report

The Hidden Heist

How Corporations Push State Bans to Keep Us Broke and Hijack Our Democracy

A collage of images connected by red lines: hands exchanging money, people rallying outside a capital building, people with protest signs saying "pay the wage," a corporate office tower

From Music City to the Mile High City, small town Missouri and suburban California, communities have organized for decades to win powerful local solutions that address shared needs.

From making sure our jobs pay enough to cover the bills and our housing is affordable, to protecting each other from pollution and harassment, we have worked together to take care of each other and stand up to corporate greed.

But corporations have honed a strategy for blocking our efforts to check their abuses — one that keeps them in the shadows while they hijack the tools of our democracy. Often hiding behind industry lobbying associations, corporations buy, bully, and bamboozle state lawmakers into banning local policies that protect communities.

These state bans now tie the hands of communities and local leaders in all 50 states, attacking our essential freedoms so they can keep profiting off our pain. Corporations have used these bans to harm millions of people — stealing paid sick days, higher wages, reasonable caps on rent, and even water breaks for people working outside in the heat. And communities of color, women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people have borne the brunt of this pain.

In their fervent quest to resist any checks on their power and profitmaking, corporations have also created the political structures, the playbook, and the social and economic conditions that have fueled the rise of authoritarians today.

Explore the report

This report reveals how corporations in different states, industries, and eras have used the same playbook to ban a wide range of community-driven solutions.

It includes:

  • Corporate power vs community progress: The two-century history of corporations and wealthy elites hijacking democracy.

  • State case studies: Exposing how corporations have banned affordable housing solutions, higher wages, and livable workplaces in California, Colorado, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

  • The repeat tactics: How corporations buy, bully, and bamboozle to get their way.

  • The repeat villains: The industry groups, corporations, and ideological think tanks that push state bans from state to state.

In our five case study states, we trace how corporations — working through industry groups and partnering with ideological think tanks and politicians — have pushed state bans that:

  • Enable landlords to charge sky-high rents for up to 4 million renters in Tennessee, Colorado, and California — trapping low-income renters into escalating affordability crises that harm their health.

  • Cut off life-saving paid sick leave from over half a million people in Missouri, endangering one in four Missouri children.

  • Took away over $580 million a year in higher wages from the lowest paid Missourians and gave it to corporations instead.

  • Increase the risk of heat-borne illness and death for over 3 million Texans who work outdoors.

  • Threaten the safety and dignity of 1.3 million LGBTQ+ Texans and create new obstacles to upholding the rights of immigrants, people of color, and disabled people across Texas.

A collage of elements set against a textured old US map, with red string connecting elements: a pile of money, a historical image of John Calhoun, logos of the American Liberty Leage, ALEC, Standard Oil, National Steel, General Motors, DuPont; torn shreds of the Powell Memo

Corporate Power vs Community Progress

The Rise of State Bans as a Tool to Hijack Democracy

The state bans corporations push today are part of a longer two-century effort by corporations and wealthy elites to hijack democracy and suppress efforts to rein in their abuses. In the process, they’ve created the conditions that fueled the rise of authoritarians today.

Explore how we got here

State Case Studies

All across the country, corporations have used the same tactics to block community-driven solutions like higher wages, affordable homes, and safe workplaces — while hijacking our democracy to serve their interests.

Cover of The Hidden Heist: Missouri report

The Corporate-Backed Legislature vs the People of Missouri

In Missouri, corporations have launched a full-fledged assault on the people of Missouri and their basic freedoms — like livable wages, lifesaving workplace protections, and the ability to shape policies affecting their lives.

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California, Colorado, Tennessee, and Texas case studies coming soon!

The Repeat Tactics: Buy, Bully, Bamboozle

To push state lawmakers into banning community solutions, corporations turn time and again to the same set of tactics:

An icon with a black money bag against a red circle

Buy

Corporations pour funds into amassing political power over lawmakers and voters — like writing campaign checks and hiring pricey lobbyists — and leverage this influence to ban policies that protect community wellbeing.

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Buy

Corporations often join forces and pool resources through large industry-wide lobbying groups and super PACs with innocuous-sounding names. That way the corporations can magnify their power while protecting their individual brand image. They then channel money through these groups to pay for lobbying efforts that influence lawmakers to advance their corporate interest. They also used these funds for campaign contributions to elect corporate-friendly lawmakers, while blocking community-backed candidates from winning.

These industry groups often also directly author state bans and other pro-business bills, with legislators acting primarily as mouthpieces for their corporate donors. And when issues are put directly to voters through ballot initiatives, corporate-backed political committees spend huge sums on misleading ads in order to overwhelm community voices and block community-led solutions.

For example

The National Restaurant Association and the Missouri Restaurant Association pooled resources to give $45,000 in 2015 to “Missourians for Fair Wages,” a PAC operational for one year only, formed specifically to oppose local minimum wage increases. As described in the Missouri case study, the PAC was pivotal to the corporate strategy to delay and block local wage increases in St. Louis and Kansas City from taking effect before the state’s minimum wage ban became law.

Bully

Companies regularly hire law firms to sue states for adopting policies that check their power. They also threaten to jack up prices or, having already pushed out local competition, threaten to exit a local or state market altogether. Corporations may even seek to punish elected officials for taking action to protect their communities.

For example

The Texas Public Policy Foundation — a right-wing, corporate-aligned think tank and a driver of that state’s sweeping “Death Star” ban — has used the threat of lawsuits (and the associated legal costs) as a weapon to bully cities like Dallas into repealing existing local policies that may stand in contrast to the new draconian state law. TPPF recently sued the city of Dallas over a list of 133 local policies — including everything from LGBTQ+ employment protections to water conservation policies to minimum wage ordinances.

Bamboozle

Rigging public narratives against local regulation and oversight is a cornerstone of the corporate playbook. Corporations, their lobbyists, and political allies across the country routinely parrot the talking point that local policies create a “patchwork of regulation” harmful to employers — but then fight all efforts to pass consistent statewide or national labor, environmental, or consumer safeguards. Corporations regularly make the argument that any regulation will hurt the people it’s meant to help — e.g. that rent stabilization will restrict housing supply or that modest increases to minimum wages will result in job loss. And they even use messaging that co-opts community concerns to confuse people about the impact of policies.

Not only are these claims unsupported by evidence, the same industry groups pushing these arguments are too often composed of corporations notorious for holding down wages or jacking up rents for the same people their industry lobbyists claim to protect. Corporations and their industry associations regularly evoke the plight of small businesses, warning that checks on corporate power will cost Main Street shops — and the jobs and families they support. Yet some of the same industry groups claiming to represent the interests of small business are funded by major corporations or have representatives of those corporations sitting on their board. And it is too often the interests and bottom lines of these massive corporations — not the mom-and-pops — that are setting the agenda at the legislature and the ballot box.

For example

In Concord, the California Apartment Association repeatedly sent misleading text messages to residents about proposed rent stabilization policies, including one set of messages that urged residents to “vote YES on Councilmember Pablo Benavente’s proposal to cap Concord rents” when his proposal involved actually increasing the allowable rent cap from 3% to 7%. This bamboozle was part of the strategy that led to the Concord City Council voting to re-open and ultimately weaken Concord’s existing rent stabilization policy in 2025 — which the Apartment Association celebrated as a rare occurrence.

The Repeat Villains

In state after state, the same industry groups, corporations, and ideological think tanks use buy, bully, and bamboozle tactics to push state bans on community solutions:

Airbnb

Airbnb plays a central role in the housing crisis nationwide, driving up housing costs in cities across the country by converting sorely needed housing into short-term rentals and using money and lawsuits to ban community efforts to regulate short term rentals.

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Airbnb

Founded in 2007 and publicly traded as of 2020, Airbnb is one of the largest companies in the United States. It has used aggressive buy, bully, and bamboozle tactics – including weaponizing courts and organizing hosts into a lobbying force to ban regulations on short-term rentals at both local and state levels.

Airbnb plays a central role in the housing crisis nationwide, driving up housing costs for local residents by converting sorely needed housing into short-term rentals. And the company has become a vehicle for investors to buy multiple homes with the explicit purpose of renting them out as short-term rentals and running them essentially as unregulated hotels. Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky has a net worth of $9.4 billion.

In Tennessee: Airbnb donated directly to its own PAC and spent up to $500,000 on lobbying between 2015-2024, facilitating the expansion of short-term rentals while blocking community efforts to regulate them. During that same time period, short-term rentals in Tennessee expanded significantly, renters in Knoxville experienced the highest housing cost increases of any metro area, and Tennessee lawmakers passed bans on community efforts to regulate short-term rentals.

American Legislative Exchange Council

Since the 1970s, ALEC has been a key driver of state bans and the larger corporate deregulation agenda — disseminating model bills that have become the template for harmful state bans and right wing laws in states across the country.

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American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Since the 1970s, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has provided a closed-door forum for corporate stakeholders to work with (decidedly conservative leaning) legislators on creating “model bills” that they then use to lobby state lawmakers in all 50 states. ALEC was co-founded by Paul Weyrich and launched as a critical vehicle for advancing the political agenda of the New Right. Since its formation, ALEC has been a pivotal force in the expansion of state bans as a cornerstone of the corporate deregulation strategy. ALEC acts as a clearinghouse for corporate-lawmaker exchanges and an efficient avenue for corporations to push their agenda across multiple states at once. As the American Prospect notes, “ALEC’s agenda extends to almost every area of public policy, as lawmakers take these model bills written by powerful special-interest and far-right groups—including the tobacco, gun, oil, pharmaceutical, and telecom industries—back to their statehouses and introduce them as their own.” 

A 2019 investigation by USA Today and The Arizona Republic found that “bills based on ALEC models were introduced nearly 2,900 times, in all 50 states and the U.S. Congress, from 2010 through 2018, with more than 600 becoming law.” ALEC has provided the template for numerous state bans, such as bans on local minimum wage and rent stabilization ordinances, as well as bans on local discrimination protections, gun control, and public health protections. Notably, lawmakers pay only $200 per year in ALEC dues, accounting for less than 1% of its revenue. Its corporate members, on the other hand, pay thousands each year to buy access to legislators and drive the agenda through seats on the policy task forces that draft model bills. 

The organization’s annual meetings provide the forum for developing and sharing model legislation and strategizing to get priority bills implemented. For example, in May 2011, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker approved Senate Bill 23, banning municipalities from passing paid sick leave ordinances. That summer, copies of the bill were distributed at the annual ALEC meeting, along with a map created by the National Restaurant Association showing where similar laws were enacted, anticipated or defeated. Over the next five years, at least 11 states adopted versions of Wisconsin’s law. 

ALEC’s right-wing legacy has included opposing divestment during the anti-apartheid movement under the Reagan years, and developing model “stand your ground” (alternatively known as “shoot first”) laws - which proliferated in the years after the police murder of Trayvon Martin. More recently ALEC has been active in combatting corporate DEI efforts as well as promoting legislation attacking LGBTQ+ rights, shutting down discussion of racial and gender diversity in public schools, and advancing discriminatory voter ID laws.

Chamber of Commerce

The US Chamber of Commerce — along with its statewide and local affiliates — has been a major driver of state bans and the larger corporate deregulation agenda in states across the country.

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Chamber of Commerce

The US Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business organization, governed by a board that includes representatives from some of our country’s largest corporations — including Pfizer, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Hilton, Meta, Microsoft, and Comcast.

The Chamber has been a primary driver of the corporate deregulation agenda for decades and lobbies against nearly every kind of state and local policy protecting working people while advancing corporate interests at all levels of government.

While the Chamber regularly argues against a “patchwork of regulation” in its efforts to push state bans on local policies, its state affiliates have also blocked community-driven efforts to create uniform statewide standards that improve wages and protections for working people.

The US Chamber alone spent $76.3 million on lobbying in 2024, not including spending by its statewide and local chapters.

