The image on the cover of TIME Magazine was striking: Elon Musk sits behind the desk meant only for the president of the United States, staring into the camera lens, a half frown-smirk playing across his lips.
For TIME, the image was meant to illustrate a “War on Washington” waged by Musk—the wealthiest person in the world, at the helm of billion-dollar corporations like X and Tesla.
But it signifies much more than that: the image is a tidy encapsulation of how the corporate drive to reshape the U.S. government has reached a new high water mark, even as Musk himself steps back.
Corporations are no longer simply interfering in, influencing, or lobbying the government; corporations have taken over the government.
How did we get here?
When you think about the corporate takeover of democracy, what comes to mind first?
Perhaps it’s the Koch Brothers and their shadowy network of well-funded, pro-corporate, anti-democracy think tanks and PACs.
Perhaps it’s the moment in 2017 when Trump chose the CEO of ExxonMobil as his Secretary of State, all but saying the quiet part out loud: that the U.S. government prioritizes Big Oil’s interests over all others abroad.
Or perhaps it’s Citizens United v. FEC, the notorious Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled 5 – 4 that spending money is a form of speech and that corporations can’t be limited in “independent” political spending—meaning corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
There’s no question that all of these are manifestations of an increasingly brazen corporate coup. But the roots of corporate power over our democracy were planted much farther back—not years, not decades, but centuries ago.
The United States of Corporate Profits
Jamestown, Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in what is today the United States. It’s most commonly known for its fort, famine, and relations with the Indigenous Powhatan people, including the real-life Pocahontas.
What’s less known: The colonists of Jamestown were acting on behalf of the Virginia Company of London, which had been granted a charter—essentially, an exclusive contract—by King James I to snatch up gold, silver, and other profitable natural resources of the so-called New World. In fact, Virginia’s first governor and captain-general for life, Thomas West, Lord de la Warr (from whom the name Delaware is derived), was the Virginia Company’s largest company officer investor.
And those coming from Europe in the decade after the Virginia Company landed? At least half were indentured servants, required to work for years, under harsh conditions and little pay. They were soon followed by the first enslaved people from Africa in North America, setting the stage for centuries of horror, abuse, and an economy based on chattel slavery. And in Jamestown, that labor happened largely in fields of tobacco—which became a profitable commodity crop, planting roots that evolved into one of the most abusive and deceptive industries today.
Similar stories played out elsewhere in the future U.S. and around the world. Many colonial projects were in fact groups of investors with monopolistic charters that prioritized, above all, returning profits to shareholders back home. The Virginia Company was dissolved in 1624 and the colony’s administration turned over to the British Crown, and, later, an elected assembly. But it’s no exaggeration to say that what we know as the United States today began as a corporate profit-seeking project.
The slow creep of corporate rule
Upon independence, the founders of the new republic laid out lofty ideals that initially only applied to a narrow slice of the population: wealthy, land-owning, white men—usually the men that controlled the corporations. Nevertheless, in contrast to the corporate charters that had launched the first boats from Europe to the shores of the Americas, they intended for the government of their fledgling nation to serve goals beyond corporate profits.
But where there’s profit to be made, corporations find a way.
Up to the 1800s, corporations in the U.S. were formed through legislature-approved charters. Like the Virginia Company, these charters were established by the government to carry out specific purposes—from transportation to banking to insurance.
But then corporations started agitating for the government to loosen the reins—and state legislatures obliged. In 1837, Connecticut began allowing corporations to engage in any “lawful business.” By 1896, New Jersey had passed a new law allowing corporations to set the terms of their charters themselves.
Meanwhile, in 1844, the Supreme Court had ruled that a corporation was a “person” and could be treated as a citizen of the state where it incorporated. A few years later, the court clarified that corporations were “citizens” only for the purpose of determining which courts had jurisdiction to rule on cases related to them. They didn’t have the constitutional rights of actual people—that would be ridiculous, right?
But throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Supreme Court gradually ruled that various rights that applied to people also applied to corporations:
- the rights to equal protection and due process under the 14th amendment;
- the right to unreasonable searches and seizures under the 4th amendment;
- the right to be tried only once for the same crime.
At the same time, corporations were growing, and growing, and growing. With little oversight or regulation, corporations like the Standard Oil Company grew bigger and bigger, gobbling up their competition and forming monopolies. Laws like the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 made feeble attempts to stem the tide, but corporations continued to get bigger and more powerful throughout the 1900s.
And then came the “Powell memo.” In 1971, then-corporate lawyer and board member for Philip Morris and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell laid out a broad strategy for corporate America to take an “aggressive attitude” on college campuses, in the media, in scholarly journals, in the courts, and more. It was, as Greenpeace has called it, a “corporate blueprint to dominate democracy.” Think: a corporate Project 2025, but developed 50 years ago and implemented ever since.
The stage was set for the notorious Citizens United case in 2010, for ExxonMobil in the State Department in 2017, and for Elon Musk at the Resolute Desk in 2025.
Corporate power today: the blatant and the subtle
Most people—no matter where we shop or how much money is in our wallets—want food that nourishes us and our families, and healthcare for when we get sick. Most people want their kids to attend safe, gun-free schools, whether those schools are in a busy city or rural countryside. And most people want clean air, green spaces to enjoy, and a climate that will sustain us for generations.
But behind whatever matters to you most, today, there are powerful transnational corporations interfering in our government and our democracy—all to protect their own profits.
It’s not just about lobbying or political donations. Consider just a few of the other ways corporations flex their power:
- Funding pro-corporate policy development: Long before Musk sat in the Oval Office, corporations found ways to literally write public policy to rob us of our rights and protections. For example, The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which represents corporations like Altria/Philip Morris U.S., drafts state-level legislation which attacks the voting rights of people of color and Black people particularly, dismantle worker protections, slash social programs, and ravage the environment with impunity.
- Dumping the costs of their business onto the rest of us: Corporations externalize their costs onto people and the environment. For example, the healthcare costs from smoking, diet-related diseases, or polluted air are not paid by Philip Morris, McDonald’s, or ExxonMobil—they’re paid by individuals and the collective taxes we pay.
- Forging unholy alliances to take away people’s rights: Corporate forces have teamed up with and supported the white Christian nationalist movement (which has its own power-driven agenda) to divide us and to try to suppress the rights and power of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; immigrants; trans and nonbinary people; LGBTQIA+ people; women; and poor and working-class people.
And, of course, corporations have worked to undermine the foundations of government of, by, and above all for the people.
A network of think tanks and academics—funded by corporate dollars—has pushed an ideology that says that governments, accountable to people, are inherently inefficient and can’t be trusted, compared to the “efficiency” of corporations. But what does it mean to run the government like a huge corporation? Authoritarian hierarchy. Externalized costs that exploit people and the planet. The pursuit of profit above all. And accountability to the wealthy few, not everyday people.
That’s why corporations, and the politicians in their pockets, work to undermine our faith in government to provide the services for which it exists. They convince the public those services aren’t worth investing in. Then, those services stop working well, and corporations seize the opportunity to profit—by privatizing them, or by “fixing” the crises they helped create. (The classic example? The private water industry and our public water systems.)
Why does any of this matter? Because when corporations make our democracy work for them, real people suffer.
And that’s exactly what we see happening under the regime in the White House today: cutting funding for public services, blaming the consequences of those cuts on the government itself, and opening the doors for privatizers to “fix” the manufactured crises.
The robbers are on the loose
Today, the robbers are in the house. Figuratively, in that corporations have unprecedented power within the government. And literally, in that 21st century robber barons like Elon Musk (despite his recent high-profile departure and feud) and many others are inside the White House all the time—and their logos are outside it, too. They’re ensuring the corporate agenda is the government’s agenda.
But it’s not just about Musk, or any one corporate CEO or billionaire.
It’s not even just about the corporate Cabinet, or the army of tech bros accessing millions of people’s data through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
It’s not just about how the guy now in the White House asked a fancy steak dinner full of fossil fuel executives for a billion dollars last April to help him get there; it’s not just about the $75 million they came through with, or how he’s now repaying the favor.
It’s about all of it.
This is the high-water mark of a deliberate, all-out corporate coup. The receipts are right there in Project 2025, the blueprint for an authoritarian takeover that blends the far right, pro-corporate-power, white Christian nationalist agenda. And despite his disavowal, this corporate-backed administration is advancing this agenda at breakneck speed.
The path forward for people power
Here’s the thing: Part of the story and the history of the United States has always been the push and pull between those who want to give unfettered power to corporations—vehicles for enriching the few at the expense of the many—and those agitating for a democracy that prioritizes all people.
Authoritarian rulers are fundamentally weak, care only about their power, and must use force to rule. The greed of this regime and the greed of its billionaire and CEO backers is a core weakness. We can ensure that their greed is their downfall.
This is why corporate campaigning is essential. To disentangle the corporate tentacles that are strangling society, yes, we must challenge them legislatively and politically. But we also must strategically target these corporations directly.
Now is the time for everyone who values liberty and justice to unite and fiercely defend all our freedoms, communities, and shared resources. Across time and around the world, people have come together to challenge authoritarians successfully. Ordinary people have changed the course of history by starting with small actions, then growing into mass movements.
Now, Musk’s time behind the president’s desk—whether literal or figurative—seems to be coming to a close. Make no mistake: feud or no feud, this is the result of organizing, and it’s a huge people-powered victory. There can be many more to come.
There’s no doubt we’ve reached a new high-water mark for corporate power in the U.S. But tides that come in go back out. We can make sure that future history books describe this as the moment when corporate power peaked—then collapsed.
Right now in the U.S., people are rising for freedom, uniting to oppose dangerous corporations and the government that they’ve bought and paid for. And at Corporate Accountability, we’ve got an almost fifty-year track record of challenging corporate power—and winning.
To win, it’s going to take all of us. If you’re ready to join in, you can sign up for the People Over Profit Corps.
