Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon, speaks during an event on November 6, 2025 in Miami, Florida.(Photo by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for America Business Forum)
“Congress made a choice: cut assistance for the most vulnerable to double down on a tax code already favoring dominant firms,” said one progressive think tank.
The tax law that congressional Republicans and US President Donald Trump enacted last summer has proved to be a massive boon for Amazon, slashing the corporate behemoth’s 2025 tax bill even as its profits surged and it moved ahead with mass layoffs that have cost 30,000 workers their jobs since October.
Citing a new securities filing, the Wall Street Journalreported Friday that Amazon’s “current US taxes, an accounting measure of taxes incurred last year, declined to $1.2 billion from $9 billion” while the company’s “pretax US profit increased by 44.5%, to $89.5 billion. On a cash basis, the company paid $2.8 billion in federal income taxes last year after paying more than $7 billion in each of the prior two years.”
The 87% decline in Amazon’s federal tax bill for 2025 was largely attributable to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s corporate-friendly depreciation tax breaks.
The new securities filing comes just days after Amazon confirmed it axed 16,000 corporate jobs as part of what’s believed to be a sweeping effort to replace workers with robots and artificial intelligence models in the coming years.
The Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, noted that the tax benefits that Amazon and other giant corporations are raking in “didn’t come free.”
“The same law slashed Medicaid and the [Affordable Care Act] and is now exacerbating our medical debt crisis,” the organization wrote on social media. “Congress made a choice: cut assistance for the most vulnerable to double down on a tax code already favoring dominant firms.”
In a statement on Friday, Amazon—founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos—said its dramatically lower tax bill “reflects… changes by Congress” purportedly aimed at encouraging “greater investment in the American economy, its innovation, and its workers.”
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) noted Friday that Amazon is one of four companies that “have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was signed into law by Trump over the summer.”
“The annual financial reports recently released by Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla disclose that these corporations collectively reported $315 billion in US profits for 2025, and collectively paid just 4.9% of that amount in federal corporate income taxes—with Tesla paying exactly zero,” wrote ITEP’s Matthew Gardner. “That amounts to a collective tax savings of $51 billion last year for these four giant multinational corporations, versus what they would have paid if they paid the full 21% federal corporate income tax rate.”
“ Tax cuts pushed through by the Trump administration last year and in 2017 have made it possible for the fastest-growing companies in the world to pay record-low federal income tax rates on their income,” Gardner added. “The tax avoidance of these four companies alone blew a $51 billion hole in the federal budget last year, and this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
President Donald Trump (left) gets a reaction from Britian’s ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson (right), in the Oval Office of the White House, May 8, 2025, in Washington
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The Mandelson scandal is about Starmer and McSweeney and Labour, but it is also about Donald Trump.
The US president who orders the illegal seizure of a Venezuelan tanker carrying oil to Cuba and says casually when asked what happens to the oil, “I guess we’ll keep it.” Who follows up his mob-style kidnap of the Venezuelan president with a round table of oil execs to decide how to divide the spoils.
Whose so-called peace initiatives, from Congo to Ukraine, are protection rackets in which Washington hints at possible security in return for signing over your natural resources.
Whose special envoy is property developer Steve Witkoff and whose special adviser — playing a key role in discussions on the future of Gaza and holding a seat on the so-called Board of Peace that Trump hopes will usurp functions of the United Nations — is another property developer, his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
US governments have always acted, often illegally and violently, to further the interests of the US capitalist class.
But no US government has blurred the lines between state policy and personal enrichment of the president and his cronies as this one has.
Trump wants the US to “move on” from the Epstein files. No wonder: he features in them heavily. But if we don’t want to be ruled by well-connected sociopaths who see ordinary people and entire countries as their playthings, we have to move on from our “special relationship” with Trump.
Even after the outrageous assault on Venezuela, and the threats to annex Nato member-state territory in Greenland and Canada, Britain assisted an illegal US seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker in the Atlantic and Starmer has offered support for an equally illegal prospective assault against Iran.
This weekend’s Adelante! conference will debate the extraordinary threat Trump poses to the whole of Latin America and to global peace and justice.
Don’t let the powers that be box off the Mandelson scandal. Down with the plutocrats and the sleaze. End the culture of impunity that says some people and some states are above the law.
Force every politician to face it: until we break with Trump, we are complicit in unspeakable crimes. And people have had enough.
Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of PeaceDonald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
US Border Patrol agents detain an unidentified man of Somali descent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 8, 2026. (Photo by Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
A new database of sworn affidavits filed by the ACLU shows masked agents detaining citizens based on race without warrants, ignoring IDs, and pointing weapons at them.
Federal agents deployed to Minnesota by the Trump administration are systematically violating the rights of US citizens and lawful residents, according to more than two dozen sworn affidavits made available this week as part of a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.
The suit was filed last month by the ACLU of Minnesota and partnered law firms, which said that as part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge, “masked federal agents in the thousands are violently stopping and arresting countless Minnesotans based on nothing more than their race and perceived ethnicity, irrespective of their citizenship or immigration status, or their personal circumstances.”
The case was launched by three plaintiffs, which include 20-year-old Mubashir Khalif Hussein, a Somali-born US citizen whose brutal arrest and detention was caught on video in December. He was placed into a headlock by masked agents and brought to an ICE office, where he said he was left in shackles for an hour and a half before being released miles from his home in the freezing cold.
The plaintiffs called it just one example of a “startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota.”
On Thursday, the online legal policy journal Just Security published a searchable database of the 29 sworn declarations filed so far as part of the case. Nearly all of them were filed by US citizens, while a few others were permanent legal residents or had pending legal status.
We just published database of @ACLU plaintiffs' sworn declarations of ICE enforcement actions in Minnesota case.
The statements detail numerous allegations that agents violated their basic constitutional rights, including by detaining them without showing a warrant; targeting Somali and Latino individuals based on their appearances; ignoring identifying documents that could prove their legal residency or citizenship; restraining them violently; and pointing weapons at them during searches.
Last year, the Supreme Courtsided with the Trump administration’s claim that when deciding whether to stop someone as part of “roving patrols,” agents had the right to consider certain factors, including “the type of work one does,” a person’s use of Spanish or accented English, or their “apparent race or ethnicity.”
While critics described it as an invitation to blatant and unconstitutional racial profiling and invasions of privacy, Justice Brett Kavanaughwrote in a concurring opinion that the practice should not prove burdensome to those legally in the US: “If the person is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,” he said.
Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security,said that the “sworn affidavits show how, on the ground, this is simply not how ICE operates.”
“They did not identify themselves, and they did not present a warrant. They just opened my car door and started yanking me out of the car. I kept saying over and over that I was a US citizen.”
One 33-year-old Latino citizen who was born in the US was driving to Menards on January 10 when he suddenly found himself boxed in by two cars at a stoplight. Before he knew it, he said agents were banging aggressively on his windows and one had started pointing a gun at him. When he put his vehicle in park, he said the doors opened automatically.
“When the doors unlocked, the agents did not ask me anything, they did not identify themselves, and they did not present a warrant. They just opened my car door and started yanking me out of the car,” he said. “I kept saying over and over that I was a US citizen.”
“Once they did get my seatbelt off and finally [pulled] me out of the car, they threw me to the ground and pinned me,” he continued. “They were pulling on my arms so tight to put on the handcuffs. They ripped my jacket, and it was torn up. My wallet fell on the ground. I was still repeating that I am a US citizen. I repeated it over and over. They never asked for or looked at my identification.”
The agents hauled the man into their car and began driving him around and interrogating him for about 20 minutes. He said the first question they asked him was his name.
“It seemed if they were going to violently arrest me before even looking at my identification, that they should have known who I was,” the victim said.
Agents eventually realized they’d been searching for another person with the same name and birthdate. They drove their captive behind a warehouse, where nobody could see, and released him. But another agent had taken his car from the intersection. An agent said he’d only give it back if the agent could scan his face, which he did.
“I felt traumatized. My arm hurt, I had bruises from the handcuffs. They were so tight that half of my hand was numb for a few days. I guess it stopped the circulation to my hands while I was handcuffed. I had cuts on my face and hands,” the victim said. “Since this happened to me, I have to pass through that spot every time I drive to work. I keep going back to it and reliving it in my mind.”
According to the database, at least five other US citizens, lawful residents, or legal asylum seekers also claimed in court that they’d had weapons pointed at them by agents during their stops.
Two other US citizens and one lawful permanent resident detailed being subject to physical force during stops.
One 53-year-old Somali man, a US citizen since 2008, said he was physically grabbed and dragged from his car, handcuffed, and pinned against the vehicle by masked agents.
“One officer pressed his knee into my back,” he said. When I screamed out in pain, another officer put his elbow into my neck, and one of the officers yelled at me, ‘Shut the fuck up, son of a bitch!’ One of the officers responded, ‘Why don’t you go back to your country?’“
“I believe that I was stopped solely because of the color of my skin and our appearance, including wearing a hijab.”
One 22-year-old Somali-American citizen who was born in Minnesota said that on January 21, five agents hopped out of their car with multiple guns drawn as she was on her way to work.
She said they demanded to see proof of her citizenship, but rejected her valid ID, claiming it was fake. They demanded to see her passport, which US citizens are not required to carry under US law. The agents told her they did not believe she was a US citizen because of her “accent.”
“I believe that I was stopped solely because of the color of my skin and our appearance, including wearing a hijab,” she said. “It was clear that the ICE agents did not know who I was when they stopped me. I had not violated any traffic laws, and the vehicle I was driving was registered to my mother, who is a United States citizen.”
It’s one of at least five cases in the database in which agents dismissed proof of a citizen or legal resident’s status.
There have also been many other documented instances, including some caught on video, in which agents have detained a citizen or legal resident or refused to let them go because they believed the person’s “accent” did not sound American.
WATCH: CNN airs unearthed footage of a ICE Border Patrol agent harassing a ride share driver:
"If you were from this country, you would know I'm an immigration officer… I can hear you don't have the same accent as me." pic.twitter.com/CZ35TKPa6T
All 29 of those who filed affidavits in the case have alleged unconstitutional racial profiling.
One 25-year-old Somali man, a US citizen born in Atlanta, said a group of masked agents accosted him and his mother while he was shoveling snow.
He said they were joined by a pair of unmasked men who appeared to be livestreaming and helped the agents to box him in. He later identified one of them as a right-wing YouTube influencer named Ben Bergquam.
Even though the vast majority of Somalis living in the US are citizens, he said the agents and the streamers were laughing and referring to him and his mother as “illegal aliens.”
“I was unsure if I was going to be seriously injured or killed.”
At least 12 people in the lawsuit have filed sworn testimony stating that agents forced them to stop while they were driving.
In one case, a Hispanic US citizen said that after following him for a few blocks, agents put on their lights and “rammed” his car off the road.
“An agent came up to my window, asking if I was a citizen. I was furious. I told them I was a citizen and they damaged my car,” he said. “Instead of apologizing, they demanded that I produce documents to prove I was a US citizen. I was too angry. I told them again that I was a US citizen and I didn’t have to prove it to them.”
He said the episode lasted 45-60 minutes, with agents repeatedly demanding his ID, name, and place of birth. Eventually, he says, they confirmed his citizenship by taking photos and videos of him and scanning his license plate.
He said agents told him they would pay for the damages to his car, but that they drove away without providing any insurance information.
“Even though I am a United States citizen and I was carrying proof of my citizenship with me, ICE agents didn’t believe me,” he said. “I felt intense fear and shock. I was unsure if I was going to be seriously injured or killed.”
The affidavits were filed as part of the caseHussen v. Noem, which claims that agents have violated Minnesotans’ rights to equal protection and against unreasonable searches and seizures. A hearing is scheduled to take place later this month.
“The government can’t stop and arrest people based on the color of their skin, or arrest people with no probable cause,” said Kate Huddleston, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality that remain a bedrock of our legal system and our country.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Thousands of protesters gather and march to demonstrate against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (Photo by Jen Golbeck/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away the economic stability.”
A centrist Democratic US senator is now talking about taking drastic measures to protect democracy from President Donald Trump.
Speaking with the Court of History podcast on Thursday, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) outlined a plan to stop Trump in case he tries to follow through on his threat to “nationalize the vote” ahead of the 2026 midterm elections or if he tried to enact ally Steve Bannon’s proposal to “surround the polls” with US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents.
“We have to prepare for the outmost scenario, the worst scenario,” said Gallego, “which is they try to either capture the ballot box as ballots are being counted, they try to stop the count, they try to surround polling places, whatever it is.”
Getting more specific, Gallego said that something like a general strike along the lines of the one that took place in Minneapolis last month to protest ICE deployment in the city would be justified.
“We need to make sure that we have an ultimate response to that which, I believe, has to be a true national strike,” he said, “in the sense that, if they do this, if they try to overthrow our democracy, if you are allied with democracy, do not go to work. If you’re a pilot, do not show up. If you drive a train, do not show up. If you’re a teacher, do not show up. We grind the country to a halt.”
Gallego acknowledged the damage that this would do to the US economy, but said that “if we have to destroy the stock market to save democracy, we need to accept that.”
He also said such an action would send an unmistakeable message to the billionaires who have given Trump their full-throated backing during his second term.
“The richest and the most powerful people in the world and in this country need to understand that that is a real possibility,” he emphasized. “There is no economic stability without democratic stability. If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away the economic stability.”
Gallego isn’t alone in saying that concrete steps may have to be taken to protect US democracy from the president this year.
Elections expert Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, said in an interview published by the New Republic on Friday that both state and city governments, as well as individual citizens, may be needed to ensure the integrity of the 2026 midterms.
“I think states and local governments need to be prepared for this,” he said. “I would suggest trying to get injunctions against the federal government to keep them away. I would suggest that lawyers for voting rights groups and Democrats be prepared to go to court.”
Failing that, he said that citizens must be prepared to get involved on the ground.
“I mean, it may take people in the streets protecting the offices where ballots are being tabulated,” he said. “To take the Brooks Brothers riot—from the 2000 disputed election where some people were trying to storm an office where they were recounting ballots in Bush v. Gore—that would look very tame compared to what, you know, we might see in 2026.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is driven through rural Nevada to visit and support rural county clerks approximately three weeks before the 2024 presidential election in Reno, on Friday, October 11, 2024. Aguilar was one of the state election officials invited by the FBI to a secretive meeting about the 2026 midterm elections. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who received the invite, said that what the president is “trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election.”
State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss “preparations” for this year’s midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” in violation of the Constitution.
On Tuesday, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”
Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on February 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
🚨SCOOP: Trump’s FBI summoned state election officials from across the country for an unusual briefing on “preparations” for the midterms, according to emails I obtained.
It’s the “strangest thing in the world,” one top state election official told me. pic.twitter.com/09ZMuZFfzX
The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was “to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections.”
Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies “would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”
At the end of the email, she reiterated, “We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections.”
Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: “Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.
Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should “nationalize” elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places” led by Democrats.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he’d never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”
“I was just like, ‘What is this?’ It’s the strangest thing in the world that the FBI is reaching out to us and trying to coordinate election security,” Aguilar said. “It’s never happened in the past. The casualness which they did… it was just beyond crazy.”
A former DOJ official told Berg that while it is normal for the department to monitor elections, the email and conference call were highly unusual: “I can’t imagine why it would be coordinated in that way,” he said.
Another official who received the email told NBC Newsthat the message was “unusual and unexpected.”
Speaking of Hardiman, the official said, “No one has heard of this person—and we’re all wondering what an ‘FBI Election Executive’ is.” NBC reported that a LinkedIn page for Hardiman showed she was appointed to the position seven months ago.
The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election “partners” is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will “have ICE surround the polls,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it’s been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.
After federal agents killed three US citizens and provoked furious protests, Trump offered to withdraw agents from the state, but only if it turned over its voting rolls to the federal government.
At Trump’s apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta last week to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
And earlier this week, it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.
“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”
Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing” for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back.”
Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump’s coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.
“Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done,” Miller said. “It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
President Donald Trump (left) gets a reaction from Britian’s ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson (right), in the Oval Office of the White House, May 8, 2025, in Washington