The Chamber’s state affiliates have fought tenant protection policies in Colorado and inclusionary zoning policies in Tennessee. And its Texas and Missouri chapters have spent heavily on lobbying and are deeply involved in fighting local efforts to raise standards for working people.

In Texas: Along with its local Chambers, the Texas Association of Business (TAB) — which is the Texas State Chamber of Commerce — spent up to $250,000 on lobbying the legislature in 2023, and local Chambers spent up to $1.6 million. 2023 was the same year that Texas lawmakers passed the Death Star bill, a sweeping ban on local policymaking that massively eroded local governing power to address nearly every issue facing working families. 

In Missouri: The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been an active driver of bans on wage increases — lobbying in support of the 2015 state ban on local minimum wage policies, suing St. Louis and later the state of Missouri to block local wage increases, and collaborating with lawmakers to retroactively nullify past minimum wage ordinances at the local level. The Board of the Missouri Chamber includes representatives from major corporations like Ameren, Anheuser Busch, AT&T, H&R Block, Hallmark Cards, Inc, Coca-Cola/Dr. Pepper, and Pfizer.

Greystar

The country’s largest landlord, property manager, and developer, Greystar is a major profiteer of the national housing crisis and a driving force behind apartment association efforts across the country to ban rent stabilization and tenant protection policies.

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Greystar

The largest apartment owner, manager, and developer in the United States, Greystar is a driving force behind the corporate landlord lobby, with representatives from Greystar holding multiple seats on the national and several state apartment association boards. Greystar is also a massive global landlord, managing and operating $315 billion in real estate across five continents.

Greystar has been subject of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit for deceptive advertising – resulting in a $24 million combined settlement paid to the FTC and State of Colorado in late 2025— along with four consolidated class action suits brought by tenants alleging Greystar imposed hidden and illegal junk fees in Colorado, and a Department of Justice lawsuit for participating in price-fixing schemes with other corporate landlords in numerous states.

Greystar’s CEO Bob Faith is worth over $5 billion.

In Colorado: Greystar has been a pernicious presence in the rental housing market, controlling 6% of the state’s rental housing while profiting off the state’s ban on rent stabilization and other tenant protections that the Colorado Apartment Association (with Greystar holding two seats on its board) has worked to uphold.

National Apartment Association

The primary voice of the corporate landlord lobby, the National Apartment Association and its state affiliates has been an aggressive driver of state bans on rent stabilization and tenant protections in states across the country.

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National Apartment Association

The National Apartment Association (parent organization to various state associations) is the primary voice of the corporate landlord lobby, with some of the country’s largest multifamily corporate owners driving the agenda of the national association and its state affiliates.

Representatives from Greystar hold three seats on the national association’s board and sit on multiple other state Apartment Association boards. Major corporate landlords like Blackstone and its subsidiaries, Essex Property Trust, and Avalon Bay Communities have collectively sent millions to power the association’s California affiliate campaigns to defeat stronger rent stabilization and tenant protection policies.

The Apartment Association’s state chapters have proudly touted their role in preserving corporate-driven bans and beating back local tenant protections. Through its buy, bully, bamboozle tactics, the National Apartment Association and its state affiliates have ensured corporate members can continue cashing in on the escalating housing crises they contribute to.

In Tennessee: The Tennessee Apartment association’s PAC donated to Senator Haile, who introduced the 2018 bill that banned Nashville’s ordinance creating incentives for development of affordable housing. Haile reported that he developed this legislation in “collaboration” with five industry groups including the Tennessee Apartment Association.

In California: A notorious buyer and bamboozler, the California Apartment Association spent a whopping $88 million to block a 2024 measure to repeal the state’s partial ban on rent stabilization (Costa Hawkins). The California Apartment Association has also celebrated “recent victories” in blocking or weakening local eviction protections in Los Angeles, a Culver City proposal to provide publicly funded legal support to tenants, and rent stabilization measures in communities across the state. 

