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taxation
Warren Demands Big Tech CEOs Come Clean on Cozying Up to Trump for Corporate Tax Giveaways
Given that "American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts" for major tech companies, she argued, "they deserve answers."
Mar 06, 2025
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren this week sent letters to five Big Tech executives—including the world's three richest individuals—to sound the alarm about their "personal and financial ties to the Trump administration" and how they "may be exploiting" those relationships for billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks.
The Massachusetts Democrat's targets include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on Earth and head of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, which is leading the administration's effort to dismantle the federal bureaucracy.
She also wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta—which owns Facebook and Instagram—as well as Amazon.com founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. As of Thursday, they are respectively the second- and third-wealthiest people on the planet. Warren's final two letters went to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
"This $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families."
Warren and other Democrats on Capitol Hill are intensely critical of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed in 2017. The law was largely crafted to serve rich individuals and businesses, including by slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Now that the GOP has regained control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, its members are aiming to extend expiring provisions of the TCJA—funded by gutting programs for the working class.
As Warren's office noted in a Thursday statement, the TCJA ended "a corporate tax break known as research and development (R&D) expensing to help pay for their tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. This tax break allowed companies to deduct the total cost of their R&D expenses immediately, instead of deducting them over time, as is the standard practice in the tax code."
"This change was one of the few parts of the 2017 bill that forced companies to pay higher taxes," her office explained. "Now, corporations want to revert back to the pre-2017 rules—and not only do corporations want to apply immediate R&D expensing to future tax years, but they are also pushing to retroactively apply these deductions to 2022, 2023, and 2024."
Warren's letters cite a recent independent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that retroactive application of R&D expensing alone would slash each company's tax bill by billions of dollars—specifically, Tesla: $2.5 billion; Meta: $15 billion; Amazon: $22 billion; Apple: $10 billion; and Alphabet: $24 billion.
In other words, Warren wrote, "collectively, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla are projected to win $75 billion if Congress awards them retroactive R&D tax expensing—nearly double what the federal government spends on child nutrition programs each year and a fantastic return on investment for the millions you have spent lobbying on the tax fight."
"And this $75 billion windfall is only one slice of the billions of dollars that you stand to gain from Republican efforts to lower your taxes while raising costs for working families," she continued, pointing out that GOP lawmakers may "succeed in lowering the corporate tax rate even further, as President Trump has sought, or in handing out other tax giveaways to massive corporations."
Given that "American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts" for major tech companies, "they deserve answers," argued Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. She demanded responses to a list of questions by March 19.
Warren's inquiries include how much the companies are spending on lobbying for Republicans' tax legislation, and the R&D provision specifically; which trade associations, lobbying coalitions, or similar entities that they are a part of; and how much they have given, directly or indirectly, to federal elected officials who are advocating for corporate tax giveaways.
The senator also asked "exactly how much" of the retroactive tax breaks that the tech giants would put toward R&D investment and how they expect it will impact the companies' outlook for stock buybacks and executive compensation.
The potential tax law change is just one way Republican control of the federal government could benefit Big Tech. As the watchdog Public Citizen highlighted Tuesday, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Tesla are among dozens of companies with ties to the Trump administration that could benefit from its efforts to end corporate probes and enforcement actions.
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In Response to Reported Executive Order, School Defenders Vow Uprising as Trump Targets Public Education
Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump "have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America," said one union leader.
Mar 06, 2025
With the Trump administration reportedly preparing an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, the head of the union the American Federation of Teachers has vowed to fight any gutting of agency programs "tooth and nail."
According to Wednesday reporting from The Wall Street Journal, a draft text of the executive order compels Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department" based on "the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law."
The Journal and other outlets reported that the order could come as soon as Thursday, though Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on X that Trump will not sign an order Thursday.
AFT president Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle, the president of the teachers union the National Education Association (NEA), cast the latest news as an attack ultimately aimed at public education.
"Don't use a 'war on woke' to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires," Weingarten said in a Wednesday statement.
Pringle said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk "have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America, by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires."
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are currently pursuing trillions in tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy.
While education policy and funding in the U.S. are largely handled at the state and local level, the Department of Education provides money for districts that serve lower income-income communities, as well as funding to help districts better serve students with disabilities. The agency is also responsible for managing federal college financial aid and federal student loans and also makes sure schools comply with a variety of federal laws, such as Title IX.
Getting rid of the Department of Education would ultimately empower the "the extremist anti-public education agenda" that is already being implemented in parts of the country, according to NEA. A key part of that agenda is vouchers for private schools, per NEA.
Vouchers siphon funding away from public schools. In 2024, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, then chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), authored a report detailing how right-wing billionaires have bankrolled coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs.
Vouchers are often the mechanism at play when conservatives talk about advancing "school choice"—which was one of the key education goals put forward by the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The cornerstone education policy in Project 2025 is getting rid of the Department of Education.
In January, Trump issued an executive order asking the Department of Education to spend time coming up with guidance to help states apply federal funding to school choice initiatives.
While education union voices and Democrats have vowed to resist attacks on the Department of Education, those attacks have already begun. Probationary employees there have been laid off and the agency has paused some civil rights enforcement, among other actions, per the Journal.
While the draft executive order reviewed by the Journal makes clear the ultimate aim is to get rid of the department, the Trump administration needs Congress' help to unwind the agency, according to legal experts.
The order doesn't mention Congress, which created the Department of Education in 1979, and fully dismantling the department would require a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
"You can't just drop a bomb on the Department of Education and turn it into rubble," Jonathan E. Collins, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, toldTime in February. "Legally, it has to start with Congress, not the president."
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Since 1975, $79 Trillion Has Flowed From Bottom 90% to Top 1% in US: Analysis
Sanders used the findings of a recent working paper to denounce Republicans' determination to pass tax cuts that will benefit wealthy Americans the most.
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday used a new working paper about income distribution over the past several decades to push back against congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump's effort to pass more tax giveaways for the rich.
The recent working paper from the nonpartisan research organization RAND, which was authored by Carter Price, aimed to quantify how much money the majority of workers—the bottom 90% by income—would have made if earnings growth had not begun to disproportionately flow to those with the highest incomes starting in the 1970s.
According to Price, assuming the same distribution of income among workers as in 1975—and taking into account continued economic growth, continued growth in inequality, and inflation—the majority of workers would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, "the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution" tallies at $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, per Price.
"The massive income and wealth inequality in America today is not only morally unjust, it is profoundly damaging to our democracy," wrote Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday in response to the study.
The analysis updates earlier numbers on the same topic. A previous analysis from Price and a co-author found the gap between what the majority of workers earn and what they could have earned if the more "uniform growth rates from the 50s and '60s" had continued totaled $47 trillion in 2018 dollars.
Sanders used the update from RAND to discuss the current aims of Trump and Republicans in Congress.
"Over and over again, my Republican colleagues have expressed their deep concern about the redistribution of wealth in America, and they are right," Sanders continued. "The problem is that it has gone in precisely the wrong direction."
Sanders opposes Republicans' intent to provide tax cuts primarily for the wealthy, which will almost certainly be paid for by cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and more. "We must do the exact opposite," he wrote.
Last week, House Republicans were able to pass a budget resolution that tees up those tax cuts after Trump intervened to pressure wavering members to vote for it.
The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than" $880 billion over the next decade. That panel has jurisdiction over Medicaid, which the GOP has repeatedly targeted in public and private discussions, with one leaked document floating over $2 trillion in cuts to the program.
Republicans also rejected numerous Democratic amendments that would have prevented Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts in the upcoming budget reconciliation process as their resolution moved through committees.
Sanders has been a consistent voice speaking out against the cuts. "Trump and his Republican friends want to enact massive cuts to the [Medicaid] program. We won't let them," wrote Sanders last week.
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