Arlene Martinez

Immigrants detained at Camp East Montana in Texas didn’t have adequate space to read, pray, write or get legal services. Many detainees said they only got a couple hours of outdoor time a week — despite federal guidelines requiring one hour per day. propublica.org/article/camp-e…

Starting soon @NALEO: I'll be talking about the soaring costs of data center tax breaks and how communities can help ensure the best deals for their residents if a data center does come to town. Come on down! #DataCenters #NALEO

NEW: The City of LA has issued nearly $1 million (‼️) in bogus street sweeping tickets over the last five years. Roughly a sixth were issued along a single corridor of one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. I built a map & tool that let you check whether you got a bum ticket.

DOGE deployed engineers into agencies to gut them. Mamdani is deploying them to make it easier to cancel your gym membership. That is the contrast Democrats should run on: one party breaks government to prove it can't work, the other makes it deliver.

New: An insurance company led by a billionaire megadonor wrote much of a new state law that could force condo owners across Florida to pay higher prices for property insurance. 🧵…

The Daily does an episode on grocery prices and is totally uninterested in consolidation. NYT gonna NYT. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Walmart, Albertsons, and 7-Eleven used AI software to raise gas prices. Just how much tech-enabled price-fixing is hidden across the economy? Good news is that California has a new law on pricing algorithms & now a class-action antitrust case is moving. popular.info/p/gas-stations…

On behalf of the largest coalition of local newspaper publishers assembled to date, we just sued @OpenAI and @Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright laws by using our clients' content to train and build their chatbots, and for repurposing that content, without proper compensation or attribution. We are proud to stand up and fight on behalf of America's most trusted news source: our local news.

For millions of Americans who can’t afford to buy, renting isn’t a choice. A @guardian investigation shows how private equity-backed corporate landlords exploit them, one invented fee at a time. Just look at what Greystar charges: • a penalty for “breaking the lease” by dying (charged to one grieving family) • DNA testing of your dog’s poop • $26.75/mo “boiler management fee” • $95/mo “lifestyle fee” (for a spin room and picnic tables) • $25/mo “valet trash,” a service that costs the landlord $8 • “final bill fee,” charged just to stop being their tenant • a fee to pay your rent online • “variable refrigerant flow fee” • “solar rebill fee” • “stormwater/drainage admin fee”

Despite their popularity, sports stadium subsidies fail to generate new tax revenue and new jobs or attract new businesses. Unfortunately, it is consumers who are left with the tax burden. More here: hubs.ly/Q04mp0K30 #economy #taxes

California's 4 super-billionaires pay only 0.07% of their wealth in California income taxes each year—a mere 0.2% of total state income tax revenue. They pay a pittance to the state that made them rich. It is as though they live in a parallel society.

Extreme wealth in the United States has now reached levels never seen before — not even during the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when railroad, finance, and oil magnates dominated the economy through their monopolies.

The biggest myth in American politics: "Nordic countries pay much higher taxes than we do." The reality? Once you account for employer-sponsored health insurance premiums, many middle-class Americans pay as much or more than workers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

ProPublica obtained 3,000 pages of emails sent last year by executives asking that their facilities be exempted from Clean Air Act requirements. The White House approved more than 180 requests and is considering more. propublica.org/article/clean-…

An electrician named Dante tells WIRED... “Nobody judges me” for data center work, he says, because “we're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck because of the unlivable world that those same rich people have created for us.”

Excited to be joined at #IRE26 by a cracker jack group of reporters to share tips on covering the growing influence of corporations. Learn how to dig into behavior and relationships, even when you're on deadline. Join us Thursday, June 18 at 2:30 p.m.!

Apple is a $4.35 trillion corporation. It made $112 billion in profits last year & paid its CEO, who's already worth $2.9 billion, $74 million in compensation. In the past 3 years, it's spending $310 billion on stock buybacks. Don't cite inflation. Cite the damn corporate greed.

And stop by @GoodJobsFirst's table to learn more about all our databases and work, including education and data centers. Say hi to @avmartinez, and meet our new Executive Director Allan Freyer!

S&P 500 profit margins just hit a record high. In Q1, companies kept nearly $0.15 in profit for every $1 of revenue — more than double the long-run average. The boom is concentrated in megacap tech, AI infrastructure, layoffs, and “efficiency” drives.

Muriel's Wedding. But maybe it's already considered one