In Colorado: The state apartment association — which represents owners who control almost 50% of all rental housing stock in the state — is Colorado’s most prominent public face opposing local rent stabilization and tenant protections. Its tactics have included large donations to sway legislators towards a pro-landlord agenda across party lines, lobbying legislators into blocking or weakening tenant protection laws, and bamboozling lawmakers and voters by pushing deceptive information about how rent stabilization harms tenants.

National Association of Realtors

The National Association of Realtors — whose leadership team includes representatives from real estate brokerage firms like Century 21 and Realty ONE — has been a major driver of state bans on rent stabilization and tenant protections across the country.

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National Association of Realtors

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has combatted rent stabilization on residential and commercial properties in states across the country, while rallying its state and local affiliates to do the same. Its leadership team includes representatives from major real estate brokerage firms like Century 21 and Realty ONE Group.

NAR lobbies against tenant protections, opposes the regulation of short-term rentals, and rails against the “expan[sion] of the authority of local governments” to provide oversight on property owners. Its state chapters run well-funded political action committees that have contributed to sponsors of corporate-driven bans.

National Federation of Independent Business

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has been a consistent driver of state bans on minimum wage and workplace protections across the country, pushing an agenda that benefits corporations while claiming to represent the interests of small mom and pop shops.

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National Federation of Independent Business

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) describes itself as the “voice of small business,” while lobbying in support of major corporate interests and against government regulation in DC and all 50 state capitals.

NFIB is notorious for its campaign to weaken workers’ rights to compensation when injured on the job and has actively driven state bans on wage and labor protections in states like Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas — where NFIB is a key organization behind the Alliance for Securing and Strengthening the Economy in Texas (ASSET), a coalition of industry groups formed specifically to push bans on labor regulations in the state.

Despite claiming to advocate for the interests of small mom-and-pops, NFIB has been influenced and funded by major corporations and billionaire industrialists. In 2012, for example, the NFIB received $1.5 million from Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a conservative advocacy group with close ties to the Koch brothers’ empire. And in 2010, the NFIB received $3.7 million from Crossroads GPS, a conservative advocacy group advised by Karl Rove that has received millions in donations from fossil fuel corporations like Alliance Resource Partners, Clayton Williams Energy, and individuals from BP Capital and Petco Petroleum.

In Texas: The NFIB made Texas’ sweeping Death Star bill — banning cities from governing on eight broad areas of policy — its priority legislation in 2023. It spent up to $505,450 on lobbying that year and positioned small business owners in front of the legislature to testify on behalf of the bill. 

In Missouri: The NFIB was an active player in pushing minimum wage bans, including suing to block St. Louis’ minimum wage ordinance from taking effect and later the state of Missouri in an industry-backed attempt to overturn Proposition A and the will of 1.7 million Missourians. NFIB has also endorsed efforts by Missouri legislators to change the rules for citizen-driven ballot initiatives to make them significantly more difficult to pass.

National Restaurant Association

The National Restaurant Association is the leading lobby for the US restaurant industry, consistently advocating against minimum wage increases at all levels of government.

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National Restaurant Association

The National Restaurant Association is the leading business association for the US restaurant industry, with affiliates in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.

The national association consistently advocates against federal and state minimum wage increases and fights to entrench the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers.

Its state affiliates have been active drivers of state bans on local wage increases, using buy and bully tactics to block the lowest paid workers from gaining more livable wages in cities and states across the country. The National Restaurant Association has also worked with ALEC to push state bans on paid sick leave protections. 

In Missouri: The National Restaurant Association and the Missouri Restaurant Association were the primary funders of a PAC — deceptively named “Missourians for Fair Wages” — formed in 2015 specifically to oppose local wage increases.  This PAC was instrumental in blocking Kansas City’s previously passed local minimum wage increase policy from taking effect. The Missouri Restaurant Association was part of industry-backed lawsuits designed to block local wage increases in St. Louis and across the state as part of the legal assault on Proposition A. And the head of the Missouri Restaurant Association actively lobbied state legislators to weaken Proposition A, contributing to the removal of the paid sick leave provisions from this landmark ballot initiative that had already won support from 60% of Missouri voters in 2024. 

In Texas: The Texas Restaurant Association is a member of a cross-industry coalition formed exclusively to promote bans on local labor protections.  Between 2020-2024, this coalition donated over $400,000 to the sponsors of Texas’ sweeping Death Star ban.

National Retail Federation

The National Retail Federation — representing some of our country’s largest corporations like Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot — has pushed state bans on wage and workplace protections that would benefit millions of workers employed by these companies.

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National Retail Federation

The National Retail Federation and its state affiliates have taken a lead role in pushing bans on wage and workplace protections in states like Missouri and Texas, undermining working conditions for the millions employed by major US retail companies across the country.

The boards of these state affiliates include representatives from huge national chains like Amazon, CVS, Dollar General, Home Depot, PepsiCo, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart. And the same lobbyists from Home Depot and Macy’s serve on the boards of both the Missouri and Texas Retailers Associations.

In Missouri: Representative Dan Shaul authored the state’s ban on local minimum wage increases in 2015 while simultaneously serving as Chair of the Missouri Retailers Association. The state association was also part of the lawsuit filed by multiple industry groups to ban St. Louis’ local wage increase in 2015, ultimately blocking it from taking effect just hours before the new minimum wage was to begin.

In Texas: The Texas Retailers Association is a member of a cross-industry coalition formed exclusively to promote bans on local labor protections. Between 2020-2024, this coalition donated over $400,000 to the sponsors of Texas’ sweeping Death Star ban.

State Policy Network

State Policy Network and its members and affiliates operate in all 50 states as the research, policy, and legal arm of ALEC — pushing state bans and the larger corporate deregulation agenda through the guise of “non-partisan” think tanks.

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State Policy Network

A conservative network of think tanks with members and affiliates in all 50 states, the State Policy Network (SPN) and its members serve as the policy, research, and legal complement to ALEC’s policy agenda. SPN has been an advocate of weakening unions (through so-called “right to work” laws), privatizing education, and rolling back environmental regulations, and its members often directly author or influence ALEC’s “model bills” that get pushed by industry groups in states across the country.

SPN’s members and affiliates have been active drivers of state bans harming working people across the country. The State Policy Network was founded in the 1980s by a Reagan administration advisor and Trustee of The Heritage Foundation, and its current board of directors includes Project 2025 authors, including representatives from The Heritage Foundation and corporate affiliated groups like the Adolph Coors Foundation, which funds projects in alignment with “traditional Judeo-Christian values.”

Despite its affiliated Center for Practical Federalism proclaiming that “when policy is local, it takes into account unique community conditions…and thereby leads to better outcomes for more of the people it governs,” SPN’s affiliates have driven state bans eroding the governing power of local communities across the country.

In Tennessee: SPN affiliate Beacon Center acted as the legal arm in the corporate-led assault on local affordable housing solutions, repeatedly suing Nashville to block everything from regulations on short-term rentals to inclusionary zoning policies. Beacon’s board includes a top lobbyist for a major provider of “Christian worldview” online curriculum.

In Texas: SPN affiliate Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) was a primary driver and the current legal arm of the corporate push for the state’s sweeping “Death Star” ban in 2023. TPPF spent among the highest of organizations lobbying that year in support of the bill and praised its passage as a “victory for liberty,” likening the ban to a bomb being dropped on “rebel cities” to “strike back against burdensome regulation.” Death Star seeks to obliterate the power of local communities to govern in eight broad areas affecting the wellbeing of millions of Texans. TPPF’s corporate donors have included Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and the conglomerate Koch Industries. And its Vice Chair Tim Dunn is an oil and gas billionaire who has pushed policies and funded groups aligned with White Christian Nationalism at the state and federal level.

Credits

This project builds on the insights, perspective, and hard work of many staff, partners, affiliates, and movement collaborators. In addition to PowerSwitch staff, this project was made possible by: Julie Gozan and Holley Knaus (original research, analysis, and writing) and Zoë Levitt (narrative and substantive editing, supplemental research, and writing). We welcome ongoing opportunities to collaborate on, sharpen, and strengthen our analysis.

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