, 2026
Amazon is boasting that the new data center it plans to build in Pecos County, Texas will be self-sustaining in its use of electricity, as the company has acquired permits to build a 7.65 gigawatt gas plant to power the massive facility, ensuring it won't raise electricity prices for households in the area.
But the savings on utility bills will likely come at a cost for the US at large and the planet, as well as locals in West Texas.
According to reporting from Cleanview Newsletter on Friday, the site acquired by Amazon, GW Ranch, has a permit from the state allowing the construction of a gas power plant that could emit 33 million tons of carbon pollution, which would make it by far the largest single source of pollution in the US.
The James H. Miller Jr. Power Plant, which burns coal in Quinton, Alabama, is currently the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, sending about 16 million tons of pollution into the atmosphere each year.
Power plants generally emit less than the maximum amount of carbon permitted, but the unprecedented limit for the new plant, which is being developed for Amazon by Pacifico Energy and will have 35 natural gas turbines, means it is likely that the company's project will far exceed the pollution caused by the plant in Alabama.
The permits viewed by Cleanview, which tracks data centers and sustainable energy development, show that the power plant would be disconnected from the state's electricity grid, at least at first, and an Amazon spokesperson said the company "believes in paying the full costs of powering our operations" and would not "raise electricity costs for Texas families."
The on-site power generation will be "designed to transition to grid-connected service as interconnection timelines allow," the spokesperson added—suggesting the data center could ultimately raise household electricity costs as well as supercharging carbon pollution in the area.
The company further tried to allay fears of the impact of the new data center and its dedicated power plant by saying it plans to use brackish water that isn't safe for irrigation or consumption at GW Ranch; along with data centers' impact on utility costs, communities have protested against the facilities across the country due to their massive water consumption.
But the advocacy group Climate Action Campaign said Sunday that in its rush to join the nationwide artificial intelligence data center buildout as President Donald Trump has demanded, Amazon "chose dirty power over clean."
"Instead of building a modern, clean energy source to power its increased AI-driven electricity demand, Amazon chose to invest in a massive natural gas power plant to fuel its giant Texas data center," said Margie Alt, the group's director. "During this excessively hot and dry summer, riddled with forest fires and unbearable air pollution, a move like this is truly unacceptable."
With Amazon pledging to eliminate its pollution-causing emissions by 2040, the company's decision to join Meta, Microsoft, and Google in investing in its own power plant to build a data center was an example of "yet another major corporation dodging accountability," said Alt.
"This isn’t innovation," she said. "Despite its massive resources, Amazon is shirking its own responsibility and the industry’s promises of computing progress without the economic or health burdens to local communities. The result of that broken promise is that communities will pay the consequences with their health and their wallets."
According to Cleanview, Pacifico Energy has plans to eventually build up to 750 megawatts of solar generation and 1.8 gigawatts for battery storage capacity at GW Ranch.
As it potentially doubles the amount of planet-heating carbon emissions that are currently sent into the atmosphere by the James H. Miller Jr. Power Plant, the plant at the GW Ranch site could heighten the risk of developing heart disease, asthma, chronic respiratory illnesses, and other health problems for people living and working in the area.
"Progress shouldn’t come at the expense of the rest of us just to power billionaires’ ambitions," said Alt. "Shame on you, Amazon!”
The project, Kathryn Guerra, a campaign director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, told The New York Times, will "absolutely have a huge impact on the environment, and on public health."
The project was made public weeks after Trump insisted that "smart" communities want data centers to be built in their vicinity—but numerous polls have shown the facilities, which offer few long-term jobs as they raise costs for families, are sparking outcry from across the political spectrum.
About 70% of respondents to a Gallup poll in March said they would oppose the construction of a data center in their area. About half of those who expressed opposition said they were mostly concerned with the environmental impact associated with data centers, or the potential for resources to be gobbled up by the facilities.
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'Starvation Wages' at Giant US Corporations Force Workers to Seek Taxpayer-Funded Aid
"No one who works for a company making billions in profits should be living in poverty," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 23, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders recently commissioned a government analysis of federal aid programs and how much employees of some of the largest and most politically influential corporations in the country are relying on food and healthcare benefits due to the chronically low wages paid by Amazon, Walmart, and other firms.
On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the results of its research, revealing trends that Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of economic inequality and poverty wages and the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, called "beyond unacceptable."
Six years after the GAO first analyzed low-wage workers' use of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report found that the number of Amazon employees who required federal assistance has nearly tripled since 2020, despite the fact that the e-commerce giant has increased its annual profits from $11.59 billion to $77.67 billion in that time.
The analysis focused on 11 states—Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington—whose combined populations comprise about one-fifth of the US population.
Last year, 12,346 of Amazon's employees needed SNAP assistance, for which households must earn less than 130% of the federal poverty level to qualify. A family of three would have to make around $35,000 or less to qualify for the program. Millions of people were shut out of the crucial program by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which required states to impose strict limits on eligibility.
