March, 24 2021, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
David Rosen, drosen@citizen.org, (202) 588-7742
Derrick Robinson, drobinson@citizen.org, (202) 588-7741
Big Tech Lobbying and Campaign Spending Soars
Facebook, Amazon are now corporate America's two biggest lobbying spenders.
WASHINGTON
Facebook and Amazon are now the two biggest corporate lobbying spenders in the country, according to a report released today by Public Citizen. The report, based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, finds that Big Tech has eclipsed Big Oil and Big Tobacco, two historically big federal lobbying spenders, with Amazon and Facebook having spent nearly twice as much as Exxon and Philip Morris on lobbying in 2020.
"We need to rein in Big Tech's influence in Washington now, so that lawmakers and regulators can break them up, enact comprehensive privacy legislation, and hold these companies accountable for harming our economy and our democracy," said Jane Chung, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen and author of the report. "The Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department, and state attorneys general are signaling that justice is finally on its way. But with Big Tech political expenditures at historic levels, it's more important than ever for lawmakers to show their independence and bring these companies to heel."
"The Big Four have learned to use their concentrated wealth to entrench their economic power through political engagement," said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president for Public Citizen. "In this moment of enhanced scrutiny, tech companies are going to spend millions and dial through their Rolodexes looking for officials to stop regulation and legislation needed to protect consumers. That is simply unacceptable."
Other key findings in the report:
- During the 2020 cycle, Big Tech companies spent $124 million in lobbying and campaign contributions, breaking its own records from past election cycles. Amazon's spending increased by 30%, and Facebook's spending jumped an astounding 56%.
- Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple together added 40 new lobbyists in the 2020 cycle, up from 293 in 2018 to a total of 333 lobbyists in 2020.
- Big Tech PACs, lobbyists, and employees contributed at least 33% more in the 2020 cycle than they did in 2018 - an increase of over $4 million, and a total of nearly $16.5 million in contributions. This is the largest cycle-to-cycle increase in contributions from Big Tech since Public Citizen began monitoring the industry in 2010.
- Among members of Congress with jurisdiction over privacy and antitrust issues, 94% received money from a Big Tech corporate PAC or lobbyist. In 2020 alone, Big Tech PACs and lobbyists contributed more than $3 million to the lawmakers tasked with overseeing and regulating them.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Insane This Is Legal': Bettors Make Huge Profits From Suspiciously Timed Wagers on Iran War
"Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year."
Mar 01, 2026
Bettors on the prediction platform Polymarket made a killing with suspiciously timed wagers that the United States would attack Iran by February 28, the day President Donald Trump announced a bombing campaign against the Middle East nation.
Bloomberg reported that six accounts on Polymarket, all newly created this month, "made around $1 million in profit" by betting on the timing of the US attack on Iran. The accounts, according to Bloomberg, "had only ever placed bets on when US strikes might occur," and "some of their shares were purchased, in some cases at roughly a dime apiece, hours before the first explosions were reported in Tehran."
One account with the name Magamyman raked in over $515,000 by betting roughly $87,000 that the "US strikes Iran by February 28, 2026."
The lucrative bets quickly drew scrutiny from lawmakers. US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on social media that "it’s insane this is legal."
"People around Trump are profiting off war and death," Murphy alleged. "I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this."
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) wrote that "prediction markets cannot be a vehicle for profiting off advance knowledge of military action" and demanded "answers, transparency, and oversight."
"Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year," Levin wrote, referring to the president's eldest son. "The [Justice Department] and [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] both had active investigations into Polymarket that were dropped after Trump took office."
There's no concrete evidence that Trump administration officials or staffers were behind the hugely profitable bets, but the wagers heightened concerns about the possibility of insider trading using increasingly popular prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi. Last month, bettors used Polymarket to make big profits on suspiciously timed wagers on when the US would oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Polymarket currently allows users to bet on when Iran will have a new supreme leader, when the US and Iran will reach a ceasefire agreement, and when the US will invade Iran.
The celebrity news tabloid TMZ reported Saturday that "a group at a Washington, DC restaurant was talking openly in the bar area Friday afternoon about a national secret that was about to literally explode hours later—the bombing of Iran."
As journalist David Bernstein noted, that—if true—leaves open the possibility that "these 'insider' bets have been placed by any rich person with good ears in DC."
"Not to mention that for all we know these administration clowns were probably gossiping about it on a text chain with half a dozen people they accidentally invited," Bernstein added. "This is hardly the locked lips brigade we’re dealing with."
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Experts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: 'Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack' in Decades
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said one analyst.
Mar 01, 2026
Senior Trump administration officials attempted during a briefing with reporters on Saturday to make their case for the joint US-Israeli military assault on Iran that has so far killed hundreds and plunged the Middle East into chaos.
According to experts who listened to the briefing, which was conducted on background, the justification for war was incredibly weak. Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association, told Laura Rozen of the Diplomatic newsletter that the administration's argument was "the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades."
During his early Saturday remarks announcing the attacks, President Donald Trump claimed that "imminent threats from the Iranian regime" against "the American people" drove him to act. But Kimball said that administration officials "provided absolutely no evidence" to back that assertion during the briefing.
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said Kimball.
Following the start of Saturday's assault, which Trump explicitly characterized as a war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, unnamed administration officials began leaking the claim that Trump feared an Iranian attack on the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, prompting him to greenlight the bombing campaign in coordination with Israel and with a nudge from Saudi Arabia.
Kimball, in a social media post, took members of the US media to task for echoing the administration's narrative. "Reporters need to do more than stenography," he wrote in response to Punchbowl's Jake Sherman.
"The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
Trump and top administration officials also repeated the longstanding claim from US warhawks that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon, something Iranian leaders have publicly denied—including during recent diplomatic talks. Neither US intelligence assessments nor international nuclear watchdogs have produced evidence indicating that Iran is moving rapidly in the direction of nukes, as claimed by the administration.
Rozen noted that some remarks from administration officials during Saturday's briefing "suggested Trump’s negotiators"—a team that included Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—"may not have had the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal to curb its nuclear program." Rozen reported that one administration official kept misstating the acronym for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
Trump administration officials, according to Rozen, seemed astonished that Iranian negotiators would not accept the US offer to provide free nuclear fuel "forever" for Iran's peaceful energy development, viewing the rejection as a suspicious indication that Iran was opposed to a diplomatic resolution—even though, according to Oman's foreign minister, Iran had already made concessions that went well beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned during his first stint in the White House.
Experts said it should be obvious—particularly given Trump's decision to ditch the previous nuclear accord—why Iran would not trust the US to stick by such a commitment.
The administration's inability to provide a coherent justification for war tracks with the rapidly shifting narrative preceding Saturday's strikes—an indication, according to some observers, that Trump had made the decision to attack Iran even in the face of diplomatic progress and left officials to try to cobble together a rationale after the fact.
In a lengthy social media post, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted war was necessary because Iran "refused to make a deal" and because the Iranian government "has targeted and killed Americans," hardly the claim of an imminent threat push by the president and other administration officials.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, noted in response that the Trump administration has "sidelined anyone who could articulate... a coherent argument, partly because expertise is deep state and woke and partly because they just don't care."
The result is another potentially catastrophic war that runs roughshod over US and international law, puts countless civilians at risk, and threatens to spark a region-wide conflict.
"President Trump, along with his right-wing extremist Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun an illegal, premeditated, and unconstitutional war," US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Saturday. "Tragically, Trump is gambling with American lives and treasure to fulfill Netanyahu's decades-long ambition of dragging the United States into armed conflict with Iran."
"The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq," Sanders added. "The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
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Democratic Leaders Face Backlash Over 'Cowardly' Responses to Trump War on Iran
"As we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
Mar 01, 2026
The top Democrats in the US Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, faced backlash on Saturday over what critics described as tepid, equivocal responses to President Donald Trump's illegal assault on Iran—and for slowwalking efforts to prevent the war before the bombing began.
While both Democratic leaders chided Trump for failing to seek congressional authorization and not adequately briefing lawmakers on the details of Saturday's attacks, neither offered a full-throated condemnation of a military assault that has killed hundreds so far, including dozens of children, and hurled the Middle East into chaos.
Schumer (D-NY)—who infamously worked to defeat the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned during his first White House term, setting the stage for the current crisis—said he "implored" US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to "be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next."
"Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon," he added, "but the American people do not want another endless and costly war in the Middle East when there are so many problems at home."
Jeffries (D-NY), a beneficiary of AIPAC campaign cash, said in his response to the massive US-Israeli assault that "Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism, and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region."
"The Trump administration must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately, provide an ironclad justification for this act of war, clearly define the national security objective, and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East," said Jeffries.
The Democratic leaders' responses bolstered the view that their objections to Trump's attack on Iran are based on procedure, not opposition to war.
This is a disgusting and cowardly statement handwringing about process and the need for a briefing.
No you idiot. This war is a horror and a disaster and must be directly opposed. Any Democrat who can’t say that needs to resign and ESPECIALLY the ones in leadership. https://t.co/CdZoEyNkOy
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) February 28, 2026
Claire Valdez, a New York state assemblymember who is running for Congress, said that "as we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
"Democrats should speak clearly and with one voice: no war," Valdez added.
Schumer and Jeffries both committed to swiftly forcing votes on War Powers resolutions in their respective chambers. But reporting last week by Aída Chávez of Capital & Empire indicated that top Democrats worked behind the scenes to slow momentum behind the resolutions, helping ensure they did not come to a vote before Trump launched the war.
"The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms," Chávez wrote.
Neither Schumer nor Jeffries backed legislation last year aimed at forestalling US military intervention in Iran.
The top Democrats' responses to Saturday's US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which Trump said would continue "uninterrupted" even after the killing of the nation's supreme leader, contrasted sharply with statements of rank-and-file congressional Democrats—and even some members of leadership—who condemned the president for shredding the Constitution and driving the US into another deadly war that the American public opposes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has been floated as a possible 2028 challenger to Schumer, said Saturday that "the American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions."
"This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic," said Ocasio-Cortez. "This is a deliberate choice of aggression when diplomacy and security were within reach. Stop lying to the American people. Violence begets violence. We learned this lesson in Iraq. We learned this lesson in Afghanistan. And we are about to learn it again in Iran. Bombs have yet to create enduring democracies in the region, and this will be no different."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was more blunt.
"Congress must stop the bloodshed by immediately reconvening to exert its war powers and stop this deranged president," she said. "But let’s be clear: Warmongering politicians from both parties support this illegal war, and it will take a mass anti-war movement to stop it."
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