June 4, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Our country’s media ecosystem is not in good shape. Local newspapers are fading away, and digital ventures are folding faster than they can secure funding. America’s “news deserts” are multiplying, and communities are losing their capacity to keep local power players accountable.

Team Trump, naturally, is making this mess worse. Earlier this week, the president formally asked Congress to pull the $1.1 billion in funding already set aside for NPR and PBS over the next two years. Local public radio and television stations all across the country are now facing an existential crisis.

Trump sycophant Kari Lake, meanwhile, has completely decimated the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal operation that houses Voice of America. VOA staffing has reportedly dropped from 1,300 in March to just 80 people.

Losing journalism means losing independent oversight of our government — and our oligarchs. Trump II began with our media in crisis. Trump funding cuts are now threatening deep damage to our democracy.

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

Fine Dining, D.C. Restaurant Workers Insist, Demands Fair Wages 

This week’s frontline faces: The workers at five of Washington, D.C.’s premier restaurants currently organizing with Unite Here Local 25. 

What they're doing to help create a more equal world: Workers at deep-pocket favorites like Le Diplomate, Rasika, Modena, Pastis, and St. Anselm are demanding that their employers treat them with respect and guarantee stability.

These workers are also expanding their fight beyond their own restaurants — through DC Restaurant Workers Rising. Restaurant workers across the city are pressing for policies that raise wages for all tipped workers.

Earlier this week, the D.C. Council paused a scheduled restaurant minimum wage raise from $10 to $12 per hour. Workers are calling that pause tantamount to a repeal of a city ballot initiative approved by local residents. 

What makes this fight so important: Securing rights in the workplace remains a prerequisite for a healthy restaurant industry. To support workers, whether you live in D.C. or elsewhere, please sign the petition below.

Congress Can — and Must — Address the Public Transit Funding Crisis

Transit agencies across the country are facing budget shortfalls that are threatening to make it harder for Americans to travel for everything from jobs and education to health care and culture. The Trump administration is risking making the situation worse by pulling the plug on federal transit funding.

New legislation now before Congress, introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson from Georgia, could reverse this trend. His initiative would put in place a new federal grant program for urban and rural transit systems that could improve service reach and reliability.

“These are essential services for the movement of goods and people,” the director of the National Campaign for Transit Justice writes in a new piece for Inequality.org. More below. 

The current Pride Month can be a reminder that LGBTQ+ workers continue to face stark economic inequality. On average, these workers earn significantly less than typical U.S. employees. Transgender women face the steepest gap, earning just 60 cents for every dollar earned by typical workers, according to a Human Rights Campaign analysis. For an interactive version of this chart and more on gender and inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

This Could Be the Most Expensive Act II in U.S. Corporate Health History

This week’s dour deep pocket: Stephen Hemsley, the newly (re)named CEO of UnitedHealth, America’s largest health care company. The 72-year-old-Hemsley had been serving as the UnitedHealth board chair after he retired in 2017 from his first stint as the firm’s chief exec.

What has Hemsley sour: reactions to his new “controversial CEO pay package.” Hemsley will be collecting $1 million a year in salary plus a guaranteed $60 million more in stock options if he stays on as CEO for the next three years.

And Hemsley clearly expects to stay on for those three years. In his new CEO role, he’s already announced that UnitedHealth has “the right strategy and structure for the era ahead, especially in the face of a health system that can be disconnected, inconsistent, and inequitable.”

In his previous 11 years at UnitedHealth’s helm, Hemsley certainly contributed to that inequity. In 2017, he pulled down just shy of $27 million, nearly 300 times that year’s $58,378 typical UnitedHealth worker take-home.

The last word: Wall Street investors seem distinctly unimpressed with Hemsley’s return to UnitedHealth’s CEO seat. The company’s shares ended May down 26.6 percent for the month.

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