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Alarm Bells Ring as Delaware 'Radically' Shifts More Power to Corporate Insiders
"The Delaware lawmakers that enacted S.B. 21 are lapdogs for corporations and Musk," said one expert at the Open Markets Institute.
Mar 26, 2025
While Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer declared that "Delaware is the best place in the world to incorporate your business, and Senate Bill 21 will help keep it that way," critics reiterated concerns about the corporate-friendly state legislation he signed this week.
The Delaware House of Representatives sent the Senate-approved S.B. 21 to Meyer's desk on Tuesday in a 32-7 vote, with two members absent. The Delaware Business Timesreported that the governor "arrived in Dover to sign the measure into law less than two hours after it passed," and "the bill signing was closed to the press."
The bill sailed through the Delaware General Assembly despite anti-monopoly, economic, and legal experts blasting it as a "corporate insider power grab" and accusing state legislators of choosing "billionaire insiders—like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—over pension funds, retirement savers, and other investors."
Delaware Working Families Party (WFP) political director Karl Stomberg said in a Wednesday statement that "at a time when rank-and-file Democrats across the country are begging their leaders to stand up to" President Donald Trump and Musk, his billionaire adviser, Democratic lawmakers in the state "just gave Musk a $56 billion handout."
That's a reference to Musk's 2018 compensation package for his electric vehicle maker, Tesla, which a Delaware judge ruled against, prompting the richest billionaire on Earth to ditch the state and encourage other business leaders to do the same. Fears of a potential "Dexit" led to lawmakers' frantic effort to pass S.B. 21.
"The Working Families Party has been standing up against this proposed bill for weeks now, and we recognize the need to fight back against corporate overreach in our government," said Stomberg. "WFP electeds proposed serious amendments to address our concerns with the bill that would protect the people of Delaware, but the Democrats chose to side with Musk and vote them down."
"This bill is an indictment of the failed Delaware Way, which continues to allow big corporations and the ultrawealthy like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to enrich themselves at the expense of working people," added Stomberg.
Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company. CNBC recently revealed that "a day after The Wall Street Journal published its story on Meta considering a Delaware departure, Meyer, who was brand new to the job, convened an online meeting with attorneys from law firms that have represented Meta, Musk, Tesla, and others in shareholder disputes in the state, according to public records obtained by CNBC. Other attendees included members of the Delaware Legislature."
"The following day, records show, Meyer invited a second group to meet with him and new Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez. That invitation went to Kate Kelly, Meta's corporate secretary, and to Dan Sachs, the company's senior national director of state and local policy," according to CNBC. "The invite also went to James Honaker, an attorney with Morris Nichols, a firm that's represented Meta in federal court in Delaware, and to William Chandler, former chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, who is now part of Wilson Sonsini's Delaware litigation practice."
Just weeks after those meetings, the governor urged state lawmakers to swiftly pass S.B. 21. The Lever's Luke Goldstein wrote Wednesday that "the timing of the emails obtained by CNBC reveals clear motivations driving the current law which was rushed before the Legislature last month by the new governor: to let top executives off the hook for legal liabilities."
In earlier reporting, Goldstein highlighted that "Delaware, which has long been perceived as a billionaire playground and corporate tax haven, is the incorporation home to more than 60% of all Fortune 500 companies. That means, if enacted, the wide-ranging regulatory handouts in the bill will have sweeping consequences for corporate behavior across the country."
The Lever's founder, David Sirota, on Wednesday lamented the limited attention the Delaware law is receiving, compared with a major national security breach involving several top Trump officials' unsecure group chat about war plans. As he put it, "Cannot overstate how significant this is—while the national media is focused on the D.C. drama, a group of Democrats off the radar in a tiny state just radically shifted more power to the planet's largest corporations via world-changing legislation."
Daniel Hanley, senior legal analyst at the Open Markets Institute, said Wednesday that "the Delaware lawmakers that enacted S.B. 21 are lapdogs for corporations and Musk. How this one state came to control practically all of American corporate law is a long story, but regardless, Congress can and should take the power away."
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Jayapal, Sanders Offer Answer to Elon Musk's Healthcare Cost Question
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said National Nurses United, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
Dec 05, 2024
Two of the United States' most outspoken critics of the for-profit health system welcomed billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's criticism of the country's sky-high healthcare spending—and suggested that Musk, a potential Cabinet member in the incoming Trump administration, join the call for Medicare for All.
A social media post by Musk drew the attention of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who reintroduced legislation to expand Medicare coverage to every American last year and have long called for the for-profit healthcare system to be replaced by a government-run program, or single-payer system, like those in every other wealthy country in the world.
"Shouldn't the American people be getting getting their money's worth?" asked Musk, posting a graph from the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation that showed how per capita administrative healthcare costs in the U.S. reached $1,055 in 2020—hundreds of dollars more than countries including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
"Yes," said Sanders, repeating statistics he has frequently shared while condemning the country's $4.5 trillion health system in which private, for-profit health insurance companies increasingly refuse to pay for healthcare services and Americans pay an average of $1,142 in out-of-pocket expenses each year.
"We waste hundreds of billions a year on healthcare administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured," the senator added. "Healthcare is a human right. We need Medicare for All."
Jayapal added that she has "a solution" to exorbitant healthcare costs in the U.S.: "It's called Medicare for All."
Musk has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new federal agency that he wants to create called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Sanders has expressed support for some of the agency's mission, saying its plan to "cut wasteful expenditures" could be put to use at the Department of Defense, which has repeatedly failed audits of its annual spending.
