May 1, 2026

Outrage of the Month: The FDA, Peptides and RFK Jr.

Health Letter, May 2026

By Robert Steinbrook, M.D.
Director, Public Citizen's Health Research Group

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!

Read what Public Citizen has to say about the biggest blunders and outrageous offenses in the world of public health, published monthly in Health Letter.

On July 23 and July 24, 2026, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a public meeting of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee to discuss easing restrictions on seven peptides that the agency removed three years ago from a list of bulk drug substances that compounding pharmacies can use. At a later meeting, the committee will consider wider access to an additional five peptides that were also banned in 2023.

Peptides are a favorite of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has used them to treat his own injuries. They are also championed by many health and wellness influencers. They are short chains of amino acids, usually administered by injection (under the skin or into a vein). Since pressure to broaden access to peptides comes directly from the HHS secretary, the FDA will have to decide whether to stand up for science or acquiesce to Kennedy’s wishes.

There is no credible reason to believe that peptides deemed unproven or unsafe in 2023 are now miraculously safe and effective. If convincing data on the safety and effectiveness of any of the 12 peptides had emerged in recent years, such findings would already be widely known.

Unapproved peptides are touted for wound healing, inflammation, insomnia and many other uses. Some are approved as drugs based on clinical research, including insulin and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists that are frequently used for Type 2 diabetes and weight management. However, the FDA has previously found that the unapproved peptides are either unproven, unsafe or both, and frequently are contaminated with other substances.

When the FDA banned the compounding of many peptides in 2023, it cited risks related to immune reactions (immunogenicity) for certain routes of administration, impurities and a lack of “sufficient information to know whether the drug would cause harm when administered to humans.” For one peptide, KPV, the FDA said it had “not identified any human exposure data on drug products containing KPV administered via any route of administration.”

On July 23, the committee will discuss BPC-157-, KPV-, TB-500- and MOTS-c-related bulk drug substances. The FDA has reviewed these substances for ulcerative colitis (BPC-157), wound healing and inflammatory conditions (KPV), wound healing (TB-500), and obesity and osteoporosis (MOTS-c). TB-500 is a synthetic version of a protein fragment known as thymosin beta-4, and the substances are used interchangeably.

On July 24, the committee will discuss emideltide, semax and epitalon. The FDA has reviewed these drug substances for opioid withdrawal, chronic insomnia and narcolepsy (emideltide); cerebral ischemia, migraine and trigeminal neuralgia (semax); and insomnia (epitalon).

At a later meeting, to be held before the end of February 2027, the committee will discuss cathelicidin (LL-37), GHK-Cu, Dihexa acetate, Melanotan II and mechano growth factor.

At present, the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee has six vacancies, including the chairperson and a consumer representative. The committee has only three voting members and one industry representative. With new appointees before the July meeting, the committee could be filled with members who would rubber stamp Kennedy’s wishes, as has been the case with vaccine recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Consistent with FDA and state regulations, compounding pharmacies can use bulk drug substances to make customized versions of medications and to mix drugs when there is a shortage of an approved version. However, compounded drug products are not approved by the FDA and are subject to lower regulatory standards than approved drugs. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group recommends that they not be used except in unusual situations when a patient’s medical needs cannot be met by an available FDA-approved drug.

The forthcoming Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting and the subsequent FDA decisions about the 12 peptides under reconsideration are a key test of the agency’s credibility and its commitment to public health, rather than Kennedy’s ill-advised directives. All these peptides, like any new drugs, should go through the FDA’s standard approval process, not a more lenient workaround alternative pathway that defeats the agency’s purpose.

Product Recalls: March 11, 2026 – April 15, 2026

Health Letter, May 2026

Note: Never stop taking a drug that appears on the product recall list without first talking to your doctor or pharmacist. Most recalls are limited to a single manufacturer and may not be related to the version of a particular drug you are taking. If a recall does relate to the version of the drug you are taking, you should not stop taking the drug until you discuss an alternative treatment with your doctor or pharmacist.

For Class 1 recalls, there is a potential for serious injury or death.

For Class 2 recalls, there is a potential for serious adverse events but a lower chance of the drug causing serious injury or death than in a Class 1 recall.

CLASS I

CLASS II

Children’s Ibuprofen oral suspension, 100 mg per 5 mL, 120 mL bottle. Manufactured for: Taro Pharmaceuticals, U.S.A, Inc. Lots #7261973A, 7261974A, exp. date: 01/27.

Cinacalcet Hydrochloride tablets, 30 mg, 60mg and 90 mg, 30 tablets per bottle. Manufactured by: Cipla Ltd. Manufactured for: Cipla USA, Inc. Lots #4PB0526, 4PB0527, 4PB0528, exp. date: 09/26; Lot #5PB0173, exp. 01/27; Lots #4PB0215, 4PB0216, exp. date: 03/26; Lots #4PB0515, 4PB0516, exp. 09/26; Lot #4PB0517, exp. 09/26; Lot #5PB0167, exp. 01/27; Lot #4PB0224, exp. date: 03/26; Lots #4PB0505, 4PB0506, 4PB0507, exp. date: 09/26; Lot #5PB0564, exp. date: 04/27.

Clonidine Transdermal System, 0.1 mg/day, 0.2 mg/day and 0.3 mg/day, cartons of 4 systems and 4 adhesive covers. Manufactured by: Actavis Laboratories UT Inc. Distribute by: Actavis Laboratories UT Inc. Lot #100060315, exp. 04/26; Lot #100068644, exp. 01/27; Lot #100060002; exp. date: 07/26; Lot #100066802, exp. date: 05/27; Lot #100053892, exp. date: 04/26; Lot #100057899, exp. date: 05/26; Lot #100062704, exp. date: 02/27.

Icosapent Ethyl capsules, 1 gram, 120 capsules per bottle. Manufactured by: Softgel Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., India. Distributed by: Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc. Lots #S2520249, S2520250, S2520267, exp. date: 01/27; Lots #S2520303, S2520305, S2520332, exp. date: 02/27; Lots #S2540208, S2540209, exp. date: 04/27.

Isotretinoin capsules, 30 mg and 40mg, 10 count prescription pack. Manufactured for: Teva Pharmaceuticals, USA. Lot#100055426, exp. date: 02/26; Lot #100071518, exp. date: 04/27; Lot #100072450, exp. date: 07/27; Lot #100075305, exp. date: 06/27; Lot #100075512, exp. date: 07/27; 100076103, exp. date: 07/27.

Levothyroxine Sodium tablets, 150 mcf, 1000 tablets bottle. Manufactured for: Macleods Pharma USA, Inc. Lot #16240062A, exp. date: 03/26.

Meclizine Hydrochloride tablets, 12.5 mg, 50-count (5X10 unit-dose blister packs). Distributed by: American Health Packaging. Lot #1213748, exp. date: 09/26; Lots #1215076, 1215077, exp. date: 10/26.

Memantine Hydrochloride extended-release capsules, 7mg, 100 capsules. Packaged and distributed by: Major Pharmaceuticals. Lot #N02425, exp. 05/27.

Pantoprazole Sodium delayed-release tablets, 40 mg, 1000-count bottle. Manufactured for: Camber Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Batch #FD253967, exp. date: 06/27.

Prazosin Hydrochloride capsules, 1 mg, 2mg and 5mg, 100-count bottle. Manufactured for: Biocon Pharma Inc. Manufactured for: Biocon Pharma Inc. Manufactured by: Appco Pharma LLC. Lot #2404160C, exp. date: 03/26; Lot #2404160C, exp. date: 03/26; Lot #2406253C, exp. date: 05/26; Lot #2407311C, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2407312C, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2408350C, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2505172C, exp. date: 05/27; Lot #2506191C, exp. date: 06/27; Lot #2404153UC, exp. date: 03/26; Lot #2404154UC, exp. date: 03/26; Lot #2502055UC, exp. date: 01/27; Lot #2505173UC, exp. date: 05/27; Lot #2505175UC, exp. date: 05/27; Lot #2406255UC, exp. date: 05/26; Lot #2406256UC, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2407313UC, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2408351UC, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2408352UC, exp. date: 07/26; Lot #2509311UC, exp. date: 09/27.

TraMADol Hydrochloride tablets, 50 mg, 500-count bottles. Manufactured by: Amneal Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd. Distributed by: Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC. Lot #AM230987, exp. date: 05/26; Lot #AR232387, exp. date: 12/26.

Xanax XR, alprazolam, extended-release tablets, 3 mg, 60 tablet bottles. Distributed by: Viatris Specialty LLC. Lot #8177156, exp. date: 02/27.

For more information about the drug recalls listed above, please visit http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/ires/index.cfm.

CONSUMER PRODUCTS

For a list of recent recalls of consumer products, please visit the Consumer Product Safety Commission website at http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/.

April 30, 2026

Public Citizen Comments Regarding the Draft Guideline on Implementation of Patent Linkage for Pharmaceutical Products in Malaysia

Thank you for the opportunity to provide written comments to the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency regarding the proposed implementation of the patent linkage mechanism in Malaysia.^[1]

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization with over one million members and supporters. Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program works with partners across the United States and around the world to make medicines available for all through tools in policy and law.

We understand that the Patent Linkage Guideline (hereinafter the “Guideline”) aims to implement Malaysia’s commitments under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to provide a notification mechanism to patent holders, opportunity to seek legal remedies, and procedures to resolve patent disputes before marketing of an allegedly infringing pharmaceutical product.^[2] We also understand that the Guideline’s objective is to balance regulatory efficiency with patent protection while ensuring continued access to medicines.^[3] However, Public Citizen is concerned that the Guideline as currently proposed will adversely impact access to affordable medicines in Malaysia.

CPTPP provides two options for implementing “patent linkage.” The first option provides that a Party must either create a system to provide notice to a patent holder or allow for notification prior to the marketing of a competing product, or a product for an approved use, claimed under a patent. A Party also needs to provide adequate time and opportunity for a patent holder to seek remedies. The second option provides for a “hard” linkage system which prevents generics companies from receiving marketing approval during the patent term unless by consent or acquiescence of the patent holder. To comply with the CPTPP, Malaysia only needs to provide anotification system and availability of judicial remedies.

The Guideline goes beyond the minimum requirements in the CPTPP, proposing a system that requires a 45-day hold on a registration decision for a generic application containing a list of patents and pending patents and an automatic 12-month suspension of approval if the patent holder initiates court action within the 45-day period. This would allow patent holders to block the registration of generic medicines for marketing approval, even for spurious patents.

Evidence shows that patent linkage delays generic entry and can facilitate abuse, since the financial benefits to patent holders of deterring generic market entry may outweigh the risks of penalties. For example, a study by Mexico’s Federal Economic Competition Commission found the patent linkage system encourages legal disputes and abuse by patent holders seeking to delay competition. The Commission found that generic drugs entered the market on average two years after patent expiration, indicating barriers to competition and lost savings as spending is maintained on higher-priced patented products.^[4]  Additionally, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has noted the harmful impacts of improperly listed patents within the U.S. “hard” linkage system, stating that “[w]hen [the] stay [on approval of a generic application] is triggered by a patent that is improperly filed and does not meet the statutory listing criteria, the stay may improperly delay consumer access to a competing product that might reduce prices, improve quality and access, or both. Given the high cost of many drugs, even a short delay in competition can have enormous consequences for consumers in accessing cost-effective medications.”^[5] Notably, the European Commission strictly prohibits patent linkage systems, finding that linkage creates unnecessary delays in generics market entry and unjustifiably blocks healthy competition and access to affordable medicines.^[6]

We urge you to withdraw the proposed Guideline and to pursue meaningful consultations with civil society experts and patient organizations on the implementation of Article 18.53 of the CPTPP.

^[1] https://upc.mpc.gov.my/main/user/view-consultations/232

^[2] CPTPP, Article 18.53

^[3]https://upc.mpc.gov.my/main/user/consultations/documents/view/consultations/documents/Vx0gJAiuAMcSRiigxHGEAzV3l9QVXegKfrPDf875.pdf

^[4] https://www.cofece.mx/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Studies-drugmarkets_vF-BAJA.pdf

^[5] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-files-amicus-brief-outlining-anticompetitive-harm-caused-improper-orange-book-listings

^[6] https://www.medicinesforeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Medicines%20for%20Europe%20Position%20Paper%20On%20Patent%20Linkage%20-%20May%202019.pdf

April 27, 2026

Big Tech Keeps Selling AI. The Public Still Isn’t Buying It.

After years of warning that artificial intelligence could pose catastrophic risks without safeguards, disrupt labor markets, strain energy systems, and even openly questioning whether data centers or humans are worthy of energy resources, major AI companies are now attempting to win the public over through massive lobbying spending and even setting up phony “coalitions” to trick advocates. These attempts at influencing politicians and the American public only come after years of public statements and product rollouts that have emphasized disruption first and little care for public impact.

Americans remain unconvinced.

Public Citizen’s new polling memo shows that across party lines, the public continues to distrust AI, support stronger regulation, and reject the idea that industry promises alone should guide deployment. Voters consistently express concern that AI will weaken job security, increase corporate power, outpace meaningful oversight, and expose children and consumers to new harms before adequate safeguards exist. Far from embracing Silicon Valley’s new sales pitch, polling shows sustained demand among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans for stronger public guardrails and accountability before AI becomes more deeply embedded in everyday life.

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Across Parties, the Public Agrees AI Must be Regulated

Almost all Americans (97%) Agree That AI Safety and Security Should Be Subject to Rules and Regulations (Gallup / Special Competitive Studies Project: Sept. 2025).

• 80% of U.S. adults believe the government should maintain rules for AI safety and data security, even if it means developing AI capabilities more slowly. This view is held by 88% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans and Independents.
• More than seven in 10 (72%) say independent experts should conduct safety tests and evaluations of AI products and services.
• Six in 10 Americans distrust AI somewhat (40%) or fully (20%).
• Only 2% of U.S. adults fully trust AI’s capability to make fair and unbiased decisions, a figure within the poll’s margin of error.

AI is the Industry Americans Most Want to Regulate (YouGov: Sept. 2024).

• 72% of Americans want more regulation of the AI industry, a 15-point increase since a similar poll a year earlier. This includes 83% of Harris supporters and 66% of Trump supporters.
• Across the 40 industries asked about in the poll, AI is the industry that Americans in general and Trump supporters specifically are most eager to regulate.

Two Thirds of Americans Want AI Regulation (Center Square Voters’ Voice / Noble Predictive Insights: April 2025).

• 64% of registered voters want the government to regulate AI.

On a Bipartisan Basis, Voters Overwhelmingly Favor Candidates Who Support AI Regulation (Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute: Jan. 2024).

• 76% of voters, including 71% of Republicans, prefer a candidate running in their district who supports regulating AI because the risks it poses are so large.
• 77% of voters, including 75% of Republicans, say government should do more to regulate AI.

By a 6-1 Margin, Americans Reject Tech Industry Self-Regulation of AI Risks (YouGov / Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute: Aug. 2023).

• 72% percent of voters said they preferred slowing down the development of AI.
• 82% of voters said they don’t trust tech company executives to self-regulate, and 56% said they would support a federal agency to regulate AI.

Americans Losing Faith in AI’s Potential for the Economy

There is a Large Lack of Trust in AI (IPSOS: March 2026).

• Almost 75% of Americans believe there needs to be action taken by the government to prevent job loss from AI.
• 66% of Americans agreed that the development of AI needs to slow down, while 76% feel that people need to keep up with the advancement of AI.
• Only 11% of corporate communicators believe existing ethical policies are sufficient for widespread AI adoption.

Voters Increasingly Think AI Is Likely to Hurt the Economy (Data For Progress: February 2026).

• 46% of voters think AI will likely hurt the economy, rising nine points from December 2025.
• Only 28% of voters think AI will likely help the economy, down eight points from December 2025.

Advancements in AI Will Likely Lead to Decreased Job Opportunities According to 70% of Americans (Quinnipiac: March 2026).

• These views are shared among Americans regardless of work environment, with 71% of white-collar workers and 73% of blue-collar workers believe AI will lead to a decrease in job opportunities.
• Gen Z is the most concerned, with 81% thinking there will be a decrease.
• Americans are overwhelmingly unwilling (80%) to work in a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program.

Americans Overwhelmingly Reject the Idea that Competition with China Justifies Leaving AI Unregulated (Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute: July 2024).

• Three out of four American voters are skeptical of the argument that the U.S. should race ahead to build ever more powerful artificial intelligence, unconstrained by domestic regulations, in an effort to compete with China.
• 75% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans believe that “taking a careful, controlled approach” to AI by preventing the release of tools that terrorists and foreign adversaries could use against the U.S. is preferable to “moving forward on AI as fast as possible to be the first country to get extremely powerful AI.”

Americans Reject Federal Preemption of State AI Regulation

Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Federal Preemption of State AI Regulations (YouGov / Institute for Family Studies: Nov. 2025).

• American voters oppose adding artificial intelligence preemption provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act by a decisive 3-to-1 margin. 57% of Americans oppose congressional efforts to block states from regulating AI through military spending legislation, while only 19% support such measures.
• Among Trump voters, 43% oppose preemption compared to just 25% who support it. Among Harris voters, 70% oppose the provision.

By a Greater Than 2-1 Margin, Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Federal Preemption of State AI Regulation (Echelon Insights / Common Sense Media: May 2025).

• Nearly three out of five likely voters oppose a moratorium on state-level AI regulation, including half of Republicans. A majority (53%) of likely voters said they trusted state and local leaders more than politicians in Congress when it comes to regulating AI appropriately.
• By a more than three-to-one margin, voters trust states to regulate AI over the federal government.
• 81% of likely voters agree that Congress should not ban states from enacting or enforcing their own laws when it comes to protecting kids’ safety and privacy online. 87% agree that states should be able to enforce laws and regulations around social media, including requiring warning labels for children.

Americans Are Demanding Stronger AI Regulation

80% of Voters Say Go Slow on AI Development (Fox News: Dec. 2025)

• 8 in 10 voters favor a careful approach to developing AI to manage potential risks to the U.S.
• Only 1 in 10 voters think the president should regulate AI.

Americans Overwhelming Support (73%) “Slow, Heavily Regulated” Development of AI (Future of Life Institute: Oct. 2025).

• 57% of adults reject the development of “expert-level AI” under current conditions; 17% feel it should never be developed; and 40% think it should be halted until proven controllable and safe. Shockingly, only 5% of adults agree that AI should be developed “as quickly as possible.”
• Almost three-in-four Americans support regulation “like pharmaceuticals with extensive testing before deployment.” Two-thirds (64%) of adults would like to see an “immediate pause” on the development of advanced AI until the technology is proven to be safe.

Public Worries About Inadequate AI Regulation (Pew Research Center: April 2025).

• Both the public and experts worry the U.S. government will not go far enough in regulating AI. About six in ten U.S. adults and 56% of experts surveyed say they’re more concerned about this than about the government going too far.
• Majorities in both parties – 64% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans – are concerned about insufficient AI regulation.
• 59% of the public and 55% of surveyed experts have little or no confidence in U.S. companies to develop and use AI responsibly.

Americans Agree the Country Needs More AI Regulation (Quinnipiac: April 2025).

• 73% of Americans think that businesses are not doing enough to be transparent about their use of AI.
• 69% of Americans think that the government is not doing enough to regulate AI.
• 86% of Americans are either very or somewhat concerned about political leaders using AI to distribute fake or misleading information.

Americans Are Worried About AI Risks (Pew Research Center: Sept. 2025)

• A majority of Americans (57%) rate the risks of AI for society as high. Far fewer (25%) see high benefits. 

Americans Support a Wide Range of Specific AI Regulations

Americans Support Required Pre-Approval of New AI Technologies (AI Policy Institute for Transformer: Jan. 2025).

• 73% of Americans support requiring companies to implement safety measures and security standards for advanced AI models, and mandatory pre-deployment approval from a government board that certified companies have properly accounted for extreme risks. Democrats and Republicans gave this proposal identical levels of support.
• Only 7% of Americans want no regulation of AI.

Americans Overwhelmingly Favor Requiring Disclosure of Deepfake Political Ads (Tech Policy Press / YouGov: Aug. 2024).

• 87% of voters back a disclosure requirement for generative AI in political ads.
• 78% of voters want a ban on deceptive AI-generated content on social media that targets a candidate for federal office with the intent of influencing an election or soliciting funds.
• 77% of voters want candidates for federal office to be able to sue to take down content when their voice or likeness is used in deceptive AI-generated content.

Voters Overwhelmingly Believe in Regulating Deepfakes and the Use of Artificial Intelligence (Data for Progress / Accountable Tech: Feb. 2024)

• 85% of Democrats, 84% of Independents, and 81% of Republicans believe AI companies should be required to label AI-generated content when it’s used to influence an election.

Americans Favor Regulation to Protect Creators from AI Training (Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute: May 2024).

• 60% of respondents said AI companies should not be able to train freely on public data, and nearly three out of four respondents said companies should be required to compensate the creators of that data.
• 78% said there should be regulations on the use of public data to train AI models.
• 61% favored taxing AI companies’ high energy use to support and upgrade the electrical grid infrastructure.

Parents Want More Guardrails on AI for Their Children (Echelon Insights: February 2026).

• 79% of parents want to be involved in decisions relating to AI tools at their children’s schools.
• Parents overwhelmingly (86%) believe AI chatbots should be required by law to provide warnings to minors before displaying text or content related to violence, self-harm, or abuse.
• 85% of parents think it should be required by law to alert a minor’s parents if their child discusses something harmful or illegal with a chatbot.
• 84% of parents would prefer having parental controls over AI chatbots, allowing them to limit what topics their children can discuss with chatbots.
• 79% of parents feel minors need permission from a parent before using chatbots.

There is Massive Public Concern About Impact of AI Chatbots and Companions on Kids (Echelon Insights / Common Sense Media: May 2025).

• 85% of registered voters are concerned about the effect of AI chatbots and AI companions on kids and teenagers.
• 92% of registered voters are concerned about the impact of deepfakes.
• 93% of registered voters are concerned about kids being exposed to AI-generated sexualized content.

Americans Worried About AI Deployment in Transportation, Job Decisions, Lending Decisions (Axios / Illinois Institute of Technology: Dec. 2021).

• More than 70% of respondents distrust the use of AI for self-driving buses and airplane autopilot systems.
• 69% percent said they would limit the use of AI for hiring decisions.
• Nearly 60% distrust AI for loan applications and mortgage rates.
• More than seven in ten liberals and conservatives overwhelmingly agree that there should be public or government oversight of the use of algorithms.
• Three-quarters of those polled said tech companies are too big (80% of liberals and 83% of conservatives).
• 81% think the government should be doing more to protect online privacy.

About 79% of Americans Say a Human Being Should Always Make The Final Decision Before Any Use of Lethal Force (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation: Feb. 2026).

• 81% of Republicans and Democrats believe humans should always make the final decision before any use of lethal force.
• About 75% feel that AI technology isn’t reliable enough to be trusted with life-or-death military decisions.
• A little over half (54%) of adults are very concerned about AI-controlled weapons that select and fire on targets without human involvement.
• Only 21% of Americans support developing and deploying AI-controlled weapons.

Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions

By Zach Everson

Executive summary

Donald Trump and his three sons now have around $1 billion tied to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture they launched in 2024 with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s now special envoy for peace, and his sons Alex and Zach, the latter of whom is its CEO.

This massive business interest has allied Trump and his family with Binance, even though that crypto exchange has pleaded guilty to “anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations” regarding Iran and other sanctioned countries and entered into a settlement acknowledging that it unlawfully facilitated financial transfers to organizations designated as foreign terrorists by the United States.

The Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ largest business partner in World Liberty Financial is a fund backed by the United Arab Emirates. Four days before Trump took office, an entity controlled by the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi—who also serves as the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates—purchased a 49% stake in the venture, a fact not revealed for more than a year. The UAE purchase put $187 million into the coffers of the Trump family. The UAE partnership creates a massive conflict of interest for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, as Trump prosecutes a war against Iran. The arrangement also raises serious questions under the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause—and crypto’s opacity may make the full extent of foreign government involvement impossible to trace.

Even with the U.S. undertaking military action in Iran and U.S. officials investigating Binance’s compliance with sanctions against the country, World Liberty Financial looked to strengthen its relationship with the exchange. On March 21 and again on March 28, Binance and World Liberty Financial announced another promotion to encourage USD1 holders to keep their stablecoins at the exchange. 

The Trumps’ billion-dollar stake in World Liberty Financial

Despite once tweeting that cryptocurrency’s value is “based on thin air,” Trump launched World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that claims to be decentralized, in the stretch run of the 2024 presidential election. “We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” he said in the announcement.

World Liberty Financial states that a key part of its mission is “to leverage the global reach and recognition of the Trump brand,” and Trump’s face is splashed across the cover of the venture’s gold paper. The venture claims it was “inspired by the vision of Donald J. Trump” who is its co-founder emeritus and “chief crypto advocate” according to corporate documents. His three sons—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump—are listed as co-founders. Trump’s “good friend” of 40 years and current special envoy for peace, billionaire Steve Witkoff—who has led U.S. diplomatic negotiations with Iran—is the venture’s other co-founder emeritus. Witkoff’s son Alex is a co-founder while son Zach is a co-founder and World Liberty Financial’s CEO. The Witkoffs own an unspecified stake in the company and receive a cut of token sales.

The Trumps also own a substantial part of the company and have a stake in its financial performance. DT Marks DEFI LLC, which Trump owns 70% of while unidentified Trump family members own the remaining 30%, holds approximately 38% of the equity interests in WLF Holdco LLC. That LLC holds the only membership interest in World Liberty Financial LLC and holds all rights to its net protocol revenues (other than net proceeds from the sale of $WLFI tokens), according to the fine print on World Liberty Financial’s website. Through a series of LLCs, Trump’s stake resides completely in his revocable trust, of which he is the sole donor and beneficiary, while Donald Trump Jr. serves as the sole trustee, according to the president’s financial disclosure, trust documents, and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DT Marks DEFI LLC along with unnamed Trump family members hold 22.5 billion $WLFI tokens. That cryptocurrency is not backed by any other assets (there are no reserves or collateral) and does not convey ownership in any company. It just allows holders to propose and vote on rules regarding the protocol—but public token buyers hold only about a third of all tokens. The rest are held by the Trump family and other insiders or distributed at their discretion, meaning outsiders would have a hard time outvoting them. $WLFI was trading at $0.07869 on April 21. The Trumps’ tokens appear to be locked up and unavailable to trade, for now. But even applying a discount because of that restriction, Forbes valued the Trumps’ token pile at $175 million in March 2026. The Trumps’ LLC is also entitled to 75% of $WLFI token sale proceeds after some deductions.

The arrangement has paid off handsomely for the president and his sons. He reported earning $57.4 million in just its first three months on his latest financial disclosure, which covers through the end of 2024. By March 2026, Forbes estimated Trump had netted $550 million from token sales. The outlet valued his stake in the venture at $240 million and his share of the $WLFI tokens at $175 million. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump’s stakes in World Liberty Financial are each worth at least $133 million, Forbes estimated in late 2025.

World Liberty Financial was responsible for almost all of the 15% increase in Steve Witkoff’s wealth over the past year, adding $280 million to his net worth and bringing his fortune to $2.3 billion, Forbes estimated in April 2026.

Table 1: The Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ roles in World Liberty Financial

Name	Role in WLF	Government/Other role	Estimated financial gains
Donald Trump	Co-founder emeritus, inspiration, chief-crypto advocate	U.S. president	$550 million from token sales. Ownership stake worth $240 million. Tokens valued at $175 million.
Donald Trump Jr.	Co-founder	President’s son, sole trustee of Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust	Added $133 million to net worth
Eric Trump	Co-founder	President’s son	Added $133 million to net worth
Barron Trump	Co-founder	President’s son	Added $133 million to net worth
Steve Witkoff	Co-founder emeritus	U.S. special envoy for peace, U.S. negotiator with Iran	Added $280 million to net worth
Zach Witkoff	Co-founder, CEO	Special envoy’s son	Unknown
Alex Witkoff	Co-founder	Special envoy’s son	Unknown

Sources: World Liberty Financial disclosures, Forbes reporting

World Liberty Financial’s ‘integral’ relationship with Binance

To reap those windfalls, World Liberty Financial relies heavily on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap, a crypto data provider. Binance has had no official headquarters, but in December 2025, it secured a global license in Abu Dhabi—the same emirate whose deputy ruler secretly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial. By the time Trump’s crypto venture launched, Binance had already agreed to one of the largest corporate fines in U.S. history for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and agreed to exit the U.S. market.

In fall 2024, almost a year after Binance admitted to violating U.S. law, it “donated software to World Liberty to help the Trump family venture launch a cryptocurrency,” CBS’s 60 Minutes reported. The partnership between World Liberty Financial and Binance has continued and, in fact, expanded after that initial assistance.

Meanwhile, Trump’s government has retreated from law enforcement against the crypto industry. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to identify instances of “weaponized” enforcement—what Public Citizen warned amounted to a “get out of jail free” card for corporate lawbreakers.  In April 2025, the deputy attorney general issued a memo titled “Ending Regulation By Prosecution,” directing the department not to pursue actions against crypto platforms for the acts of their users and to close ongoing inconsistent investigations.

Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed a lawsuit against Binance that the agency had filed during the Biden administration, Trump pardoned its founder, and the administration has dismissed or withdrawn at least 21 crypto cases involving other companies.

In addition to $WLFI, World Liberty Financial’s other core product is USD1, a stablecoin it announced in March 2025, backed 1:1 with U.S. dollars and government money market funds. Stablecoin issuers typically make money similarly to traditional banks: they take cash deposited by stablecoin users and invest it in safe assets, pocketing the interest. So the more USD1 in circulation, the more reserves World Liberty Financial has to invest, the more money it makes for its owners, including the Trumps.

In May 2025, Binance received a $2 billion investment denominated in the fledgling USD1 from MGX, a state-backed Abu Dhabi fund chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler and the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser. The move essentially allowed World Liberty Financial—and the Trumps—to make interest off the $2 billion for as long as that USD1 is in circulation. The deal also gave the Trump-backed stablecoin some intangible benefits: “It took World Liberty from being a small project that maybe was on the road map after the election, purely for the name, to being one of the largest stablecoins in the world in a single transaction,” Austin Campbell, a former crypto executive who now teaches at New York University, told 60 Minutes. It currently ranks as the fifth largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap.

World Liberty Financial’s dependence on Binance for the launch of USD1 extends much further. In May 2025, trading in USD1 on PancakeSwap—a crypto trading platform Binance employees quietly created in-house in 2020 and continued to supervise—exploded from tens of millions of dollars a day to regularly more than $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in August 2025, citing people familiar with the company, including former employees, as well as data from the platform and CoinMarketCap. “Over 90% of USD1 trades have taken place on PancakeSwap,” the Journal reported. But that volume was not driven by organic demand—“It was because crypto investors were chasing prizes worth up to $1 million for generating as much USD1 trading as possible as part of a ‘Liquidity Drive,’” according to the Journal.

In December 2025, World Liberty Financial said Binance would convert the assets it had set aside to back a token tied to its sunsetting stablecoin, BUSD, into USD1. That move “further embedd[ed] the stablecoin within the exchange’s ecosystem,” making it “an integral part of Binance’s updated collateral structure,” according to the announcement. That month, Binance also offered zero trading fees between USD1 and two other popular stablecoins, thereby encouraging adoption of the Trumps’ product.

Between its own wallets and its users’ accounts, Binance holds $3.56 billion of the $4.25 billion of USD1 in circulation. That’s 84%—the highest concentration at any third-party holder among the top 10 stablecoins by market cap (the median is 23%). Binance agreed to completely exit the U.S. market under the terms of its 2023 settlement with the Treasury Department. So, if the rules are being followed, at least 84% of USD1 is held by overseas interests.

Both parties appear to be looking to deepen that concentration. In December 2025, Binance launched a promotion that awarded some USD1 holders an annual percentage rate of 20%. In late January, two days after Binance announced a promotion where USD1 holders would be awarded $40 million in $WLFI, Trump’s crypto venture transferred about that much worth of $WLFI to Binance, according to Etherscan, a blockchain analytics platform. Molly White, a crypto researcher, told Forbes the promotion was among the most generous she’s seen.

Table 2: Top 10 Stablecoins by Market Cap, Share Held at Largest Exchange, as of April 21, 2026

Rank	Currency	Symbol	Market cap	Top holder	Value held	% at top holder
1	Tether	USDT	$187,915,978,826.50	Binance	$43,940,000,000	23.38%
2	USD Coin	USDC	$77,978,014,877.58	Binance	$10,820,000,000	13.88%
3	Dai	DAI	$5,364,279,693.00	Polygon	$922,770,000	17.20%
4	Ethena USDe	USDe	$4,776,923,664.24	Ethena	$4,410,000,000	92.32%
5	World Liberty Financial	USD1	$4,249,676,286.99	Binance	$3,560,000,000	83.77%
6	PayPal USD	PYUSD	$3,727,988,256.70	USD AI	$282,670,000	7.58%
7	Global Dollar	USDG	$2,322,707,440.40	OKX	$745,570,000	32.10%
8	Ripple USD	RLUSD	$1,446,997,462.41	Aave	$121,190,000	8.38%
9	USDD	USDD	$1,330,195,363.00	JUST	$305,390,000	22.96%
10	United Stables	U	$1,025,292,118.88	Binance	$442,930,000	43.20%

Sources: Public Citizen analyses of data from Arkham and CoinMarketCap

Binance’s role in Iranian sanctions evasion and financing of designated terrorist organizations

The criminal sanctions violations that led to Binance’s record penalty appear to be largely tied to Iran. The exchange processed $8 billion worth of Iranian transactions between 2018 and November 2022 despite U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported, citing data from blockchain researcher Chainalysis. Between January 2019 and May 2022, “Binance willfully caused over $898 million in trades between U.S. users and users ordinarily resident in Iran” by failing to “implement controls that would prevent U.S. users from trading with users in Iran,” as required by U.S. sanctions, according to the Department of Justice.

In November 2023, Binance admitted “it engaged in anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations” regarding Iran and other sanctioned countries. It agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history. Binance founder and then-CEO Changpeng Zhao also “pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program” and was sentenced to four months in prison. In announcing a separate settlement with Binance that month, the Treasury Department said the crypto exchange ”failed to implement programs to prevent and report suspicious transactions with terrorists”—including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, each of which the State Department says is backed by Iran.

Binance, however, continued to help Iranian crypto traders skirt sanctions, according to recent media reports. Entities tied to Iran received more than $1 billion through Binance from March 2024 through August 2025—all while Binance was operating under a court-ordered DOJ compliance monitor as part of its 2023 plea deal—according to the company’s own compliance team, Fortune reported in February 2026, citing internal documents and multiple sources. Binance later fired at least five of the investigators who internally flagged the transactions.

Binance hosted accounts used by at least eight entities and individuals that the Treasury Department has sanctioned for supporting terrorism or terrorist-designated groups linked to Iran, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of government press releases and a federal lawsuit filed in November 2025 by American families of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel [1]. Some entities were sanctioned or prosecuted by Trump’s own administration.

• In July 2025, Trump’s Justice Department announced a $2 million civil forfeiture action filed against Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company, “a Gaza-based money transfer business that was involved in financially supporting Hamas.” In the government’s complaint, it alleges “users utilized BuyCash to fund accounts at Binance and to fund unhosted wallet addresses containing USDT (or Tether) to obfuscate their financial support of international terrorist organizations, including Hamas.” According to the Oct. 7 lawsuit, “public blockchain data between March 29, 2021, and September 1, 2025, shows that Binance was responsible for 90% of the funds sent by BuyCash to crypto exchanges,” which totaled more than $250 million. An investigation by crypto intelligence firm Nominis went so far as to say, “further investigation suggests that [Buy Cash] is not only used by Hamas, but is run by Hamas.”
• In September 2025, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand for “coordinat[ing] to facilitate the purchase of over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency for oil sales for the Iranian government.” According to the Oct. 7 lawsuit, the Iranian nationals used Binance to transfer at least $30 million.

U.S. officials continue to probe the company. In February 2026, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., opened an inquiry into Binance allowing $1.7 billion to flow to Iranian proxies and Russia’s shadow fleet. “Instead of actually preventing illicit use,” Blumenthal wrote, “Binance has sought to evade accountability and influence the White House through lobbying and a financial partnership with World Liberty Financial.” He specifically asked Binance to produce all records on the use of USD1 “in connection to sanction evasion, criminal activities, money laundering, and the provision of support to terrorist organizations.” In March 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Iran’s use of Binance to evade sanctions.

Even with the U.S. launching a war against Iran and U.S. officials investigating Binance’s compliance with sanctions against the country, World Liberty Financial looked to strengthen its relationship with the exchange. On March 21 and again on March 28, Binance and World Liberty Financial announced another promotion to encourage USD1 holders to keep their stablecoins at the exchange. On April 20, they extended the promotion.

World Liberty Financial’s entanglements beyond Binance related to Trump’s war in Iran

Four days before Trump’s inauguration, a company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler, the UAE’s national security adviser and chair of the firm that would later direct $2 billion in USD1 to Binance—purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal, which was a secret until the Journal’s 2026 article, routed $187 million to Trump family entities and $31 million to entities associated with the Witkoffs. The UAE, of course, has a major interest in U.S. policy towards Iran, with The Economist reporting that “The United Arab Emirates has warned against talks with Tehran, saying that Iran is committing ‘economic terrorism’ in the region.” On April 21, Trump said the United States was considering offering financial support to the UAE, which “has been contending with economic fallout from the war,” the New York Times reported.

Pakistan has hosted ministers from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt to discuss the war, as well as high-level talks between the United States and Iran. The Pakistani government, is also a business partner of World Liberty Financial, which is helping the country integrate blockchain technology into its financial system, according to a press release from the Ministry of Finance. World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff—son of one of Trump’s top negotiators with Iran—“showed keen interest to engage with Pakistan” and “expressed keen desire to further deepen engagement,” the ministry wrote. The son of the man negotiating with Iran on behalf of the United States is simultaneously pursuing business deals with—and meeting with the prime minister of the country and its top military official—mediating those negotiations.

In January 2026, the Pakistani government signed a memorandum of understanding with SC Financial ‌Technologies, which it described as “an affiliated entity of World Liberty Financial.” That firm was at least partially owned by Steven Witkoff as of August 2025, according to his latest financial disclosure, which the Office of Government Ethics made available in March 2026. (Witkoff’s stake in World Liberty Financial was sold to his sons in January 2026, the New York Times reported, citing a White House official.) Additionally, the chair of Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, Bilal Bin Saqib, previously was an adviser to World Liberty Financial, Bloomberg reported.

 

Conclusion

The Trump family’s entanglement with Binance exposes a dangerous contradiction at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: The same exchange that helped build the infrastructure for and holds the vast majority of Trump’s USD1 stablecoin has facilitated billions of dollars in transactions for Iran and designated terrorist organizations.

The opacity that defines crypto isn’t a bug. It’s the feature that makes it useful to both speculators and sanctioned regimes, and the president of the United States is profiting from it.

Even as the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Iran’s use of Binance to evade sanctions, the administration has systematically dismantled enforcement tools that would hold the exchange accountable. The American people deserve to know that when their president takes an official action, he’s doing so because he thinks it will benefit the country—not because it’s helping out his business partners. Sanctions lose credibility, to put it modestly, when the president and one of his chief negotiators profit from a platform undermining them.

The Constitution states, “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Four days before Donald Trump returned to such a position, his business struck a deal with the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s National Security Adviser that saw $187 million routed to Trump family entities in exchange for an ownership stake in World Liberty Financial, a fledgling crypto company.

Crypto also can make Emoluments Clause violations invisible. When a foreign government books Trump hotel rooms, there should be a paper trail. But when a foreign state actor buys USD1 through Binance—essentially giving the president’s business an interest-free loan that it, in turn, can earn interest off of—there may be no way to identify them. Via Binance, the president is selling a financial product to anonymous buyers who should be exclusively outside the United States—and neither Congress nor the public can know whether those buyers include foreign governments, sanctioned entities, or designated terrorists.

In July 2025, the Justice Department announced it seized approximately $2 million worth of cryptocurrency connected to Hamas fundraising. The funds were seized via Binance and Tether, according to the DOJ’s complaint. When announcing the seizure, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that the Justice Department is “aggressively dismantling the financial infrastructure of terrorism and refusing to allow our digital currency platforms to become safe havens for terrorist financing.”

Meanwhile, her boss does business with just such a platform.

 

[1] Complaint, Balva v. Binance Holdings Ltd., No. 3:25-cv-00266, D.N.D., 24 Nov. 2025, ¶¶ 425–27, 487, 549–55, 602–06, 650–59, 660–64, 680–95, storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ndd.70568/gov.uscourts.ndd.70568.1.0.pdf; “Treasury Targets Qods Force, Houthi, and Hizballah Finance and Trade Facilitators.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 26 Mar. 2024, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2209/; “Notice of OFAC Sanctions Actions.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 19 Sept. 2022, public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-20234.pdf; “Treasury Sanctions IRGC-Affiliated Cyber Actors for Roles in Ransomware Activity.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 19 Sept. 2022, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0948; “Treasury Takes Massive Action Against High-Profile Iranian Network.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 14 Sept. 2022, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0215; “Treasury Targets Financial Network Supporting Iran’s Military.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 16 Sept. 2025, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0248; “Following Terrorist Attack on Israel, Treasury Sanctions Hamas Operatives and Financial Facilitators.” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 18 Oct. 2023, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1816; “Treasury Sanctions Hamas-Aligned Terrorist Fundraising Network,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, 27 Mar. 2024, home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2213 ; “Sanctions List Search.” Office of Foreign Assets Control, sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=47108; “United States Unseals Civil Action Filed Against Approximately $2M in Digital Currency Involved in Hamas Terrorism Financing.” U.S. Department of Justice, 22 July 2025, justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-unseals-civil-action-filed-against-approximately-2m-digital-currency-involved.

April 23, 2026

Uprooting the Forest Service

As fire seasons intensify, the federal agency overseeing much of the nation’s forests is reorganizing its long-standing structure, reducing scientific and staffing capacity, including relocating key offices and elevating officials whose priorities appear closely aligned with the interests of extractive industries. 

• The Trump administration’s Forest Service Chief, Tom Schultz, is a former timber industry executive with no prior Forest Service experience.
• Schultz has quickly advanced policies he previously advocated for the industry, including expanding logging and reducing environmental review requirements. 
• Three-quarters of the agency’s research stations are being closed, disrupting decades of climate and forest data.
• These changes reduce the agency’s ability to collect environmental data, weakens its capacity to track conditions, and hampers research that informs land management decisions.

Fire season has barely started, and the United States has already burned through more than 1.6 million acres, more than twice the ten-year average for this point in the year. In Nebraska, for example, a single storm system in March sparked a conflagration that burned more than 600,000 acres in 48 hours.

The National Interagency Fire Center’s spring 2026 forecast predicts very high fire risk across much of the West and Southeast, which has seen record-low snowpack and early heat waves. But the Trump administration is trying to derail the agency most responsible for fighting wildfires—and for understanding why they keep getting worse.

On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the most sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service in its 121-year history. The plan, described in USDA’s announcement as a move toward being “nimble, efficient, [and] effective,” will hollow out the agency’s scientific core while consolidating political control. 

Overseeing this transition is Tom Schultz, a recent political appointee from the private timber sector and the only Chief without prior experience inside the agency. “My focus over this last year as Chief is to return to fundamentals,” he told Congress on April 16, explaining his goal was “trying to cut through regulation.” Before his appointment, he worked at the Idaho Forest Group, one of the country’s largest lumber producers. Within months of taking office, Schultz began implementing policies aligned with positions he advocated as a timber industry representative.

The agency’s headquarters, which have been located in Washington for more than a century, are being relocated to Salt Lake City, and approximately 260 employees have been told to relocate or lose their jobs—a move that echoes the first Trump administration’s relocation of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado, which was later reversed by the Biden administration. 

The agency’s scientific work will change even more dramatically. Fifty-seven of the agency’s 77 research facilities will be closed in 31 states, consolidating into a single hub in Fort Collins, Colorado. No research facilities will remain in Alaska, where the agency oversees 22 million acres. Many of these have been running decades-long experiments, research that cannot be relocated.

Meanwhile, climate change is rewriting the rules of these ecosystems, making sustained research and monitoring of public lands all the more critical. “Forests are dying faster than they’re growing,” Schultz told Congress, before arguing for increasing timber production. 

While Schultz’s testimony expressed the need to deregulate the federal agency and increase “active management” of national forests, his boss at the Department of Agriculture has a track record of disdain for the agency’s purpose and mission. Michael Boren, co-founder of a Boise-based financial technology firm and an Idaho rancher who is now the USDA’s current Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, has a long history of public fights with the agency he oversees. Boren, a billionaire with no track record of public lands or forestry management, previously faced a restraining order for allegedly buzzing a U.S. Forest Service trail crew at low altitude in a helicopter. Boren ran afoul of the government by building a private airstrip on national recreation land, and by building an unauthorized cabin on national forest land. While Boren awaited confirmation at the Forest Service, he joined the Trump administration in September 2025 after being named an assistant secretary at the Interior Department, moving to the USDA in October 2025.

Shifts in temperature and rainfall are altering not only forests, but the wildlife that depend on them. Climate-driven pests and diseases are increasingly killing trees, and in some regions, reducing their ability to store carbon. In some areas, conditions have already warmed beyond what trees are adapted to, leaving so-called “zombie forests” dying off or unable to regrow after wildfire. Research by the Forest Service and its partners is critical to spotting these changes, predicting future conditions, and guiding decisions to help keep forests healthy and productive.

Forests in Flux

Climate science depends on long-term records: Distinguishing a climate signal from natural variability can require decades of consistent data collection. Relocating or dismissing the scientists who maintain those datasets effectively ends these experiments, some of which have been running for more than 60 years.

But the Trump administration didn’t consult with Congress about what research was actually needed before slashing the Forest Service’s programs. When questioned about details as basic as a new organizational chart, Schultz admitted the agency was “still working through some of the details.” 

The stations being closed are disproportionately those doing long-term ecological monitoring, climate impact research, and watershed science. Among the facilities being shuttered is the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Oregon, which led key studies into how climate change is affecting wildfire patterns. In Minnesota, a laboratory leading global research into peatlands will be closed, ending studies of critical carbon storage areas that are especially vulnerable to climate change. 

Besides providing valuable scientific data, this research forms the foundation for watershed and land management decisions. National forests and grasslands supply drinking water to approximately 180 million Americans. Forest Service research on subjects like how trees filter rain or how logging and roads change sediment in streams affects downstream water supplies and ecosystem health. 

These changes are unlikely to stop firefighters from responding to fires tomorrow. But they degrade the system that makes those responses effective over time. The U.S. Forest Service plays a central role in wildfire management, both on its own lands and across the country. It leads fire suppression efforts, coordinates with state and local agencies, and manages prescribed burns and thinning projects to reduce fuel buildup before fires start. The agency also provides much of the scientific research that shapes how fires are understood and fought, from modeling fire behavior to studying how climate change is extending fire seasons. 

Dismantling this work will feed directly into the growing insurance crisis. Wildfire risk, once considered seasonal and regional, is now increasingly a year-round threat that’s reshaped insurance markets and left homeowners exposed.

As the country heads into a potentially record-setting danger season, the Forest Service will be making decisions with less precision, and a smaller workforce. The Forest Service lost almost a fifth of its staff last year to DOGE cuts and early retirement programs. Fewer people are being asked to do more, at the same time as fire seasons are getting longer, forests are under mounting stress from climate change, and the administration increased timber harvests by 25 percent.

Who Benefits?

Moving the Forest Service’s headquarters to Salt Lake City places its leadership at the center of a state challenging federal land control. Utah sued the federal government this spring in an attempt to remove over 18 million acres from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and has previously attempted to expand state authority over federal lands and reduce federal oversight.

No cost-benefit analysis has been released for the restructuring, but when President Trump relocated the BLM to Colorado during his first term, it cost taxpayers $28 million. The decision was later reversed under Biden, but 87% of affected employees left rather than relocate. 

The Trump administration has framed the restructuring as part of a broader push to increase timber output. USDA Secretary Rollins explicitly said the changes “would enable boosted timber production.” Rollins previously worked at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think-tank bankrolled by Tim Dunn, the former CEO of CrownQuest Operating, an oil company based in Texas. 

The Forest Service’s new chief’s public career similarly traces a tight circle between Idaho’s timber industry and the public agencies that regulate it. Before taking over the Forest Service, Schultz led the Idaho Department of Lands, which manages state endowment lands and timber. In 2018, he stepped down to become the VP of resources and government affairs at the Idaho Forest Group. In that role, he managed “strategic relationships with key local, state, and federal governmental officials and serve[d] as a key advisor to the owner and executive leadership team.” During Schultz’ tenure, the Idaho Forest Group was an active federal lobbying spender, spending a total of $955,000 since 2020 on lobbying, according to OpenSecrets. When Schultz was named Chief, the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, an industry lobbying group, celebrated, saying, “They could not have picked a better person to lead the agency.”

That work extended to Congress. In July 2022, Schultz testified before U.S. House lawmakers as president of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a national trade association representing purchasers of federal timber in 37 states. He proposed allowing states to manage more Forest Service timber sales, bypassing detailed environmental reviews, and updating stewardship contracting rules to support forest product operations, including logging and wood‑processing facilities. Each item on this industry wishlist has since been adopted or advanced under the administration he now serves. 

Within months of taking office, Schultz began implementing policies that align with positions he advocated as a timber industry representative. In December 2025, for example, he personally signed an agreement with Idaho Governor Brad Little to double federal timber sales from Idaho’s national forests, directly benefiting his former employer. 

Schultz noted the agency’s reorganization also clears the way for mining on forest service lands. Closing regional offices and slashing research capacity reduces agency staff who would otherwise have reviewed proposals like new mining roads, which may soon be allowed in nearly 60 million acres that were previously protected by the Roadless Rule, which the Trump administration began efforts to rescind in August. Several recently fast-tracked mining projects are located in or near national forests with significant roadless areas. The Forest Service already faced a $4.4 billion backlog in road and infrastructure maintenance, and these changes will further strain its capacity to adequately oversee extractive industries. 

Conclusion

Eroding the Forest Service follows the same logic driving rollbacks across federal agencies: prioritizing extraction over stewardship. At a recent budget meeting, Rep. Pingree (D-ME) criticized the proposal, saying “from the elimination of state and private forestry programs and most of our forest and rangeland research, to the proposed move of the wildland fire management to the Department of Interior, it seems that political goals and arbitrary topline funding cuts have driven the creation of this budget, not the needs of our forest.”

Public Citizen has repeatedly highlighted how the Trump administration and its slate of revolving door officials are treating public lands as a source of profit rather than a public good. These changes make it harder for the government to manage its lands at a time when forests are increasingly important for addressing climate change.

 

Big Tech Embraces Trump

“If you look at some of these internet people, I know so many of them, Elon is so terrific. But I know, now all of them, you know they all hated me in my first term, and now they’re kissing my ass. It’s true. All of them. It’s true.”

-President Donald Trump speaking at a University of Alabama commencement speech on May 2, 2025

 Key Takeaways

• Big Tech corporations and executives are engaging in deliberate campaigns to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration, heaping excessive praise on Trump while going along with his unpopular and authoritarian policies.
• The enmeshment of Big Tech and the Trump administration is undermining essential government functions and sacrificing essential public protections, prioritizing the enrichment of a handful of tech billionaires and increasing corporate profits over serving the broader public interest.
• Among those ingratiating themselves with Trump are some of the biggest Big Tech corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, and corporations headed by Elon Musk, including X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, and Tesla.
• Conservatively, Big Tech has spent at least $653 million to win favor with Trump and Republicans – a number that is expected to grow with future disclosures and as the 2026 midterms approach.

Introduction

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in December 2024 when giving a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Then, days before the inauguration, Tools for Humanity Corporation – a startup Altman co-founded – made a $5 million donation to MAGA Inc, a Trump-backing super PAC. It was one of the largest corporate donations the super PAC received after the election and before the inauguration, matched at the time only by United Healthcare. It would later be dwarfed by the whopping $25 million the super PAC received from another OpenAI executive, Greg Brockman, and his wife Ann.

A clearer picture of what it means for Trump to “lead our country into the age of AI” is now coming into focus.

In the opening days of the US war with Iran, Altman struck a “rushed” deal with the Pentagon for military use of OpenAI’s technology. The deal followed the refusal by OpenAI rival and Pentagon contractor Anthropic to allow its AI technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weaponry. While OpenAI insists “safeguards” against federal misuse are in place, the full details of OpenAI’s deal to replace Anthropic have not been disclosed.

OpenAI and Altman are among several self-serving Big Tech corporations and executives that have fully embraced President Trump, tying their fortunes to obediently serving the administration’s authoritarian agenda.

The dangerous synergies of an authoritarian White House supported and supercharged by Big Tech titans puts on full display the risk of concentrated and excessive corporate and oligarchic power.

Big Tech’s products are now being deployed to automate unprovoked warfare, generate and spread viral misinformation, torment workers, target immigrants (and anyone standing up for them), and surveil Americans at an unprecedented scale.

The many favors Big Tech’s “ass kissing” has already won include:

• White House endorsement of nonexistent federal standards preempting of state laws regulating AI and an executive order intended to thwart state and local AI regulations;
• The Trump administration’s endorsement of the accelerated construction of AI data centers requiring immense levels of power generation as an excuse for gutting anti-pollution protections, despite widespread public disapproval;
• A massive retreat from federal enforcement against Big Tech’s lawbreaking amid authoritarian “law and order” crackdowns deploying ICE and the National Guard against immigrants, protestors, and wildly exaggerated levels of street crime;
• Expanded federal contracts, including AI tools pitched as replacements for the more than 148,000 federal workers recklessly fired or forced out by DOGE and other dangerous deregulatory initiatives;
• The appointment of nine Big Tech billionaires with a combined wealth of $900 billion to the President’s Counsel of Advisors on Science and Technology, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Safra Catz, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – and just one actual scientist.
• A White House effort to force Big Tech’s deregulatory demands on the rest of the world by exploiting so-called “trade” policy to undermine protections abroad.

Now Big Tech corporations and billionaires are spending big on politics to sustain their cozy relationship with the Trump administration and to thwart efforts to restrain Big Tech’s power.

The public must recognize and remember the role these corporations are playing – and prioritize a vision of the future that breaks down, rather than reinforces, Big Tech power. After all, our political system, flawed as it may be, is still ostensibly built to carry out the will of the American people – not the corporations and the handful of tech billionaires enriching themselves at our expense.

The Inauguration Big Tech Bought

Big Tech’s full embrace of President Trump made its public debut at the January 20, 2025 inaugural ceremony, where the spectacle of Silicon Valley billionaires and executives flanking Donald Trump and Vice President JB Vance affirmed the fealty of the wealthiest corporations ever to exist under the newly reelected and unrestrained president.

Just a few days earlier, outgoing President Joe Biden had given a farewell address warning of oligarchy, “the dangers of the concentration of technology, power, and wealth” and the emergence of an incipient “tech-industrial complex.”

When asked about Biden’s warning and the Big Tech billionaires attending the inauguration, Trump responded, “I think they deserted him. […] They were all with him, every one of them. Now they’re all with me. […] They’re not going to get anything from me. I don’t need money, but I do want the Nation to do well. And they’re smart people. And they have—you know, they create a lot of jobs.”

Table 1: Big Tech executives who attended Trump’s inauguration and inaugural fund donations

Inauguration Attendee	Big Tech Corporation	Inauguration Donation
Sam Altman	OpenAI	$1,000,000
Jeff Bezos	Amazon	$1,000,000
Tim Cook	Apple	$1,000,000
Shou Zi Chew	ByteDance (TikTok)	$50,000*
Dara Khosrowshahi	Uber	$2,000,000
Elon Musk	Tesla, SpaceX, xAI	$1,000,000
Sundar Pichai	Alphabet (Google)	$1,000,000
Mark Zuckerberg	Meta (Facebook, Instagram)	$1,000,000
TOTAL		$8,050,000

Source: FEC disclosures and *Politico

Additional million-dollar Big Tech donors to Trump’s inaugural festivities include Adobe, Broadcom, C3.AI, Intuit, Micron Technology, Nvidia, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Perplexity, and Thiel-allied venture capitalists Ken Howery and Keith Rabois.

Not including cryptocurrency corporations and executives, technology corporations and executives collectively contributed $35 million toward Trump’s record-breaking $239 million inauguration haul – more than double the previous record (Trump’s first inauguration, which raised $107 million). (See appendix.) Crypto corporations and executives kicked in an additional $15 million.

Big Tech Backing Trump in 2024

Big Tech’s embrace of Trump began well before Election Day.

Billionaire executive Elon Musk most famously and ostentatiously became a full-throated Trump supporter following the July 13, 2025 assassination attempt – and ultimately spent a whopping $290 million backing his candidacy. But Musk was not alone.

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen gave more than $5 million to Trump-backing groups. Andreessen’s business partner Ben Horowitz gave $2.5 million to a Trump-backing super PAC (and, subsequently, $2.5 million to a super PAC backing Kamala Harris). Musk allies Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale (a Palantir co-founder) each gave $1 million to Musk’s Trump-backing America PAC, as did TikTok investor Douglas Leone. David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former PayPal executive with ties to Musk and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel gave $400,000 to Trump-backing super PACs and hosted a $12 million fundraiser for Trump’s campaign.

And while billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos did not contribute financially to Trump, his decision in late October to withhold the Washington Post’s anticipated endorsement of Kamala Harris was widely viewed as a gift to then-candidate Trump. Within hours of the decision becoming public, executives from the Bezos-owned aerospace corporation (and SpaceX rival) Blue Origin were meeting with Trump. A Washington Post editor who resigned in protest accused Bezos of arranging the Blue Origin meeting as a “quid pro quo” in exchange for the dropped endorsement.

Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate was another sign of the coming synergies between the administration and Big Tech. A onetime tech-investing venture capitalist himself, the Republican senator from Ohio brought strong relationships with tech executives, including Andreessen, Musk, Sacks, and Thiel.

As election day approached, executives representing Amazon, Apple, and Google were already reaching out to Trump. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Trump boasted that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called him praise Trump’s campaign appearance at McDonald’s.

Big Tech Billionaires Bend the Knee to Broligarchs

As an in-group of MAGA-friendly tech executives coalesced around the newly reelected Trump, Big Tech corporations and executives did everything in their power to join the “broligarchy” surrounding incoming administration.

Trump tasked Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, with staffing and operating the reckless DOGE initiative, which would lead to illegal mass firings of federal workers, gut government services, and increase rather than reduce costs. The DOGE leaders lobbied for the involvement of Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect behind Trump’s efforts to dismantle the government from within from a his eventual post as director of the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget. Musk allies, including Lonsdale, Gracias, and Boring Company President Steve Davis, help staff and structure DOGE along with Andreessen and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

To lead tech policy for the transition, Trump tapped Michael Kratsios, a Thiel ally who served in Trump’s first term and is a former executive for Scale AI, and Gail Slater, a policy advisor to Vance and former Internet Association lobbyist. Both served in the White House during Trump’s first term.

Scale AI is a startup that has been accused of running “digital sweatshops” abroad and donated $125,000 toward Trump’s inaugural fund. Its workers label data to aid the development of large language models for Big Tech corporations, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta, which in June hired the startup’s founder and purchased a 49% stake in Scale AI for $15 billion. Trump would later select Kratsios to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Slater to lead the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Kratsios also is a former board member for the Foundation for American Innovation, a Silicon Valley think tank that has advocated for using A.I. to automate government jobs and criticized the Biden administration as “much too risk averse” in terms of its efforts to implement A.I.

Slater was at first seen as a strong antitrust enforcer willing to challenge Big Tech monopolies. However, she departed the DOJ after a little over a year, seemingly because she was seen as an impediment to Trump-allied lobbyists pushing big corporate mergers.

Billionaire David Sacks, meanwhile, was appointed by Trump to serve as the White House AI and Crypto Czar. The role categorizes Sacks as a “special government employee,” which the administration has used as vehicle for avoiding the ethics and transparency requirements and prohibitions against self-dealing that normally apply to government workers. Through Craft Ventures, the venture capital fund Sacks co-founded, Sacks boasts “notable investments” in Big Tech corporations including Airbnb, Facebook, Palantir, SpaceX, Uber, and X (formerly Twitter). Despite claims he sold most of his AI assets, a damning New York Times investigation later found he retained at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to AI that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies.

Once Trump’s electoral victory was secured, Big Tech’s efforts to ingratiate themselves with the reelected president started ramping up in earnest. The executives who four years earlier had released strong statements against the January 6 MAGA insurrection at the Capitol were singing a different tune. Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all posted glowing messages personally congratulating Trump on his victory. (Zuckerberg and Pichai did not post messages congratulating Biden in 2020.)

Over the month before Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony, Big Tech billionaires and executives made the pilgrimage to Florida to meet and dine with president-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Climate, Changed

After the billionaire-packed inauguration, Trump signed more than two dozen executive orders in the Oval Office.

One executive order initiated the formal withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement – a repeat of an action Trump took in 2017 during his first term. Back in 2017, the withdrawal drew public criticism from Big Tech executives who appeared to take climate commitments seriously, including Cook, Pichai, Zuckerberg, and even Musk, who quit his membership to Trump’s business councils over the action and posted on Twitter, “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.” Bezos and Gates had spent billions of their wealth on climate initiatives, and numerous Big Tech corporations, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, had made ambitious plans to reduce emissions and increase their reliance on clean energy.

In 2025, they said nothing.

The day after the inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire. (The project has since been mired in disagreements and delays.) Apple plans to spend another $500 billion on AI infrastructure, and Google plans to spend $75 billion. A recent projection suggest AI data centers will consume as much energy as nearly a quarter of all households in the US.

Six months later, the Trump White House released an AI Action Plan at a summit sponsored by David Sacks’ “All-In” podcast. The plan rejected “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” and discouraged the “premature decommissioning” of power plants.

Big Tech’s mad scramble for energy to power AI datacenters made the abandonment of climate principles politically convenient. Greenpeace found that at least five coal-fired power plants that had been scheduled for retirement will continue to operate – in part because of the demand for energy from expanding data centers used to power AI.

To audiences outside the hard core climate deniers in the Trump administration, Big Tech still shamelessly deploys climate rhetoric to greenwash AI, pitching it as a potential solution to the climate crisis, even as the technology is being used to accelerate drilling for fossil fuels and spread climate misinformation.

In 2026, Big Tech executives representing Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI joined President Trump in a public relations stunt that acknowledged the unsustainable surge in energy demand from data centers – and sought to tamp down public discontent by making a show of executives signing an unenforceable and voluntary agreement to power data centers themselves.

Big Tech’s MAGAfication

The abandonment of pledges to combat climate catastrophe while chasing profits by building power-hungry, pollution-prone data centers is just one example of Big Tech’s MAGA turn.

Big Tech corporations have fallen in line with Trump’s attacks on diversity, accelerated and enabled the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdowns and military aggression, and fueled Elon Musk’s destructive and reckless DOGE initiative. They’ve spent millions toward Trump’s inauguration, future presidential library, and Trump-backing super PACs and untold sums sponsoring Trump’s projects, including the 2025 military parade held on Trump’s birthday and the destruction and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with a “Golden Ballroom.” Big Tech executives, meanwhile, are maximizing their face time with the president, not only attending the inauguration but regularly appearing at White House events, lending their apparent support to numerous administration policies.

Quantifiable non-election gifts from Big Tech to Trump – Google and Meta’s $22 million settlements plus Amazon’s $28 million payment to Melania Trump for a documentary and Microsoft’s $1 million sponsorship of the World Economic Forum’s USA House total at least $73 million. The undisclosed gifts may well be much more.

Table 2: Big Tech Corporations Pledging Gifts to Trump

Corporation	East Wing Demolition / Golden Ballroom	Trump Library	Trump’s Birthday Military Parade	White House Easter Egg Roll	Other Payments / Gifts
Alphabet and Google	Yes ($22 million)			2025 and 2026, amount undisclosed
Amazon	Yes (amount undisclosed)		Yes (amount undisclosed)	2025, amount undisclosed	Melania movie, The Apprentice licensing deal (at least $28 million)
Apple	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Google / Alphabet	Yes (amount undisclosed)
HP Inc	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Meta	Yes (amount undisclosed)	Yes ($22 million)		2025 and 2026, amount undisclosed
Micron Technology	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Microsoft	Yes (amount undisclosed)				USA House sponsorship ($1 million)
Nvidia	Yes (amount undisclosed)
Palantir Technologies	Yes (amount undisclosed)		Yes (amount undisclosed)

Big Tech also has emerged as a prolific pro-Trump political spender. During the 2024 elections and ahead of the 2026 midterms, the biggest Big Tech corporations, executives, and investors have poured over half a billion dollars toward Trump and Republicans. (Big Tech corporations and executives additionally have pledged $100 million toward super PAC to attack candidates who support AI regulation, while Meta has launched a $65 million super PAC focused on state races in California.)

Table 3: Big Tech Political Spending Backing Trump and Republicans

Donor	2024 Elections	2026 Elections	Sum
Elon Musk (and Tesla and SpaceX)	$291,000,000	$70,000,000	$361,000,000
Jeffrey and Janine Yass (ByteDance investor)	$100,000,000	$16,000,000	$116,000,000
OpenAI and executives (Greg Brockman and spouse Anna)		$25,000,000	$25,000,000
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz	$8,844,600	$5,000,000	$13,844,600
Jan Koum (WhatsApp founder)	$5,100,000	$1,000,000	$6,100,000
Tools for Humanity Corporation (Sam Altman / Worldcoin)		$5,000,000	$5,000,000
Asha Jadeja (Silicon Valley VC and early Google investor)		$5,000,000	$5,000,000
Doug Leone (Sequia Capital)	$3,300,000		$3,300,000
Paradigm Operations and Matt Huang		$2,000,000	$2,000,000
Antonio Gracias (VC investor and Tesla and SpaceX board member)	$1,000,000	$1,000,000	$2,000,000
William Ford (Bytedance board member, General Atlantic CEO)		$1,250,000	$1,250,000
Nvidia	$1,000,000		$1,000,000
MicroStrategy		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Advanced Micro Devices		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Alex Karp (Palantir CEO)		$1,000,000	$1,000,000
Lonsdale Enterprises (Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder)	$1,000,000		$1,000,000
Safra Catz (Oracle CEO)	$1,000,000
Total	$412,244,600	$134,250,000	$545,494,600

Source: FEC data

Together, Big Tech’s electoral spending and non-electoral gifts to Trump total $653 million.

Below are some of the most high-profile ways some of the biggest Big Tech corporations are backing President Trump.

Amazon

“I’m very hopeful — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country… What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time — more confident, more settled.”

-Amazon founder and chairman and Jeff Bezos after meeting with Trump before the inauguration

• During the pre-inauguration meeting where Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez met with Donald and Melania Trump, Melania pitched Bezos on the eponymous documentary. Amazon subsequently agreed to pay $40 million to license the film – more than the company had ever spent on a documentary and nearly triple the next-closest offer by Disney, $14 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Melania Trump would directly be paid more than 70% of the $40 million. Amazon also spent an eyebrow-raising $35 million promoting the documentary’s theatrical release. As of early March, the film earned $16.6 million In January, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy attended a private screening of the Melania film at the White House that was held just hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti.
• Amazon Prime Video also made a deal to stream episodes of Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” As an executive producer of the show, Trump is likely to profit from the deal.
• An internal memo circulated within Amazon before the inauguration signaled the company intended to roll back diversity initiatives. Mentions of inclusion and diversity were scrubbed from the corporation’s annual report, and the minimized descriptions on its website about “Equity for Black people,” “Diversity, equity and inclusion” and “LGBTQ+ rights.” Mentions of the term “transgender” were removed entirely.
• In addition to its $1 million inauguration donation, Amazon made a $1 million in-kind donation by streaming the inaugural ceremony on Amazon Video and has spent undisclosed sums sponsoring demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom,” Trump’s 2025 military parade, and the White House Easter egg
• An Amazon plan to display cost increases attributable to Trump’s tariffs on its website was apparently abandoned after Trump found out and made an angry phone call to Bezos. A White House official said Trump was “pissed” when he learned about Amason’s plan. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized the tariff labels as a “hostile and political act.” Trump later told reporters after the plan was dropped that “Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly. Good guy.”
• Amazon Web Services gave the Trump administration a $1 billion discount on cloud computing services. One administration official remarked in the press release announcing the deal, “Through this unique partnership, the federal government is poised to deliver on President Trump’s AI Action Plan and solidify its position as the global AI leader.”
• Amazon Web Services sold $25 million in cloud services to ICE in September 2025 and $39 million in cloud services to Customs and Border Protection.
• Amazon’s Jassy was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Meanwhile at the Washington Post, owner Jeff Bezos’s non-endorsement in the election would be just the first change seen as a favor to Trump. One month after Trump’s inauguration, Bezos announced the Post’s editorial priorities would shift toward opinion pieces that favor “Personal liberties and free markets,” a clear signal that the paper’s ideological alignment would be directed to track more closely with the interests of Big Business. One year later, the Post abruptly laid off about one third of its work force. Martin Baron, formerly the Post’s executive editor, said, “Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
• Former Amazon executive and Blue Origin CEO David Limp joined the September White House dinner attended by Big Tech executives.

Apple

“I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major [$600 billion] investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, here. I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation. I also want to thank you for helping American companies around the world. This is a very key, key thing, and I really enjoy working with your Administration.”

-Apple CEO Tim Cook  praising Trump, at gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• In addition to CEO Tim Cook’s $1 million inauguration donation, Apple has spent undisclosed sums sponsoring demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom.”
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Apple changed the label in its Apple Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference.
• Following pressure from the Trump administration, including a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi promising not to prosecute, Apple restored user access to TikTok on its app store despite this being an apparent violation of the 2024 law banning TikTok.
• Two months after Trump took office, Apple modified instructions for AI developers. Mentions of “systemic racism” were removed from instructions for data labelers, who also were told no longer to flag “intolerance” as “harmful.” The list of “controversial topics” was expanded to include “DEI policies, vaccines and elections.”
• During a visit to the White House to announce Apple’s pledge to invest $600 billion in expanding its manufacturing capacity in the US, Cook presented Trump with the unusual gift of a 24-karat gold plaque. Apple increased its investment pledge by $100 billion after al $500 billion investment plan announced earlier was revealed primarily to be the regular cost of running its business. This follows the administration’s announcement that it would impose a 100% tariff on computer chips and semiconductors unless corporations increase manufacturing in the US.
• Cook also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• Cook also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• In January, Cook attended a private screening of the Melania film at the White House that was held just hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti, igniting internal criticism from Apple employees about the company’s unwillingness to oppose the administration’s authoritarian and abusive immigration enforcement practices.
• Following pressure from Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, Apple blocked apps people used to crowdsource ICE sightings in their communities.
• Trump responded to news of Cook stepping down as Apple’s CEO with a post on Truth Social saying he’d “always been a big fan of Tim Cook” which included an anecdote about how “impressed with myself” Trump was “to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass’,” when Cook called him during his first term with a request for a favor for Apple. “During my five years as President,” Trump continued, “Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could.”

Google / Alphabet

“It’s a real incredible inflection point right now in AI and the fact that your Administration is supporting our companies instead of fighting with them — it’s hugely important. It’s a global race and I think we’re at the cusp where these AI models are about to become profoundly useful… so we’re very grateful for your Administration’s support.”

-Billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• In addition to Google’s $1 million inauguration donation, parent company Alphabet agreed to pay $22 million toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House to settle Trump’s lawsuit against YouTube for suspending his account after the January 6 insurrection. YouTube also sponsored the 2025 White House Easter egg
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Google changed the label in its Google Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference. Google also removed cultural holidays, including Pride and Black History Month, from its calendar app and prohibited the text of the phrase “impeach Trump” from autocomplete suggestions in its search engine.
• Weeks after the inauguration, Google canceled its policies for increasing the diversity of its workforce. Google also dropped its funding for 58 diversity-related nonprofit groups
• Following pressure from the Trump administration, including a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi promising not to prosecute, Google restored user access to TikTok on its app store despite this being an apparent violation of the 2024 law banning TikTok.
• Google also dropped its pledge not to use or develop AI for weapons or surveillance, a commitment made in response to a push from workers during Trump’s first term, resulting in the company’s withdrawal from its Pentagon contract.
• Google’s AI was revealed to be one of the technologies used by the Department of Homeland Security to produce propaganda videos promoting the surge in ICE enforcement against immigrants.
• Following pressure from Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, Google blocked apps people used to crowdsource ICE sightings in their communities.
• Google received $530,000 from ICE for cloud products in January 2026.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also praised Trump: “The AI moment is one of the most transformative moments any of us have ever seen or will see in our lifetimes, so making sure the U.S. is at the forefront — and I think that your Administration is investing a lot already. The AI Action Plan, under your leadership, I think is a great start, and we look forward to working together — and thanks for your leadership.”
• Pichai also thanked Trump for his administration’s role in reducing penalties sought in the federal antitrust lawsuit alleging Google engaged in illegal monopolistic conduct.
• After the Pentagon announced it was severing ties with AI contractor Anthropic and declaring the company a supply chain risk, Google expanded its Pentagon work, rolling out a new tool allowing military and government personnel to develop custom AI agents for unclassified work.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Google lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• Google President Ruth Porat, meanwhile, also has praised Trump. Speaking on a panel after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum complained about Silicon Valley supporting “the climate extremist agenda” and advocated for coal and fossil-fuel-powered AI data centers, Porat remarked that Burgum’s comments were “fantastic” and gave a presentation that included Google’s advocacy for using natural gas to power AI data centers. According to Google’s own reports, the company’s emissions have risen 51% over the past five years.
• Porat also attended a White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia.
• Google has been complying with the Department of Homeland Security’s administrative subpoenas seeking information on users who oppose ICE.
• In March, Google’s Brin was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Meta Platforms

“The United States has the opportunity to lead the world in AI… I’m honored to join the President’s council and work with other industry leaders to help make this happen.”

-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement following his March 2026 appointment to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

• In a Bloomberg interview ahead of the election, Zuckerberg declined to endorse either Harris or Trump, and described Trump standing up after the assassination attempt as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
• The source of Trump’s infamous racist claim about Haitian immigrants eating peoples’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, during the 2024 presidential debate with Biden was a viral rumor posted on Facebook.
• In January before Trump’s inauguration, Meta announced it would modify its content moderation policy – which it claimed had been “overly enforced” – and ended third-party fact checking. The new rules were criticized for allowing hate speech. Meta’s independent Oversight Board later noted the changes “were announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure, with no public information shared as to what, if any, prior human rights due diligence the company performed” and criticized the company for not taking down posts that incited violence against Muslims and immigrants.
• “We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” said Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan, a friend of Justice Kavanaugh newly promoted to Meta’s top policy role.
• In November after the election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met privately with Trump and Stephen Miller at Mar-a-Lago. Zuckerberg was reportedly “amenable” to the coming crackdowns on immigration and diversity that Miller said were coming, and that Zuckerberg signaled he would not interfere with Trump’s agenda. On Fox News, Miller said Zuckerberg “has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change we’re seeing.”
• Zuckerberg previewed for Miller Meta’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policy rollbacks before making them official on the day before Trump signed an executive order rolling back diversity initiatives for federal contractors.
• In addition to Meta’s $1 million inauguration donation, the company agreed to pay $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against Meta for suspending his account after the January 6 insurrection. Out of the total, $22 million is slated to fund a future Trump presidential library. Meta also contributed an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom” and sponsored the 2025 White House Easter egg
• Meta appointed Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to its board of directors and named former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick to serve as the corporation’s president and vice chair, a decision Trump praised on Truth Social.
• Zuckerberg sent a text to Elon Musk on February 3, 2025 to cheer on the deregulatory DOGE effort, saying, “Looks like DOGE is making progress. […] I’ve got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.” Zuckerberg’s offer to thwart “doxxing” appears to be a reference the story on DOGE employees that appeared in Wired, which Charlie Kirk mischaracterized as “doxxing” them in a post on X.
• Meta removed a Facebook page users set up to track ICE in Chicago following a request from Trump’s DOJ.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Meta lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Zuckerberg responded to Trump’s question how much Meta was investing in the US and said, “This is quite a group to get together — and I think all of the companies here are making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation… [Meta is investing] at least $600 billion through 2028 in the U.S.” Zuckerberg’s microphone later caught him apologizing to Trump, apparently about the investment number, saying, “sorry, I wasn’t ready …I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”
• Meta has been complying with the Department of Homeland Security’s administrative subpoenas seeking information on Facebook and Instagram users who oppose ICE.
• The nonprofit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also eliminated DEI teams and ended social advocacy funding, which included work on racial equity and immigration reform, and pulled funding from the tuition-free private school founded to serve a low-income, majority-Latino population in East Paolo Alto.
• In March, Zuckerberg was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Microsoft

“I felt like [Trump] was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation… I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”

-Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates praising Trump ahead of the inauguration

• Before the inauguration, Nadella and Microsoft President Brad Smith had a “productive meeting” with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago where they reportedly discussed cybersecurity, technology policy, and Microsoft’s plans to invest $80 billion in AI infrastructure “creating new American jobs for American workers and advancing American competitiveness both in the U.S. and abroad.”
• Gates, who has spent billions of his fortune towards addressing climate change, released a memo seen as downplaying the possible effects ahead of the United Nations climate summit.
• In addition to Microsoft’s $1 million inauguration donation, the company pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House. Microsoft also spent up to $1 million sponsoring the “USA House” for Trump’s visit to the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• Microsoft quietly dropped its practice of diversity reporting and removed diversity, equity, and inclusion from employee performance reviews.
• Following Trump’s executive order re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” Microsoft changed the label in its Bing Maps app to reflect Trump’s preference.
• Microsoft is benefitting from the surge in cloud spending from ICE, which ordered $38 million in Microsoft software.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Microsoft called for the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• For the first time, Microsoft gave in to a federal law enforcement request to access encrypted data on a user’s laptop. The FBI request stemmed from an investigation into allegedly misappropriated COVID relief funds in Guam.
• At a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House, Nadella praised Trump, stating, “Thank you so much for bringing us all together, and the policies that you have put in place for the United States to lead. One of the things that I think has made this industry unique is not only the innovation, but it’s the market access that you have obviously championed for us all over the world and also the trust the world has on American technology. I think that everything that you’re doing in terms of setting in place the platform where the rest of the world can not only use our technology, but trust our technology more than any other alternative, is perhaps the most important issue — and you and your policies are really help a lot.” Ahead of the gathering, Microsoft announced increasing access to AI in schools, an initiative tied to the Trump administration’s Presidential AI Challenge.

Nvidia

“America’s unique advantage that no country could possibly have is President Trump.”

-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang following the unveiling of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan

• In addition to Nvidia’s $1 million inauguration donation, Huang pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom.” The corporation also pledged to support “Trump accounts” for children of employees with a $1,000 matching gift.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forged a mutually beneficial relationship with White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks. Huang lobbied for reduced export restrictions on Nvidia’s AI chips, arguing that expanding access to the chips around the world would benefit Sacks’s AI investment. Sacks then facilitated deals to sell chips to the United Arab Emirates and, ultimately – following a meeting between Huang, Sacks, and Trump – to China.
• Nvidia agreed to pay 15% of the revenue from its China sales to the US government.
• The loosening of restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s AI chips also followed Huang attending a $1 million-a-head fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC.
• Huang also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, Huang outspokenly opposed state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• After the Trump administration directed the federal government directly to invest $8.9 billion in rival chipmaker Intel, Nvidia followed suit with a $5 billion investment of its own, an agreement the Wall Street Journal described as showing “how some industry executives view efforts to help Intel as a way to win favor with the Trump administration.”
• Huang also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• In March, Huang was among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

OpenAI

“Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation President. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful. The investment that’s happening here, the ability to get the power of the industry back in the United States, is going to set us up for a long period of great success leading the world — and I don’t think that would be happening without your leadership.”

-OpenAI CEO Sam Altman praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• “President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December 2024 when giving a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund. He was among the first from the tech sector to announce a donation.
• In addition to Altman’s $1 million inauguration donation, a different Altman-led company, Tools for Humanity, made a $5 million donation to Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC. OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna also gave $25 million to MAGA Inc.
• The relationship between OpenAI and Trump was forged in part through Doug Burgum, the former Microsoft executive and former governor of North Dakota who Trump would tap to lead the Interior Department. Burgum arranged a meeting between Trump and Brockman in June before the 2024 election during which the company’s video-generating Sora platform was previewed for candidate Trump. Since taking office, Trump has become particularly fond of posting AI-generated videos.
• Ahead of the inauguration, Altman met with Howard Lutnick, who Trump had nominated to become Commerce Secretary.
• Altman also attended Trump’s inauguration, albeit in the overflow room instead of sharing the stage with fellow Big Tech executives.
• The day after Trump’s inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire. “For AGI [artificial general intelligence] to get built here, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President, and I’m thrilled that we get to,” Altman said during the announcement, which he pitched to Trump before the inauguration with the claim “artificial general intelligence” would be achieved during this administration.
• Days after the inauguration, Altman posted on X, “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him (i wish i had done more of my own thinking and definitely fell in the npc trap). i’m not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!”
• Weeks after Trump took office, Altman described the new administration as a “breath of fresh air” for the tech industry.
• Before Trump signed an executive order seeking to thwart state efforts to regulate AI, OpenAI lobbied the White House to pre-empt state legislative efforts to protect the public from AI harms.
• Altman also apparently supported provisions of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to pre-empt state AI legislation, telling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing, “it is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation.”
• Altman met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in the spring, where he attended a $1 million-a-head dinner, and at the president’s New Jersey golf club in the summer of 2025.
• Altman also attended Trump’s United Kingdom state dinner at St. George Hall.
• In a long post on X on July 4, 2025, Altman declared himself to be “politically homeless” and criticized the Democratic Party. “I believe in techno-capitalism. We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism,” he wrote. “I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.” He has reportedly told people he could see himself voting Republican in the next election.
• In June 2025, OpenAI announced its $200 million federal contract “to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense.”
• The Department of Homeland Security has been using OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to review resumes of ICE job applicants.
• Brockman also praised Trump at the same dinner: “We’ve been just very impressed with how this Administration has really embraced AI. In addition to the most massive infrastructure building in history… There has been a choice of whether to approach it with optimism, and I think that that’s what I’ve really seen from this Administration, so I just wanted to say thank you for that.”
• On X, Brockman posted following his MAGA Inc super PAC donation, “[I]t’s been great to see the president’s and his administration’s willingness to engage directly with the AI community and approach emerging technology with a growth-focused mindset and goal of helping to ensure continued US leadership in AI and supporting American economic competitiveness.”
• Brockman also attended a White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia.
• In the opening days of the US war with Iran, Altman struck a “rushed” deal with the Pentagon for military use of OpenAI’s technology. The deal followed the refusal by OpenAI rival and Pentagon contractor Anthropic to allow its AI technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weaponry. While OpenAI insists “safeguards” against federal misuse are in place, the full details of OpenAI’s deal to replace Anthropic have not been disclosed. Reports allege the replacement of Anthropic with OpenAI was politically motivated.

Oracle

“This is a most incredible time. AI is going to change everything — you hear all of us saying that — but the fact that you are our President and you recognized this right away, and you’ve unleashed American innovation and creativity — all the work you’re doing in basically every cabinet post in addition to what’s coming out of the White House — is making it possible for America to win.”

-Billionaire former Oracle CEO Safra Catz praising Trump at a September gathering of Big Tech executives at the White House

• Oracle’s billionaire co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison is a longtime ally of Trump and Musk who participated in strategizing to challenge the 2020 election and pledged $1 billion in support of Musk’s Twitter takeover.
• The day after the inauguration, OpenAI’s Sam Altman joined Trump, Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi son to announce “Stargate,” a $500 billion project to build AI data centers projected to demand more power than the entire state of New Hampshire.
• Trump has praised and supported the efforts by Ellison and his son David to build a media empire. Near the end of Trump’s first term when Oracle sought to expand its business into managing TikTok’s US data, Trump referred to Ellison as “really, a terrific guy for a long time” and referred to Oracle as a “great company.” Trump also has said, ““Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine […] They’re big supporters of mine.” Earlier this year, Oracle with the backing of the Trump administration, successfully closed the deal become a partial owner of TikTok and the platform’s cloud data service provider. Oracle and other investors are reportedly prepared to grant the Trump administration a $10 billion fee for brokering the TikTok deal. Oracle’s control over TikTok’s algorithm is seen as a threat to pro-Palestinian voices on the platform, and a boon to supporters of Israeli military aggression under Prime Minister and Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Ellison’s son David, meanwhile, is the founder of Skydance Media, which the Trump administration permitted to acquire Paramount Global. Prior to the deal, Paramount, which owns the television network CBS, paid $16 million toward a future Trump presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over edits to a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. A CBS producer who worked on the interview decried the settlement as “a cowardly capitulation by the corporate leaders of Paramount” and was characterized as a “payoff” by Late Show comedian Stephen Colbert, whose CBS show Paramount canceled. Under its new ownership, the network has taken steps to appease Trump by shifting to the ideological right – and the newly merged Paramount Skydance corporation is on the verge of completing another merger, a $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discover backed by Larry Ellison’s fortune.
• David Ellison also was among the many executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Catz has also praised Trump through Oracle press releases, stating, for example, “Thanks to the decisive actions and strong leadership of President Trump and his administration, Oracle is providing the world’s most advanced cloud and AI technology to Saudi Arabia.”
• In 2024, Catz donated $1 million to the Trump-backing Preserve America PAC.
• In March, Ellison and Catz were among the nine Big Tech billionaires Trump announced would join the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Palantir Technologies

“[Trump] is actually a peace president.”

-Palantir CEO Alex Karp during his October 2025 visit to Ukraine

• Palantir’s personal ties with the Trump administration are uniquely close. Billionaire co-founder Peter Thiel supported Trump’s 2016 election and is seen as a mentor for Vice President JD Vance. Co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a close ally of Elon Musk, became a leader in the billionaire’s deregulatory DOGE efforts. White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks was an executive at PayPal, which Thiel also co-founded, in the company’s early days. Trump named PayPal co-founder and Thiel venture capital partner Ken Howery to serve as Ambassador to Denmark. The State Department’s Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg, previously worked as a senior advisor to Palantir CEO Alex Karp and made a $1 million donation to help elect Trump.
• In addition to Karp’s $1 million inauguration donation, Palantir pledged to contribute an undisclosed amount toward the demolition and replacement of the East Wing of the White House with Trump’s “Golden Ballroom” and Trump’s 2025 military parade.
• Thiel is reportedly among those advocating for US control of Greenland. Trump declared in his announcement nominating Thiel ally Howery to serve as Ambassador to Denmark, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
• Palantir has expanded its work across the federal government compiling data on Americans under Trump, having received more than $300 million in federal contracts since Trump took office and securing a $795 million contract with the Department of Defense and a $10 billion contract with the Army.
• The company, which has contracts with or is doing work with the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury Department, is central to the Trump administration’s efforts to share data across the government, including controversial efforts to share IRS data with ICE for immigration enforcement.
• A tool Palantir developed for ICE “populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address” and obtains address data via the DHS database of Medicaid enrollees. Former employees condemned the corporation’s partnership with ICE.
• On a call with investors, Karp seemed to celebrate Palantir’s involvement in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. “We’re doin’ it!” he exclaimed. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!” He continued, “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about. […] Palantir is here to disrupt. And, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”
• Palantir also has been involved with centralizing IRS data under Musk’s DOGE initiative, raising questions about the government’s handling of sensitive private information.
• Palantir’s AI tools also have been used by DHS to eliminate grants to eliminate under Trump’s anti-”DEI” and “gender ideology” executive orders.
• Karp has defended Palantir’s work assisting the Trump administration’s anti-immigration and deportation efforts, saying, “I care about two issues: I care about immigration and re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America without being a colonialist neocon view. On those two issues, this president has performed.” When asked if Trump is a fascist, Karp, who wrote his thesis on fascism, answered, “Of course not. I think that’s stupid, honestly.”
• Karp also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Palantir’s Maven Smart System is helping provide insights for targeting and target prioritization for the Trump administration’s war against Iran. The system had relied on Anthropic’s AI systems, which Palantir now must replace following Anthropic being designated a supply chain risk in retaliation for insisting on guardrails against its use for fully autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The US bombing of a girl’s school in Iran, which killed at least 175 people, has raised questions about military reliance on AI for targeting.
• Thiel, Lonsdale, and Karp all publicly advocated for war with Iran before the conflict began.

X (formerly Twitter) and others led by Elon Musk

“I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man”

-Billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and other corporations Elon Musk in a post on his X platform

• Musk, the billionaire CEO of a network of corporations including Tesla, Neuralink, and SpaceX – of which the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and its OpenAI rival xAI are now subsidiaries – has had perhaps the closest, albeit occasionally volatile, relationship with Trump. Musk most famously and ostentatiously became a full-throated Trump supporter following the July 13, 2025 assassination attempt – and ultimately spent a whopping $290 million backing his candidacy and Republicans.
• Musk’s Trump-boosting activities in 2024 included transforming the X platform into a “pro-Trump echo chamber,” hosting Trump for a two-hour town hall and amplifying right-wing conspiracy theories.
• Musk launched his own Trump-backing super PAC, America PAC, into which he poured $250 million. Musk allies Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale each gave $1 million to the super PAC, as did TikTok investor Douglas Leone.
• Musk spoke at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania and, after the election, met frequently with Trump, including joining cabinet meetings and appearing alongside the president at the Oval Office.
• Musk’s X Corp. made a $1 million inauguration donation and paid $10 million toward a future Trump presidential library to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the suspension of his account following the January 6 insurrection.
• Over the course of 2025, Musk poured another $73 million into pro-Trump and super PACs, including a $5 million gift to Trump’s MAGA Inc super PAC following the temporary falling out between Musk and Trump and $45 million into America PAC. JD Vance brokered the reconciliation.
• Trump tasked Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, with staffing and operating the reckless “Department Of Government Efficiency” initiative, which would lead to illegal mass firings of federal workers, gut government services, and increase rather than reduce costs. Ramaswamy departed early, leaving Musk in control.
• To lead DOGE, Trump made Musk a special government employee, allowing him to remain CEO of multiple corporations and avoid complying with federal conflicts of interest law. Musk had conflicts of interest at more than 70% of the agencies DOGE targeted.
• Musk’s corporations faced numerous federal enforcement actions when Trump took office. Several have been dropped.
• Following Musk’s exit from DOGE, many who are close to the billionaire remained to oversee its efforts.
• Weeks after Musk’s $5 million MAGA Inc donation, xAI announced a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. Use of the company’s AI chatbot Grok has raised alarms within the government, with some within the General Services Administration (GSA) warning the system is overly sycophantic and susceptible to manipulation.
• Musk also was among the many Big Tech executives and billionaires who attended the White House dinner organized to strengthen US ties with Saudi Arabia, including the promise of a $1 trillion investment in the US and its corporations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Musk appeared with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a visit to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site, who approvingly referenced DOGE.
• Musk has advocated forcefully for extreme voter identification legislation. He claimed that failure to pass the bill “would be the end of democracy in America.” He has repeatedly made the false claim that Democrats are engaged in a conspiracy to win elections by letting undocumented immigrants vote.
• Musk offered to pay the salaries of Transportation Security Administration agents during the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that began in January over efforts to restrain ICE. Trump welcomed the offer.

 Conclusion

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, Big Tech executives are scrambling to ensure their profitable MAGA alliance with President Trump will continue – and threatening big spending to discipline candidates who might restrain their power.

And with the prospect of a possible shift from Republican to Democratic majorities in one or both chambers of Congress, Big Tech corporations are bracing for the change. Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, and others that have gone out of their way to ingratiate themselves to Trump are similarly expected to face scrutiny.

A memo by lobbying firm Holland & Knight warned that subjects of potential oversight investigations could include “communications and activities between the Trump Administration and private companies, including financial contributions to the construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom, settlement funds earmarked for the Trump Presidential Library and awarding of federal contracts to companies with ties to the administration” as well as data centers, algorithmic pricing schemes, environmental rollbacks, and the federal government’s use of AI systems.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who is expected to control the House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the majority, remarked to Politico, “How can we focus on taking on big corporate interests that might be hurting the American public? […] We can investigate larger corporations, organizations that are also harming consumers — large companies using data to manipulate pricing, foreign interests that are driving up the cost of housing, contracts through the Department of Defense that are going to friends and family of members of the administration.”

Holding Big Tech accountable for enabling authoritarianism, harming consumers and workers, leveraging unfair political and marketplace advantages, and engaging in misconduct should be a priority regardless of political partisanship. Americans oppose the cozy connections between the Trump administration and Big Tech by a two-to-one margin, while voters strongly favor tough regulations to protect the public from AI technology.

Big Tech might spend big money in an attempt to subvert democracy against what the public wants, but make no mistake – the people want their elected representatives to stand with them against corporate abuses. Strong spines and stronger convictions are essential for stopping the subversion of the public’s will. Because technology does not have the authority to determine America’s future – and neither do the handful of billionaires and corporations that control it. The American people do. Big Tech’s attempts to subvert the public interest must be resisted every step of the way.

April 20, 2026

Presentation on TeraWulf’s Fossil Fuel Data Center In Maryland

By Tyson Slocum

Today Public Citizen made a presentation about the controversial proposal by the cryptomining company TeraWulf to convert 4 oil-fueled power plants just south of Washington, DC on the Potomac River into a 1 GW natural gas facility to support a new 1 GW data center. We detail our efforts to raise challenges and force transparency during the current Federal Energy Regulatory Commission review of the project. Read it here TeraWulf

April 16, 2026

Public Citizen Testimony on Making Medicines More Affordable

Before the Senate HELP Committee

By Robert Weissman

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a national public interest organization with more than 1 million members and supporters. For more than 50 years, we have advocated with some considerable success for consumer protection, corporate and government accountability, and ethics and honest government. Over those five decades, we have focused especially on drug safety and affordability.

Big Pharma price gouging of Americans is worse now than at any time in our more than 50 years of existence. It has, truly, become intolerable and unsustainable.

In very rough outline, here’s how drug development, manufacture, approval and sales work in the United States:

1. The U.S. government spends tens of billions on the most fundamental biomedical research, with a hand in the research for almost every prescription drug that reaches the market. It gives away the fruits of its research unconditionally.
2. The U.S. government confers 20-year patent monopolies on new drugs and bestows other marketing exclusivities on drug corporations.
3. The U.S. government is the world’s largest drug purchaser, but with modest exceptions, it forbids its largest drug purchasing program from negotiating prices with drug companies.

In other words, there is no “free market” for the pharmaceutical industry. The industry relies on massive public subsidies; it exploits government-granted monopolies; and it leverages its political power to prevent its largest purchaser from exercising its negotiation power.

The result of this system is exactly the injustice one would predict: massive profits for drug companies, sky-high CEO pay, monopoly pricing and widespread rationing of important and sometimes life-saving medicines.

This is a system that needs to be fundamentally reformed. Aggressive pro-competition tools – like those included in the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act – can meaningfully constrain Big Pharma’s price gouging and make medicines affordable for all Americans.

The first section of this testimony provides an overview of the failures of the current drug development and pricing system, identifying market failures and their profound consequences for Americans.

The second section evaluates the efforts of the Trump administration to address the problems. It points out that President Trump has rightfully criticized drug corporations for charging far more in the United States than they do in other rich countries; but shows how the administration’s policies have failed and will fail to address price gouging – and, in some cases, will make things worse.

The third section focuses on solutions that employ market forces to curtail Big Pharma’s pricing abuses. It emphasizes how the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, introduced by Ranking Member Senator Bernie Sanders, would leverage the power of generic competition to ensure U.S. consumers and payors are not subjected to prices higher than those in other rich countries; and it notes how similar results could be achieved by expanding and improving the existing Medicare drug negotiation system.

Big Pharma’s Price Gouging and its Consequences

Big Pharma-controlled drug pricing in America is working wonders for drug corporations, but it is a disaster for American consumers and public health.

Consider these facts:

• More than 40 percent of Americans report that they have skipped drug treatments or otherwise haven’t taken medicines as prescribed because of cost.1
• The median launch price of a new drug in the United States jumped from $2,115 in 2008 to $180,007 in 2021, a 20 percent annual inflation rate, according to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.2 Since 2021, the median price has more than doubled, to $370,000 in 2024.3
• The top 20 Big Pharma companies have reported more than $400 billion in profits over the last three years (2023-2025).4
• The top 20 Big Pharma CEOs take home more than $300 million in collective pay every year.5
• The United States pays 3-4 times more for prescription drugs than other rich countries.6

There’s nothing natural, or market-based, about these facts. They are the result of Big Pharma leveraging its political power to impose and maintain subsidies, monopolies and manifold protections.

There’s also nothing acceptable about this. There’s no legitimate reason for the United States to pay 3-4 times more for medicines than the price in other countries. And there’s certainly no legitimate reason, nor any excuse, for 4-in-10 Americans to ration the medicines they need.

The problem starts with this basic fact: Government funding contributes to the invention and development of virtually every new drug. In 2018, researchers at Bentley University found that “NIH funding contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010-2016.” “Collectively,” they found, “this research involved more than 200,000 years of grant funding totaling more than $100 billion.”7

This government funding – just shy of $50 billion annually but now in some jeopardy due to the actions and chaos of the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services – is a good thing and a source of American strength.

The problem is that the government does not request anything in return for its largesse. Under current law and practice over the last four decades, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) manages its ownership rights with the goal of getting new drugs to market – without regard to whether drug corporations will charge reasonable prices for the medicines invented with public funds.

(In 20248 and renewed in 2025,9 NIH took a modest step to redress this problem, requiring companies licensing NIH drug discoveries to submit “access plans” detailing how the products they license will be made widely available in the United States or in poor countries. This new policy was a giant step forward conceptually, but practically is likely to have modest impacts because of weak standards for establishing what “access” means, lack of enforceability, and applicability only to NIH-developed inventions, not those developed in universities and elsewhere with NIH funds.10)

Building on this unconditional subsidy for Big Pharma is the most fundamental reason that drug companies can charge such high prices: the government grants them monopolies.11 These include 20-year patent monopolies for new inventions – not just the original drug, but also small modifications or means to deliver the drug – plus other marketing exclusivities.

The rationale for granting use and marketing monopolies is to incentivize research and development – the logic is that companies will undertake risky research if they know they will be rewarded with a monopoly and that competitors will not be able to free ride on their research – but the system is badly out of whack and growing worse by the year. In the best case, monopolies are an inefficient way to pay for research. But we’ve long ago left the best-case scenario.

Drug prices have no relationship to actual R&D costs whatsoever, with the Congressional Budget Office concluding “current R&D spending does not influence the future prices of the drugs that result from that spending.”12 Top drug companies receive 163% of their global R&D costs from just the excess revenue generated in the United States,13 underscoring that these companies often earn well beyond their R&D spending and don’t need to raise prices to maintain R&D investments.

In fact, drug corporations simply charge what the market will bear. And given the inelastic demand for important medicines and the role of third party payors, the market will bear outlandish prices, even if that means many will go without.

One way to address the problem of monopoly pricing is to limit the period of monopoly or to introduce generic competition when monopolists abuse their power. Generic competition generates huge price reductions, typically 80 percent within a few years for markets with many generic sellers.14 Unfortunately, Big Pharma has been able to leverage its political and legal power in recent decades to create new and extended exclusivities.

Another way to address monopoly pricing abuses is to empower bulk purchasers to leverage their power to negotiate down monopoly prices. Medicare, however, which is the world’s largest drug buyer, was prohibited from the inception of the Medicare Part D program from negotiating drug prices. Under the Medicare Modernization Act that created the Medicare drug benefit, Medicare Part D is not allowed to “interfere with the negotiations between drug manufacturers and pharmacies and [Part D plan] sponsors.”15 While Medicare Part D plan sponsors can obtain substantial rebates from both drug manufacturers and pharmacies, the federal program is prohibited from leveraging its purchasing power to realize economies of scale, due to this “noninterference” clause. The result is wildly inflated prices for Medicare, nearly twice those paid by the much smaller Veterans Health Administration, which effectively negotiates the prices it pays.16

Consider how all these factors come together exacerbate each other for just a single medicine, Xtandi (generic name: enzalutamide):

Xtandi is a medicine to treat advanced prostate cancer, sold by Astellas and Pfizer. Xtandi is exorbitantly priced by any measure. In 2020, it cost $129,000 per year, or close to $90 per capsule.17 The price of Xtandi is three to five times higher in the United States than in other rich countries. In 2020, Astellas and Pfizer made more money selling Xtandi in the U.S. than from the rest of the world combined.18 The year before, Medicare spent more than $1 billion on the drug before rebates. A Canadian manufacturer once offered to sell generic enzalutamide to the U.S. government for $3 per capsule – one thirtieth of the original manufacturers’ price – but the offer was declined.19

Many patients can’t afford the sky-high price. For one patient who was briefly placed on the treatment, filling just one prescription cost $625 out-of-pocket. “Drugs like Xtandi force families to focus on and worry about price tags,” he wrote in a 2022 submission to the Department of Health and Human Services. “Please allow American prostate cancer patients the same right to access affordable care as patients around the world.”20 The price for those without insurance is now much higher.

The high price of Xtandi also raises concerns about health equity. Black men die from prostate cancer at twice the rate of white men and may have a disproportionate need for the exorbitantly priced drug.21

Xtandi was invented at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with U.S. government grants provided by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army. U.S. government funds also helped pay for the early-stage clinical trials of the drug.

In 2016 and 2021, the organizations Knowledge Ecology International and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment and prostate cancer patients petitioned the NIH and Department of Defense to exercise authorities to make generic versions available. 22 They refused. 23

Medicare drug negotiation will enable some modest relief to Xtandi price-gouging. The maximum price for Medicare in 2027 will be $84,000 annually – a significant reduction, but insufficient, far too late in the drug’s life cycle and not available to private payors.24

This is, unfortunately, a representative, not exceptional case.
In general, drug corporations know they can’t pull the same tricks in other countries that are permitted in the United States, so their business model relies on gouging U.S. consumers and taxpayers, while still earning substantial profits overseas. Based on its review of internal company documents, the House Oversight Committee reported that Pfizer “targeted the U.S. market for price increases. A draft internal Pfizer presentation from 2016 explicitly linked Pfizer’s global profitability to its ability to raise prices in the United States, noting that growth was driven by ‘price increases in the U.S.’”25

This is a situation that demands action. The proportion of patients who can’t afford prescribed medicines has steadily increased in recent decades. The Big Pharma burden on the health sector and the national economy has grown, such that drug spending accounts for nearly 3 percent of GDP, and more than twice as much an economic share as in other countries. And, the problem is severe and growing worse, rapidly: From 2017 to 2022, “U.S. average price per unit for the top 50 drugs increased faster over time compared to the rest of the world.”26

Trump Administration: Strong Rhetoric, No Results

President Trump has criticized Big Pharma for its unreasonable prices and correctly said that there’s no reason for the United States to pay more than other rich countries.27

Unfortunately, he has not pursued policies to remedy that wrongdoing. His key initiatives on drug pricing are shrouded in secrecy and beset by confusion, and will either have no or limited effect on pricing – or make the problem worse.

Most notably, President Trump had denounced the gap between U.S. and other countries’ drug price levels and negotiated a series of agreements with drug companies that purport to require them to offer the United States the lower prices they charge overseas (known as “most favored nation” or MFN pricing).

Purportedly to advance this objective, the Trump administration has negotiated a series of secret deals with drugmakers. The secrecy makes it impossible to determine whether these deals will lower some drug prices or if the terms are designed to protect Big Pharma or to be easily gamed by drug companies. Public Citizen has tried to obtain the text of these agreements under the Freedom of Information Act and has sued to force their disclosure.28

But there is no reason to believe these secret deals contain meaningful price concessions. The drug industry,29 Wall Street analysts and even CMS Administrator Oz30 have all predicted minimal financial impact from Trump’s dealmaking with pharma.31 Dr. Oz suggested drug companies helped “design a plan that doesn’t hurt [them].”

Regarding so-called “most-favored nation” prices offered to Medicaid, the Trump Administration has provided little transparency and thus it is difficult to evaluate the potential impact, but Medicaid already typically gets the best price on drugs in United States; and Medicaid beneficiaries pay minimal or no out-of-pocket drug costs.

Depending on the structure of the arrangement, it’s possible the deals will actually increase costs in the United States. For example, a drug corporation may avoid costly inflationary rebates it would otherwise be obligated to pay, as media reports suggest may be the case regarding Eliquis.32

A review of industry investor calls shows that Big Pharma is not overly concerned about MFN deals. “Company leaders frequently stress that agreements are ‘bounded,’ ‘channel-specific,’ or ‘limited in duration,’” according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution’s Richard Frank. “Notably, in financial reports, few companies provide precise estimates of MFN revenue impact. … The lack of large, quantified adjustments may suggest one of the following: Either the revenue effects are manageable relative to total sales, or the scope remains too uncertain to model definitively.”33

The second prong of the administration’s policy is to initiate a government operated direct-to-consumer sales website, TrumpRx. This is a structurally deficient proposal that fails to recognize that most people have drugs costs covered, at least in part, by insurance. That structural deficiency is exacerbated by the terrible execution of TrumpRx, with few drugs available and promotion of brand-name products for which generic alternatives exist. In fact, for most people, TrumpRx will not provide any relief from high drug prices; others may be tricked into paying more for prescription drugs.

More than 40 percent of the drugs listed on TrumpRx (28 out of 69) have generics already approved by FDA that can be purchased more cheaply than the “discount” prices on TrumpRx. For some of these drugs, the difference can amount to hundreds of dollars per fill.34 Most of the products listed on TrumpRx are decades old; the median time on the market of the listed drugs is 20 years. One product has been on the market for 84 years.35

In the vast majority of cases, it will be cheaper for patients with insurance to use their insurance instead of TrumpRx. Insurance typically covers most of the drugs listed on TrumpRx with low out-of-pocket costs.36 For insured patients, going through TrumpRx could provide a double whammy of higher drug costs and those costs not counting toward insurance deductibles or out of pocket maximums.

TrumpRx claims to provide “the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs,” but prices remain higher than in other wealthy countries. Wegovy injection deals on TrumpRx start at $199 for the first two monthly fills of the lowest dose and then rise to $349 per month; coupons must be used by the end of June 2026 to secure this deal. Meanwhile, Wegovy can be purchased for $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and $92 in the United Kingdom. Amgen’s arthritis treatment Enbrel costs nearly $1,000 more a month on TrumpRx than its Medicare negotiated price for 2026.

The third prong of the administration’s drug pricing policy has been to undermine price negotiations through Medicare. The tax and budget reconciliation bill included language to exempt and delay negotiations for drugs that would have otherwise been selected for negotiations this year, including Keytruda, Darzalex and Opdivo. These exemptions are projected to reduce savings from the negotiation program by $8.8 billion or more,37 directly impacting cancer patients and taxpayers who will pay more for cancer treatments as a result. Merck has already made more than $160 billion selling the anti-cancer drug Keytruda since its launch in 2014;38 it’s long past time for patient and taxpayers to obtain some price relief.

President Trump has also proposed to further weaken Medicare drug price negotiations by prohibiting negotiations on all medicines until at least 11 years after they first receive FDA approval, meaning negotiated prices would not be available to Medicare and its beneficiaries for at least 13 years.39 This would effectively exclude many of these medicines from negotiations entirely,40 or shorten the period patients have access to lower negotiated prices to only one or two years before generics enter the market, blunting the impact of the law, potentially costing seniors and Medicare tens of billions more each year.41

Last, President Trump has pressed for other countries to raise their drug prices, on the misguided theory that higher prices overseas will lead to lower prices in the United States. In reality, higher prices overseas will simply lead to higher profits for Big Pharma, as well as lower access in those countries.

Big Pharma acts rationally on the world market: It charges the highest prices it can in each market. As the Congressional Budget Office notes, “Manufacturers maximize their global revenue by charging different prices in different market segments, depending on the demand characteristics of those segments. Those demand characteristics reflect differences both in buyers’ willingness to pay and in the regulations affecting prices in various markets. Differences in drug prices paid in different countries in part reflect that market segmentation, as do differences in prices paid by various purchasers within the United States.”42

Drug prices are lower in other countries compared to the United States because those countries have systems in place to moderate the monopoly pricing excesses of prescription drug corporations. Better deals achieved by other countries are not “subsidized” through higher U.S. prices – drug companies are not in the business of selling their products at a loss, occasional humanitarian programs notwithstanding. And, as already discussed, drug pricing is disconnected from R&D costs – and drug company revenues far greater than needed to support R&D efforts.

Harnessing Market Forces to Restrain Big Pharma Price Gouging

Our pharmaceutical pricing system needs an overhaul. There is no good reason for the United States, a nation which invests so much public money in biomedical research and whose public dollars so vitally support private drug development, to pay three of four times more for medicines than the United States. And it’s public health and moral outrage that, in the richest country in the world, more than 40 percent of adults ration their medicines because they are too expensive.

More competition can address these issues. But because the problems are so severe and the market failures so complete, modest measures won’t do the trick. That’s in part because medicines are so expensive that modest price reductions won’t materially change the unaffordability of drugs for many consumers and payors. Even more consequentially, it is because Big Pharma can offset modest limits on specific pricing abuses by intensifying them in other areas. Aggressive approaches are needed.

There are multiple possible market-based avenues to tackle excessive drug prices. The basic standard should be that the United States does not pay more than other rich countries. And the basic approach should be to use market tools to lower prices if drug corporations abuse their monopoly power to price gouge American consumers.

This is the approach employed by the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act of 2025, S. 1818. The Prescription Drug Price Relief Act would, in a nutshell, authorize generic competition for drugs where a manufacturer charges more in the United States than it does in other rich countries. The introduction of generic competition will drive prices down to an affordable level.

Yale University researchers project massive savings from this approach – overall national savings of at least $184 billion. Their analysis concludes that savings would total 51 percent price reductions for private insurers (totaling $82.2 billion), 62 percent for Medicare ($70.5 billion) and 35 percent for Medicaid ($12.9 billion). Patient out-of-pocket spending would fall 40 percent, according to the Yale study.43

The Prescription Drug Price Relief Act is a simple and direct approach, but it is also careful and nuanced. Two features in particular are worth underscoring. First, the Act would require payment of a reasonable royalty to the original manufacturer. Licensing is commonplace in the industry and the Act’s baseline is the average industry royalty rate. That payment will ensure fairness to the original manufacturer and its efforts to develop and bring the drug to market, and also ensure fair compensation in line with Constitutional standards around “takings.”

Second, the Act provides discretion to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to set royalties instead based on consideration of a range of factors, including the value of the drug to patients; the size of the affected patient population; the amount of federal subsidies to develop the drug; the clinical benefits of the drugs compared to existing therapies; and the revenues obtained by the manufacturer, relative to actual development costs. These factors will enable the Secretary, as appropriate, to calibrate the royalty rate to reflect particular circumstances. For example, in the case of an important treatment, expensive to develop, for a disease that affects a small population, the Secretary could set a higher royalty. Or, by contrast, where a company relied heavily on public support, contributed modestly to R&D expenses and has already generated substantial revenue, the Secretary could set a royalty rate lower than the baseline.

Another approach to achieve the same objective as the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act would be to build on the successes of the Medicare drug negotiation provisions. The elements of this approach would:

• Establish the median price paid in other countries as the presumptive fair price.
• Eliminate the delay period for negotiation, so that Medicare negotiations begin immediately upon market launch.
• Expand Medicare negotiation to cover all drugs, just like is done for the Veterans Health Administration.
• Make the negotiated Medicare price available to all payers, including to uninsured individuals.

Even with aggressive reforms to drive down price – such as those that could be achieved by the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act or expanded Medicare price negotiations, accumulated expenses for many people will be unsustainable. Complementing the effort to drive down price should be an extension of Medicare’s $2000 out-of-pocket cap to the private insurance market.

The Urgent Need for Bold Action

Americans are as united in demanding bold action to address Big Pharma price gouging as they are about anything. Well over 8 in 10 – including 89 percent of Republican voters – say Big Pharma’s excessive profits are a major contributing factor to unreasonably high drug costs. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans want speeded up generic competition. There is roughly comparable support for strengthening Medicare price negotiation.44

The overwhelming support for aggressive measures to end Big Pharma’s price gouging reflects people’s lived experience in rationing the drugs they need, or being forced to pay more than they can afford. It also reflects a widespread awareness that prescription drugs are cheaper, much cheaper, in other countries.

Americans have every reason to be mad. It is our money that fuels drug development. It is our government that confers the monopolies that Big Pharma exploits. It is all of us – as consumers and taxpayers – who are forced to pay Big Pharma’s monopoly shakedown prices.

Market tools, aggressively deployed, can make a difference. Responding to price gouging by insisting we won’t pay more than other rich countries and promoting generic competition, as the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act does, or leveraging the power of Medicare as a buyer, can yield dramatic national savings — $184 billion annually, and climbing.

The issue is not how to re-design a broken system that benefits Big Pharma at the expense of the rest of us. We know how to do that. The issue is whether Congress and the Executive have the political will to do it.

(more…)

April 15, 2026

White House OMB Director Russell Vought Must Answer for His Extremism

OMB Director Vought has tough questions to answer

Public Citizen is sharing some important questions for White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought with lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and reporters ahead of his hearings this week. Vought is expected to testify today before the House Budget Committee and the Senate Budget Committee on Thursday.

Many of the questions for Vought challenge his extreme views on the White House’s spending authority, the administration’s repeated defiance of congressional oversight and spending prerogatives, the White House’s corrupt attacks on the federal regulatory process, and its demands for unprecedented Pentagon spending.

Public Citizen’s experts are available to discuss these matters and comment on Vought’s responses at the hearings. Please reach out to drosen@citizen.org to get connected.

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Questions:

1. The Administration issued an executive order directing the Office of Management and Budget to pay the salaries of federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security not currently funded by appropriations using funds “that have a reasonable and logical nexus” to DHS operations. What specific funding is available to fund these agencies and to which agencies is this funding going? If the Administration is using Sec. 90007 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, what is the reasonable nexus between FEMA operations and that section’s requirement that funds be used to fulfill the DHS mission of safeguarding the borders of the United States? More recently, it has been reported that the Administration will stop paying DHS employees and that paychecks will not be issued until Congress passes an appropriations bill to fund the Department. After deciding to pay DHS employees, why has the Administration decided to take their pay hostage until Congress passes a DHS appropriations bill?
2. You have said that you would like the Congressional appropriations process to be less bipartisan. Currently, the Administration is pursuing a strategy to fund DHS for multiple years and include major baseline increases for the Department of War through the partisan budget reconciliation process. Why does the Administration believe funding increases for War and Homeland Security should happen outside of the annual appropriations process? Does the Administration believe Congress should fund all of government in a partisan manner, either through reconciliation or by eliminating the Senate filibuster?
3. Section 416 of the appropriations act for Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related agencies requires that each department or agency funded in FY26 shall report to the Appropriations Committees no later than 60 days following enactment of the law, and monthly thereafter, on the status of obligation of funds. What steps has OMB taken to ensure that agencies comply with Sec. 416? Has every department and agency been reporting to the Committees on Appropriations as required by law?
4. Of the apportionments OMB has made publicly available, there are dozens of anomalies that restrict funding to agencies contrary to the will of Congress. This includes instances within the Departments of Agriculture and Interior where the Administration has conditioned funding to align with “Administration priorities” in spend plans. OMB’s apportionment decisions are set forth in these spend plans and must be publicly disclosed under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. Yet in dozens of instances OMB has not done so. When will OMB post these spend plans? In other cases, such as programs within Community Development Financial Institutions accounts, OMB has not apportioned hundreds of millions of dollars, thus impounding them. CDFI is broadly supported by Congress, including a letter from October signed by more than 100 Congressional Republicans. Does OMB intend to release all of the CDFI funding as required by appropriations law? When will this happen? In other cases, OMB has apportioned funding in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year, even though previous apportionments did not impose similar delays. The timing of this apportionment raises the possibility that OMB is planning to withhold this funding just prior to its expiration, triggering a pocket rescission – or late-term impoundment – against the will of Congress. Will OMB commit to sending any rescissions requests more than 90 days before the funds expire to ensure Congress has time to adequately consider and vote upon the proposed cuts?
5.  In the recent Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 Congress renewed a longstanding prohibition against using any taxpayer dollars to “eliminate[] or reduce funding for a program …as proposed in the President’s budget request . . . until such proposed change is subsequently enacted in an appropriation Act…” Several apportionments or failures to apportion funds, such as OMBs withholding of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) funding, run afoul of this provision, which is enforceable under the Antideficiency Act. Have you and the OMB Program Associate Directors to whom you delegated the authority to sign apportionments been briefed on your personal liability under the Antideficiency Act, for violating this provision? Are you and your staff aware that knowing and willful violations of the Antideficiency Act can be subject to criminal penalties, and have a statute of limitations of five years?
6. You have said that you believe the president has constitutional authority to not spend money the Congress wants him to spend and has been directed to do so by statute. Do you believe this theory extends to formula grants? Do you believe your theory extends to public insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security?
7. Recent reports reveal that you are considering moving into military housing for your safety, yet you have previously called for federal workers “to be traumatically affected” and seen as “the villains.” Director Vought, what would you like to say to the government workers – whom you’ve traumatized, villainized, threatened with RIFs, furloughed, and fired – who don’t have the privilege of fleeing to military housing for safety and security?
8. The General Services Administration (GSA), at OMB’s direction, last year without notice or explanation removed a tool called the POST Application Programming Interface (API) from Regulations.gov, preventing advocacy groups and other third-party organizations from submitting their members’ comments on proposed rules to federal agencies. Why did OMB permanently remove this vital tool for public engagement on the President’s deregulatory agenda from the public comment website Regulations.gov? What evidence supports the decision and will you make it available to the public?
9. Your administration says agencies finalized deregulatory actions at a 129-to-1 ratio for Fiscal Year 2025. You stated, “The Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda is the most ambitious in American history. We have blown far past the target 10-to-1 deregulatory ratio in President Trump’s Executive Order, saving hundreds of billions for the American people. In less than one year we have already achieved more savings than in all four years of the prior Trump Administration, and we’re just getting started.” Director Vought, how exactly has deregulation for major corporations led to affordability for the American people? The cost of living is higher than ever and Americans are in more debt than ever. And cutting safeguards passes even more cost and harm onto the public. How do you explain that? 
10. The White House is proposing a near 50% increase in Pentagon spending, raising the total Pentagon and military budget to $1.5 trillion from an already inflated $1 trillion this year. You are proposing that this would be funded in part by slashing 10% from health, housing, environmental and other programs Americans deeply care about. The $500 billion proposed increase in Pentagon funding would be enough to meaningfully address our county’s greatest challenges, including health care, day care, affordable housing, education, and the climate crisis. Americans are suffering from skyrocketing costs of living, due in part to your illegal and reckless war on Iran. To make matters even worse, the Pentagon has repeatedly failed audits, and last September, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth burned through $80 billion in unspent funds that he clearly didn’t need, including $6.9 million on lobster tail and $2 million on king crab. Why should the Pentagon get a penny more in increased funding when this Administration is wasting billions of dollars on an illegal and disastrous war on Iran, Secretary Hegseth is feasting on taxpayer funded lobster tail and king crab, and you have been slashing funding for healthcare programs, the environment, housing, and education?