February 25, 2026                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Billionaires didn’t make the presidential guest list for the State of the Union last night. In fact, listening to Trump’s speech, it was almost as if they don’t exist. 

Over nearly two hours of boasting, Trump made no mention of the big wins he’s delivered for the ultra-wealthy:

Last night the president made a show of recognizing heroes of long-ago wars and recent hockey games. Today, the business-as-usual billionaire agenda continues.  

Sarah Anderson
for the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality.org team

Unlike Trump, This Activist Views Student Aid as Central to the Health of Our Union 

This week’s frontline face: Satra D. Taylor, a doctoral student studying higher education at the University of Maryland. 

What she’s doing to help create a more equal world: Taylor is a student debt activist who denounced the Trump administration’s deep cuts to student aid programs at an alternative State of the Union event organized by the group Families Over Billionaires. 

Trump didn’t even mention student aid in his remarks, but for Taylor, this is a central issue for the health of our union. “It’s about whether we as a nation believe working families deserve opportunity — or just survival,” she wrote in an op-ed for Inequality.org. “It’s about whether we as a nation value the futures of our young people — or only the futures of billionaires.”  

What makes this fight so important to her: Taylor, a first generation college student, wants other low-income people to have the opportunity she’s had to fulfill their education dreams. 

“My hard-working Black family poured everything they had into me because they believed — against every obstacle — that education could be my ladder up,” Taylor explains. “Pell Grants and the Grad Plus subsidized loan program helped me as I struggled up that ladder. It still wasn’t easy. I worked two part-time jobs and still could barely make ends meet. But without that help, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” 

For more on Taylor’s perspective, click the link below.

Tariff Policy Doesn’t Have to Be Chaotic and Harmful to the Working Class

Last night President Trump berated Supreme Court justices seated in the front row of the House chamber for their recent ruling against his chaotic tariff policies. He also once again falsely claimed that foreign countries pay the tariffs when in reality, U.S. importers pay them and often pass the costs on to consumers.

Since the court ruling last week, Trump’s tariff announcements have become even more erratic — 10 percent on all imports one day, 15 percent the next, and then back to 10 percent. This uncertainty, with no discernible strategy, has turned tariffs into a blunt weapon that harms the working class here and around the world. 

Sara Steffens, a labor expert with the group We Build Progress, writes in Inequality.org that tariffs can instead be tools to build a better future for workers and their communities. Well-designed strategic and targeted tariffs can promote high labor standards and support family-sustaining jobs. 

Trump ran for re-election on a promise of reviving U.S. manufacturing, a sector that has been a vital path to the middle class, particularly for workers without college degrees. In his State of the Union speech, he claimed that his tariffs have delivered on this promise and that factories and jobs "will continue pouring into the United States of America."

But during the first year of Trump’s second term, manufacturing employment actually dropped by 83,000 jobs. The health care sector drove nearly all job growth, driven by an aging population rather than any smart presidential policies. For an interactive version of this chart, click the link below.

The CEO Cashing In on Unnecessary Tax Return Complications

This week’s dour deep pocket: Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit, the corporate giant behind TurboTax, the tax-prep product with a lockgrip on 60 percent of the tax software market. That dominance has helped Goodarzí to $36.6 million in 2024 compensation and $36.9 million in 2025.

What has Goodarzi sour: the widespread public support for free electronic tax return filing direct to the IRS. The IRS “Direct File” pilot program launched in 2024 gave taxpayers that option. They loved it. Some 94 percent of the taxpayers participating in the pilot reported a positive experience.

Intuit did not take that positive experience positively. In December 2024, 29 GOP members of Congress — the grateful recipients of $2 million in Intuit campaign contributions — sent the newly re-elected Donald Trump a letter asking for Direct File’s elimination. Trump, after Intuit contributed $1 million more to his inaugural fund, would kindly oblige. His IRS has shut Direct File down.

The last word: “The Trump administration,” notes Roosevelt Institute researcher Noa Rosinplotz, “has gutted the IRS and handed the tax filing system back to the companies that profit from making you waste time and money filing your taxes.”

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