More than 11,000 Amazon workers also relied on Medicaid last year in the states surveyed.
"Corporations underpay workers, don't provide healthcare, and outsource core worker needs to the government," said the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union.
While Walmart topped the list of corporations whose employees used Medicaid benefits, as it did in 2020, its share of workers who rely on the two federal programs went up only slightly over the five-year period, while Amazon's share grew significantly.
Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lighty told The Washington Post—owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—that the company's hiring spree since the coronavirus pandemic contributed to its increased share of Medicaid and SNAP beneficiaries, and noted that Amazon offers "part-time options for those who want them," which makes more employees eligible for the benefits.
But the Post noted that many people who may want full-time employment and the higher wages it offers can only find part-time work. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has found an increase in part-time employment since the pandemic.
Sanders noted that Walmart increased its annual profits from $14.88 billion in 2020 to $21.89 billion in 2025, but the number of workers who relied on Medicaid grew by 55% to more than 16,000 people in the 11 states sampled by the GAO.
“American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the starvation wages of large corporations like Walmart and Amazon," said the senator. "These corporations are making record-breaking profits, paying their CEOs exorbitant compensation packages, and spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich their wealthy shareholders. It is beyond unacceptable that these corporations, owned by some of the wealthiest people on the planet, are receiving corporate welfare from the federal government."
Rideshare and delivery apps like Uber and DoorDash, which were not significantly featured in the GAO's 2020 report, are now the top employers of people who use SNAP benefits and are in the top three employers of workers on Medicaid.
Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, told the Post that gig workers across the country struggle to make ends meet with "absolutely precarious income."
The analysis comes a year after the passage of the OBBBA, which delivered $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and the rich and which Republican proponents said was partially focused on eliminating waste and fraud in government programs like Medicaid. The law includes work requirements for the program and is expected to slash $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
Republicans have intensified their fixation on "fraud" in social services in recent months after fraudulent payments were found in Minnesota's public programs.
Warren Gunnels, the minority staff director for the Senate HELP Committee, said the GAO analysis shows that "the problem isn't the single mom getting $6 a day in food stamps."
"The problem is Jeff Bezos, worth $269 billion, more than doubled his wealth since 2020 while paying wages so low the number of Amazon workers on food stamps and Medicaid nearly tripled," said Gunnels. "Bezos is the welfare queen."
Sanders called on Bezos and the Walton family, which owns Walmart, "to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage with good benefits."
"No one who works for a company making billions in profits should be living in poverty," said the senator. "This is especially true after these corporations and their multibillionaire owners received a massive tax break from President Trump’s so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ paid for by the largest cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance in history.”
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'Drop Project Nimbus!': Protester of Amazon Genocide Complicity Put in Chokehold at 'AI for Good' Summit
"Is this the future you want to see? Where AI executives pretend like they have the answers, that they are doing good, and you're giving them a stage?"
Jul 08, 2026
A protester was violently removed from the United Nations AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva on Wednesday after Palestine defenders disrupted a presentation by a senior Amazon executive to denounce Big Tech's complicity in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Pro-Palestine activists linked to the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement are protesting the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) conference over its partnerships with tech titans, especially Amazon and Google. In 2021, the pair signed a $1.2 billion contract for Project Nimbus, which provides cloud services to the Israeli government and military.
Under the deal, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud provide the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli government agencies with cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence tools, and data storage. The contract prohibits Google or Amazon from refusing service to Israeli government, military, or intelligence agencies.
Project Nimbus sparked the #NoTechForApartheid campaign, in which disaffected tech workers and dozens of advocacy groups rose up against Big Tech’s complicity in Israeli human rights crimes in Palestine, including the Gaza genocide; apartheid; and illegal occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
On Wednesday, activists interrupted a summit speech by Amazon vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) Werner Vogels, with protesters taking the stage—two of them holding a large sign reading "No Tech for Apartheid"—as others in the audience chanted "Drop Project Nimbus!"
"You are making Project Nimbus, a project of billions of dollars that Amazon is investing so that Israel has free access to your servers," the man who upstaged Vogels said as the Amazon CTO stood by with his hands on his hips. "You are investing billions in that. Your technology, Project Nimbus, develops Lavender, develops the software Where's Daddy, that actively tracks, using AI, people in Palestine, and when they come back, they kill them together with their families."
"And you know this... and you're making millions out of this," the protester continued. "You're sitting here as if you're trying to do good, as if you're trying to be for the good of AI. What do you have to say for yourself? How do you sleep at night?"
"Maybe that's why you're looking so panicked. Maybe that's why you cannot even stand on this stage anymore and look at these people, because you know exactly what your technology is being used for," the activist said after Vogels stepped off the stage.
"They know exactly where their profits are coming from, and they continue anyway," the protester added, drawing loud cheers.
As the activists holding the sign were removed from the stage, the man speaking gestured to Vogels and others and said: "You should be stopping them! You should be stopping those criminals right here! Why are you facilitating genocide? Why are you continuing to be complicit in the deaths of innocent people three years on?"
Security personnel then removed the man from the stage as he said: "No violence. No violence."
"Why are you putting me in a chokehold?" he asked as he was violently ejected. "Is this the future you want to see?... Where AI executives pretend like they have the answers, like they are doing good, and you're giving them a stage? Shame on you, Amazon! Drop Project Nimbus!"
Activists with the BDS movement and other groups also protested at last year's AI for Good summit, which came on the heels of a report by UN independent Palestine expert Francesca Albanese detailing corporate complicity and direct participation in Israeli crimes against Palestinians and specifically naming dozens of companies, including Amazon and Google parent company Alphabet.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, including thousands of people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the flattened Gaza Strip, since Israel launched its US-backed war on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led the deadliest attack on Israel in the country's 78-year history. Around 2 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, while Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza fueled famine and disease.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The International Criminal Court, also located in the Dutch city, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
The Geneva summit follows the creation earlier this month of the ITU's AI for Good Global Commission, which is co-chaired by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose repressive 32-year rule has been criticized for persistent human rights abuses. Both Amazon and Google are represented on the commission.
The summit also comes amid growing worldwide opposition to the unchecked development of AI technology, which experts warn will lead to job losses on an unprecedented scale, widening economic inequality, environmental and climate harms, social isolation, increased government surveillance, "killer robots," and, in the long term, possibly even human extinction.
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A Four-Word Response for Those Upset With Jeff Bezos for Any Number of Reasons: 'Tax the Damn Rich'
Sen. Bernie Sanders noted that the billionaire spent $10 million on the Met Gala, $120 million on a penthouse, and $500 million on a yacht while "planning to throw 600,000 Amazon workers out on the streets and replace them with robots."
May 05, 2026
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in recent weeks has come under fire for a wide variety of reasons, including his involvement with the 2026 Met Gala and his plans to build a robot workforce.
A Monday report from The Hollywood Reporter noted that Bezos, despite being a lead sponsor of this year's Met Gala, did not make an appearance at the event's red carpet as he had in past years.
Bezos' sponsorship of the Gala has been hit with heavy criticism in recent weeks, as many activists slammed the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art for taking the tech mogul's money despite his company's labor practices and reported involvement in helping US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, other critics "accused the billionaire of buying influence with the major event and speculation swirled that some stars may boycott the event due to his involvement."
In addition to not appearing at the Met Gala red carpet, Bezos is reportedly trying to lower his profile by selling his $500 million luxury yacht.
The New York Post reported on Monday that Bezos has decided that the 417-foot vessel has become "too recognizable," and is also a headache to maintain, costing an estimated $30 million per year to operate.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday argued that Bezos' lavish spending and his plan to build an army of robots to replace human workers was symbolic of American capitalism in 2026.
"The reality of American life today," Sanders wrote in a social media post. "Jeff Bezos, worth $290 billion, spent: $10 million on the Met Gala, $120 million on a penthouse, $500 million on a yacht. Meanwhile, he‘s planning to throw 600,000 Amazon workers out on the streets and replace them with robots. Unacceptable."
Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, similarly made the case that Bezos' spending spree was yet another argument for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
"Jeff Bezos, who paid $10 million for the Met Gala," Gunnels wrote, "got $62 billion richer since [President Donald] Trump was elected and spent $500 million on a yacht to sail to his $55 million wedding in Venice to give his wife a $5 million ring because his tax rate is less than 1%. Four words: Tax the damn rich."
Labor unions, which have long clashed with Bezos over Amazon's aggressive union-busting tactics, held their own rival "Ball Without Billionaires" on Monday evening to protest the Bezos-funded Met Gala.
As reported by Democracy Now!, the gala featured "Amazon, Whole Foods, Washington Post, Starbucks, and Uber workers" who "walked the runway in looks by immigrant designers."
April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, said the Ball Without Billionaires was "not just about fashion" but "about power" and "telling the truth that people who sew and care and drive and cook and clean and secure and those that create are the ones who make everything possible."
Workers at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, who earlier this year voted to unionize, registered their own disapproval of this year's Met Gala, posting a message on Instagram informing followers that "91% of hourly Met staff in our unit earn less than a living wage."
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‘Worst Conceivable Representative’: Inequality Opponents Condemn Bezos Sponsorship of Met Gala
"It's a thin line between celebrating glamor and artwashing extreme wealth," said the Tax Justice Network.
May 04, 2026
As celebrities prepared to attend the 2026 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, a coalition of nearly three dozen civil society groups warned that with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—currently the fourth-richest person on Earth—chairing the annual fundraiser, the gala risks "artwashing the harms of extreme wealth."
Groups including Greenpeace International, Patriotic Millionaires, and War on Want signed a letter organized by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, calling on the museum and Vogue magazine, which hosts the event, not to honor Bezos and warning that the billionaire is using the two cultural institutions as tools "to launder his public image."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a celebrated collection of art spanning centuries, many of it made "in defiance of power—work that exposed injustice, gave voice to the silenced, and held the powerful to account," reads the letter.
But the tech mogul chosen to chair the gala "has made his loyalties clear" since President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 and during the Republican's second term, said the groups, pointing to Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post, the mass firing of hundreds of the newspaper's reporters this year, and his remaking of the publication's opinion section into one focusing on "free markets."
He "gutted" the Post "while reportedly pouring $75 million into a film promoting Melania Trump," reads the letter, referring to the Amazon-produced documentary film Melania.
"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes."
"He is not just a bystander to Trump’s administration," wrote the organizations. "He is one of its enablers. This is not philanthropy. This effectively is influence bought and paid for by Bezos’ pocket change—and the Met Gala is his latest purchase."
The groups added that in addition to aligning himself with the White House through his ownership of the Post, Bezos and Amazon—a government contractor where he is still the largest individual shareholder—is working with Trump to "make possible a concentration of power that not only threatens lives in the US but across the world as well."
"While so many of these policies aren’t new, they have been exacerbated under Trump and with the help of people like Bezos—from families torn apart by ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids reportedly enabled by Amazon's own technology, to a White House emboldened to threaten and carry out military action against sovereign nations without consequence—including to ‘destroy a whole civilization’ in Iran—with no accountability," reads the letter.
The Tax Justice Network, one of the signatories, emphasized that just a fraction of the money that goes to the $100,000-per ticket Met Gala could alleviate the economic inequality that's grown worse under the Trump administration.
"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes," said the Tax Justice Network, citing its analysis released Monday.
Bezos is among the billionaires who have contributed donations to Trump's pet projects—a luxury ballroom and a 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, DC—while the president has tried to cut the home energy assistance program, said the group.
“There’s a thin line between celebrating glamorous fashion and artwashing extreme wealth, and that line gets bulldozed when your poster boy is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects and a top spender on anti-worker lobbying,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network.
In the first two hours of the Met Gala, Cobham added, "Bezos’s wealth will grow by the equivalent of 130,000 hours of a teacher’s labor... This extreme distortion throws economies out of whack. Our economies are supposed to let people earn the wealth they need to lead secure and comfortable lives, but most countries’ tax rules make it easier for the superrich to collect wealth than for the rest of us to earn it."
It's a thin line between celebrating glamor & artwashing extreme wealth. That line gets bulldozed when your patron is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects & a top spender on antiworker lobbying. Don't let Bezos artwash his at the Met Gala taxjustice.net/press/2-tax-...
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— Tax Justice Network (@taxjustice.net) May 4, 2026 at 3:25 AM
"In Bezos’ case, it’s easy to see how that undertaxed collected wealth goes towards lobbying further against workers’ rights and pay, while his company Amazon remains one of the biggest recipients of US subsidies," said Cobham.
According to the Tax Justice Network's analysis, Bezos accumulated $3.8 million every house from 2023-25, when his total wealth grew by more than $100 billion.
"If Bezos were to continue to accumulate wealth at this rate," said the group, "he would accumulate $7.6 million in the first two hours of the Met Gala event, which is the equivalent of 110 NYC Public Schools teachers’ starting salaries"—$68,902.
Those organizing the gala can and must "stop celebrating those destroying our countries and humanity itself," reads the letter sent by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, by not honoring Bezos and backing the fair taxation of the wealthiest households and corporations.
"End the oligarchy," reads the letter. "Tax the super rich. Now."
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a proponent of taxing the rich to pay for crucial public programs and services, planned to skip the Met Gala in a break with tradition. Last month Mamdani announced plans for a tax on second homes valued at $5 million or more in New York City.
Celebrities who are reportedly planning to skip the event include Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid, who has spoken out against ICE and in favor of Palestinian rights, and actress Zendaya.
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It Is Difficult for the Brain to Comprehend All the Ways Jeff Bezos Is Shafting Americans
Like the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, Bezos’s consumption is of the conspicuous kind. But is luxurious lifestyle is not his biggest crime.
Apr 24, 2026
I’m tempted to give Elon Musk the title of world's worst neo robber baron. But when it comes to greedy and irresponsible corporate behavior, one CEO is outdoing even Musk.
When the history of this sordid second Gilded Age is written, the list of neo robber barons will obviously include Musk as well as Meta’s (Facebook’s) Mark Zuckerberg, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and board chair Peter Thiel, Oracle’s Larry Ellison (and his son, David), Google’s Sundar Pichai, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and the Trump Organization’s monumentally corrupt Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump.
But one greedy, public-be-damned CEO stands out even above Musk, Trump, and the rest. His name: Jeff Bezos. His corporation: Amazon.
It is difficult for the human mind to comprehend all the ways Bezos is shafting Americans.
