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      Elizabeth Warren introduces Senate bill to hold capitalism ‘accountable’

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      The senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill in Congress on Wednesday aimed at shifting corporations away from “maximizing shareholder value” and towards giving more support to workers and other stakeholders.The Accountable Capitalism Act proposes a series of reforms to increase corporate responsibility, strengthen the voices of workers and others in corporate decisions and shift companies away from their focus on shareholders.In the 1980s, the largest corporations in the US dedicated less than half of profits to shareholders, reinvesting the rest into the company, according to a fact sheet on the bill provided by Warren’s office to the Guardian.But over the past decade, more and more profits have gone to shareholders rather than workers or long-term investments. During the same period, worker productivity has risen, with only modest increases to real wages for the median worker, while income and wealth inequality have soared.“Workers are a major reason corporate profits are surging, but their salaries have barely moved while corporations’ shareholders make out like bandits,” said Senator Warren in a statement on the bill “We need to stand up for working people and hold giant companies responsible for decisions that hurt workers and consumers while lining shareholders’ pockets.”Given that 93% of all stocks in the US are owned by the wealthiest 10% of the population, with over 50% of all US households owning no stock at all, Warren argues the corporate policy of maximizing shareholder value is predicated on “making the richest Americans even richer at all costs”.The bill would mandate corporations with over $1bn in annual revenue obtain a federal charter as a “United States Corporation” under the obligation to consider the interests of all stakeholders and corporations engaging in repeated and egregious illegal conduct can have their charters revoked.The legislation would also mandate that at least 40% of a corporation’s board of directors be chosen directly by employees and would enact restrictions on corporate directors and officers from selling stocks within five years of receiving the shares or three years within a company stock buyback.All political expenditures by corporations would also have to be approved by at least 75% of shareholders and directors.She first introduced the bill in 2018 to the US Senate, with the congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin introducing a companion bill in the House.The bill faces tough opposition in Congress, especially with an incoming Republican administration. Business leaders have considered similar proposals. In 2019 the Business Roundtable, the US’s lead business lobby, called for a redefinition of the purpose of a corporation away from a focus on shareholders to an “economy that serves all Americans”. But that redefinition now seems to have been dropped. More

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      Trump names Andrew Ferguson as next chair of Federal Trade Commission

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      President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Andrew Ferguson as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission.He will replace Lina Khan, who became a lightning rod for Wall Street and Silicon Valley by blocking billions of dollars’ worth of corporate acquisitions and suing Amazon and Meta while alleging anticompetitive behavior.It was one of several evening announcements Trump made via his social media platform, including that he was naming Mark Meador as a commissioner to the FTC, Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece, a longtime supporter who was engaged to his son Don Jr, and ally and former inaugural chairman Tom Barrack as ambassador to Turkey.Ferguson is already one of the FTC’s five commissioners, which is currently made up of three Democrats and two Republicans.“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “Andrew will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History.”The replacement of Khan likely means that the FTC will operate with a lighter touch when it comes to antitrust enforcement. The new chair is expected to appoint new directors of the FTC’s antitrust and consumer protection divisions.“These changes likely will make the FTC more favorable to business than it has been in recent years, though the extent to which is to be determined,” wrote Anthony DiResta, a consumer protection attorney at Holland & Knight, in a recent analysis.Deals that were blocked by the Biden administration could find new life with Trump in command.For example, the new leadership could be more open to a proposed merger between the country’s two biggest supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, which forged a $24.6bn deal to combine in 2022. Two judges halted the merger on Tuesday night.The FTC had filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this year to block the merger, claiming the deal would eliminate competition, leading to higher prices and lower wages for workers. The two companies say a merger would help them lower prices and compete against bigger rivals like Walmart.One of the judges said the FTC had shown it was likely to prevail in the administrative hearing.Yet given the widespread public concern over high grocery prices, the Trump administration may not fully abandon the FTC’s efforts to block the deal, some experts have said.And the FTC may continue to scrutinize big tech firms for any anticompetitive behavior. Many Republican politicians have accused firms such as Meta of censoring conservative views, and some officials in Trump’s orbit, most notably the vice president-elect, JD Vance, have previously expressed support for Khan’s scrutiny of big tech firms.Trump named Meador, a former staff member to Utah senator Mike Lee, as an FTC commissioner, a role that he should be comfortable with given his experience with the agency.Meador is a veteran of the FTC and spent five years at the beginning of his career working on antitrust cases at the agency. He later served for two years at the justice department’s antitrust division before taking a role as the advisor to Lee, the ranking Republican on the Senate antitrust committee. Meador was in the running to be a minority party member on the FTC under Joe Biden.Barrack, a wealthy financier, met Trump in the 1980s while helping negotiate Trump’s purchase of the renowned Plaza hotel. He was charged with using his personal access to the former president to secretly promote the interests of the United Arab Emirates, but was acquitted of all counts at a federal trial in 2022.Trump called him a “well-respected and experienced voice of reason”.Guilfoyle is a former California prosecutor and television news personality who led the fundraising for Trump’s 2020 campaign.Trump also announced Tuesday that he had selected Jacob Helberg as the next undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, and Dan Bishop as deputy director for budget at the Office of Budget and Management.For ambassador to Mexico, Trump has picked Ron Johnson, who served as ambassador to El Salvador in Trump’s first term. In a post on Truth Social, Trump congratulated Johnson, saying, “Together, we will put an end to migrant crime, stop the illegal flow of Fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into our Country and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!” More

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      Trump taps former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle as US ambassador to Greece

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      Donald Trump has named Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who has been engaged to Trump’s eldest son, to be the US ambassador to Greece.“For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally,” Trump wrote in a statement. “Kimberly is perfectly suited to foster strong bilateral relations with Greece, advancing our interests on issues ranging from defense cooperation to trade and economic innovation.”Guilfoyle’s nomination would require Senate confirmation. She wrote on social media: “I’m honored to accept President Trump’s nomination to serve as the next Ambassador to Greece and I look forward to earning the support of the US Senate.”The president-elect has been filling out his administration with loyalists, donors and family members. Trump chose Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, to serve as ambassador to France, and Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of daughter Tiffany Trump, to serve as a Middle East adviser.Guilfoyle – who was engaged to Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr in 2020 – has served as a campaign fundraiser and surrogate for Trump. She has not served in any foreign policy or diplomacy role, working as a prosecutor in California before transitioning to a career in television.Guilfoyle left Fox News in 2017. In 2020, the New Yorker detailed allegations from a former assistant of Guilfoyle who had accused her of repeated sexual harassment. More

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      Trump’s deportation plan would hurt families and economy, Senate hears

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      Donald Trump’s vow to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history would separate families and hurt the economy, witnesses testified during a Tuesday Senate hearing, as a top Republican on the committee warned that undocumented people living in the country should “get ready to leave”.The president-elect has outlined an aggressive second-term immigration agenda that includes plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the US military to round up and expel millions of people living in the country without documentation. Trump has also vowed to end humanitarian protections for millions of people who fled violence, conflict or other disasters in their home country.The hearing, convened by Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, set out to explore the economic and human toll of a large-scale deportation operation. But the session also revealed the ideological tensions that have for decades thwarted legislative attempts at immigration reform.“If you’re here illegally, get ready to leave. If you’re a criminal, we’re coming after you,” said Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee. When Republicans assume the Senate majority next year, Graham promised his party would bring forward a “transformational border security bill” that would expand capacity at detention centers, boost the number of immigration officers and “finish the wall”.Many of Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, including family separation, proved deeply unpopular during his first term in office. But a post-pandemic rise in global migration led to a surge of asylum claims at the US-Mexico border during the early years of the Biden administration. Americans strongly disapproved of Biden’s handling of the issue, and ranked immigration as a top election issue.The November election was a “referendum on the federal border policies for the Biden-Harris administration”, the senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and the ranking member on the judiciary committee’s immigration subcommittee, declared during the hearing.The Democratic senators insisted that there were areas of common ground between the parties – repeatedly stating their support for the removal of immigrants with criminal records and the need for better controls at the border. And they emphasized the broad support for protecting Dreamers, people brought to the country as children.“Instead of mass deportations, [let’s have] mass accountability,” said the senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s Democratic chair. “Let’s fix our broken immigration system in a way that protects our country and honors our heritage as a nation of immigrants.”Democrats turned to their witnesses – an immigration expert, a retired army major general and an undocumented prosecutor – to make the case that mass deportations would do far more harm than good.“The president-elect’s mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire US population,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, testified to the committee.An analysis by his group estimates that it would cost nearly $1tn to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plan and slash the annual GDP by between 4.2% and 6.8% – a level on par with the recession of 2008. Asked how Trump’s plans could impact Americans financially, Reichlin-Melnick said it would exacerbate inflation and cause food prices to rise.“A single worksite raid in 2018 under the Trump administration at a beef plant in Tennessee led to ground beef prices rising by 25 cents for the year that the plant was out of operation following the raid,” he said.Randy Manner, a retired US army major general and anti-Trump Republican, cautioned against using US troops to assist with a politically decisive domestic mission that he warned could undermine military readiness and erode public trust in the institution.“The US military is the best trained in the world for its war fighting mission, but it is neither trained or equipped for immigration enforcement,” he said.Among the witnesses invited to testify was Foday Turay, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia who fled Sierra Leone as a child and testified that he did not know he was undocumented until he went to apply for a driver’s license. He is shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.As a father, a husband, an immigrant and a prosecutor, Turay said the threat of mass deportations would affect him “on a personal level, on a community level and on a societal level.“If I were to be deported, my wife and our son would be left without money to pay the mortgage. My son would also be without a father,” he said. He also warned that the widespread deployment of immigration agents could chill the ability of law enforcement to pursue criminals.“As a prosecutor, I know how delicate the ties between law enforcement and immigrants can be if immigrants are afraid to cooperate with the police or prosecutors like myself because they’re afraid of deportation,” he added. “Mass deportation hurts all of us, our families, our community and our society.”Republicans invited Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was beaten, raped and killed in August 2023 during a hiking trip. Officials say the suspect in her death was in the US illegally after killing a woman in his native El Salvador. Trump, with the support of the Morin family, has cited the murder as part of his appeal for stricter border controls.“The American people should not feel afraid to live in their own homes,” Patty Morin told the committee. “We need to follow the laws that are already on the books, we need to close our borders. We need to protect American families.”Seeking common ground, the Democratic senator Peter Welch of Vermont asked Morin if she would support a deportation policy that targeted undocumented people with a criminal record while pursuing a legal remedy for those who have lived and worked in the US with no criminal record.“Are we saying it’s ok to come to America in an unlawful way?” Morin replied. “There has to be some kind of a line, a precedent, of what is lawful and what isn’t lawful.”The senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who has been sharply critical of Trump’s immigration proposals, accused his Republican colleagues of distorting data and conflating fentanyl deaths with immigration. Citing federal statistics, he said the vast majority – more than 80% – of people prosecuted for trafficking the drug into the country were US citizens.“If that’s a concern, then let’s address the heart of the concern and not just use it as a sound bite to further attack immigrants,” he said.Ahead of the hearing, Padilla was among a group of Democratic senators who sent a letter to the president urging Biden to extend humanitarian protections to certain groups and to expedite the processing of applicants for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which shields from deportation undocumented people brought into the US as children.“We urge you to act decisively between now and the inauguration of the president-elect to complete the important work of the past four years and protect immigrant families,” the letter said.Earlier this week, the White House released a memo outlining Biden’s priorities for his final days in office that did not include any reference to immigration-related actions. 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      Trump first-term inquiry into leakers led to invasive searches, report finds

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      A Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation aimed at finding leakers during Donald Trump’s first presidency resulted in invasive searches of congressional staffers’ phone and email records, often without specific cause or the prior approval of the attorney general, a report published on Tuesday has found.In findings that may trigger concerns of how Trump’s incoming administration will behave, the department’s inspector general concluded that DoJ lawyers overreached their authority in their inquiries aimed at discovering who was leaking classified information in 2017, in the early phases of the president-elect’s first stint in the White House.The phone records of two Congress members and 43 staffers – including 21 Democrats and 20 Republicans, along with two holding non-partisan roles – were sought in an aggressive effort to find the source of leaks following the firing of James Comey, the former FBI director, who was ousted by Trump.Although Michael Horowitz’s 96-page report did not identify those whose records had been searched, CNN reported that they included Kash Patel, whom Trump has nominated to be the next FBI director. Patel was a staff member of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee at the time of the DoJ leak inquiry.Others included the then House member, and recently elected Democratic senator, Adam Schiff – branded as an “enemy within” by Trump in his successful recent presidential election campaign – and Eric Swalwell, another Democratic representative.DoJ prosecutors also sought the records of journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN as part of the investigation.The subpoenaing of reporters’ records during the first Trump administration has been previously reported and was described as “simply, simply wrong” by Joe Biden in 2021, leading to the DoJ announcing it would no longer seek a legal process to find out journalists’ sources.Since his first presidency, Trump has pledged to jail reporters who do not divulge their sources on stories he considers to have national security implications – a threat now carrying greater weight with his imminent return to the White House.Horowitz said many of the congressional records had been obtained without just cause and, as such, put Congress’s constitutional oversight function of the executive branch at risk.“[D]ozens of congressional staffers became part of the subject pool in a federal criminal investigation for doing nothing more than performing constitutionally authorized oversight of the executive branch,” he wrote.“We believe that using compulsory process to obtain such records when based solely on the close proximity in time between access to the classified information and subsequent publication of the information – which was the case with most of the process issued for non-content communications records of congressional staff in the investigations we examined – risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch.”The report said DoJ prosecutors did not take into account important constitutional principles governing the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.The subpoenas requested records of whom staff had spoken to and for how long, rather than the content of their conversations.However, even such limited requests amounted to an encroachment on Congress’s constitutional powers, the report suggested.It stated: “Even non-content communications records – such as those predominantly sought here – can reveal the fact of sensitive communications of members of Congress and staffers, including with executive branch whistleblowers and with interest groups engaging in First Amendment activity.”Criticism of the department for over-zealousness during Trump’s first administration seems ironic given his insistent claims that it was weaponised against him after he left office to press criminal charges that he has dismissed as a political witch-hunt and which he has demanded be purged.It may also foreshadow developments in his forthcoming presidency after he nominated a staunch loyalist, Pam Bondi, as attorney general, after his original pick, Matt Gaetz, stepped aside amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to bring the DoJ under direct White House control, in contrast with the quasi-independent status it has held since the Watergate era.He has also spoken of using it to pursue his political opponents and enemies. More

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      Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner retrying comeback

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      Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who suffered one of the most spectacular falls from grace in US politics after he was embroiled in a sexting scandal that some blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, has formally initiated yet another attempt at a comeback.Weiner, 60, has officially registered as a candidate for a New York City council seat. The filing with the city’s campaign finance board, which was first reported by the New York Post’s Craig McCarthy, marks Weiner’s latest attempt to claw his way back into public office despite his scandal-laced past.The disgraced politician’s longstanding X account reposted news of the candidate filing on Tuesday with the comment: “Mr Moneybags over here.” The remark was an apparent ironic reference to the fact that he has so far recorded zero dollars in supporters’ donations for his campaign coffers.In recent weeks, Weiner has been dangling the possibility of an attempted return to public life in front of media outlets, including his own The Middle radio show on WABC. In a recent broadcast, he told his listeners that he still craved public service, addressing his sexual misdeeds, which culminated in him serving 18 months in prison for sexually messaging an underaged girl.He said on the show that “the things in my past, the things about my addiction, the things about my acting out, the things about my background – it’s a lot, it’s a lot. But we’re at a moment that we Democrats, we seem like we come into knife fights carrying library books all the time.”Weiner has been assailed by scandal since he crashed out of Congress in 2011 after 13 years representing New Yorkers. His downfall came amid a sexting scandal involving explicit messages sent to several women, as well as the underaged girl.He made his first comeback pitch in 2013, running for New York mayor, only to flame out again in a renewed scandal over sexual texts sent under the cover name Carlos Danger.But it was the inadvertent role that Weiner played in Clinton’s agonizing defeat when Donald Trump clinched his first presidency for which Weiner will be most remembered – unflatteringly so – by many Democrats. In 2016, federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Weiner’s exchange of lewd photos with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.The inquiry became entangled with Clinton’s White House bid because Weiner’s then wife, Huma Abedin, was vice-chair of the Democratic nominee’s presidential campaign. In the course of the investigation into Weiner’s sexting, FBI agents found emails on his personal laptop that led them to reopen an investigation into a private email server used by Clinton.The investigation, reopened just days before the 2016 election, was rapidly concluded with no incriminating evidence found against Clinton. But the damage had been done as Trump took the decisive electoral college victory despite losing the popular vote.To this day, Weiner’s sexual misconduct is regarded by many in the Democratic party as a factor behind Clinton’s defeat – and hence Trump’s elevation to the White House, which he retook in the 5 November election against Kamala Harris after losing the 2020 race to Joe Biden.“Everyone deserves a second chance,” another candidate vying for the city council seat, Sarah Batchu, told the New Republic recently. “But this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances.” More

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      Key US unit fighting disinformation abroad in jeopardy ahead of Trump return

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      The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a state department unit critical to combating foreign disinformation, will not receive a multi-year extension in the latest National Defense Authorization Act, putting its future operations in jeopardy.The next chapter of the GEC – which only addresses foreign influence operations outside the United States – now relies on Congress to come up with an extension some other way by 24 December, or the United States faces a potential gap in their international disinformation response capabilities.In response to the NDAA snub over the weekend, a state department spokesperson told the Guardian: “As our adversaries continue to ramp up their efforts globally, it’s counterintuitive – and dangerous – to weaken or worse yet dismantle, the US’s leadership in this critical mission.”The GEC is looking to be the latest institutional target to get hit by congressional Republicans, who have grown increasingly skeptical of the center and other US agencies for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints. Last year, the Republican-led House judiciary committee labelled the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as “the nerve center” of the government’s social media censorship apparatus.The GEC has been instrumental in exposing significant disinformation campaigns in Latin America and Moldova, including a complex Russian operation in Africa called the “African Initiative” this year. This campaign sought to undermine US and western influence by spreading conspiracy theories about US-funded health programs through social media, websites and Telegram channels.Bipartisan supporters, including Chris Murphy, a Connecticut senator, and John Cornyn, a Texas senator, had proposed an amendment to extend the center’s mandate through 2031, but the effort ultimately failed to make it into the final NDAA text.Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has long been vocal about his concerns about foreign influence operations by way of China and Russia. His office did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would back the state’s GEC entering a new era.Several prominent Republican lawmakers, including the outgoing House foreign affairs chair Michael McCaul, have criticized the GEC for allegedly overstepping its mandate. Those lawmakers argue that the center, through its connection with the UK-based Global Disinformation Index, has been complicit in labeling conservative media outlets as high-risk for spreading disinformation.“A win for free speech and Main Street America!” the House Committee on Small Business posted on X on Tuesday. “The shuttering of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center means there is one less way for unelected bureaucrats to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.”According to the center’s own assessment, countries like China have invested “billions of dollars” to exert global information control through disinformation and propaganda. More

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      Trump picks Maga darling Harmeet Dhillon to lead civil rights cases at DoJ

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      Donald Trump picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Maga darling and ardent supporter, to lead civil rights cases at the US Department of Justice, a sign of major changes ahead in the agency’s priorities.Dhillon made her name in Maga circles by taking on culture-war cases as a San Francisco lawyer and became a fixture in rightwing media, appearing often on Fox shows. She has filed various lawsuits over election “integrity” issues and supported Trump’s quests to overturn results in 2020.In announcing Dhillon’s nomination, Trump cited a laundry list of cases she’s working on, including “taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers”.He also mentioned how Dhillon’s lawsuits on election law fought to “ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted”.“In her new role at the DOJ, Harmeet will be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights, and will enforce our Civil Rights and Election Laws FAIRLY and FIRMLY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.“I’m extremely honored by President Trump’s nomination to assist with our nation’s civil rights agenda,” Dhillon wrote on Twitter/X after the nomination. “It has been my dream to be able to serve our great country, and I am so excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers led by @PamBondi. I cannot wait to get to work!”Trump previously announced Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida and a Trump defense attorney, as his pick to lead the justice department.As a lawyer in California, Dhillon has sued the University of California, Berkeley for its speech policies, represented rightwing undercover operation Project Veritas and the former Fox host Tucker Carlson, and filed lawsuits over pandemic restrictions. She served as a legal adviser to Trump in 2020 and ran to replace Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee in 2023, seeking to make the party organization more Trump-friendly. During the 2024 election, she was dispatched to Arizona by the Trump campaign, a decision that some saw as a sign the campaign was ready to make aggressive legal moves if needed to win there.She founded a legal non-profit, the Center for American Liberty, which uses the courts to go after violations of civil liberties and defend against the “coordinated assault on our civil liberties from corporations, politicians, socialist revolutionaries, and inept or biased government officials”, the organization’s website says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Guardian investigation in 2023 found that the non-profit paid Dhillon’s law firm, Dhillon Law Group, at least $1.32m, which experts said was “problematic”. The reporting also noted that Dhillon was paid a $120,000 salary from the non-profit for working two hours a week.Democracy Docket said Dhillon has emerged as “one of the leading legal figures working to roll back voting rights across the country”. It tracked Dhillon or other attorneys at her firms as being involved in more than a dozen lawsuits across the states that challenged voting rights, election processes or Trump’s eligibility for office. She defended Trump in the Colorado case challenging his ability to run for office because of the January 6 insurrection.“Democrats are conspiring to commit the biggest election interference fraud in world history, right before our eyes, as government officials avert their eyes to the mockery of the constitution and our laws,” she said in late 2023 of efforts to keep Trump off the ballot. “This is a low point in American history.”Dhillon also faced hateful backlash from the far-right over her religion after appearing at the Republican convention in 2024. Dhillon, who is Sikh, gave a Sikh prayer at the convention, which some far-right figures called blasphemous. Before her rise in Trumpworld, she gained public attention for writing legal memos defending Sikhs who wore turbans from racial profiling after the 9/11 attacks. More