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
wall street journal
Judge Tosses Trump's $10 Billion Wall Street Journal-Murdoch Suit Over Epstein Reporting
The fight seemingly isn't over, with a spokesperson for the president pledging that he will "refile this powerhouse lawsuit," which critics have called part of his war on free speech.
Apr 13, 2026
A Florida-based federal judge on Monday dismissed President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a "bawdy" birthday letter the Republican allegedly gave to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump denies writing the letter or drawing the outline of a naked woman around the text. He sued the journalists behind the July report—Joseph Palazzolo and Khadeeja Safdar—and the newspaper, plus its parent company News Corp, chief executive Robert Thomson, and founder Rupert Murdoch.
The US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subsequently subpoenaed the Epstein estate for all materials that now-imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly compiled for the dead financier's birthday book, including the letter attributed to Trump—and in September, the panel published those documents online.
US District Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, found on Monday that Trump's "complaint fails to adequately allege actual malice." However, Gayles also gave Trump the opportunity to amend his filing within the next two weeks.
While The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment, a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement that the president intends to continue the case.
"President Trump will follow Judge Gayles' ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants," the spokesperson said. "The president will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People."
CNN noted that despite the legal battle, "the 95-year-old Murdoch has maintained a cozy if complicated relationship with the president, including multiple meetings at the White House in recent months."
The suit over the birthday letter to Epstein—whom Trump was publicly friends with in the 1980s and '90s until a reported falling out in the early 2000s—is just part of a sweeping effort by the president and his political enablers "to undermine and chill the most basic freedoms protected under the First Amendment," as the advocacy group Free Press put it in a December analysis.
In addition to the Journal case, examples included Trump's legal battles with the BBC and The New York Times, the White House taking control of the presidential press pool, the administration blocking The Associated Press from the Oval Office over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, ABC temporarily suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel following comments from Trump's Federal Communications Commission chair, and the Pentagon's legally contested media policy.
Such attacks continue. Last month, as the costs of his unconstitutional war on Iran mounted, Trump floated "treason" charges against media outlets that he accused of reporting false information about the conflict.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Opportunistic' Fossil Fuel Execs Cashed In on Trump's Iran War With Record Stock Sales
One climate reporter warned their windfalls "will go toward political campaigns and lobbying organizations dedicated to fighting climate regulation, blocking clean energy policy, and fueling authoritarianism."
Apr 08, 2026
After pouring money into President Donald Trump's successful campaign to take back the White House, US fossil fuel industry executives cashed in on his and Israel's war on Iran with record-setting stock sales, according to a VerityData analysis reported on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.
"Much of the selling for the first quarter began before the US and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28," and some "were prearranged under plans that allow executives to sell stock automatically at specific times or share prices without making in-the-moment decisions that could leave them open to allegations of improper trading," the newspaper acknowledged.
However, as share prices for the industry skyrocketed—Iran responded to the US-Israeli assault by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route for fossil fuels—executives at Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Diamondback Energy, and other oil and gas companies collectively sold $1.4 billion in stock.
"At nearly a dozen companies, the number of executives selling in the quarter reached or surpassed 10-year records, and in some cases set all-time records," the Journal detailed. "The sales hit a 15-year peak, with nearly six executives selling for every one that bought shares in the first quarter—well over double the usual ratio."
"CEOs stood out as big sellers in many cases," the newspaper highlighted, noting that "Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth sold some $104 million worth of shares between January and March. ConocoPhillips's Ryan Lance netted about $54.3 million in share sales in March alone. Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of oil field services company Baker Hughes, sold about $33 million worth of stock that same month."
VerityData's head of research, Ben Silverman, said that "it speaks to the opportunistic behavior of everyone involved—it could be opportunistic set months earlier, it could be opportunistic in the moment... There was a breathlessness to the selling, and the message they sent was to cash in now because the ride won't last forever."
Who's profiting from ridiculous and unnecessary wars? Big Oil CEOs, to name one obvious group. @emorwee.bsky.social heated.world/p/chevrons-c...
[image or embed]
— Ross Macfarlane (@rossmacfarlane.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 5:04 PM
In her Heated newsletter, climate journalist Emily Atkin pointed out that "this isn't the first time a small group of extraordinarily wealthy oil CEOs used a war to make themselves richer. In the weeks after President Joe Biden said that he was 'convinced' Russia would invade Ukraine in 2022, Big Oil CEOs sold almost $99 million worth of shares, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth and BailoutWatch."
According to Atkin:
What really makes this story remarkable is not simply that oil executives got rich from a war. It's how perfectly legal and normal it all is, and what that legality reveals about who wins and who loses when America goes to war.
When America goes to war, the costs are distributed broadly, onto every American who drives a car or heats a home. The benefits are distributed narrowly, flowing to a small group of men whose compensation is designed to capture exactly this kind of windfall.
And the cash windfall these oil executives make from the war won't go primarily toward yachts and private jets (they already have those). It will go toward political campaigns and lobbying organizations dedicated to fighting climate regulation, blocking clean energy policy, and fueling authoritarianism.
The Journal reporting came on the heels of Trump and Iran agreeing to a fragile two-week ceasefire negotiated by Pakistan late Tuesday. While Israel is supposedly on board, it escalated attacks on Lebanon on Wednesday.
As a Pakistani official publicly reiterated that Lebanon is still part of the deal and Iran threatened to back out altogether, Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher with the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams that Israel's assault "appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked."
Meanwhile, although oil prices dropped after the ceasefire announcement, "'fossilflation'—or inflation caused by volatile and rising prices of oil and gas—is still likely to continue," the global climate group 350.org warned on Wednesday.
"Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens and the ceasefire holds, oil and gas prices will stay above pre-war levels, and consumers will pay," said Andreas Sieber, 350.org's head of political strategy. "Volatility remains high, and supply will stay tight due to infrastructure damage and inventory rebuilding."
The group said last week that war-related spikes in oil and gas prices "have already cost consumers and businesses an additional $104.2-$111.6 billion" globally, and an analysis from Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee found that Americans spent an extra $8.4 billion at the fuel pump during the first month of Trump's war.
Throughout the conflict, 350.org and other green groups have advocated for a windfall profits tax targeting oil and gas giants, as well as renewed calls for a swift and just international transition away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Billionaires Are 'Becoming a Problem for the Economy,' Declares Wall Street Journal Report
"Debate about how much tax billionaires pay is likely to grow as America’s fiscal situation deteriorates and its wealth gap widens."
Feb 18, 2026
A report published Wednesday by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal outlined how billionaires' tax evasion schemes are causing problems for the US economy.
The report, written by London-based columnist Carol Ryan, began by noting how completely the US economy has come to depend on the spending habits of its richest households, whose wealth is primarily tied to the fortunes of the stock market, which "could mean the entire economy pays a steep price in the next market correction."
Ryan then walked through some of the plusses and minuses of the wealth tax being debated in the state of California, which has more billionaires than any state in the nation.
Even while personally finding flaws with the California proposal, Ryan said that plans to extract wealth from the super-rich aren't going away, even if the California tax plan is ultimately defeated.
"Debate about how much tax billionaires pay is likely to grow as America’s fiscal situation deteriorates and its wealth gap widens," Ryan wrote. "Data from the Federal Reserve shows that only the richest 1% of households have grown their share of overall US wealth since 1990."
Ryan also broke down how the very richest Americans have tax evasion options that mere multimillionaires don't have.
"A common strategy is to avoid salaries, which are heavily taxed," she wrote. "Billionaires prefer to be paid in shares, which are subject to capital-gains taxes when sold. But they don’t need to sell to fund their lifestyles. Billionaires use borrowed money for living expenses, pledging their shares or other assets as collateral."
Ryan added that "the interest on the debt is much lower than a capital-gains tax bill would be," and billionaires compound this wealth by passing it off to their children as part of a “buy borrow die” tax avoidance plan.
Boston College law professor Ray Madoff told Ryan that the wealth at the very top has grown so concentrated that even "very well-off Americans with high incomes" are now aligned "much more with the middle class" than in the past.
Ryan's report isn't the only one published by the Journal in recent weeks to warn of dangerous levels of US wealth inequality.
Chief Wall Street Journal economics commentator Greg Ip last week posted data showing that corporate profits' share of gross domestic income is now the highest it has been in more than 40 years, while the share of income paid out in workers' wages is at the lowest.
"Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more," wrote Ip. "The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders, and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains."
Ip also said that this problem could grow worse if artificial intelligence lives up to its creators' hype and starts replacing human workers on a mass scale.
In such a scenario, wrote Ip, the "biggest winners" of the economy would be shareholders who, as Ryan explained in her piece, have ample tools to avoid paying taxes.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular