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A Petty, Vicious Wall Of Shame
The awful keeps spewing. The latest proof there is truly, repulsively no bottom: The most broken, powerful human being on the planet has added to his crappy, gaudy, reality-show "Presidential Walk of Fame" bronze plaques below the photos denoting a boorish, revisionist "history" of each president. Inevitably, he lobs the crudest insults at his direct predecessors - "divisive" Obama, "crooked" Biden - while praising his own supreme reign. America on the fucking, endless, childish ugly of it: "This is so exhausting."
As always, there are of course more substantive horrors underway. Pam Bondi has told the FBI to create a list of domestic terrorist groups - the non-existent Antifa and anyone else who espouses “radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism or anti-Christianity” - and establish a “cash reward system” to encourage them to snitch on each other. Because what climate change/it still snows doesn't it?, Trump is also dismantling Colorado's National Center for Atmospheric Research, home to the largest federal research lab on climate change and natural disasters.
In addition, because what science?, anti-vax crackpot RFK Jr's Health and Human Services (sic) Department has terminated seven multi-million-dollar grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is now suing said crackpot for his COVID vaccine changes. The initiatives were aimed at reducing sudden infant death, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, identifying autism early and other worthy goals; officials said they were cancelled because the group used "identity-based language," including "racial disparities" and "pregnant people." Really.
Finally, Pee Wee German Stephen Miller issued a fascist mission statement in support of our pointless, upcoming war against Venezulela, arguing the U.S. has long "operated as a 'reverse empire'" that enriched foreign nations and sacrificed our wealth and security while "all we got in return were migrants." "No more," he raves. "America's might will secure America's rights...For Americans, first and always." By which, many clarified, he means, "rich white people. Everyone else to the camps." Other comments: "Sounds like Chap. 15 in Mein Kampf," "Sounds better in the original German," and, "Miller is a grotesque, shrill, squirrel of a thing."
All of these efforts, lest we forget, have been undertaken to please a small, sick, empty shell of a man who Avatar director James Cameron calls "the most narcissistic asshole in history since fucking Nero." Now, in a particularly infuriating (for those of us who cherish facts) and petty move, he's now installed "a tantrum cast in bronze," a wall of grievance-oozing plaques added to the photos along his cheesy, race-to-the-bottom "Presidential Walk of Fame" outside the West Wing "as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad and somewhere in the middle." And "as a student of history" (sic), Press Barbie hilariously brags, Trump himself authored "many of its eloquently written descriptions" - evidently what he's been doing when not golfing. One patriot: "Well done, dumbass."
They are, of course, crude, juvenile, self-serving garbage. Reagan's plaque boasts he was "a fan" of Trump. Bill Clinton's notes "his wife Hillary" lost to Trump. The plaque for "Barack Hussein Obama" acknowledges him as our first Black President before calling him "one of the most divisive political figures in American history." He allegedly "passed the highly ineffective Unaffordable Care Act," caused the spread of ISIS (no mention of W's contributions), weaponized federal bureaucracies against opponents, spied on Trump's 2016 campaign and created "the Russia Russia Russia hoax, the worst political scandal in American history." Sigh.
Biden, already trolled with the image of an autopen - the eloquent author is 12 - gets worse. "Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History." He "took office (in) the most corrupt Election ever seen" and "oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our nation to the brink of destruction" - pot/kettle - with high inflation, weaponized law enforcement, Green New Scam, "abolishing" the Southern Border, insane asylums, "Afghanistan Disaster." His "devastating weakness" made Russia invade Ukraine and Hamas attack Israel. He issued "blanket pardons to Radical Democrat thugs" and "the Biden crime family." Sigh redux.
But "despite it all" - trumpets please - the manchild king triumphed in a landslide to "SAVE AMERICA!" Now he's "delivered" on his promise to "usher in the Golden Age of America," and "THE BEST IS YET TO COME!" Some beg to differ. They suggest his plaque should read, "Pedophile, Narcissist, Rapist, and Convicted Felon." They marvel, "Damn, his dick really is that tiny." They exclaim, "This is insane," "What the actual fuck," "God I hate this man," "This is embarrassing," and, "I am at my wit's end." In all, notes Canadian pundit Dean Blundell, "The United States of America is going through some things right now."