Start with prices. According to a newly unsealed filing released Monday in an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Amazon has pressured major brands like Levi’s and Hanes to demand that competing retailers raise prices on their products.
At a time when most Americans are having trouble making ends meet, Amazon’s push to raise prices — to enlarge its profits (and put more money into Jeff Bezos’s pockets) — is beyond unconscionable.
The New York Times’s David McCabe reports on unsealed evidence that Amazon punishes sellers on its marketplace for offering lower prices on other websites, like those of Walmart or Target. When it spots a competitor’s lower price, Amazon tells the brands to demand that rival sites raise their prices for the products.
The filing includes an email to Hanes from Amazon, with links to Target’s and Walmart’s lower prices, along with Hanes’s apologetic response that it “reached out to Target and Walmart to have the prices increased.” And an email to Levi’s from Amazon, with links to lower-priced khakis on Walmart’s website, along with Levi’s response that Walmart had agreed to raise its price.
According to the lawsuit, Amazon has been able to exert pressure on different brands to raise their prices because of Amazon’s power and reach.
At a time when most Americans are having trouble making ends meet, Amazon’s push to raise prices — to enlarge its profits (and put more money into Jeff Bezos’s pockets) — is beyond unconscionable.
This is hardly Bezos’s and Amazon’s first brush with antitrust law. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states accused Amazon of illegally maintaining a monopoly in online retail by squeezing merchants who sell on its site and prioritizing its own products, resulting in “artificially higher prices.”
In September, the FTC agreed to settle another lawsuit against Amazon that accused it of making it difficult for consumers to cancel its Prime subscription service. Amazon agreed to pay up to $2.5 billion — including $1 billion in penalties and additional payouts to consumers — but didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson reports that Virginia is subsidizing Amazon’s “second headquarters” in Crystal City, Virginia — just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. — with $750 million in taxpayer funds, yet the corporation is wildly behind its job-creation pledge. Having promised to create 25,000 new jobs by 2038, it created a mere 1,600 jobs last year and is up to just 29 percent of the number of jobs it promised by now.
Speaking of Amazon jobs: Until earlier this month, attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board were prosecuting Amazon for firing employees that make Amazon deliveries because they’d voted to join the Teamsters, a clear violation of labor laws.
But then, a few weeks ago, the NLRB attorneys — now firmly under control of Trump’s NLRB general counsel — announced they’d reached a “settlement” with Amazon in which Amazon agreed to pay the workers who’d been laid off for more than two years, two weeks’ worth of wages. Two weeks.
Amazon’s workers are among the worst-treated in America.
Ryan Haas of The Western Edge reports that on April 6, an Amazon warehouse worker collapsed and died on the floor of Amazon’s warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon. A co-worker trained in CPR tried to help but was told by a manager to turn around. For more than an hour, employees said, they were instructed to continue picking items and loading trucks as the man lay dead. One manager reportedly told workers to “just turn around and not look” and get back to work.
Jeff Bezos couldn’t care less. As of April 2026, his net worth is estimated to be between $259 billion and $269 billion, making him one of the three richest people in the world.
Like the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, Bezos’s consumption is of the conspicuous kind.
He celebrated his wedding last year to Lauren Sánchez with a multi-day star-studded event in Venice, Italy, estimated to cost more than $50 million, featuring guests like Oprah Winfrey and Kim Kardashian, and including a ceremony on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and a pajama-themed afterparty at the Arsenal.
His “homes” include three adjacent properties on Indian Creek Island in Florida, costing over $230 million; the former Warner estate in Beverly Hills, California, which features a 13,600-square-foot mansion and a golf course, which he purchased for $165 million; a 14-acre compound on Maui with a 4,500-square-foot main house and 700-square-foot pool; a $23 million mansion in Washington, D.C.; and a massive multi-lot compound with waterfront frontage in Medina, Washington.
But what puts Bezos at the head of all the other robber barons in this second Gilded Age is his slavish sycophancy toward the worst president in American history.
Bezos bought the legendary Washington Post for $250 million in October 2013 and has turned it into a Trump cheerleader — prohibiting its editorial page from endorsing Kamala Harris in 2024 and barring it from writing anything critical about American capitalism or Trump.
(That’s not all Bezos has done to ruin the Post. In February, he fired more than 300 Post journalists, about a third of its staff.)
Then he shamelessly paid $40 million to license the documentary “Melania” plus $35 million to market it — and earned back a tiny percentage. It was a blatant bribe of Trump.
And he does whatever Trump asks. After Trump complained to Bezos about a report that Amazon planned to display for consumers the costs of Trump’s tariffs, Bezos immediately canceled the plan.
Bezos has sucked up to Trump presumably to secure Pentagon contracts for his Blue Origin rocket company, which landed a $2.3 billion NASA contract early in Trump's second term. And to avoid further antitrust lawsuits or labor law scrutiny.
That he has zero scruples does not necessarily distinguish Bezos from the other robber barons of this despicable era.
But his public-be-damned business practices, his especially conspicuous consumption, and his excessive sucking up to Trump make Jeff Bezos the worst CEO of them all.
What can you do? You might share this post and boycott Amazon.
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Ocasio-Cortez Vindicated—Again—After Amazon HQ2 Added No Jobs in Virginia Last Year
The Amazon mega-facility has consistently failed to meet job creation expectations, reported a Virginia-based business publication.
Apr 03, 2026
Although Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took criticism from some mainstream media pundits after she helped rally public opinion against the construction of Amazon's HQ2 in Long Island City, new data revealed this week has seemingly vindicated her skepticism of the project.
Virginia Business reported on Thursday that a filing submitted to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership this week showed that Amazon created no jobs at its HQ2 in Arlington County last year, and thus "will not seek a state payment" under the state's workforce grant incentives.
Last year, reported Virginia Business, Amazon requested more than $6.4 million through the grant program for adding just under 293 jobs in 2024.
"The hiring slowdown follows earlier signs that Amazon’s HQ2 buildout has fallen short of initial expectations," Virginia Business explained. "The company originally projected it would create 10,000 jobs by 2024, but hiring totals fell well short of that mark. The company currently has nearly 8,500 employees who work out of HQ2."
In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined with local activists to oppose the construction of HQ2 in Long Island City, and they pointed to the billions of dollars in tax incentives offered by New York City and New York state as an example of wasteful corporate welfare being given to one of the world's richest companies.
Amazon canceled its plans to build HQ2 in New York in February 2019, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to take a victory lap.
"Anything is possible," the then-freshman congresswoman wrote in a social media post. "Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."
Amazon would subsequently move construction of HQ2 to Virginia after being offered hundreds of millions in potential tax incentives, but it delayed construction of the facility in 2023, which again led Ocasio-Cortez to declare vindication.
"When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York because it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us," she wrote. "Billboards went up in Times Square denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-eds and CEOs insulted my intelligence. In the end, we were right."
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Amazon Cites Oil Price Spike Caused by Trump's Iran War to Justify New 3.5% Surcharge
The retail giant said the surcharge was needed due to "elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics" that "have increased the cost of operating across the industry."
Apr 02, 2026
Americans having been paying more for gasoline since the start of President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and now it seems the war's costs are spreading to other areas of the economy.
Amazon announced on Thursday that, beginning April 17, it would add a "3.5% fuel and logistics-related surcharge" to vendors that use its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service in the US and Canada.
The company said that it needed to add the surcharge due to "elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics" that "have increased the cost of operating across the industry."
"We have absorbed these increased costs so far," Amazon said. "However, similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated, we implement temporary surcharges on our fulfillment fees to recover a portion of the actual cost increases we are experiencing."
Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek told CNBC that the company's surcharge will be "meaningfully lower" than rival carriers, and insisted that "we remain committed to our selling partners' success and to maintaining broad selection and low prices for customers."
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, said that Amazon's surcharge is "yet another example of more increased costs to come," as "the ongoing supply shock" caused by the Iran war "has lasted longer than expected."
Amazon isn't alone in adding surcharges due to the war's impact on fuel costs.
According to a Tuesday report in The New York Times, fresh food distributors across the US have been adding surcharges to deliveries to make up for the increased fuel costs caused by the Iran war, with the result being that "grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, and even schools are most likely seeing costs for their food shipping climb."
John Ross, the chief executive of the Independent Grocers Alliance, told the Times that the increased shipping costs from the surge in diesel fuel costs have come at a particularly inopportune time since many Americans were already stretched thin financially before Trump attacked Iran.
"For people who spend every nickel they have on daily expenses, if grocery prices go up $5, that $5 has to come from something else," Ross said. "But it’s hard for the grocers to eat it also. For every $1 that consumers spend at the register, the grocery store is keeping about two pennies. There’s very little room there."
The price of fuel isn't the only factor seen driving food prices higher, as CNBC on Thursday reported that experts expect to see a spike in food prices later this year thanks to the Iran war's impact on fertilizer prices.
University of Minnesota economist Kjetil Storesletten told CNBC that "the price of food is going to move quite a lot" in the coming months, predicting that "all of the increased price in fertilizer is going to be passed through to food."
Storesletten said that food prices won't jump immediately, but warned that coming grocery sticker shock will grow more severe if Iran keeps its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future.
"Imagine [the strait] remains closed until the summer," the economist said. "We will see substantial increases in food prices."
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Meet the 16 Billionaires Making Bank by Underpaying Their Workers
The poverty wage business model that is so prevalent in Corporate America works spectacularly well for a handful of wealthy and politically powerful executives and shareholders. For the rest of us, not so much.
Mar 25, 2026
At least 16 US billionaires owe their wealth to one of America’s 20 largest low-wage employers—corporations where a significant share of workers earn so little they have to rely on public assistance.
Of these 16 billionaires, 8 are associated with Walmart. Amazon and Tyson Foods have two members of this elite club, while Home Depot, Best Buy, Starbucks, and Chipotle each have one.
For detailed data on wages and CEO pay at these and other leading low-wage corporations, see the recent Institute for Policy Studies report "America’s 20 Largest Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis." This article includes updated net worth data from the just-released Forbes 2026 Global Billionaires List.
Walmart
Seven descendants of Walmart founder Sam Walton have accumulated their multi-billion-dollar fortunes off the backs of the giant retailer’s low-wage workers. His eldest son, Rob Walton, leads the pack, with $146 billion. Another billionaire, Drayton McLane, gained entry to this elite club by selling his grocery distribution business to Walmart for a significant share in the retailer.
When corporate resources are funneled into the pockets of those at the top while ordinary employees have to rely on public assistance, we are all subsidizing the executive mansions and private jets.
Median pay at Walmart, the largest US private sector employer, stood at $29,469 in 2024. That’s below the income limits for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food aid benefits. It’s nowhere near the $59,600 income level needed to afford the US average rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
In addition to median pay figures reported in corporate proxy statements, we gathered data from the small number of state governments that disclose corporations’ use of public assistance programs to subsidize their low wages.
In Nevada, Walmart had 4,574 employees, 29.3% of their employees in that state, enrolled in Medicaid in 2024. In four states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan), Walmart had a total of 10,920 employees enrolled in the SNAP food aid program.
The media organization More Perfect Union points out that Walmart not only relies on SNAP to make up for the low wages they pay their workers, but they also benefit when people use food stamps to buy groceries in their stores. According to a Numerator survey covering the 12 months ending July 31, 2025, Walmart ranked No. 1 for SNAP benefit redemption, receiving nearly 26% of all SNAP dollars.
Amazon
Since MacKenzie Scott received 4% of Amazon stock in her 2019 divorce settlement, the ecommerce goliath has had not one but two reps on the billionaire ranking. Scott has become a major philanthropist, but is still sitting on an estimated $28.6 billion. Her ex, Amazon founder and current Trump ally Jeff Bezos, came in fourth in the world in the Forbes list this year, with $224 billion.
Amazon’s typical employees are on another economic planet. Their median pay of $37,181 just barely exceeds the family-of-three income limits for Medicaid and SNAP. With half of Amazon employees earning less than that amount, a significant share of the company’s 1.2 million US employees no doubt have to rely on public assistance.
Indeed, the Nevada state government’s Medicaid report reveals that Amazon had 8,951 employees enrolled in that health program in that state in 2024, making up 48.4% of all of the firm’s employees in Nevada. In the four states that report SNAP enrollee data by employer, Amazon came in second after Walmart, with 9,633 employees receiving those benefits.
Home Depot
Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank holds an estimated $11.1 billion. His fellow co-founder, Bernard Marcus, died on election day in 2024, after donating $9.4 million to the campaigns of President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
While ranking among the country’s lowest-paying companies, Home Depot has had plenty money to blow on stock buybacks. This is a financial maneuver that artificially inflates the value of a company’s shares—and the stock holdings of wealthy executives and stockholders.
The big-box chain spent $37.9 billion on share repurchases between 2019 and 2024. That sum would have been enough to give each of Home Depot’s 419,600 US employees six annual $15,039 bonuses. Home Depot’s median pay in 2024 stood at just $35,196—less than the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid.
State government data show that Home Depot employees had a total of 2,213 employees enrolled in SNAP food aid in Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan.
Starbucks
Longtime Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has accumulated $3.5 billion in wealth off a company that paid its median earner just $14,674 in 2024. Employee discontent has sparked pro-union elections at more than 570 stores over the past four years. But the company has used various tactics to prevent workers from securing a first contract, including during a period when Schultz returned to his CEO post.
Schultz recently purchased a $44 million penthouse in Surfside, Florida, a state with zero personal income tax.
Taxing away excessive wealth could also encourage business models that share profits equitably with all employees.
Rounding out the low-wage billionaires list are the founders of Best Buy and Chipotle and two descendants of John Tyson, the founder of Tyson Foods, a meat processor with a sizeable immigrant workforce.
The poverty wage business model that is so prevalent in Corporate America works spectacularly well for a handful of wealthy and politically powerful executives and shareholders. For the rest of us, not so much.
When corporate resources are funneled into the pockets of those at the top while ordinary employees have to rely on public assistance, we are all subsidizing the executive mansions and private jets, the massive political spending, and all the other trappings of excessive wealth.
Taxing Excessive Wealth
Lawmakers have introduced several tax proposals to curb the size of billionaire fortunes. Under current law, the ultra rich hold most of their wealth in stock and other financial assets that are not taxable until they are sold. In the meantime, they’re allowed to borrow against these assets to fund their lavish lifestyles and then pass their wealth on to heirs tax-free.
One federal bill to address that loophole, the Billionaires Income Tax Act, would impose an annual tax on billionaires’ gains from tradable assets like stocks, whether or not they sell the asset.
Several other proposals would tax billionaires’ accumulated wealth. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) are the lead advocates of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would apply a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion and a 3% tax on those with net worth above $1 billion.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently introduced a slightly different model that would establish a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires. This proposal is similar to a California state ballot initiative for a 5% one-time wealth tax on billionaire residents of that state.
Each of these proposals would raise massive revenue for public investments. At the same time, taxing away excessive wealth could also encourage business models that share profits equitably with all employees instead of extracting from those at the bottom to make wealthy executives and shareholders even richer.
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As Amazon Ditches Flock, Protesters Call On It to Go Further and 'Dump' ICE
"Amazon knows that we know now that they are facilitating and profiting from the rise of a supercharged surveillance state that does not respect human rights or the rule of law, and it must end,” one participant said.
Feb 13, 2026
As backlash against Big Tech’s complicity with President Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda grows, 200 to 250 people gathered on a rainy Seattle afternoon outside Amazon’s headquarters on Friday to demand that the company “dump” its support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which they illustrated by dumping ice onto the grass.
The protest came one day after Amazon-owned Ring announced it would cut ties with law-enforcement tech company Flock Safety, a move that followed public backlash after a Super Bowl ad showcased a “Search Party” feature that activates a network of Ring cameras and uses artificial intelligence for neighborhood surveillance. Ending the partnership with Flock had originally been one of the Seattle protesters’ three demands.
“Our third demand has already been met—which shows that these companies are waking up to how appalled regular people are about the dystopia they're creating for us," organizer Emily Johnston said in a statement.
Johnston said the backlash, as well as nationwide protests against Target’s complicity with ICE and an open letter from Google employees calling on that company to disclose and divest from its dealings with ICE and CBP, meant “it’s clear that we have momentum.”
“We want them to see that partnering with Palantir was a mistake and hosting ICE and CBP on Amazon Web Services was a mistake."
“No one wants surveillance and state violence except those who are profiting from it—and Amazon's thriving depends on both its workers and customers,” Johnston continued. “We have leverage, and we're going to use it."
The protesters on Friday called on Amazon to go further by stopping to host ICE and CBP on Amazon Web Services and ending its partnership with Palantir that also facilitates deportations and surveillance.
“Corporations for years have not only been complicit, but active beneficiaries of the tax money needlessly spent to tear apart immigrant families and communities,” Guadalupe of participating group La Resistencia said in a statement. “Tech plays a bigger role today more than ever in empowering ICE surveillance and its apparatuses of control.”
Eliza Pan, the co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), told the crowd that Ring dropping the Flock contract was “a big victory for every single person here.”
“We’re adding to that pressure by being here together,” she said. “Amazon knew about this rally, and knows that this is the first of many if they do not end these other partnerships. Amazon knows that we know now that they are facilitating and profiting from the rise of a supercharged surveillance state that does not respect human rights or the rule of law, and it must end.”
The Ring ad featured at the Super Bowl did not mention Flock and showed the Search Party feature being used to find lost dogs, yet viewers and advocates could easily imagine the technology being used in more invasive ways.
“The addition of AI-driven biometric identification is the latest entry in the company’s history of profiting off of public safety worries and disregard for individual privacy, one that turbocharges the extreme dangers of allowing this to carry on,” Beryl Lipton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in response to the ad. “People need to reject this kind of disingenuous framing and recognize the potential end result: a scary overreach of the surveillance state designed to catch us all in its net.”
The widely negative response told Amazon that partnering with Flock “was a mistake,” protest organizer Evan Sutton told Common Dreams.
“We want them to see that partnering with Palantir was a mistake and hosting ICE and CBP on Amazon Web Services was a mistake,” he said.
The protest was organized by local tech worker, immigrant justice, and other activist groups including AECJ, No Tech for Apartheid, Defend Immigrants Alliance, La Resistencia, Troublemakers, Washington for All, Seattle Indivisible, Seattle DSA, 350 Seattle, and Southend Indivisible.
The protesters gathered for about an hour to listen to six speakers, including progressive Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck. They distributed a flyer to Amazon employees and other passersby with a QR-code link for employees to connect with AECJ.
The demonstration reflects a growing frustration with the Trump-Tech alliance, both nationally and locally.
“We are seeing the American technocrats just full body hug the Trump administration right now, and in the case of Amazon, it’s a company that was born in Seattle, that has made Seattle home, that benefits from all the wonderful things about Seattle and is completely betraying Seattle values by profiting off of the industrial deportation complex and cuddling up to the Trump administration,” Sutton told Common Dreams.
He pointed out that on the night of the day that a CBP agent murdered Alex Pretti, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy attended a private White House premiere for the Melenia movie.
“We have a duty to let these companies know that we won’t stand for it,” he said.
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