SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
amazon web services
$40 Million Amazon Documentary Deal for Melania Trump Slammed as Corporate 'Pandering'
That's a "staggering amount of money for any figure, let alone one who commands relatively little public interest," wrote one journalist.
Jan 08, 2025
In a move panned as kowtowing to the incoming Trump administration, Amazon confirmed Sunday that it will release a documentary about the life of incoming First Lady Melania Trump, which will premier in 2025 on its platform Prime Video and in theaters.
Puck news reported that Prime Video is paying $40 million to license the film, and the deal includes the documentary as well as a multiple episode follow-up docuseries. That's a "staggering amount of money for any figure, let alone one who commands relatively little public interest," wrote Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic.
The deal was denounced by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which called the move another example of "corporations pandering to Trump."
"I see we're back to openly bribing the Trump family," quipped Matt Stoller, the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Writer Heidi Moore said, "imagine how much financial benefit Amazon hopes to get from the Trump administration if they think $40 million is an easy investment in Melania's doc."
Brett Ratner, the director of the film, has directed multiple blockbuster movies including the Rush Hour film series and X-Man: The Last Stand, but hasn't made a major Hollywood production since multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct in 2017 (Ranter has denied all the allegations).
The news of the deal follows multiple reports that Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos is making overtures to President-elect Donald Trump, likely hoping to change the script after Trump came down hard on Bezos for his ownership of The Washington Post during his first presidency and Amazon argued it was unfairly passed over for a Pentagon contract in 2019.
Bezos dined with Trump in mid-December and committed to donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund through Amazon.
The tech titan also intervened to halt a planned endorsement of then-candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in The Washington Post right before the presidential election. Bezos justified his decision, writing in an op-ed: "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election...What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one."
A cartoonist at The Washington Postquit last week after the paper's opinion section rejected a cartoon she submitted that depicted billionaires, including Bezos, genuflecting before Donald Trump.
In a Substack post, the cartoonist—Ann Telnaes—wrote that it was the first time a cartoon of hers was rejected because of "the point of view inherent in the cartoon's commentary."
"That's a game changer...and dangerous for a free press," she wrote.
Bezos' business ventures have enormous exposure to the federal government. Amazon, which faces an antitrust lawsuit by Federal Trade Commission, holds contracts with the federal government through its cloud-computing service Amazon Web Services. Bezos' company Blue Origin has a multibillion-dollar NASA contract for a moon mission that is supposed to launch in 2029. The firm is also able to compete for a next round of national security launch contracts, the Post reported in October 2024.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Dr. Oz Had Up to Tens of Millions Invested in Companies Involved With CMS
"Seniors deserve a CMS leader who will protect and strengthen Medicare—not someone like Dr. Oz who wants to privatize this vital and hugely popular program for great personal gain," said the head of Accountable.US.
Dec 13, 2024
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the "former daytime television fixture" who U.S. President-elect Donald Trump picked to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reported "up to $56 million in investments in three companies" with direct CMS interests, the watchdog Accountable.US highlighted Friday.
The celebrity heart surgeon is already under fire for his record of peddling "baseless or wrong" health advice and pushing Medicare Advantage (MA)—an alternative to the government-run program administered by private health insurance companies—on The Dr. Oz Show, as well as his stake in UnitedHealth and CVS Health.
The new Accountable.US report—based on disclosures from Oz's unsuccessful 2022 run against U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)—adds to conflict of interest concerns and fears that Oz may thwart the Biden administration's new rule intended to rein in privatized Medicare Advantage plans.
"Dr. Oz's conflicts of interest pose a serious threat to seniors' health security."
"In 2022, Oz's 'single biggest healthcare holding' was up to $26 million in Sharecare, a digital health company Oz co-founded that became the 'exclusive in-home care supplemental benefit program' for 1.5 million MA enrollees across 400 MA plans through its CareLinx service in 2022," the watchdog detailed. "By 2023, CareLinx was available to over 2 million MA enrollees. Sharecare was taken private in a $518 million private equity deal in 2024, and it is unknown if Oz still holds a stake."
Nick Clemens, Oz's spokesperson on the Trump transition team, told USA TODAY—which first reported on the Accountable.US findings—that Oz sold his stake in Sharecare but did not address further questions.
The group noted that "in 2022, Oz disclosed holding up to $25 million in Amazon and up to $5 million in Microsoft, which CMS called its 'two primary cloud service providers' in its FY 2025 budget document, which requested over $3.3 billion in information technology funding for the year. Notably, Amazon Web Services hosted 74 million Medicaid records as early as 2017 and the company has been contracted to streamline Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance portal run by CMS."
Accountable.US "reviewed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was unable to find evidence that Oz sold stocks in Amazon or Microsoft since the 2022 filing," according to USA Today—which found that Oz's stakes could be as high as $26.7 million for Amazon and $6.3 million for Microsoft.
When asked if Oz still owned the stocks in the two tech giants, Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes only said that "all nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies."
Given the nominee's TV and investment history, Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk declared Friday that "seniors deserve a CMS leader who will protect and strengthen Medicare—not someone like Dr. Oz who wants to privatize this vital and hugely popular program for great personal gain."
"If Dr. Oz and Project 2025 had their way, Medicare as we know it would end, replaced with private insurance plans that cost taxpayers more and leave patients vulnerable to denials of care and higher premiums," Carrk continued, citing the Heritage Foundation-led playbook for the incoming Republican president.
"Dr. Oz's conflicts of interest pose a serious threat to seniors' health security," he added, "but as long as big insurance industry megadonors are happy, President-elect Trump doesn't seem to mind."
While Trump has the power to pick the next CMS administrator, the selection requires Senate confirmation—unless the president-elect works around it to install his most controversial nominees.
On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and six colleagues wrote to Oz to express their concerns about his qualifications, "advocacy for the elimination of traditional Medicare," and "deep financial ties to private health insurers."
"As CMS administrator, you would be tasked with overseeing Medicare and ensuring that the tens of millions of seniors that rely on the program receive the care they deserve, including cracking down on abuses by private insurers in Medicare Advantage," they pointed out. "The consequences of failure on your part would be grave. Billions of federal healthcare dollars—and millions of lives—are at stake."
The lawmakers sent Oz a list of questions, requesting responses by December 23. They inquired about his views on traditional Medicare and revelations that "private companies overcharge taxpayers and unlawfully deny care." They also asked whether, as administrator, he would commit to "fully divesting of any and all financial holdings related to the insurance industry" and "recusing from any decisions that may impact insurers" in which he has a stake.
Sharing the letter on social media Wednesday, Accountable.US said that Warren "is right: this glaring conflict of interest endangers seniors and puts billions in corporate pockets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Investigation Exposes Big Tech Ties to Israeli Genocide in Gaza
"It's more than complicity: It's direct participation and collaboration with the Israeli military on the tools they're using to kill Palestinians," said one policy expert.
Aug 05, 2024
The Israeli military is using cloud storage and artificial intelligence services provided by U.S. tech titans for "direct participation and collaboration" in what many critics around the world call Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, according to an investigation published this week.
Two Israeli publications—+972 Magazine and Local Call—on Sunday published a joint investigation revealing that the Israeli military is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store data gleaned from the mass surveillance in Gaza, where nearly 10 months of bombings and ground invasion have left more than 140,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to local and international estimates.
Multiple sources told the outlets that pressure on the IDF since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel has "led to a dramatic increase in the purchase of services from Google Cloud, Amazon's AWS, and Microsoft Azure." The report states that cooperation between the IDF and AWS "is particularly close" and "even helped on rare occasions to confirm aerial assassination strikes in Gaza—strikes that would have also killed and harmed Palestinian civilians."
IDF Col. Racheli Dembinsky—who spoke at a recent "IT for IDF" event near Tel Aviv—told investigative journalist Yuval Abraham that the "most important" advantage offered by cloud computing companies is advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. AI, she said, provides the IDF with "very significant operational effectiveness" as it obliterates Gaza.
Last year, Abraham published an investigation on the same two websites that showed how the IDF is using AI to select targets, essentially creating what one former Israeli officer called a "mass assassination factory." In April, the journalist revealed that the IDF was using a previously undisclosed AI system that had replaced "human agency and precision" with "mass target creation and lethality."
According to Abraham:
Many of Israel's attacks in Gaza at the beginning of the war were based on the recommendations of a program called "Lavender." With the help of AI, this system processed information on most Gaza residents and compiled a list of suspected military operatives, including junior ones, for assassination. Israel systematically attacked these operatives in their private homes, killing entire families. Over time, the military realized that Lavender was not "reliable" enough, and its use decreased in favor of other software. +972 and Local Call could not confirm whether Lavender was developed with the help of civilian firms, including public cloud companies.
In 2021, Israel signed a $1.2 billion contract with Amazon and Google for Project Nimbus, which provides cloud services to the Israeli government and military. The move sparked the #NoTechForApartheid campaign, in which disaffected tech workers and dozens of advocacy groups rose up against Big Tech's complicity in Israeli human rights crimes in Palestine.
"Technology should be used to bring people together, not enable apartheid and ethnic cleansing," the campaign explained in 2021.
Earlier this year, Google—which Abraham said was briefly listed as a sponsor of the "IT for IDF" event—fired 50 employees for protesting Project Nimbus.
IDF Col. Avi Dadon told Abraham that "of course" tech companies want to work with the IDF, because "it's the strongest marketing."
"What the IDF uses was and will be one of the best selling points of products and services in the world," Dadon explained.
However, Big Tech's alleged complicity in Israeli human rights violations is coming under more intense scrutiny lately as Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan has also applied for arrest warrants for two Hamas leaders, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri and Ismael Haniyah—at least one of whom has since been killed.
Last month, the ICJ ruled in a separate case that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.
Some campaigners have noted that Google is apparently violating its own AI principles, which vow that the company "will not design or deploy AI in… technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm… weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people… technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms… [or] technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."
Others have noted Google and Amazon's lack of transparency on how its systems are being used.
"Neither company has publicly disclosed what, if any, human rights due diligence they carried out before participating in Project Nimbus," Zach Campbell, a digital rights expert at Human Rights Watch, told Abraham. "They haven't mentioned which, if any, red lines there are in terms of what would be permissible use of their technology."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, U.S. policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Abraham that while "there's always a lot of focus on the direct military assistance the United States provides to Israel—the munitions, fighter jets, and bombs," far less attention "has been paid to these partnerships that span both civilian and military environments."
"It's more than complicity: It's direct participation and collaboration with the Israeli military on the tools they're using to kill Palestinians," he stressed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular