Airlines and planemakers warn that credit card legislation could end frequent-flier rewards
Airlines, labor unions, and manufacturers have written to senators warning that a bill about credit cards being proposed by senators could damage the aviation industry by weakening airline loyalty programs.
United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Airbus, and Boeing are among the signatories of Monday's letter.
The campaign, led by the trade group Airlines for America, takes aim at legislation proposed by Senators Roger Marshall and Dick Durbin.
Their amendment to the crypto-focused GENIUS Act hopes to expand competition for credit card providers and lower swipe fees.
It's been supported by retailers, including the National Retail Federation, but has faced backlash from financial institutions.
Credit cards also play a significant role for airlines. "A lot of people call airlines credit card companies with wings," TJ Dunn, a points guru and editor in chief at the Prince of Travel, previously told Business Insider.
Co-branded credit cards are a cash cow for many airlines, allowing customers to build up frequent-flier points or miles.
Monday's letter cites research from Airlines for America that says over 31 million Americans have airline travel reward cards, generating around $25 billion in economic activity in 2023.
It adds that 57% of all frequent flyer miles or points issued in 2023 were generated by airline credit card use.
"Americans value and enjoy credit card rewards programs because they reward consumers for dollars that they would be spending no matter what," the letter says. "Many may be unpleasantly surprised if Congress disrupts those programs."
It warns that the Durbin-Marshall amendment could see airlines stop offering rewards credit cards.
Unions, including those representing pilots, flight attendants, and Boeing workers, have signed the letter, too. That's because it says the effect on loyalty programs would result in fewer flights and therefore "a contraction in airline activity and jobs."
It adds that lost revenue means airlines would struggle to meet existing commitments to their workers, and "certainly complicate existing or future collective bargaining negotiations."
The letter also says airlines would have less money to spend on buying new planes.
Durbin has said that the legislation would save merchants and consumers an estimated $15 billion each year, while businesses pay more than $100 billion in swipe fees annually.
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Yahoo
36 minutes ago
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Historian Federico Finchelstein: Trump's "abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern"
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America's experience with the erosion of democratic beliefs and experiences is quite common at the level of everyday practice. Intolerance, racism and violence have always been part of modern global history, this country included. However, at the federal level, Trumpism represents a change from previous norms and administrations. It is way more disruptive. Extreme forms of populism that are oriented towards fascism are now at the helm of the most powerful country in the world. Trumpism is more anti-democratic than its predecessors, and it also exerts a big influence outside of the United States. Trumpism is toxic for democratic life here in the United States and around the world. Donald Trump has now been back in power for more than 100 days. Are things as you expected? Better? Worse? I am not shocked by the extremism of Trumpism. But the Trump administration has failed in many ways, and yet it will keep trying to degrade American democracy as much as it can. 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There have been many public discussions of the so-called authoritarian's playbook and how Donald Trump and his agents are following it very closely. What are some specific examples? Some of them are learned in the ways of fascism, others, like the leader himself, are intuitively antidemocratic, but the effects are the same, namely, the irrational rule of a leader who would like to rule as a king or dictator. The examples are many and they range from deportations for racist/and or other authoritarian ideological reasons, attacks against the press, attempts to destroy the independence of universities, the replacement of legality with manipulations of the law in the name of the leader and the attacks against idea and the practice of anti-racism and in favor of diversity. And last but certainly not least, are the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to usurp democracy. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently warned that the speed of Donald Trump and his forces' attacks on democracy and civil society is more like a coup than autocratic capture. Do you agree? My friend and colleague Professor Ben-Ghiat is absolutely right! This is not a gradual process. It is unclear, yet, exactly what type of authoritarian end goals they want or will be able to reach. Do they want a full-on fascist dictatorship? An elected populist autocracy? Traditional tyranny? What is clear is that Donald Trump and his MAGA forces and their allies want to leave constitutional democracy behind. I don't want to be too strict with path dependency. But was there a moment(s) when Trump's return to power could have been stopped? Or was this democracy crisis and now the rise of naked fascism and authoritarianism more probable than not? What I focus on is that the architects and visionaries who did the intellectual work never faced justice for their role in the events of Jan. 6 and the larger attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 election. This is a key ingredient of the success of Trumpism. Without the link between history and justice, democracy cannot properly function or expand. The opposite happened, and we can now see the horrible consequences of these mistakes. The news media and free press are supposed to function as the Fourth Estate and the guardians of democracy. How would you assess the American mainstream news media's performance in that regard? The mainstream American news media continues to normalize Trumpism when it is labeled or framed as a 'conservative' or 'center-right' movement. Trumpism is radical and revolutionary. We are witnessing a new ultra-right populist phenomenon in the form of Trumpism and MAGA that is close to fascism. The extremism must be emphasized when discussing it so that the American people understand the dire reality that they are facing. The American news media need to put more history and context into their discussions of the Age of Trump and the attacks against democracy. This would also involve interviewing and otherwise featuring more scholars and other real experts. In your conversations with colleagues in higher education, what is the environment like now, given the Trump administration's attacks? There is, of course, the desired and planned chilling effect. There are attacks on media and universities, legal firms, judges, and others across civil society and the country's democratic and governing institutions. As I see it, what is even more troubling and deeply concerning is how the American people, the majority, are becoming increasingly numb to the abnormal behavior of Trump and his allies. Expert voices and others who have a trusted platform must continue to sound the alarm to wake the American people up from their complacency about Trumpism and the extreme danger it represents to the nation. Going beyond language and concepts, what are some practical, day-to-day things that the average American can do to defend democracy and civil society? It is critically important to be informed and alarmed about the extreme dimensions of Trumpism. In practice, we all need to continue reading independent media accounts of what is going on. We need to defend the independence of institutions and the separation of powers. I think it is important to oppose anti-democratic attempts by defending key dimensions of democracy and not giving up out of frustration and exasperation. This involves voting but also convincing others to do so. It also involves clearly and peacefully expressing one's own positions in conversations, in the streets and on social networks. History demonstrates that the worst thing we can do vis-à-vis wannabe dictators is being silent and apathic. What are some books, articles, creative work, films, movies, etc. that you recommend to those Americans who are trying to make sense of Trump's rise to power and the ascendant authoritarianism and fascism in this country? I would recommend novels such as "It can't happen here' or the recent movie about Trump and his relationship to Roy Cohn. The works of Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism and obedience are essential readings as well, especially her classic book On the Origins of Totalitarianism. I would also recommend the analysis of Nazi language by Viktor Klemperer, 'The Language of the Third Reich.' I also believe that the works of Latin American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges or Roberto Bolaño are of key importance in understanding the logic of fascism. I would recommend movies like the Argentines' 'The Official Story' and 'The Secret in their Eyes' to understand how important it is to know the links between history and legality when confronting propaganda, demonization and violence. I also think the second season of the Star Wars series 'Andor', starring Diego Luna, offers an excellent portrayal of the authoritarian manipulation of the truth through lies and propaganda. It is really well done and quite entertaining as well! The graphic novel "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi is also an excellent representation of how the Iranian dictatorship distorts the lives of an entire population. The novel focuses on the life of a young woman who resists in her own way. As different from the United States as all these cases are, there are still troublesome connections. The United States is becoming more and more like those real and fictional contexts where fascism and dictatorship are part of the picture, and a government wants its people to be less diverse and less tolerant of others. As you see it, what is the most disturbing aspect of Trump's return to power during these first four months? For fascists, what the leader wants is more legitimacy than legality, because while the former was the result of a cult of heroism and leadership principle, the latter was regarded as artificial and even boring. For example, this meant that everything Hitler wanted was legitimate and beyond the rule of law. This was the rationale for Jan.6 and Trump's arguments that he is above the law and that the courts should not have co-equal power to interfere with his actions as president. These actions take place in the context of lies and propaganda; one helps the other. Fascists, and wannabe fascists, imagine that all actions in defense of the law and democracy are part of a conspiracy against them. Donald Trump and his allies' abuse of the law fits an old autocratic pattern, one that has been given a new life in America. I hate applying sports analogies to politics, especially given a situation as serious as the Age of Trump. But who is 'winning right now? Trump and his 'team'? Or the other team? (the institutions and democracy, the 'Resistance,' civil society and the norms, etc.) Donald Trump and his 'team' started very aggressively, but they also made many mistakes. These mistakes include their approach to the economy and the rule of law. The apparent corruption will also not be forgotten by many American citizens. The apparent corruption and using public office to make money embodies the heart of the extremist politics of Trumpism and other forms of extreme populism and wannabe fascism. At this point, it is too soon to conclude how well Trump and his 'team' are playing the 'game.' There is another side to this 'game' that must be included. The other 'team' is those Americans who believe in democratic institutions and if they are going to go on the offense and get involved in the 'game' instead of mostly looking the other way.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
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We've finally slowed the surge in overdose deaths. The Trump admin may undo all of it
On May 14, 2025, the Division of Overdose Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the number of overdose deaths in 2024 had dropped 27%. This was an extraordinary, even historic announcement, given overdoses had risen relentlessly for more than 33 years, resulting in the deaths of more than a million Americans, with another 1 million projected to die before this decade is over. Now, for more than a year, overdose deaths have decreased every single month, most dramatically for deaths caused by illicit fentanyl — considered the toughest problem, given the opioid's high potency, simplicity of manufacture, and ease of smuggling. That very same day, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in testimony before Congress, made no reference to overdoses, the number one killer of Americans 18 to 44 years of age, nor to the recent success. A week later, in his agency's 72-page 'Making America Healthy Again' manifesto, the word 'opioid' was never mentioned. Instead, he went on to propose that CDC should be disassembled, along with the other principal agencies responsible for addressing the overdose crisis. Those proposals, as part of the administration's 2026 fiscal year budget, passed the House and await action by the Senate. For nearly thirty years I was a CDC scientist. I have been outspokenly critical of how CDC and those other agencies have handled the opioid crisis, but the solution is not to take a wrecking ball to the institutions that protect us, particularly when we seem to be making progress. What will be the consequences? A health secretary who systematically ignores mention of the major killer of adult Americans is clearly not interested in research on what could account for a decrease in deaths. But among recent national initiatives, the push to increase availability of the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone (brand name Narcan), has clearly played a role. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of naloxone doses dispensed from retail pharmacies doubled, and millions of additional doses were distributed by harm reduction organizations. Then in March 2023, the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter distribution of a nasal spray version. By the end of the year, 20 million doses had been dispensed. The decline in overdose death rates started the month after the nasal spray became widely available. Temporal sequence is not causation, but in a public health crisis, a plausible step is mass distribution of an antidote easily administered by lay persons. Few interventions in medicine are more cost-effective than saving a life in ten seconds for $25. Shortly after being put in charge of the U.S. health care system in February 2025, Kennedy, called for immediate decreased funding for naloxone. And he didn't stop there. Slated for abolition is the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the research group at the National Institutes of Health that helped develop the nasal version of naloxone. NIDA is currently researching opioid analgesics with lower addiction risk and developing wastewater detection systems to provide early warning of new illicit drugs. What is left of NIDA will be absorbed, with other decimated institutes, into a single entity focused on 'behavioral health.'Also on the chopping block is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which provides the major funding for state and local naloxone distribution and drug treatment programs. CDC's Division of Overdose Prevention, which is responsible for monitoring the drug epidemic, is marked for demolition too, despite having just reported the unprecedented reduction in overdose deaths. Adding to the threat of a renewed overdose explosion, the CDC issued the stark warning of a seven-fold rise in overdoses from illicit carfentanil, an opioid 100 times more potent than fentanyl — so potent that the drug is used to sedate elephants and minuscule amounts can easily kill a person. Remnants of SAMHSA and the CDC's Division of Overdose Prevention will be folded into the new 'Agency for Healthy America." Even if we assume that every cent of the budgets of the three cancelled drug control groups is eliminated, the total reduction in the federal budget would be one-tenth of one percent, or considerably less than the cost of one aircraft carrier. According to the new director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, these transformations should be done in a way to assure that the federal workforce will 'be traumatically affected,' and 'viewed as the villains.' What should the few remaining traumatically affected villains do about the drug crisis? Kennedy, who attributes his heroin recovery to 12-step abstinence, made that clear in his 2024 documentary: 'We're going to build hundreds of healing farms' — places where people with addiction 'learn the discipline of hard work' and 'get re-parented,' all the while bringing 'a new industry to these forgotten corners of America.' Antidotes, treatment, prevention? These are at best irrelevant — more likely, a moral hazard. The first thing you learn in public health is that all victories are temporary. Back in 2000, the CDC group where I worked demonstrated that ongoing transmission of measles — the most infectious pathogen known to humankind — had been eliminated from the U.S., thanks to nationwide hard work to raise immunization levels. A quarter-century later, because of lowered immunization levels consequent to a torrent of vaccine misinformation by Kennedy and others, there have been more than 1,000 measles cases in 30 states over the first five months of this year. The question is now before Congress: If the agencies battling the drug epidemic are disabled, will a renewed explosion of deaths result? The last time the current president was in office, overdose rates rose more than 44% over the course of his tenure — the largest overdose increase in American history, with more than 300,000 lives lost. This time, we may never know if history is repeating itself since the systems that monitor overdose deaths are themselves subject to elimination. However, families of future overdose victims may still wonder if 2025 was the year we helped make Americans die again.
