Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect Journalist Profile

Articles

Runaway Tren

3 weeks ago | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

Earlier this month, a middle-aged woman with shaggy, silvery hair and a pleasant smoker’s contralto flew from Denver to Washington to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. “My name is Cindy Romero,” she began. “I am a wife, a mother of five, a grandmother of three, a part-time worker and student, and a former resident of Aurora, Colorado.
Trump Scrambles to Pardon Corporate Criminals He Once Prosecuted

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Maureen Tkacik

8 hours ago Aussie spy planes worked overtime during nearby Chinese naval drills MELBOURNE, Australia — Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft took center stage in Australia’s and New Zealand’s joint response during a … 1 hour ago Buyout, aerospace firms among remaining bidders for Boeing navigation unit, sources say Several private equity firms and at least one aerospace supplier are among the remaining bidders competing to buy Boeing’s Jeppesen navigation unit for more than...
Trump Scrambles to Pardon Corporate Criminals He Once Prosecuted

1 month ago | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

As the Trump administration tells the story, Barry Sturner is an ordinary small-business owner who had his life’s work and reputation destroyed by Rohit Chopra’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in a “seven-year harassment saga,” after some power-mad lawyers got ahold of some “innocuous” comments he’d made about crime on an AM radio show and decided to “spen[d] years persecuting and extorting” his “small Midwest firm.” What really happened is this: Sturner and his longtime partner...
A Hospital Empire Is Closing Its Doors-but the Stock Is on a Tear

1 month ago | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik |Teri Buhl

Last week, the few hundred remaining employees of two hospitals in Warren, Ohio, got an email informing them they were suspending hospital admissions following a sudden rise in costs precipitated by a Houston bankruptcy court ruling.
DOGE’s Private-Equity Playbook

2 months ago | thenation.com | Maureen Tkacik

Comment / March 11, 2025 DOGE’s Private-Equity PlaybookElon Musk’s rampage through the government is a classic PE takeover, replete with bogus numbers and sociopathic executives. Ad Policy This article appears in the April 2025 issue, with the headline “Raiding the Swamp.” The nation’s capital is teeming with people who serve the interests of sadists who have converted seemingly every crevice of our economy into a Sopranos plotline.
Did Luigi Save the UnitedHealth Case?

2 months ago | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

Valerie O’Meara had been working as a nurse for the Polyclinic in Seattle for over a month before it dawned on her that she actually worked for the risk adjustment department of the health insurance juggernaut UnitedHealth. A physician had interviewed her for the job. Her employment contract named a gastroenterologist she had never met as the owner and medical director of the practice.
The DOGE Czar’s Plan To Loot Medicare

2 months ago | portside.org | Maureen Tkacik

The DOGE Czar’s Plan To Loot Medicare Published February 17, 2025 Four and a half years ago, Department of Government Efficiency co-czar Brad Smith stumbled on a counterintuitive revelation: The most effective way to slash federal health care spending involved drastically raising Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospital care.
The DOGE Czar’s Plan to Loot Medicare

Feb 14, 2025 | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

Four and a half years ago, Department of Government Efficiency co-czar Brad Smith stumbled on a counterintuitive revelation: The most effective way to slash federal health care spending involved drastically raising Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospital care.
The Private Equity Hatchet Man Leading the Lost Boys of DOGE

Feb 6, 2025 | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

When the private equity owners of the enterprise software firm Citrix were recruiting a new chief executive officer in early 2022, they weren’t looking for a morale-boosting TED Talker or a visionary guru. Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital had just put together a deal to finance their $16.5 billion acquisition almost entirely in high-yield floating rate bonds. Interest rates were fast floating higher, and Citrix didn’t have enough cash on hand to make a single interest payment.
Crisis Actors

Feb 6, 2025 | prospect.org | Maureen Tkacik

Three years ago this spring, three companies controlled by right-wing radio host Alex Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Victoria, Texas. Nearly a decade had passed since the former cable access show host had begun espousing his view that the massacre of first graders perpetrated by a deranged youth with enormous eyes at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was in fact an elaborate con orchestrated by shadowy elites to manufacture consent for stricter gun laws.