Greed has become so rampant in the nation’s capital that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has turned green. 

On Sunday night, meanwhile, the oligarchs outdid themselves with a taxpayer-funded “fight night” wingding for the wealthy. One particularly jubilant gazillionaire attendee: David Ellison, the Paramount nepo baby CEO. Ellison had good reason for his jubilation. The Trump Justice Department had just approved his corporate empire’s latest mega media merger. 

But last night, D.C. hosted quite a different and infinitely more democratic sort of gathering: a primary election party for mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George.

This postal worker’s daughter ran on an inequality-fighting agenda. She campaigned pledging to protect union rights and close business tax loopholes to pay for universal child care. Her city council record includes a tax hike on the rich to fund housing aid and raises for child care workers.

With two-thirds of votes tallied, Lewis George stands at 53 percent, 16 points ahead of her nearest challenger. In a normal year, the Democratic mayoral primary victor in this dark blue city would be starting to measure the drapes in the new mayor’s city hall office. 

But we don’t live in normal times. Last week, Trump pledged a federal takeover of D.C. to block Lewis George from ever taking power. D.C. voters have shown they were unfazed by this threat to their democratic rights. Now all Americans need to have their backs.

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

A Big Win for Clawing Back Control Over the Gig Economy

This week’s frontline faces: Drivers for rideshare apps based in Massachusetts.

What they're doing to help create a more equal world: After years of organizing by drivers and their advocates, Massachusetts recently became the first state in the nation to recognize a union representing gig workers.

Some 70,000 workers for apps like Uber and Lyft will now have an avenue for negotiating better pay, benefits, and protections. Making this union recognition possible: a 2024 ballot measure victory that created a framework for rideshare drivers to collectively bargain while remaining independent contractors.

The National Labor Relations Act, the legislation that enables traditional union bargaining, doesn’t cover independent contractors like gig workers. But both Uber and Lyft have said they will work with the newly formed App Drivers Union.

What makes this fight so important: Gig workers “should be able to see how much of each transaction goes to them — and how much the company keeps,”  Michael Huggins of Color of Change has just noted on Inequality.org. All working people, he adds, “should have the ability to organize and push back.” 

For more on the gig worker scene from Michael Huggins, click the link below.

States Are Taking the Lead on Taking Big Money Out of Politics

The 15 years since the infamous Supreme Court Citizens United decision essentially gave the rich and the corporations they run the “right” to spend as much as they want on political campaigns have been devastating for American democracy. Our political system, maybe more than ever before, caters to the whims of our wealthiest — and ignores the needs of working people.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. have done little to curb Citizens United’s democracy-warping impact. But state lawmakers, by contrast, have recently started stepping up. Hawaii, for instance, recently executed a neat end run around the Supreme Court’s damaging decision by redefining corporations to limit their ability to spend money on elections.

Other states, journalist Sonali Kolhaktar notes, can replicate Hawaii’s model. Activists in Montana are pushing a similar ballot measure, and Citizens United workarounds are advancing in other state legislatures as well. To read more about the burgeoning movement to rework our democracy, check the link below.

Elon Musk’s latest add-ons to his personal fortune are making our inequality emergency impossible to ignore. Last week, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after his rocket/AI company SpaceX made its U.S. stock market debut.

Musk’s wealth now roughly amounts, in today’s dollars, to 175 times the net worth of the richest American back in 1982, a stat that vividly highlights just how dramatically wealth has concentrated at our American economy’s summit.

For an interactive version of the chart above and more on wealth inequality, click below to our Inequality.org Facts section.

A Convincing Knockout Against the Billionaire on Top of the Knicks

This week’s dour deep pocket: James Dolan, the billionaire CEO of Madison Square Garden Sports, the corporate owner of the New York Knicks, the long-suffering pro basketball franchise that last Saturday won its first NBA championship in 53 years. Dolan inherited the franchise from his daddy in 1999.

What has Dolan sour: losing a high-profile blame game with New York City mayor Zoran Mamdani.

The squabble started when Donald Trump, a close Dolan buddy, decided to attend the NBA finals third game in New York. Trump’s attendance led to much tighter event security and cancelled a “watch party” for fans planned to take place just outside the Madison Square Garden arena. Trump didn’t attend the next game, but no watch party took place outside the arena for that game either.

Dolan blamed Mamdani and his police commissioner for that second watch party’s cancellation, calling them “party poopers” looking for “a convenient excuse to restrict how and when Knicks fans celebrate.”  

But Mamdani quickly noted that the city had actually approved a Madison Square Garden request for a permit that would have enabled a 999-fan watch party for the NBA finals fourth game. Dolan’s MSG, Mamdani pointed out, then cancelled that party, “breaking hearts across our city.”

The last word: Mayor Mamdani did his best to mend those broken hearts. His office gained NBA clearance to stream the rest of the championship series for free on the city’s 2,000 street kiosks. Fans cheered, Dolan steamed.

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