May 21, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Want to see the influence of oligarchs in action? Amid the hubbub over Trump's “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, House Republicans managed to insert a little-noticed dangerous amendment. If approved as written, the bill would now block states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next ten years.

Given the pitiful congressional track record on technology, that blocking would essentially mean no meaningful regulations on the rapidly growing AI industry for a decade.

Meanwhile, at the same time that GOP lawmakers were pulling off this policy coup, some of AI's wealthiest boosters — Elon Musk, Open AI's Sam Altman, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang — were flying to Saudi Arabia aboard Air Force One. The tech execs took advantage of the trip to cut billion-dollar sweetheart deals with the Gulf states and continue to ingratiate themselves with Donald Trump.

The horrors in the House Republican budget go far beyond, of course, this AI policy freeze. A just-released analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that the GOP budget would accelerate inequality by reducing the resources of households in America’s poorest 10 percent and increasing those resources for households sitting pretty in our most affluent tenth.

Chris Mills Rodrigo
for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality.org team

The Fight To Save the Federal Agency That Protects Us from Scams

This week’s frontline face: Lauren Saunders, the associate director of the National Consumer Law Center.

What she's doing to help create a more equal world: The world, Saunders knows from personal experience, sits stacked against consumers. Scams are always lurking around the corner. 

Last year, for instance, Saunders while on vacation found herself charged nearly $1,000 for a short taxi ride. Her bank refused to investigate this clearly bogus charge. But fortunately, back in 2010, Congress had created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to address frauds just like that.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is now dismantling the CFPB, a move that would leave Americans having to rely on their own individual capacity to do battle with their banks.

What makes this fight so important to her: “Most people can’t take on big banks by themselves,” Saunders recently wrote. “In a world where we’re at the mercy of big corporations that ignore the law, exploit struggling families, and make profits at our expense, we need the CFPB on our side.”

Taking Over the Corporate Oversight Mantle the Feds Have Abandoned

The second Trump administration, in just a few months, has dismantled much of the federal government's regulatory infrastructure. As noted above, the administration has been busy gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

The administration is also not enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an important piece of legislation that makes it illegal for a U.S. business to pay foreign officials to cut business deals. But in this new federal vacuum states and private actors have started stepping up.

In a new piece for Inequality.org, Phil Mattera of Good Jobs First outlines the litigation wins that consumer advocates have begun racking up against some of our most massive U.S. corporations.

People live longer in nations with lower levels of inequality. The United States ranks poorly on inequality measures, closer to Turkey than to France or Sweden. The pending House budget proposal, if enacted, would no doubt make matters worse. This budget plan would throw an estimated 13.7 million Americans off health insurance while giving tax breaks to billionaires. 

This chart here uses the Gini coefficient, a standard global benchmark, to measure inequality. The higher the Gini, the greater the inequality. For an interactive version of this chart and more on inequality and health, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

Can You Be Too Rich? This Congressman Doesn’t Think So

This week’s dour deep pocket: Rep. Jefferson Shreve, a near-billionaire who now represents central Indiana in Congress — when he’s not trading stocks.

What has Shreve sour: The high-profile press coverage this House freshman has just started receiving about his penchant for paying considerable attention to his personal stock portfolio.

Between April 7 and April 17 alone, Shreve made over 140 stock trades worth somewhere between $3.44 million and $9.45 million. The stocks involved included transportation-related companies. In Congress, Shreve sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

NOTUS, the news group that broke the Shreve share trade story, is reporting that the lawmaker’s office “did not respond to a series of specific questions about the congressman’s stock transactions.”

The last word: A recent University of Maryland poll has found 78 percent of Democrats in the United States in favor of prohibiting members of Congress and their live-in families from trading stocks. Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans support that ban.

Our research, editorial, and publishing team depends on hundreds of paid subscribers who make monthly gifts. Some give $3 each month. Others give $200! All told, this support enables our team to stay focused on identifying causes and solutions to our deep economic inequality. Paid subscribers have contributed more than $20,000 in the past year. Ready to become a paid subscriber? Sign up today.