SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
american economic liberties project
'The Country Is Not Trump's to Liquidate': New Report Details Depths of Presidential Corruption and Grift
"Americans know they’re being ripped off and are demanding accountability."
Jun 03, 2026
The American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative on Wednesday released a joint report detailing how President Donald Trump's unprecedented corruption is padding his own pockets at the expense of US taxpayers.
The report—titled "The Price of Corruption: How Trump's Pay-to-Play Administration is Driving Up Costs for Working Families"—explains how Trump isn't just using the presidency to enrich himself, but leaving ordinary Americans to foot the bill for his corrupt dealings.
The report notes that the TrumpRx website, which purports to offer Americans deep discounts on drugs, is actually a scheme for funneling even more money to large pharmaceutical companies.
"When Trump rolled out TrumpRX earlier this year, the administration claimed it was a way for Americans to access more affordable prescription drugs," the report states. "Instead, the platform fails to disclose information about less expensive generic alternatives and, in some instances, charges consumers more for products that are available for less elsewhere."
Rather than providing real relief, the report charges, TrumpRx "serves as free advertisement for Big Pharma and may be lining the pockets of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is on the board of prescription drug platform BlinkRX, which stands to benefit from the administration’s promotion of direct-to-patient medicine sales."
The report also highlights the way that Trump has used his tariffs, which raise the cost of imported goods for US consumers, as a personal self-enrichment tool, such as when he slashed tariffs on Switzerland "just a few days after Swiss business leaders presented him with a personalized gold bar worth more than $130,000 and a Rolex desk clock."
Trump levied tariffs against Brazil last year in retaliation for that country convicting a political ally, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, of plotting a coup to illegally stay in power after he lost an election to current President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva.
"Americans paid the price for Trump’s international allies breaking the law," states the report, "as coffee imported from Brazil surged to a 40% increase in price."
One particularly egregious instance of Trump's corruption, the report explains, comes from the president's unprecedented number of pardons of political allies, including hundreds of rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol on his behalf on January 6, 2021.
Beyond the high-profile rioter cases, the report shines a spotlight on a number of white-collar criminals who have received presidential clemency, including Paul Walczak, "a nursing home executive convicted of tax evasion" who was pardoned "three weeks after his mother donated $1 million to Trump at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser," and cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao, who received a pardon months after helping boost the Trump family's crypto venture.
The report notes that the Trump administration has also stacked regulatory agencies in ways that directly benefit the business interests of the president's family members, most prominently in the realm of online prediction markets tied to Donald Trump Jr.
"Over the past year, Donald Trump Jr. has served as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and a large investor in Polymarket, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—the agency overseeing these firms—has acted as their ally, rather than their watchdog," the report says. "Both firms had actively lobbied Trump’s CFTC to block states from regulating prediction markets in the same way they regulate gambling companies."
Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, called the report on Trump's corruption "a reminder that we cannot afford to look away or pretend that any of this is normal."
"The country," Harper added, "is not Trump’s to liquidate."
Molly Claflin, senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, made the case that Trump's corruption and the economic pain being felt by Americans are inseparable.
“As working families buckle under the weight of Trump’s high prices, the president is further driving up costs by abusing his position to direct taxpayer-funded kickbacks to his family and political allies," said Claflin. "His erratic policymaking is making daily life more expensive. Americans know they’re being ripped off and are demanding accountability."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Decades in the Making': Antitrust Advocates Celebrate as Jury Rules Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict "a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive."
Apr 15, 2026
Antitrust advocates celebrated on Wednesday after a jury found that Live Nation and is subsidiary Ticketmaster were illegal monopolies who for decades systematically overcharged customers for concert tickets.
As reported by The Associated Press, the verdict against Live Nation and Ticketmaster could cost the two entities "hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states," and they could be forced to sell off some of the venues they own.
The case against Live Nation, which was brought by 33 states and the District of Columbia, was initially led by the US Department of Justice. However, under President Donald Trump, the DOJ last month reached a last-minute settlement with the company that would not require it to be broken up.
The state attorneys general, however, vowed to see the case through and were rewarded with a big verdict in their favor.
New York Attorney General Letitia James celebrated the verdict, describing it as "a landmark victory to protect New Yorkers from harmful monopolies."
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict "a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive," and declared himself "proud to have brought this lawsuit."
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb noted Live Nation "has raked in billions in profits from an illegal monopoly that coerces venues, restricts artists, and exploits fans," and called the verdict "a massive win in the fight for fairness for local venues, artists, and fans."
Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden, hailed the verdict, but said it was just "a key first step towards ending Live Nation’s monopolistic control and securing real relief for those it harmed."
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the verdict was "decades in the making," and he cited iconic Seattle band Pearl Jam's fight against Ticketmaster in the 1990s to illustrate just how long it's taken to hold the company accountable.
"Pour one out for Pearl Jam, who testified before Congress in 1993 about Ticketmaster's abuse of the live concert industry," he commented.
The Roosevelt Institute took a shot at the Trump DOJ for bailing on the case, and noted the verdict against Live Nation "only happened because state AGs kept pushing after a federal settlement that let the companies off the hook."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump AI Framework Would Deliver 'Big Tech's Top Policy Priority': A Ban on State Regulations
"Written by Big Tech, for Big Tech," said Rep. Yvette Clarke of the Trump administration proposal.
Mar 20, 2026
The Trump administration on Friday released its national policy framework for regulating artificial intelligence, and critics said it gave Silicon Valley a massive gift by coming out in favor of barring state regulation of the technology.
Specifically, Big Tech critics pointed to the framework's recommendation that the federal government preempt state laws regulating AI that could otherwise "act contrary to the United States’ national strategy to achieve global AI dominance."
"States should not be permitted to regulate AI development," the framework stated, "because it is an inherently interstate phenomenon with key foreign policy and national security implications."
The Trump administration's paper also argued that states "should not unduly burden Americans’ use of AI for activity that would be lawful if performed without AI" and "should not be permitted to penalize AI developers for a third party’s unlawful conduct involving their models."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, slammed the AI policy framework, which he said appeared designed "to protect Big Tech at the expense of everyday Americans."
"Trump’s AI framework is a hollow document with only one tough and meaningfully binding provision, delivering Big Tech’s top policy priority: It aims to preempt all state laws and rules dealing with AI," said Weissman. "Preemption would effectively mean no US regulation of AI at all, with the narrow exception of rules to deal with nonconsensual intimate deepfakes, because there are no national rules in place—and this framework would impose no additional standards of consequence."
Weissman added that while states' actions to regulate AI are inadequate, they are at least "trying to meet the novel and enormous challenges of the moment," which "is exactly why Big Tech wants to shut down their efforts."
Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, called the White House's preemption of state AI laws a mistake, predicting that it would lead to even worse problems than the ones created by unregulated social media over the past two decades.
"I think it's like this: if you think the current state of play in social media guardrails are A-OK, then you'll be fine with the framework," he wrote. "If—like most—you believe we made catastrophic mistakes re social media, then you should fervently oppose this vacuous 'framework.'"
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) singled out the proposed ban on state AI regulations as a particularly troubling aspect of the framework.
"The White House National AI Policy Framework reinforces the Trump administration’s commitment to preempting state-level AI laws without the establishment of clear, enforceable federal guardrails to address the urgent risks posed by AI systems," he wrote. "It even seeks to limit congressional regulatory action. But until federal action ensures safe and responsible AI development, deployment, and use, states must retain the ability to implement policies to protect the American public."
Matt Stoller, an antitrust researcher and author of the BIG newsletter, argued that the Trump AI framework should be one of the first things a future Democratic president throws in the garbage after taking office.
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) delivered a pithy analysis of the White House framework, describing it as being "written by Big Tech, for Big Tech."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular