Helen Santoro is is a reporter with the Lever based in Colorado.
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Internal Revenue Service pressed the agency to investigate and consider stripping the country’s leading animal welfare group, the Humane Society, of its tax status. As IRS chief, he’d be in a position to make that happen.
Democrats could actually do a lot in the months before Donald Trump takes office to impose guardrails against the next four years of deregulatory and extreme pro-business policies.
Wall Street–backed charity funds provide ultrawealthy donors with massive charitable tax breaks — yet operate without any requirement to ever distribute the money to working charities.
The Biden Justice Department just announced it is making it easier for corporate lawbreakers to avoid prosecution — even if they have committed multiple crimes, earned significant profit from their wrongdoing, and failed to self-disclose the misconduct.
Lobbying by the chemical industry and weak regulations are obscuring details about industrial toxins contaminating areas hit by disasters like Hurricane Helene. If Trump takes office, his administration will likely weaken disclosure rules further.
As Hurricane Milton bears down on their districts, two Republican representatives backed by fossil fuel companies are pushing legislation that claims the climate crisis is a “false emergency.”
Before Kamala Harris became vice president, she had a clear message about dark money groups: they play a dangerously influential role in our political system. Now her campaign is reaping the rewards of massive donations from these very sources.
A new lawsuit backed by Trump-linked operatives seeks to make dark money donations tax-deductible. The rich already face no spending limits on influencing elections and, if successful, the suit could turbocharge dark money in politics.
Dark money groups extracted huge tax cuts from Colorado lawmakers by threatening to push ballot initiatives that would slash taxes even further. Referenda should promote democracy — yet billionaires are using them to blackmail the state.
Kamala Harris has signaled she supports closing the carried interest tax loophole, an enormous boon to rich investors looking to avoid higher taxes. But she’s also received $80 million this year from finance, insurance, and real-estate sectors.
An anti-immigration nonprofit with ties to hate groups is pushing GOP lawmakers to expand the use of a government website designed to screen workers’ immigration status.
On Friday, an update to a cybersecurity program took down Microsoft systems across the globe. Microsoft has resisted efforts to regulate a root cause of this chaos: the concentration of digital infrastructure in the hands of a few tech giants.
Just months before an assassin tried to kill Donald Trump, Pennsylvania Republicans blocked an attempt to ban the type of assault rifle used in the attack. It’s lunacy that these guns are on the streets — and that you can buy them at only 18.
Finance giants like Fidelity and Schwab are pushing “donor-advised funds” that enable the ultrawealthy to funnel cash to far-right extremist groups anonymously under the guise of charitable giving. Project 2025 has benefited enormously.
GOP vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance has pressured lawmakers to kill a rule that blocks police from accessing the medical records of people seeking abortions — an indication of the threat a Trump-Vance administration would pose to reproductive health.
Private equity firms are scoring huge payouts from manufacturers to take on the financial risks of people getting sick from asbestos poisoning — and using ruthless legal maneuvers to delay and deny compensation to victims.
Boeing is facing scrutiny from the Justice Department that could lead to criminal charges. But a department official involved in the case formerly consulted on behalf of the company — just one among many such officials with close corporate connections.
Since the 2023 East Palestine derailment disaster, the railroad industry has continued to lobby against federal safety regulations, even as new data suggests that recent increases in train length have made derailments more likely.
A historic congestion pricing plan for New York City was slated to go into effect this month. NY governor Kathy Hochul suddenly blocked it this week — and has taken tens of thousand of dollars in campaign funding from auto groups opposed to the plan.
Teaming up with Big Pharma and Wall Street, universities are profiting by fighting government efforts to curtail soaring drug prices. A case in point: UCLA has reaped more than a billion dollars from its development of Xtandi, a lifesaving cancer drug.