Ryan Cooper

Philadelphia

Managing Editor at The American Prospect

Managing editor @TheProspect. Cohost & producer of @LeftAnchor podcast: https://t.co/CD022VuwNF https://t.co/Darm54JyeO

Articles

Go, Elon, and Never Darken Our Doors Again

1 week ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

Elon Musk is out of the Trump administration—or is he? The richest man in the world announced this week that he is transitioning out of politics and returning to business. “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @RealDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he posted on Twitter/X.
How I Survived White Genocide in South Africa

1 week ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

Donald Trump and Elon Musk recently met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House. Trump dimmed the lights and showed a video consisting of various right-wing propaganda products purporting to prove that white South Africans are being singled out for their race and killed en masse. It’s a “genocide,” Trump insisted. “They’re being executed, and they happen to be white, and most of them happen to be farmers. I don’t know how you explain that.” “Death, death, death,” he added.
Pyramid Schemes Are Eating American Capitalism

2 weeks ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

This article appears in the June 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America By Bridget Read Crown According to classical Marxism, capitalism is destined to collapse on itself because of its supposed inherent contradictions.
These 16 Democratic Senators Deserve a Primary

2 weeks ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

It’s official. As my colleague David Dayen and I both predicted, enough Democratic senators have voted for a crypto “regulation” bill (called the GENIUS Act), basically written by the industry and Donald Trump’s minions, that it passed easily on Tuesday. If anything, it was even worse than I expected—just nine Democrats were needed to get to the necessary 60 votes, but 16 voted for it. (Two Republicans, Sens.
Senate Democrats Poised to Enable Trump’s Crypto Corruption

3 weeks ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

As my colleague David Dayen has been covering here at the Prospect, the cryptocurrency “industry” is in the midst of a major lobbying push to get pro-crypto legislation through Congress. The sticking point is the Senate, where to get around the filibuster’s 60-vote requirement, at least seven Democratic votes would be needed, assuming every Republican supports it. That support seemed to be forthcoming, until Donald Trump started using crypto for some of his habitual mind-boggling corruption.
House Republicans Take Aim at Red-State Economies

3 weeks ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

One of the ironies of Joe Biden’s green industrial policy, as enacted through the CHIPS Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and especially the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), was that about three-quarters of the benefits have accrued to Republican congressional districts. The point of these laws, which set out a giant array of subsidies for clean energy, infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, was to get America back on the cutting economic edge.
Trumpflation Is Here

1 month ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

By far the loudest economic complaint against the Biden administration was about inflation. A May 2024 poll from Pew found 62 percent of adults rating it as a “very big problem,” the highest of any issue and 37 percentage points higher than unemployment. President Biden was blamed for this, and the discontent undoubtedly dragged down Kamala Harris’s campaign. In many ways, this was unfair.
DOGE Is Obliterating American Industry

1 month ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

One of the hidden gems of American government is a small division of the Department of Energy called the Loan Programs Office. This is a government bank that hands out loans to companies with business plans that go beyond the technological frontier, with ideas nobody has tried before.
Republicans Declare War on Asylum Seekers and the FTC

1 month ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

Congressional Republicans are in a panicked sprint trying to put together a reconciliation package for this year. That’s their one chance to make an end run around the Senate filibuster, and so the entire Trump agenda is being stuffed into it. (Here at the Prospect, we’ve got further coverage on education policy and the bill’s general chances of success.) On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee is marking up its part of the bill. The text is out, and it is a doozy.
Trump’s War on the Judiciary Escalates

1 month ago | prospect.org | Ryan Cooper

The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan Friday morning. The supposed reason, as FBI Director Kash Patel boasted on Twitter/X, was “evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” (He later deleted the tweet.) The immigrant in question is named Eduardo Flores Ruiz. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, Dugan allegedly “directed the ICE agents to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office.