Trumpism wants to capture your attention. And it won't hesitate to colonize, with the approval of its leader, all the world's main information outlets, streaming media and video game platforms. Emerging from the effervescent magma of the MAGA universe, a group of powerful businessmen are in orbit around Trump, fattening his businesses and helping him expand the reach of his ultraconservative rhetoric.
In 2023, truck manufacturers struck a deal with the California Air Resources Board to drastically reduce emissions and invest in electric trucks. This summer, however, several of the companies - Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, Paccar and Traton - backed out of the partnership and sued California, with support from the Trump administration. Now fossil-fuel-aligned corporations are leveraging political connections to weaken oversight, erode environmental protections and entrench their dominance.
The World Health Organization Foundation took an increasing amount of dark money from corporate donors during the three years since its 2020 inception, research has shown, raising concerns among some experts and campaigners that big business is playing a larger role shaping the institution's policies. Through the end of 2023, the last year for which records were available, the foundation had taken about $83m in corporate donations,
"Over the last two nights, the NBA didn't just stage a show—they sold the stage, the script, and the orchestra pit to an insurance giant... It was branded content."
The BBC instructed Evan Davis to drop his podcast about heat pumps, seen as steering into public controversy, despite less scrutiny on politically charged content from others.