More came In Wednesday night's "prime time unraveling." His racist, dementetd, drug-addled, "nothingburger" of a meltdown, in which "basically nothing he is saying is true," was brutally summarized as, "Old man yells at country," "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?", his "Pettysburg Address," "a 19-minute nervous breakdown," his "Norma Desmond imitation," "what presidential panic looks like," "Stop talking about Epstein," "lie harder and louder," "the Worst Wing," "Nazis On Drugs,'" "authoritarian fantasy at its finest" - colossal invasion! drug prices down 600% in magic math! the first peace in the Middle East in 3,000 years!", "This wasn't confidence. This was agitation." From MAGA: "Why is he yelling at us?" "He's talking so fast he sounds panicked," "the most pointless presidential address (in) American history." From Newsom: 100 "Me Me Me Me Me's." From us: For God's and our sanity's sake, once and for all, fucking quiet Piggy.
'Defeat for Justice': Ecuador to Pay Amazon-Polluting Chevron $220 Million
A US advocacy group, American human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, and the group in Ecuador behind a historic legal battle against Chevron over its dumping of toxic waste in the Amazon rainforest are condemning the Ecuadorian government's plans to pay the oil giant hundreds of millions of dollars due to an arbitration ruling.
In response to the legal fight in Ecuador that led to a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron—which bought Texaco—the fossil fuel company turned to the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, suing the South American country in the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration. As part of the latter case, Ecuadorian Attorney General Diana Salazar Méndez's office announced Monday that the government would pay the US company only around $220 million, rather than the over $3 billion Chevron sought.
While Chevron said in a statement that it was "pleased with the resolution of this matter" and claimed the decision "strengthened the rule of law globally," and Salazar Méndez's office celebrated the dramatically lower figure, and the Union of Peoples Affected by Chevron-Texaco (UDAPT)—the group that began the case against oil company in 1993—pushed back against the government's framing of the reduction "as if it was a success and an economic achievement."
"The reality is it is a defeat for justice," UDAPT argued in a Tuesday statement. "For 32 years, UDAPT has documented pollution, environmental crime, and lives broken by Chevron, proving what should be obvious: Communities have not recovered, health has not been restored, clean water has not returned, and the territories that sustain life remain contaminated. A debt is not owed to Chevron. A debt is owed to the Amazonian families still waiting for truth, justice, and full reparation."
Amazon Watch deputy director Paul Paz y Miño similarly said Tuesday that "this illegitimate arbitration process is nothing more than Chevron abusing the law to escape accountability for one of the worst oil disasters in history."
"Ecuador's courts ruled correctly and based largely on Chevron's own evidence, that Chevron deliberately poisoned Indigenous and rural communities, leaving behind a mass cancer zone in the Amazon," the campaigner continued. "Adding insult to injury, the idea that Ecuador's people should now pay a US oil company that admitted to deliberate pollution is the epitome of environmental racism."
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa "must not honor this ISDS award, and the international community must stand behind the victims of Chevron's crimes and demand that the company clean up Ecuador once and for all," Paz y Miño added. "Amazon Watch stands with the affected Indigenous peoples and communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We urge President Noboa to reject this illegitimate award, disclose any negotiations with Chevron, and enforce Ecuadorian law by ensuring Chevron pays its debt to those it poisoned."
Donziger—who was detained in the United States for nearly 1,000 days after Chevron went after him in the American legal system for representing Big Oil's victims in Ecuador—was also sharply critical, saying Tuesday that "the decision by a so-called private corporate arbitration panel that claims to absolve Chevron of its massive pollution liability in Ecuador has no legitimacy and does not affect the historic $9.5 billion damages judgment won by Amazonian communities."
"That judgment still stands as the definitive public court ruling in the case," he said. "The private arbitral panel has no authority over the six public appellate courts, including the Supreme Courts of Ecuador and Canada, that issued unanimous decisions against Chevron and confirmed the extensive evidence that the company devastated local communities by deliberately dumping billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into rivers and streams used by thousands of people for drinking, bathing, and fishing."
"I also strongly condemn President Daniel Noboa for his plans to betray his own people by agreeing to send $220 million from the public treasury to Chevron, a company that owes Ecuador billions under multiple court orders for poisoning vulnerable Indigenous peoples with toxic oil waste," Donziger added. "Noboa would effectively grant Chevron a taxpayer-funded bailout financed by the same citizens who remain victims of the company's pollution. This would be an outrageous dereliction of duty and a violation of his oath of office, warranting removal."
Surging Home Building Costs Caused by Trump Tariffs Could Result in 450,000 Fewer Homes by 2030
After campaigning last year on reducing the cost of living and as he attempts to claim progressive Democrats' push for affordability as his own, President Donald Trump's policies have been directly linked to making life more expensive for people across the US—and along with electricity, healthcare, and groceries, housing costs are set to rise, according to a new analysis out Tuesday, which examines the impact of Trump's tariffs.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) found that the impact on home construction materials by Trump's tariffs could force builders to scale back significantly over the next five years, reducing new home construction by 450,000 homes through 2030.
According to the analysis, the average cost of building a home in the coming years will increase by $17,500 if current home building rates continue.
"With the average home sales price having already risen by 31%—or over $120,000—since 2020, this tariff-induced change could put homeownership further out of reach for millions of Americans," said CAP.
Trump's tariffs are as high as 50% for some countries, and some of the highest levies have been imposed on key building materials, including lumber, copper, aluminum, and steel products. Imports of upholstered products and kitchen cabinets are set to face tariffs that could increase by up to 50%.
The tariffs were unveiled amid a growing housing affordability crisis, with the number of available homes falling short by 2 million units or more, according to some estimates.
Following the Great Recession, home construction has not returned to pre-2008 levels and the country requires "sustained, above-average construction rates to correct" the persistent underbuilding, according to CAP.
"Yet the Trump administration’s tariff policies are pushing home building in the opposite direction by raising construction costs, which will slow new construction activity, raise costs, and worsen housing affordability," reads the report by Cory Husak, Natalie Baker, and Mimla Wardak.
The analysis found that while Trump has insisted that the tariffs will target the countries that import goods to the US, but as with groceries—which have gone up in price by up to 40% at some stores—the levies on home building materials are projected to ultimately impact American families who are already struggling to afford healthcare and other essentials.
The tariffs are expected to add $27 billion to the annual cost of constructing new homes by 2027, effectively raising the cost of building a new home by about 3.3%.
🚨Hot off the presses 🚨 New tariffs are going to kill 450,000 homes over the next 5 yearsTariffs on lumber, steel, cabinets, vanities, copper add an average $17,500 to the cost of building a new home. Yearly home losses will soon total 100k per year-www.americanprogress.org/article/trum...
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— Corey Husak (@chusak.bsky.social) December 16, 2025 at 1:08 PM
From 2030 onward, the number of new homes being built is expected to be down by 100,000 yearly.
"This would be equivalent to eliminating 6 percent of the homes constructed in the five years from 2020 to 2024," said CAP.
If home building falls as CAP projects, the cost of construction will rise to $18,500 per home in 2028, CAP projected.
“Families are already struggling to afford a place to live, and the administration is adding fuel to the housing costs fire,” said Husak, director of tax policy at CAP. “These tariffs are a tax on builders and aspiring homeowners, raising construction costs, slowing the pace of new building, and pushing homeownership even further out of reach for millions of Americans.”
The group urged the federal government to act to stop the tariffs from continuously "driving up construction costs, slowing homebuilding, and worsening the nation’s already severe housing shortage."
"Building new housing supply is crucial to solving the housing shortage," said CAP, "and canceling tariffs on homebuilding materials is a necessary step to bring more housing online and improve housing affordability."
'Gambling With Lives of Their Constituents,' House GOP Leaders Refuse Vote on ACA Tax Credits
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he will not allow a vote to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the month, solidifying his party's decision to let tens of millions of Americans face massive premium increases in the new year.
Speaking to reporters, Johnson acknowledged that some swing-district Republicans pushed him for a vote on the ACA subsidies as people across the country face sticker shock, with premiums more than doubling on average.
"We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve, and it just was not to be," Johnson said of the ACA tax credit vote. "We worked on it all the way through the weekend, in fact. And in the end there was not an agreement."
Johnson's comments, which sparked angry backlash from some of his GOP colleagues, came less than a week after Senate Republicans voted down a Democratic measure that would have extended the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) called Johnson's obstruction of a subsidy vote "bullshit" and "political malpractice."
Around 22 million Americans received the subsidies, which were first put in place in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. A survey released earlier this month by the health policy group KFF found that 25% of ACA marketplace enrollees would "very likely" go without insurance if their monthly insurance premiums doubled.
The ACA open enrollment period ended Monday for those with coverage starting start January 1, 2026.
"With no extension of enhanced tax credits, ACA enrollees are going to start the year with premium payments increasing by an average of 114%, or over $1,000 a year per person," Larry Levitt, KFF's executive vice president for health policy, noted Tuesday. "Some will find a way to pay it, some have switched to higher deductibles, and some have dropped coverage."
"Johnson is choosing chaos, higher costs, and uncertainty for working families."
Ahead of next week's holiday recess, House Republicans are expected to vote on legislation that cobbles together various GOP healthcare ideas that experts say wouldn't do much to lower healthcare costs. Even if the bill—which would not extend the ACA tax credits—passes the House, it stands no chance of getting the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.
"They are actively choosing to go into the holiday break, knowing healthcare premiums are doubling and tripling for millions of Americans in 2026, and doing nothing about it," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said of Republican lawmakers.
Last-ditch, bipartisan efforts to force Johnson to allow a vote using a discharge petition also appear unlikely to garner enough support. NBC News noted that "even if a discharge petition secured the votes to pass, which is far from certain, it would take time to reach the House floor," effectively guaranteeing "it’ll be pushed into next year, with Republicans hoping to adjourn after this week."
Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a statement Tuesday that "Mike Johnson is running out the clock while millions of families face higher premiums and the loss of affordable coverage in just a couple of weeks."
"Across the country, working Americans are preparing for unimaginable sacrifices," said Woodhouse. "They are getting ready to shut down the small businesses they spent blood, sweat, and tears building because the GOP healthcare hikes are simply unbearable. Many are preparing for what life looks like without insurance. Others are considering leaving their jobs or making the impossible choice between paying for medications, rent, or groceries."
“The solution is simple and already on the table: a clean, three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits," he added. "Johnson is choosing chaos, higher costs, and uncertainty for working families. The choice for House Republicans is clear. If not, the out-of-touch Republican Party will be in for another electoral reckoning in 2026 for raising costs, ripping away coverage, and gambling with the lives of their constituents."
Petition Signers Want Elon Musk to Be ‘The Richest Man in Town’ This Christmas
"Let's make the world's richest man the richest man in town!" urges a new campaign launched Friday by the economic advocacy group Tax Justice Network, borrowing a memorable line from the classic film "It's a Wonderful Life."
The group's global petition emphasizes that SpaceX owner Elon Musk is already the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $508.4 billion—more than double the assets of the planet's next-richest person, Google co-founder Larry Page.
Tax Justice Network's (TJN) petition invites Musk to give 44% of his wealth—$223.6 billion—to the children of the world. That amount of money would allow the purchase of a $90 gift card for all 2.4 billion of the planet's children under the age of 18, and could stop more than 100 million children from going hungry this holiday season.
And Musk would still be the richest person alive, emphasized the group.
Let’s make the world’s richest man feel like the richest man in town this Christmas! Sign our Christmas card inviting Elon Musk to gift 44% of his wealth to the children of the world to create 2 billion smiles and still be the world’s richest man alive! #WealthTax #TaxTheSuperRichc.org/jnnZhmp6J4
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— Tax Justice Network (@taxjustice.net) December 12, 2025 at 10:40 AM
The campaign quotes Harry Bailey's famous line declaring his brother George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, "the richest man in town" in "It's a Wonderful Life," after George's neighbors donate money to save him from financial ruin.
“We’re obviously poking a little fun here but the point is to show how extreme the concentration of wealth has become," said Alex Cobham, chief executive at TJN. "Depending on where you are in the world, if you earn the average wage, you’d need to work anywhere from 20 times to a thousand times longer than humans have existed to earn as much wealth as Elon Musk has collected."
The petition notes that TJN and the world's children "would also settle for a 2% wealth tax on the superrich," which would allow countries around the world to raise $2 trillion per year if it was applied to the richest 0.5% of people on the planet.
"That’s enough public money to meet most countries’ climate finance needs, and leave billions to spare for local public services," the group said.
The group pointed to a recent G20 report declaring a global "inequality emergency" and last week's World Inequality Report, which found that fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—just 0.001% of the world's population—own three times more wealth than the entire bottom 50% of humanity.
"Within almost every region, the top 1% alone hold more wealth than the bottom 90% combined," noted TJN.
The petition emphasizes the difference between collected wealth—the kind enjoyed by Musk and other superrich people—and earned wealth. The vast majority of people earn money for what they do, notes TJN. Musk and other billionaires "get paid for what [they] own, so dividends for owning stocks and rent money for owning real estate."
Billionaires including Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle executive Larry Ellison famously take salaries of just $1, but the money that's made them part of the world's superrich is their collected wealth, emphasized TJN.
"Earned wealth cannot create billionaires," said TJN. "Only collected wealth grows fast enough to do so. It’s impossible to earn a billion dollars."
A ProPublica report in 2021 detailed how billionaires like Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid a collective "true tax rate" of just 3.4% while the median American household made $70,000 and paid a tax rate of 14%.
"This special tax treatment has helped the superrich quadruple their wealth since the 1980s to extreme levels," said TJN. "Studies directly link this rise in extreme wealth to lower economic productivity, to more households going into debt and to people living shorter lives."
Musk in the past has pledged to use his extreme wealth to help people around the world—only to renege on his promises. In 2022, he challenged then-World Food Program chief David Beasley to prove, as Beasley had stated, that a small fraction of Musk's wealth could help address world hunger. He pledged to donate $6 billion by selling his Tesla stock if the WFP could prove the contribution would "solve world hunger."
The WFP responded with a report detailing how $6 billion could feed 42 million at-risk people and prevent them from going hungry for a year. But Musk didn't follow through with his pledge, instead donating $5.7 billion of his Tesla shares to his own foundation.
This year, Musk spearheaded a push to slash government spending on foreign aid, with the US Agency for International Development a key target. The cuts have already proven deadly for children in impoverished nations.
Cobham on Monday pointed to research showing that the skyrocketing wealth of the richest 1% of Americans over the past 40 years has not led "to more investments, and instead resulted in dissaving among non-rich households."
“We now have plenty of evidence showing that extreme wealth shrinks economies, makes people poorer, and threatens democracy," said Cobham. "The best way to protect people, economies, and planet from the harms of extreme wealth is to end the special tax treatment that collected wealth gets over earned wealth. We must tax extreme wealth more effectively to protect the earner way of life we all rely on. Whether you’re a wealth collector or a wealth earner, we all have an equal responsibility to pitch in our fair share.”
Pranksters Trick Former US Official Into Admitting Ukraine War Was Preventable
A former senior Biden administration official admitted during a recent interview with who she thought were aides to Ukraine's president that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been averted if Kyiv had agreed to stop seeking NATO membership.
Amanda Sloat—a former special assistant to then-President Joe Biden and senior director for Europe at the National Security Council—believed she was speaking with aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week when she sat down for a phone interview with who turned out to be the Russian prankster duo known as Vovan and Lexus.
“We had some conversations even before the war started about, what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, you know, if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion’—which at that point it may well have done,” Sloat said. “There is certainly a question, three years on now, you know, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do [at the] Istanbul talks? It certainly would have prevented the destruction and loss of life.”
However, Biden officials chose not to address Russia's main concerns regarding Ukraine and NATO—with disastrous results.
Sloat explained that she "was uncomfortable with the idea of the US pushing Ukraine" against pursuing NATO membership, "and sort of implicitly giving Russia some sort of sphere of influence or veto power on that."
"I don’t think [then-President Joe] Biden felt like it was his place to tell Ukraine what to do then, to tell Ukraine not to pursue NATO," she said.
Sloat is the latest in a series of former US officials who have fallen victim to Vovan and Lexus' pranks, including ex-Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, and senior State Department official Victoria Nuland—who played a key role in a plot to overthrow the pro-Moscow government of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych during the Euromaidan uprising of 2013-14.
Sloat's remarks during the interview implicitly belied the prevalent Western prewar narrative of an unprovoked Russian invasion—an assertion that ignored decades of provocation, beginning with the betrayal of a 1990 assurance by then-US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" if the Soviets cooperated on German reunification.
Not only did NATO admit 13 new nations between then and the start of Russia's 2022 invasion, all of the new members were countries formerly in Moscow's orbit, and three—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were ex-Soviet republics. The Biden administration's public pronouncements of an "open door" to Ukrainian NATO membership continued right up to Russia's invasion, and were particularly intolerable for Moscow—even if Russian leaders understood that the US was actually more opposed to Kyiv joining the alliance than in favor of such a potentially fraught outcome.
Responding to the prank, French political commentator Arnaud Bertrand said on X that "this is as close to a smoking gun as I've ever seen on Ukraine."
"Hundreds of thousands dead, a country in ruins, and the justification is America being 'uncomfortable' about not preserving optionality," he added. "Not even an actual gain—just the theoretical possibility of one day pulling Ukraine into NATO. The banality of evil."
"All of this will surely go down as one of the great missed opportunities of history."
Sloat's comments, noted Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen, come "after our political-media establishment has for four years smeared, censored, and cancelled anyone who claimed that NATO expansion triggered the war."
Referring to Sloat's acknowledgment that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could have been averted with a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality, Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic wrote for Responsible Statecraft Tuesday that she "is not the first to have made this admission."
"As I documented two years ago, former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and former Biden Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines both likewise explicitly said that NATO’s potential expansion into Ukraine was the core grievance that motivated Putin’s decision to invade, and that, at least according to Stoltenberg, NATO rejected compromising on it."
"Zelensky has now publicly agreed to this concession to advance peace talks—only three years later, with Ukraine now in physical ruins, its economy destroyed, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and survivors traumatized and disabled on a mass scale," he lamented.
"All of this will surely go down as one of the great missed opportunities of history," Marcetic added. "Critics of the war and NATO policy have long said the war and its devastating impact could have been avoided by explicitly ruling out Ukrainian entry into NATO, only to be told they were spreading Kremlin propaganda. It turns out they were simply spreading Biden officials' own private thoughts."
FTC Opens Investigation Into Instacart Pricing After 'Bombshell Report'
Groundwork Collaborative revealed this month that artificial intelligence-enabled pricing experiments used by the shopping app have charged users up to 23% more than others for the same products.
The executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, the advocacy group behind a "bombshell report" that exposed Instacart's artificial intelligence-powered pricing schemes, welcomed the news that the federal government US opening an investigation into the business practice, and urged the Federal Trade Commission to follow the probe with concrete consumer protection actions.
The FTC told Gizmodo that "like so many Americans, we are disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart’s alleged pricing practices.”
Groundwork joined Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union in examining Instacart's practice, using the AI pricing software Eversight, of quoting different prices to different shoppers using the company's app, which allows people to order groceries and send a shopper to pick them up.
Some customers at a Safeway in Seattle were charged a price that was 23% higher than other shoppers for Skippy peanut butter, Oscar Mayer turkey, and Wheat Thins crackers. In Washington, DC, customers using the Insacart app saw eggs priced at $3.99, while others who logged on at the exact same time were charged $4.79 for the same brand at the same store.
Instacart has the ability to change prices based on data such as ZIP code or income, though the groups did not find it is currently using that information in its pricing experiments.
Groundwork noted that the scheme is taking place as American families are already struggling to afford groceries, electricity, healthcare, and other essentials.
“At a time when families are being squeezed by the highest grocery costs in a generation, Instacart chose to run AI experiments that are quietly driving prices higher," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork. "While the FTC’s investigation is welcome news, it must be followed with meaningful action that ends these exploitative pricing schemes and protects consumers. Instacart must face consequences for their algorithmic price gouging, not just a slap on the wrist.”
In its report, the group called on the FTC to take action under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair methods of competition," or to bring enforcement cases or initiate rulemaking to officially classify AI-enabled pricing strategies as "unfair and deceptive" strategies.
The progressive think tank Roosevelt Institute applauded Groundwork and its partners for the "major investigation" that pushed the FTC to act.
Instacart's shares dropped by about 7% following the news of the FTC probe.
On Thursday, the agency announced that Instacart would pay $60 million in refunds to settle separate allegations that it falsely advertised "free delivery" while charging a service fee, falsely advertised a "100% satisfaction guarantee" that suggested it would offer full refunds, and failed to disclose terms regarding Instacart+ membership.
Big Tech Ramps Up Propaganda Blitz As AI Data Centers Become Toxic With Voters
One Michigan state legislator said data centers are emblematic of the divide between "tech billionaires who are seizing power and… the working and middle classes."
As voters across the country begin to rally against the unchecked construction of data centers, artificial intelligence companies are panicking and investing millions into propaganda to paint the energy-sucking facilities in a more positive light.
By 2030, the amount of energy demanded by US data centers is expected to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency.
Energy costs have spiked considerably in the states with the most data centers. And as the industry continues its breakneck expansion, one watchdog report found that consumers on America's largest electric grid are expected to pay hundreds of dollars more to meet increased power demand from now until 2027.
These costs became an unexpected point of emphasis for Democrats in November, whose calls for greater transparency from tech companies seeking to build data centers propelled them to victory in elections from New Jersey to Virginia.
But tech companies want to keep building, and as AI threatens to become a central villain of the 2026 midterm elections, Politico reports that companies are putting the wheels in motion to portray themselves "as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs."
As Gabby Miller wrote on Wednesday:
A new AI trade group is distributing talking points to members of Congress and organizing local data center field trips to better pitch voters on their value. Another trade association, the Data Center Coalition, nearly tripled its lobbying spend in the third quarter of this year from the previous quarter, according to US lobbying disclosures.
The social media giant Meta, with billions invested in its own fleet of data centers from Stanton Springs, Georgia, to Richland Parish, Louisiana, has been running a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting data centers as a boon to agricultural towns in Iowa and New Mexico. It has spent at least $5 million nationally in the past month on TV ads plugging Meta’s $600 billion pledged investment in tech infrastructure and jobs.“
"There’s a very bad connotation around data centers. And this is something that, frankly, the data center industry needs to figure out,” said Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, a new trade group established in January to accelerate AI infrastructure development.
Tech giants are also putting focus on swaying policymakers. Max told Politico that his group has been making the rounds to talk with elected officials in critical battlegrounds for the AI future, like Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, to craft a "positive pro-data center campaign message for elected officials, for businesses, for current lawmakers who are going to be up for reelection in 2026."
Meanwhile, Meta reportedly aired its 30-second TV spots "featuring small-town imagery of farming equipment and mom-and-pop diners" in Washington, DC, and nine state capitals. Miller says this suggests "that policymakers might be Meta’s real target audience, rather than the rural Americans impacted by these energy-hungry server hubs."
AI and tech firms plan to ramp up the lobbying and ad blitzes as the next election draws nearer, and their attempt to reframe the narrative about data centers comes as no surprise, as communities across the US in recent months have increasingly come out in force to push their representatives to halt the construction of the facilities.
In Saline Township, a small community just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than 800 residents descended upon a public input session earlier this month to protest against the construction of a $7 billion center—predicted to consume as much energy as the entire city of Detroit—fearing it would raise energy costs, pollute groundwater, and force the state to abandon its nation-leading climate policies.
The town initially blocked the plans, but reversed course following a lawsuit from a real-estate billionaire closely aligned with President Donald Trump, whose administration has backed the $500 billion "Stargate" initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to expand data centers.
On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined Saline residents at a gathering outside the state Capitol, where they called for a statewide moratorium on data centers.
Data center projects have run into similar resistance nationwide. As of March, the group Data Center Watch found that more than $64 billion worth of projects had been blocked or delayed due to local opposition since May 2024. This opposition has reached a fever pitch in recent months.
Last week, after it received hundreds of angry comments from residents, the city council of Chandler, Arizona, unanimously rejected plans for a $2.5 billion data center that had been pushed by former US Sen.-turned lobbyist Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
Even in Trump country, backlash has been fierce. Last week, the planning commission of Starke County, Indiana, voted unanimously to recommend a one-year moratorium on the construction of centers bigger than 5,000 square feet after residents flooded a meeting to raise concerns about water pollution and energy costs.
"In Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk's AI company has built a data center whose energy demands have outgrown the region's energy capabilities," said one resident, Sophia Parker. "We've heard from everyone else saying that our infrastructure does not have the capacity to support a data center. And as a result, gas turbines are emitting nitrogen oxide to the point where residents cannot breathe. Their community is being used as a sacrifice for others to get rich. We cannot allow that to happen to us."
Last month in Montour County, Pennsylvania—a state where electric prices have surged by 15% this year, double the national average—environmentalists formed an uncommon alliance with conservative farmers and the Amish to stop the county planning commission from rezoning 1,300 acres of agricultural land for a massive new center.
“Stay out. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation without federal involvement,” said Craig High, a 39-year-old Trump supporter quoted by Reuters. “Both parties are pushing data centers and giving regulatory relief—water permits, permitting, all of it.”
“This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those who have much too much… and the working and middle classes,” Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader from Michigan and clean energy advocate who opposes the construction of data centers, told The Guardian. “That’s what these data centers are symbolic of, and they’re the vehicle for the furtherance of this divide."
'Straight-Up Nazi Stuff': Trump Admin Plans to Strip More Naturalized Americans of Citizenship
"Requiring monthly quotas that are 10 times higher than the total annual number of denaturalizations in recent years," said one former immigration official, "turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty."
Policy experts were skeptical Wednesday that the Trump administration could legally or practically carry out its threat to strip more naturalized Americans of their citizenship. Still, they warned that new guidance issued by the White House to immigration officials would ramp up "fear and terror" in immigrant communities and could portend the targeting of naturalized citizens who President Donald Trump views as adversaries.
The guidance was issued Tuesday to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field offices, with officers directed to supply the Department of Justice (DOJ) with "100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year.
The denaturalization process is "deliberately hard" for the federal government, noted American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and stripping people of the citizenship is a rare step only taken in cases of fraud when they applied to be a citizen or in other narrow circumstances.
As such, between 2017-25, there have been just over 120 denaturalization cases filed with the Office of Immigration Litigation at the DOJ.
Under the first Trump administration, denaturalization cases peaked at 90 in one year in 2018, and the directive issued Tuesday signaled the White House is aiming for a far bigger escalation as it also continues its mass deportation operation and blocks people from seeking asylum as they are permitted to under international law.
Reichlin-Melnick called the directive for a denaturalization quota "vicious and cruel," and pointed out that the president is asking USCIS and the DOJ to take on an onerous task.
"These cases are hard to file and win, and require a lot of DOJ resources, and the DOJ is stretched thin already. So we’ll see; I have serious doubts about their ability to do this," said Reichlin-Melnick.
USCIS refers cases to the DOJ, which must prove in a federal court that it has "unequivocal evidence" that someone obtained their citizenship illegally or fraudulently.
"The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that citizenship and naturalization are too precious and fundamental to our democracy for the government to take it away on their whim. Instead of wasting resources digging through Americans’ files, USCIS should do its job of processing applications, as Congress mandated,” Amanda Baran, a former senior USCIS official who served during the Biden administration, told the New York Times.
Naturalized Americans account for 26 million people in the US, with 800,000 people sworn in last year. In most cases, a person who loses their citizenship status is classified as a legal permanent resident.
Trump has repeatedly called to denaturalize Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and to deport her over her criticism of his policies, and has made the same threat against New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist.
In those threatened cases, wrote Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, earlier this month, "it appears that crime isn’t so much a motivation as disloyalty."
"Stripping citizens of their citizenship in the name of making the electorate more 'American' is arguably one of the most un-American acts imaginable," wrote Waldman. "We are a nation of immigrants and also a nation of laws. The courts must continue to ensure that those laws protect naturalized citizens from being punished for speaking out."
Three other Brennan Center experts also recently wrote about the history of denaturalization efforts in the US, including during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s:
Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led witch hunts, with denaturalization often used as a tool against accused communists or sympathizers. Among those targets was Harry Bridges, an Australian-born, nationally known labor leader accused of being a communist, who faced an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to revoke his citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, not once, but twice.
"This is straight-up Nazi stuff and I’m calling on my fellow Jewish Americans who know where this can lead to be in the vanguard against it," said Dylan Willams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, also noting that the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee has endorsed Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who has called for the denaturalization and expulsion of Muslim Americans and immigrants.
Sarah Pierce, a former USCIS official, told the Times that Trump's quota for denaturalization cases "risks politicizing citizenship revocation" as it has been in the past.
“And requiring monthly quotas that are 10 times higher than the total annual number of denaturalizations in recent years," she said, "turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty for the millions of naturalized Americans.”