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‘One More Billionaire Front Group’: Centrist Dems Mocked Over New Initiative Led by Corporate Lobbyist
Next American Era will be headed by Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has lobbied for powerful corporations.
Feb 09, 2026
Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party's campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of "pro-growth" deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called "abundance" movement.
The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed "with an eye toward 2028" as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a "hub for center-left policy and advocacy."
Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison's Oracle, said Next American Era plans to "air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won't endorse candidates," Axios reported.
Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share "many of the same principles as the Abundance movement," a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance.
"She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit," Axios reported.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, called those proposed objectives "some of the weakest economic policies we've polled in the last 18 months."
"Not sure why you’d want to put ads out on these for candidates unless it’s an opp," Owens added.
pic.twitter.com/eWbdnyiNig
— Alex Jacquez (@AlexSJacquez) February 9, 2026
Abundance takes aim at what Klein and Thompson characterize as an overly burdensome regulatory approach that is purportedly hindering progress toward more affordable housing, public transportation systems, and a renewable energy revolution. Critics, such as antitrust advocate Zephyr Teachout, have criticized the so-called abundance agenda as far too ambiguous.
"I still can’t tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small-bore and correct (we need zoning reform) or nontrivial and deeply regressive (we need deregulation) or whether there is room within abundance for anti-monopoly politics and a more full-throated unleashing of American potential," Teachout wrote in her review of the book for Washington Monthly.
Critics have also noted the enthusiasm with which corporations and billionaires have glommed onto the abundance narrative.
"The ambiguity of the abundance agenda’s policy proposals, strategic or otherwise, allows private interests to leverage 'abundance' as a Trojan Horse for their preferences," the Revolving Door Project observed last year. "The growing abundance movement has institutional support from fossil fuel and Big Tech affiliates, including the sprawling Koch network and crypto and AI industry players."
Axios observed that Next American Era is one of "several center-left groups" that "have popped up or expanded in the past 18 months, including the think tank Searchlight Institute, Majority Democrats, and WelcomePAC."
"Just one more billionaire front group. Just one more neoliberal policy shop," reporter and political analyst Austin Ahlman wrote mockingly on social media in response to the launch of Next American Era. "Just one more polling outfit cooking the numbers on behalf of corporate interests and we’ll win bro, I promise."
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'Statistics Are Human Beings With the Tears Wiped Away': Silicosis, Dead Workers, and Corporate Greed
The counter-top manufacturing industry doesn’t want to protect workers from harm; it wants protection from the workers it harms.
Feb 09, 2026
Those who cut our artificial stone countertops are breathing in silica dust and dying. Not just a few. In fact, so many that in Australia they’ve banned the product and adopted safer substitutes. In the US, however, the industry wants to ban workers from suing the manufacturers and Republicans are doing their bidding, introducing H.R. 5437, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act.
Dr. David Michaels, the former head of OSHA, points us to California’s tearless Silicosis Surveillance Dashboard: 511 cases of silicosis have been diagnosed among these workers; 29 have died (average age 46); 54 underwent lung transplants; and 98 percent of these workers are Latino.
In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. “The number of cases is rising rapidly,” Dr. Michaels wrote to me, “That’s the important point.”
Here’s the more tearful description form Dr. Michaels during testimony last month before the House:
The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer.
The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. As Michaels testified:
There are substitute products that are comparable in use and cost, but which do not kill workers. Many substitutes are made from amorphous silica—a different and a safer material than crystalline silica. Since Australia banned countertops containing crystalline silica, countertops are fabricated from alternative products that look and cost the same but are safer for workers.
But switching to safer products involves costs that the manufacturers would prefer to avoid. Why lose any profits at all? Why go through the disruptions involved in producing new products? Better to be shielded by your political allies.
The countertop manufacturing industry doesn’t want to protect workers from harm; it wants protection from the workers it harms. It worries this could become another asbestos epidemic that has cost asbestos manufacturers billions of dollars in payments to the victims. This time around, the industry is in position to nip it in the bud, given that the Republicans are in full control of all three branches of government.
What the industry dreads are third-party suits. Workers are not permitted, in nearly all circumstances, to sue their own employers for illnesses and exposures at work. Those claims are covered by state workers’ compensation programs. But harmed workers can and do sue manufacturers of equipment or substances that cause them harm. And if the harm can be proved to a jury, the compensation can be steep. It doesn’t make up for the damage to the exposed workers, but it provides some support to their families and pressures the industry to find safer substitutes for its harmful products.
The solution preferred by the countertop industry is simple: get a free pass, which is what this killer legislation would do. It would shield the entire industry from “persons who claim personal injuries as a result of exposure to silica dust produced during the alteration of such products in the course of their employment by third-party fabricators.”
Nice. No change needed, no interruption of profitable production, no switching to new products. No nothing except a few political donations to grease the skids. And at least some of that corporate-funded grease comes from millionaire Marty Davis, the CEO of Cambria, a large counter manufacturer, who has donated more than $800,000 to Republicans, and encouraged Trump to challenged the outcome of the 2020 election.
On this piece of legislation, the Democrats are saying the right things. Rep. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-Ga.), the ranking Democrat on the House Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet Subcommittee committee, which is pushing this legislation, said it as clearly as could be said:
The bill behind today’s hearing would give blanket immunity to artificial stone manufacturers and suppliers, preventing injured workers from seeking justice in court. It would dismiss the hundreds of cases pending against these manufacturers.
…Our courts determine liability all the time. People petition the court, have their grievances heard, a judge and jury consider the evidence, and a judgment is rendered.
Manufacturers are asking for a different scenario – one where the deep pockets go to Congress, Congress makes a snap judgment, and the big businesses never have to go to court again. That’s not how our justice system is supposed to work, and I condemn the blatant misuse of this committee to shield corporations at the expense of the American worker.
If only more Democrats would speak like this more often, millions of working people might hear them.
The quote in the headline of this article is attributed to journalist Paul Brodeur, author of "Expendable Americans."
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'Everything Is for Sale': Trump Exploits 250th Anniversary of US Independence for Yet Another Grift
"Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise."
Feb 09, 2026
Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards.
The New York Times reported Sunday that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to "gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters," including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.
Trump has described Freedom 250 as a "public-private partnership" dedicated to organizing "a celebration of America like no other" later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.
The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump's top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 "will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events," which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.
Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation's semiquincentennial.
"American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality," Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones last week. "The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury."
"Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints," they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.
Park Service employees are being bombarded with guidance telling them to promote Freedom 250, the Trump-run org, in place of America250, the statutorily-bipartisan congressional commission. They were even urged to add the Freedom 250 logo to email signatures. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
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— Dan Friedman (@dfriedman.bsky.social) Feb 8, 2026 at 2:35 PM
Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250's activities, which the watchdog organization's co-presidents described as a "potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes." According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has "already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called 'Freedom Trucks' that rolled out last month."
" Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise," said Public Citizen's Lisa Gilbert. "Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests."
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