The CEOs of the country's lowest-paying large companies made $17.2 million on average last year. Their workers made $35,570.

YouTube video by MSNBC

YouTube video by MSNBC

Trump’s Justice Department has begun launching probes into his political rivals, including New York Attorney General Letitia James. Whistleblower Miles Taylor—himself a target of Trump’s retribution campaign—urges Americans to stay “open-eyed” about what’s unfolding. Taylor warns that targeting experts and officials like himself, along with entire institutions such as universities and law firms, will inevitably alter American life. “It's going to change the way you get legal representation.. it's going to change the universities you try to learn at...it’s going to influence the media that you consume because they're trying to intimidate media organizations. The President's revenge campaign is warping our society, and that’s not hyperbole." MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin notes that while some large firms are caving to political pressure, nonprofits and independent attorneys are stepping up. Top lawyers who want to take on Trump’s legal battles, she says, will simply break from their firms and branch out on their own.

Betty, our fictional working mother living in the real American economy, is facing rising prices in every corner of her life – from new cars to laundry detergent and athletic clothes. She may want to make her purchases sooner rather than later, but Investopedia’s Caleb Silver says the economic uncertainty of Trump’s tariff policy “paralyzes people.”

The 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has reignited the debate around nuclear weaponization and the cost of war. Ben and Jerry’s Co-founder, Ben Cohen has launched the “Up in Arms” campaign to bring attention to military spending and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. He argues that cutting social safety net programs in lieu of military funding “is economic violence.” The U.S. outspends most countries in military defense, “the U.S. leads and drives the arms race and those other countries are trying to catch up to us,” says Cohen. "That's not deterrence - that's delusion.”

Since President Trump’s return to office, the Department of Justice has increasingly targeted the president’s critics and opponents, including an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted the Trump Organization for fraud. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell, who is representing James, says that Trump’s “retribution” agenda “makes George Orwell’s ‘1984’ look like a Mother Goose nursery rhyme.” “The manipulation of language” from the administration, Lowell says, “makes your head spin." This politicization of the DOJ, Lowell argues, makes “Department of Weaponization” a more fitting name. He says that Trump’s end goal in this, it seems, is a regime where “only Democrats get scrutinized” while Republicans and Trump allies “get a free pass.” Lowell notes that he does not view his work as partisan, and he has represented figures across the political spectrum, including both Ivanka Trump and Hunter Biden. Regardless of party, he argues, “if the government overreaches, then lawyers' job is to put the government in the right place.”

YouTube video by MeidasTouch

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