All posts tagged "Microsoft"

From Alphabet to X, eight of the largest tech giants spent a record of $71 million combined on U.S. political lobbying in 2025, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit working to reduce the influence of money in politics.

“Big Tech is using every tool in the toolbox to gain access and influence in Trump's Washington,” said Michael Beckel, senior research director at Issue One and report co-author.

It’s the latest example of “pay-to-play politics” under President Donald Trump, the report says — highlighting how tech, artificial intelligence (AI) and social media companies spent nearly $330,000 each day Congress was in session in 2025, and came away with a series of wins around industry regulations. ...

Flanked by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a White House dinner with some of the richest and most powerful leaders of the world’s tech giants.

To Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, an AI-powered construction hiring platform, it was no coincidence that after the meeting last month of more than 30 Silicon Valley power players and Trump advisers, the administration unveiled a plan to charge $100,000 one-time application fees for H-1B visas, which tech companies typically use to employ highly skilled foreign workers.

“It can appear as though, rather than it being an improvement to immigration policy, it feels a little more like a labor war strategy,” Patterson said....

President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon called for Microsoft to fire its global affairs president and former President Joe Biden's deputy attorney general, calling her "deranged," a "pawn," and a "menace to U.S. National Security."

Lisa Monaco joined the Washington-based company in June and is also the former homeland security advisor for the Obama administration.

Trump wrote the following on his Truth Social platform after attending the Ryder Cup on Long Island earlier in the day:...

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post, has perplexed D.C. insiders with his dramatic transformation from civic-minded entrepreneur to MAGA faithful, according to a new piece in Politico.

Bezos was famously pictured alongside fellow tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at Trump's second-term inauguration, cementing what Politico columnist Michael Schaffer wrote was an image that looked "more self-serving than selfless."

"The man who once praised democracy’s guardrails has begun to look like he’s just another rich guy trying to curry favor with a transactional president," Schaffer wrote....

CHICAGO — In ballrooms, barrooms and backrooms this week, the business of big business is getting done with Democrats out of public view.

Yes, Bernie Sanders on Tuesday railed before Democratic National Convention delegates about how “millionaires and billionaires” should “not be able to buy elections.” And sure, curtailing “the corrupting influence of money in politics” is a plank in the 2024 Democratic Party platform.

But most Democrats in Chicago are ignoring the socialist senator and stepping over and around that party plank while pursuing cash that corporations and moneyed special interests are all too keen to contribute....

This article was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.