September, 12 2024, 11:12am EDT
Kroger’s Year-to-Date Earnings Double While Pushing for Merger That Will Raise Food Prices
Today, Kroger reported $466 million in Q2 2024 earnings, with year-to-date earnings of $1.4 billion nearly doubling from 2023—sky-high totals that coincide with criticism that some grocery retailers continue to use inflation as an excuse to pad profits. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently fighting to block Kroger’s proposed merger with grocery giant Albertsons, a deal that could cost $334 million in wages for nearly a million grocery workers, open the door for more price increases, and reduce grocery access across the country.
"The Biden-Harris administration is putting American families first by challenging the ill-advised merger between Kroger and Albertsons. Corporate price gouging has cost consumers enough, yet Kroger wants to make matters worse by cornering the market to maximize profits. Make no mistake: If the merger goes through, it will leave many families worse off with higher prices and fewer store locations.” —Accountable.US Liz Zelnick
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently found that Kroger—along with Dollar General and Dollar Tree/Family Dollar—has charged Americans over $90 million in junk fees annually “just to access their own money” via cash back transactions. In response, government watchdog Accountable.US called into question Kroger’s reliability when “they’ve proven they’ll take advantage of their customers to bolster their profits.”
MORE ON KROGER FROM ACCOUNTABLE.US
Accountable.US is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes corruption in public life and holds government officials and corporate special interests accountable by bringing their influence and misconduct to light. In doing so, we make way for policies that advance the interests of all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
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Number of Jailed Writers Increases Worldwide for Sixth Consecutive Year
"We are seeing that free expression, and therefore writers, are increasingly in the crosshairs of repression in a much wider range of countries," said PEN America.
Apr 24, 2025
A report released Thursday by the free expression group PEN America detailed how authoritarian regimes around the world, recognizing "the role that writers play in promoting critical inquiry and cultivating visions of a better, more just world," jailed more journalists and writers last year than ever before.
The number of imprisoned writers has ticked up each year since the group began its yearly Freedom to Write Index six years ago. In 2024, the index recorded 375 writers in prison across 40 countries—up from 339 writers who were detained in 33 countries the previous year.
The group observed startling trends in governments' crackdown on freedom of expression last year. The number of women imprisoned for their writing rose, with women making up 16% of those incarcerated last year, compared with 15% in 2023 and 14% in 2022.
Writers classified as "online commentators" accounted for 203 imprisoned authors last year, while 127 journalists were jailed for their work. Other professions represented in the index include literary writers, poets, songwriters, and creative artists.
"The high numbers of writers in the online commentator and journalist categories suggest that a significant proportion of the cases included jailing or other threats because of their writing commentary on politics or official policies, economic or social themes, or advocacy for a range of human rights," reads the report.
China and Iran are the biggest jailers of writers, with the two countries accounting for 43% of imprisoned writers worldwide.
Other top offenders include Saudi Arabia with 23 writers, Israel with 21, Russia with 18, and Belarus with 15.
"Authoritarian regimes are desperate to control the narrative of history and repress the truth about what they are doing. That is why writers are so important, and why we see these regimes attempting to silence them," said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, PEN America's director of writers at risk. "Jailing one writer for their words is a miscarriage of justice, but the systematic suppression of writers around the world represents an erosion of free expression—which is often the precursor to the destruction of other fundamental human rights."
The index includes all cases in which writers are detained for at least 48 hours in its accounting of jailed writers. The report notes that as in previous years, PEN America observed an increase in the number of writers held without charge or in pre-trial detention, with 80 such cases last year—up from 76 in 2023.
The majority of writers held in administrative and pre-trial detention—"tools of repression," the report says—were detained by officials in China, Egypt, and Israel.
The index highlighted a number of cases of jailed writers, including:
- Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist and blogger who "has been detained incommunicado since 2017" after being sentenced to life in prison by a court in Umruqi, China in 2014;
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate and women's rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi, who was among several women attacked by Iranian military forces and prison guards at Iran's Evin prison in August 2024; and
- Mahmoud Fatafta, a Palestinian columnist who was arrested in May 2024 by Israeli security forces in the West Bank while traveling with his 10-year-old son, with authorities citing his Facebook post in which he quoted Egyptian scholar Abdul Wahab al-Mesiri: "The more brutal the colonizer becomes, the nearer his end is."
Fatafta's arrest came amid Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and the West Bank, which has provoked outcry by international human rights groups, including in Israel and the United States.
The U.S. was not named as a country of concern in the index, but PEN America pointed to "recent developments in the United States," with the Trump administration revoking visas of foreign students who have protested the government's support for Israel and detaining several student organizers, as evidence of "the precarious nature of freedom of expression."
"The suppression of free expression has taken on an especially troubling dimension on college campuses where Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices are being silenced, including via attempts to deport student activists, limiting discourse on issues of the war in Gaza and human rights," reads the report.
PEN America noted that Columbia student organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk were apparently detained "purely on the grounds of speech protected by the U.S. Constitution," with Ozturk targeted specifically because she co-authored an opinion piece for a student newspaper.
Their detention, said the group, "not only undermines academic freedom but also stifles the critical exchange of ideas."
"As geopolitics continue to shift and authoritarian tendencies spread to countries that were once considered safely anchored in openness," said PEN America, "we are seeing that free expression, and therefore writers, are increasingly in the crosshairs of repression in a much wider range of countries."
Karlekar said that writers like those who have been detained in the last year "represent a threat to disinformation and encourage people to think critically about what is going on around them."
"War, conflict, and attacks against the free exchange of information and ideas go hand in hand with lies and propaganda," said Karlekar. "With the index, we want to alert the world to the jailing and mistreatment of these 375 writers. Each and every one of them should be released, and we insist that the world's jailers of writers end this repression and abuse."
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Trump White House Reportedly Tips Off Wall Street on Trade Talks
"Wall Street execs are getting a direct heads-up from the White House about news that could earn them billions on the stock market."
Apr 24, 2025
Officials inside U.S. President Donald Trump's White House have reportedly tipped off Wall Street executives about a potentially imminent trade agreement with India, a move that one watchdog group described as further evidence that the administration is "flagrantly enabling insider trading."
Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino reported Thursday that unnamed "people inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street execs they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India." Gasparino cited "senior Wall Street execs" with ties to the Trump White House.
It's not clear what kind of information Trump administration officials provided Wall Street executives or how the information differs from publicly available reporting and White House comments on the U.S.-India trade talks, which have thus far been scant on specific details about the timing or provisions of a potential deal.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, told reporters Wednesday that the Trump administration was "very close" to a bilateral trade agreement with India, one of the United States' largest trading partners.
The report of behind-the-scenes communications between the Trump White House and Wall Street executives on a matter that could substantially move financial markets drew immediate alarm.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said Thursday that "while we all look at our retirement accounts with alternating relief and horror, Wall Street execs are getting a direct heads-up from the White House about news that could earn them billions on the stock market."
"The White House is flagrantly enabling insider trading and is continuing their long history of embracing Wall Street while throwing everyday Americans to the wolves," said Peterson-Cassin. "These tip-offs also serve as a corrupt shakedown scheme to lure powerful CEOs into Trump's orbit to beg for their own special carve-outs. It is crystal clear that the president doesn't care about fighting for Main Street and just wears economic populism like one of his ill-fitting suits."
Earlier this month, Trump himself sparked insider trading concerns by writing on his social media platform that it was a "great time to buy" stocks shortly before announcing a partial 90-day tariff pause, which sent equities surging.
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Ben-Gvir Says GOP Leaders Agree Gaza 'Food and Aid Depots Should Be Bombed'
The remarks by the Israeli national security minister, who is visiting the United States, came ahead of Israel's bombing of a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three people, including at least one child.
Apr 24, 2025
An Israeli drone strike on a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three Palestinians on Thursday underscored remarks earlier in the week by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, who said that Republican leaders told him during a meeting at U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort that they agree with his policy of bombing humanitarian aid depots in the embattled enclave.
Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli drone bombed a food distribution point in the town of al-Zawayda, killing three people, including at least one child, and wounding others. The bombing came amid a crippling Israeli blockade of Gaza that has fueled widespread starvation and sickness, with the United Nations relief coordination office warning earlier this week that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached "unprecedented levels."
The Palestinian news outlet Wafareported that Israeli airstrikes killed 52 civilians across the Gaza Strip since dawn Thursday, bringing the death toll from 566 days of Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal assault to at least 51,355, with more than 117,000 others injured, over 14,000 people missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thursday's attacks came after Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, said that "senior Republican Party officials" whom he met Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida "expressed support for my very clear position" that Gaza "food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely."
More than 250 Israeli and other hostages were taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It is believed that 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, has been widely accused of trying to scupper cease-fire and hostage release efforts in order to prolong the war and delay his criminal corruption trial.
On Wednesday, Ben-Gvir was invited by Shabtai, a secretive society co-founded in 1996 by Yale University graduate students including Cory Booker—who is now a Democratic U.S. senator—to speak at the elite Connecticut school. After his speech, Ben-Gvir waved and flashed the "victory" sign to pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the event, prompting some to throw water bottles at him.
Following a Tuesday night protest which it did not organize, the Yale chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was stripped of its official club status by university officials, who cited concerns over "disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering"—without providing any evidence to support their claim.
Ben-Gvir continued his U.S. tour on Thursday, with planned visits to Jewish neighborhoods in New York City's Brooklyn borough.
Tuesday's remarks were not the first time Ben-Gvir—who was convicted in 2007 by an Israeli court of incitement to racism and supporting the Kahanist militant group Kach—has endorsed war crimes against Palestinians.
"Let's bomb the food reserves in Gaza, let's bomb all the power lines in Gaza. Why are there lights in Gaza? There must not be a single light. Stop the electricity," he said last month.
In January, Ben-Gvir resigned from Netanyahu's government in protest of its cease-fire and hostage release agreement with Hamas. He rejoined the government after it renewed its genocidal assault on Gaza last month.
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