We’re hitting your inboxes a little earlier in the week than usual with this week’s Closer Look. That’s because we have very exciting news that we could not wait to share with you all: The Patriotic Millionaires made the front page of The Washington Post!
Jeff Stein’s article featuring Patriotic Millionaires made the front page of the paper
Last Friday, July 25, 2025, three of our members were featured in an article—“They’re rich. They’re anti-Trump. And they don’t want their big tax cut.”—written by The Washington Post’s Chief Economics Correspondent, Jeff Stein. The piece highlighted the irony inherent in Trump and Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in that it disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans who are increasingly opposed to both Trump and the tax cuts he showers on their class. Patriotic Millionaires Kim Hoover, Drew Pomerance, and Morris Pearl spoke to Jeff and shared their unique perspectives and experiences with him, explaining why they support a more equitable tax code. Jeff also attributed all three as members of Patriotic Millionaires—a welcomed name-drop that we hope caught some prospective members’ eyes!
The piece has attracted an incredible amount of attention. On Friday morning, it topped the Post’s “Most Read” list and a push alert went out for the article as an Editor’s Pick. Print subscribers woke up on Saturday morning to also see it running on the front cover of the print edition. All told, thanks to the Post’s extensive readership, the article has reached over 28 million people around the world. Talk about going global!
The story has also made quite a splash on social media. The Post’s Instagram carousel post highlighting the piece has garnered over 42,000 “likes” and hundreds of comments. Our own social posts on X, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, and LinkedIn also continue to reach a wide audience while generating a significant amount of engagement.
We were thrilled to see Kim, Drew, and Morris featured in the Post’s story. They each come from different professional backgrounds: Kim is the owner of a real estate company, Drew is a nationally renowned trial and appellate attorney who works in business and commercial litigation, and Morris, our Chair, is a former Managing Director at BlackRock. They’ve certainly traversed different paths in life, but they ultimately all led to the same conclusion: economic inequality is harmful to our country, even if they are the ones benefiting from it.
The piece opened with Kim and her thoughts about the tax windfall she will (begrudgingly) reap from Trump’s new bill: “At some point, it starts to feel wrong. It starts to feel excessive. It starts to feel somehow inappropriate. And at some point, it just doesn’t feel good. Imbalanced is really not good for anyone, even if you’re on the positive end of that imbalance, because it’s unsustainable.”
Drew echoed Kim’s sentiments later in the piece: “Don’t get me wrong: I like money. I like having money. I’m not opposed to having money. But at the expense of what it does to the rest of the country, it should not be a priority to give me and other rich people more money.”
Finally, here’s what Morris said to close out the piece: “It’s great for me personally, financially. But even looking at my own and my family’s long-term self-interest, I would prefer less inequality and less of a country of very rich and very poor, and more of a country with lots of people doing all right.”
The article quickly became a top-read story on The Washington Post’s website on Friday
In speaking with Jeff for the story, Morris specifically highlighted two parts of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—its changes to the estate tax and the creation of low-tax Opportunity Zones—that he and his family benefited from that were extended and expanded as part of the new tax bill. We talk all the time about the estate tax, but haven’t discussed Opportunity Zones in much detail. Essentially, they allow investors like Morris to delay payment of capital gains tax if they reinvest profits from the sale of assets in low-income communities; additionally, they erase payment of capital gains tax if they hold investments in Opportunity Zones for at least 10 years. Proponents like to claim that this tax benefit helps the poor, but just like other “trickle down” policies, research has shown that it has failed to affect the employment, earnings, and poverty of Opportunity Zone residents and that most investments tend to flow to communities that are relatively better-off.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Opportunity Zones rob the poor to help the rich, Morris laid out everything you need to know in his 2021 book, Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer.
We’re so grateful the Post gave us the opportunity to get the word out about how regressive Trump and Republicans’ new tax bill is—and how, increasingly, our wealthy peers are on our side in rejecting tax cuts that we neither need nor deserve. We have a long road ahead in our fight for tax justice, but special moments like this give us the inspiration we need to soldier on.