Trump deleting tech enforcement

Public Citizen - The Trump administration is punching the delete button on federal enforcement against lawbreaking by Big Tech corporations. Parroting President Trump’s complaints about “weaponized” government, tech executives cast commonsense protections for consumers, investors, and the public as unfair political attacks. Their goal: to derail enforcement by federal agencies charged with protecting Americans from their misconduct. It’s working.

In six months, the Trump administration has already withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165 corporations of all types – and one in four of the corporations benefiting from halted or dropped enforcement is from the technology sector, which has spent $1.2 billion on political influence during and since the 2024 elections.

Public Citizen’s analysis found that:

• The Trump administration has halted or withdrawn one third of targeted investigations into suspected misconduct and enforcement actions against technology corporations.
• At least 104 technology sector corporations faced at least 142 federal investigations and enforcement actions at the beginning of Trump’s second term.
• So far, 47 enforcement actions (against 45 tech corporations) have been withdrawn or halted (38 withdrawn, nine halted).
• These tech corporations, along with their executives and investors, collectively spent $1.2 billion on political influence during and since the 2024 elections, including:
  • $863 million in political spending;
  • $222 million in payments to Trump’s businesses;
  • $76 million in lobbying spending; and
  • $25 million in donations to Trump’s inauguration.
• Two-thirds of the political spending – $610 million – was spent backing Republicans, including Trump. More than half of the political spending ($352 million) is attributable to Elon Musk.
• Nearly half of the enforcement actions that have been dropped or halted – 23 – were against cryptocurrency corporations (20 withdrawn, three halted).
• Financial technology (FinTech) corporations, mostly facing enforcement by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, also disproportionately benefitted, with eleven withdrawn or halted enforcement actions (seven withdrawn, four halted).
• Tech corporations that faced federal investigations and lawsuits under Biden that are poised to exploit their ties with the Trump administration include Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and corporations headed by Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink).