THREAD: A small handful of companies are propping up the U.S. economy.

GDP growth is overly reliant on one sector: AI.

And the numbers are going up in no small part because these companies keep investing in each other. On Tuesday, Nvidia and Microsoft announced that AI startup Anthropic will buy $30 billion of cloud computing capacity from Microsoft, “powered by Nvidia.”

As part of the deal, Nvidia agreed to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, and Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion.

businessinsider.com/anthropic-nvid…

Donald Trump is proposing 50-year mortgages.

What he doesn't want you to know is that if you take a 30-year loan on the average house, you pay around $824,000 over the life of the loan.

If you took out a 50-year loan for the same house, you’d ultimately pay about $1,213,500.🧵 Assuming a 6.2% interest rate, a 30-year plan on a $373,680 loan costs $2,288.68 per month.

A 50-year loan would cost $2,022.52 per month.

While homebuyers would see a small drop in their monthly costs, they would also see a meteoric rise in interest payments.

apnews.com/article/home-p…

The South has quickly emerged as a battleground between big tech and working people.

Companies are pouring billions into data centers, but Southerners are fighting to block them.

The outcomes could greatly affect residents’ economic security and the region’s water supply. 🧵 $200 billion worth of data center projects are being built in the South, according to a new report from @MediaJustice.

To keep up with the massive amounts of energy these centers consume, projects like gas pipelines and coal plants are also growing.

mediajustice.org/wp-content/upl…

Companies are increasingly trapping workers with a move that looks a lot like indentured servitude.

The company will pay for training, then when you want to leave the job, the corporation will say you owe thousands of dollars for that training — unless you stay on the job.

🧵 The following article describes a nurse who switched to a better-paying job at a nearby hospital only to wind up with debt collectors at her door demanding she pay her former employer back for a loan she didn’t know she owed.

jacobin.com/2025/08/corpor…

Amazon tried to build a massive, water-consuming data center out in Arizona. Tucson’s city council unanimously killed it.

We were on the ground to tell the real story of how a community stopped Amazon in their tracks.

A thread 🧵 Back in 2023, Amazon Web Services outlined a plan to build a 290-acre data center—nearly the size of downtown Tucson.

It was one of the largest projects ever considered by the city, and was projected to use massive amounts of water and electricity.

azluminaria.org/2025/07/21/ama…

Republicans in Congress are currently trying to ram through a bill that would the biggest wealth transfer in history.

Here are some of the most extreme cuts, giveaways to the rich, and impacts that the bill will have.

What they're trying to do is simply shocking. 🧵 Due to the drastic Medicaid cuts in the bill, 1 in 4 nursing homes say they will be forced to close, and more than half would have to cut staff.

Florida Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis are preparing the most sweeping set of anti-worker bills in the country — rolling back labor protections for kids as young as 14 and even classifying older workers as interns or apprentices.

🚨THREAD🚨 In 2020, more than 60% of Florida voters backed an amendment raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. But now, in an anti-democratic move, legislators could get around the will of the people.

Two people were tased at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s town hall in Georgia, where furious constituents demanded answers about insider trading, DOGE, and more.

The Congresswoman faces multiple allegations of profiting from market manipulation. What’s really going on? 🧵 MTG bought between $10K-$150K worth of stock the same day that Trump announced his 90-day pause on tariffs.

The day before, she purchased between $11K-165K in stocks and sold between $50K-100K in Treasury bills.

*Signs an illegal executive order. This is called breaking a union contract.

It’s an attack on workers everywhere. Thread. Last night Trump signed an executive order instructing 18 agencies to illegally terminate their collective bargaining agreements with 700,000 union workers.

In the first two weeks of the Elon Musk presidency, the world’s richest man has attacked the federal government relentlessly.

Here’s what the billionaire has done in just 14 days. Thread 🧵 Musk and his cronies have forced their way into the Treasury Department, and his young, inexperienced loyalists are attempting to get into the system that manages payments for the entire government.
crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-want…

Unprecedented wildfires are ripping through the Los Angeles area, and the state’s wildfire fighting force often includes incarcerated workers making as little as under $6 a day.

🧵 2) California has dozens of “fire camps” throughout the state for incarcerated people to fight wildfires.

They work in “hand crews” to dig trenches, clear vegetation, and perform other “dirty work” to help make putting out fires possible. smithsonianmag.com/history/the-hi…

President Biden has officially blocked the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese giant Nippon Steel for $14.9 billion.

"Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure," Biden said. Despite extensive lobbying by Nippon, United Steelworkers opposed the deal over concerns including that Nippon would seek to renegotiate their existing contract, which expires in September 2026, and could pursue layoffs and plant closures.
washingtonpost.com/business/2024/…

The FTC is suing the biggest alcohol distributor in the country, and it matters a whole lot more than you think.

It could even change the price of your groceries.

Here’s why you should know about the Robinson-Patman Act. Thread. The Robinson-Patman Act requires suppliers to offer the same prices and terms to all buyers. Passed in 1936 to protect small businesses, the law meant that big chains and corporations couldn’t get discounts that weren’t available to mom and pop shops.
ilsr.org/articles/the-c…

The Lambeau Field vendors who provide endless beer for Green Bay Packers fans have approved a new union contract with huge raises — doubling pay for some workers. 🧵 More than 90 drink vendors work at Lambeau Field, employed by the corporation Delaware North. They unionized last year with the independent union @MASHworkers, which also represents workers at the home arena of the Milwaukee Bucks.

greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/n…

Thread: Lina Khan is the chair of the FTC. For the past three years she’s set a new standard when it comes to fighting for working people.

She’s taken on Adobe, Amazon, Facebook, corporate landlords, and more.

Here's what fighting corporate power looks like 🧵 The FTC finalized a rule just days ago banning fake reviews and testimonials for products and services from being published.

This is the sort of work the commission has been up to under chair Lina Khan. /2
substack.perfectunion.us/p/the-ftc-says…

As Hurricane Milton nears landfall in Florida and over a million people have been ordered to evacuate, corporate price gouging has begun.

There are numerous reports of airlines and hotels suddenly jacking up prices as people need to flee.

Thread. Accusations are being leveled against United Airlines for dramatically increasing prices:

https://x.com/iowaradioguy/status/1843362951593660813

BREAKING: 45,000 port workers from Maine to Texas are on strike for the first time since 1977.

The members of the International Longshoremen’s Association walked off the job after their contract expired.

They're pushing for higher wages and to prevent job-killing automation. The ILA represents workers at 16 ports that handle half of the US's imports.

Wages have stagnated and sit as low as $20/hour for backbreaking, indispensable work. The union wants a yearly $5/hour raise for six years.

Port owners' refusal could cost the US $5 billion a week.

THREAD: Amazon, Tesla, and Meta are among the biggest threats to democracy, a new report by the International Trade Union Confederation shows.

These companies and the billionaires behind them are trying to subvert laws, attack unions, and challenge the foundation of democracy 🧵 The ITUC determined that Amazon, Tesla, and Meta are among the worst offenders by looking at the ways each company opposes unionization efforts among their employees, as well as violations of union and human rights law and their contributions to the climate crisis.

Thread: Private equity is involved in everything now, including housing.

Alden Global Capital has spent over $275 million on buying up more than 10,000 manufactured housing units to hike rent, enact junk fees, and evict people when they can’t pay.

Here’s how it went down 🧵 Alden Global Capital, already well known for buying and then shuttering physical newsrooms and leaving journalists without a place to do their work, have in recent years upped the ante by buying up housing units across 17 states.
aljazeera.com/economy/2024/3…

THREAD: Terry Belk quit his job to help his wife fight cancer.

She passed away, and now he's saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. Even after selling his home, Belk couldn't pay it all off.

Then a nonprofit hospital sued for the $6,000 he still owed. Despite having insurance, Belk found that the $23,000 for his wife’s treatment, as well as $6,000 for his own treatment costs, was too much to pay due to high interest rates and a predatory debt collection system.

Today, he’s still paying $100 a month.
nbcnews.com/news/investiga…

Thread: One of America’s largest psychiatric hospital chains is holding people against their will to maximize insurance payouts and reap huge profits.

Here's how Acadia Healthcare traps patients physically and financially. Acadia charges up to $2,200 each day that a patient stays in one of their facilities, and uses a variety of tactics to keep them there.

They:
-Exaggerate symptoms
-Arbitrarily adjust the dosage of medications
-Misrepresent the circumstances of their stay
nytimes.com/2024/09/01/bus…