But Sanders has sharply criticized the economic system and business practices that have helped make Musk the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $343.8 billion.
Another progressive, David Sirota of The Lever, suggested last month that DOGE could be used to eliminate the nation's vast health insurance bureaucracy and replace it with Medicare for All, pointing to a 2020 report from the Republican-controlled Congressional Budget Office that showed that a government-run healthcare program would save the country an estimated $650 billion each year.
"Such a system could achieve this in part because Medicare's 2% administrative costs are so much lower than the 17% administrative costs of the bureaucratic, profit-extracting private health insurance industry," wrote Sirota.
Musk drew the attention of Medicare for All advocates amid online discussion about the greed of for-profit insurance giants.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday prompted discussion about widespread anger over the U.S. healthcare system, and following public outcry, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield on Thursday backtracked on a decision to stop paying for surgical anesthesia if a procedure goes beyond a certain time limit. The American Society of Anesthesiologists said that if Anthem stopped fully paying doctors who provide pain management for complicated surgeries, patients would be left paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.
National Nurses United, which advocates for a government-run healthcare system, urged Musk and others who support the broadly popular proposal to "join the movement to win Medicare for All."
"The most efficiently run healthcare systems in the world," said the group, "have been proven time and time again to be single-payer systems."
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Biden Memo on US Arms Transfers Called 'Too Little Too Late'
"If existing restrictions were enforced, the U.S. would have firmly halted all offensive military support for Israel rather than continuing to fuel its devastating war," said one group.
Feb 09, 2024
As U.S. arms continue to fuel Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, critics responded skeptically on Friday to a memo from President Joe Biden requiring human rights assurances from governments receiving American weapons, noting that the White House issued—and ignored—a similar directive last year.
Biden's memo—which is modeled on an amendment proposed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—"requires the secretary of state to obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments receiving defense articles... and requires the secretaries of state and defense to provide periodic congressional reports to enable meaningful oversight."
"The question has always been what the administration is willing to do in practice, not in theory."
The White House said the policy is meant to "prevent arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law" and "strengthen ally and partner capacity to respect their obligations under international law and reduce the risk of civilian harm."
Referring to the far-right administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Van Hollen said that "this new policy will help hold all recipients of U.S. weapons—including the Netanyahu government—more accountable. It's a huge step forward in shining a light on the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars, and will have a lasting impact for years to come."
Skeptics, however, noted the yawning chasm between U.S. policy and practice. David Sirota, founder of the investigative news site The Lever, said on social media that "this isn't new. This is a press release designed to distract from basically the same directive [Biden] issued less than a year ago, which he just totally ignored."
Biden's February 2023
memo states that "no arms transfer will be authorized where the United States assesses that it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit... genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949... or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender‑based violence or serious acts of violence against children."
The
International Court of Justice and a federal judge in California have found that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza. At least hundreds of international legal and genocide scholars, including numerous Israelis, have said Israel's onslaught—which has caused more than 100,000 casualties and has displaced around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people—is genocidal.
Gazans and human rights observers have documented a wide range of potential Israeli war crimes, including the deliberate withholding of lifesaving humanitarian aid; indiscriminate killing; bombing of vital civilian infrastructure including shelters, hospitals, and schools; deliberate targeting of media, medical, and humanitarian workers; and the execution of civilians including elders, men, women, and children.
At least 12,150 children have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, according to Palestinian officials.
"For civilians in Gaza, where U.S. arms continue to cause catastrophic harm, this memo is too little too late," Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said of Biden's new directive. "The Biden administration needs to do what it should have months ago: End U.S. complicity in devastating harm and leverage assistance to deescalate and protect civilians."
Biden has acknowledged and implored Israel to stop its "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza, which on Thursday he called "over the top."
However, the Biden administration has requested $14.3 billion in additional U.S. military aid for Israel atop the nearly $4 billion the apartheid state already receives from Washintgon each year. Biden has also twice bypassed Congress in order to expedite "emergency" armed aid to Israel.
Since the passage of the Foreign Assitance Act of 1961, and later the Leahy Laws, the U.S. government has been statutorily prohibited from providing assistance to foreign security forces that commit gross human rights violations. However, this has not stopped Washington from supporting some of the world's worst human rights violators—including the perpetrators of genocides in Paraguay, Guatemala, Bangladesh, East Timor, Kurdistan, and Gaza—since these laws were enacted.
Responding to Biden's new memo and its requirement of written human rights pledges, Shiel contended that "assurances like this would not be necessary if the U.S. was already following its own laws and policies."
"Where it's clear U.S. weapons are contributing to violations or blocking humanitarian aid, U.S. law and policy says arms transfers can't continue—full stop," she said.
Despite massive U.S. military aid—which has totaled more than $150 billion since Israel was established in 1948 amid the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arabs—Biden administration officials have claimed that they have little leverage over the Israeli government.
"Assurances like this would not be necessary if the U.S. was already following its own laws and policies."
While U.S. officials including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argue that conditions on arms transfers should not apply to Israel, human rights defenders assert that the Biden administration must go beyond mere words to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
"The United States must press Israel for a cease-fire," Center for International Policy senior fellow Melvin A. Goodman wrote for CounterPunch Friday.
"The only way to pressure Israel would be to place genuine conditions on U.S. arms transfers or to withhold the lethal systems that only Washington provides," he added.
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