More Perfect Union

When our reporter Eric Gardner flew to Miami in late January, the cryptocurrency industry was busy celebrating its newfound power and influence. In the buildup to the 2024 election,?the industry combined to raise nearly $200 million, showered it across both parties, and won every election it backed. They even converted Donald Trump. In 2021, he?called crypto a “scam”, but by 2022?he pledged?to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.” Many of those involved with the industry knew that Trump’s election meant a friendly regulatory approach to crypto, but even the most optimistic insider couldn’t have known what would happen next. Just last week, Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange that faced SEC charges for selling unregistered securities, announced the government was?dropping its suit. Days before his inauguration, Trump launched his own digital token, or meme coin. In the hysteria, the digital asset soared to $75, before ultimately crashing to around $17—minting early traders hundreds of millions while leaving?more than 800,000 people with billions in losses. At?WAGM-Miami, which markets itself as one of the largest crypto conferences in the United States, attendees were still wrapping their minds around an American president lending his name to a scheme similar to one that saw celebrities?including Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul?charged with violating securities law. “A bust is gonna come,” said Hilary Allen, a law professor who investigated the 2008 financial crash for Congress. “I have no idea when, but when it does, if the traditional financial system and the crypto ecosystem have fully merged, then we're ready to have another 2008 moment.”

While Elon Musk is busy dismantling the federal government, he’s also been building his own private cities to surround his company headquarters in remote parts of Texas. In April, employees at SpaceX’s South Texas location?will vote on incorporating?their private space tourism campus into a city called Starbase. Located 40 miles east of the border town Brownsville, Starbase was already encroaching on the unincorporated town Boca Chica Village, a small community of snowbirds that lived in nearly-off-grid bungalows surrounded by state and federal parks. Boca Chica Village has become unrecognizable over the last decade since Musk brought his company to South Texas. SpaceX has built two launch pads for its Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, as well as a sprawling production facility and a cluster of houses and airstream trailers with?perks for employees?like Tesla chargers, e-bikes, a medical facility, and a private bar called Astropub. In 2019, SpaceX tried to buy out the winter Texans in Boca Chica Village, saying that it was no longer safe to live near the SpaceX launchpad. At the same time, SpaceX was slowly moving employees into the homes and building new blocks parallel to the original streets. Musk has also established a town outside of Austin called?Snailbrook, where he plans to move X headquarters. Snailbrook is already home to a SpaceX campus and his tunneling company called Boring and Musk has spent?hundreds of millions?of dollars to establish a private school for his employees’ children. Musk sold hope for the towns to climb out of stagnation into growth. Instead, SpaceX has caused earthquakes, rampant workplace injuries, skirted regulations, threatened wildlife, and displaced local communities, while securing millions in corporate welfare. We went to Texas in January, just as SpaceX was gearing up for the seventh launch of its Starship, and this is what we unraveled.

Credit card companies are robbing us. In the last decade, they have nearly doubled their interest rates — and last year, Americans paid $170 billion in credit card interest. Experts told us that credit card companies have been running an experiment to see how far they can stretch their profit margins beyond what’s necessary. A former Capital One employee was more blunt, telling us the companies operate like “loan sharks." But ever-higher interest rates on credit cards might not be inevitable. A very unlikely political coalition — including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even President Donald Trump — have proposed capping credit card interest rates from 10 to 18 percent. And smaller financial institutions have proven that it’s possible to offer lines of credit to borrowers at well below the rates of big banks. We spoke to industry experts, advocates, and consumers about the factors that got us to the credit card interest quagmire, and what our path out of it might be.

We are hiring great journalists and progressives to join our team! https://lnkd.in/gPsjsT7m

Rue 21 filed for bankruptcy and is closing all of its stores. If you don't know what's going on, a worker reportedly put this in the window of one of the stores to fill people in.

A new bipartisan bill in Ohio would force the Cincinnati Bengals to play home games on a real grass field instead of artificial turf. Data shows that artificial turf leads to more injuries, and the Bengals have long had the most dangerous turf in the NFL.

Public schools in Alaska are crumbling, literally and metaphorically. Alaska’s traditional public schools have dropped into the?bottom five?worst-performing in the nation. Years of funding shortages have brought the once-great public school system to the brink of collapse—and a right-wing governor is standing in the way of fixing it.

NEW: America has a credit card cartel—and it's about to get bigger. Capital One and Discover want to merge into the largest credit card company in the U.S. Swipe fees and interest rates will rise even higher, and banks will make billions. This merger must be stopped.

CEOs really hate when you have a life outside of generating their profits.

BREAKING: Norfolk Southern will pay the U.S. government $310 million for the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, OH. $235 million will go towards past and future costs relating to the environmental clean-up. $15 million is a civil penalty for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act. Norfolk Southern also settled a class action lawsuit from East Palestine residents last month for $600 million.