Skip to content Skip to footer

Sections

Trending

Latest

More

© 2026 Truthout

Robert Manning:

New federal credit card rules that took effect Monday promise to outlaw the most egregious practices of the credit card industry that have plunged customers into insurmountable debt. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure, or CARD, Act includes new protections for customers under twenty-one and makes it illegal for credit card companies to retroactively … Continued

By
DemocracyNOW!

Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.

New federal credit card rules that took effect Monday promise to outlaw the most egregious practices of the credit card industry that have plunged customers into insurmountable debt. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure, or CARD, Act includes new protections for customers under twenty-one and makes it illegal for credit card companies to retroactively increase rates and charge certain types of misleading fees. But many credit card companies have already been trying to find ways to bypass these new rules by reinstating annual fees, cutting credit limits and hiking interest rates. Credit card issuers established or expanded the use of at least eight hidden charges to circumvent the rules, according to a report from the Center for Responsible Lending.

We lost 15 percent of our traffic overnight.

We now have three full months of data since Google changed its search to feature AI results. The numbers are worse than we anticipated. Overall readership that comes to Truthout through Google is down 54 percent against last year. The number of new readers who discover Truthout via Google searches is down 49 percent, and returning users from Google are down 51 percent.

We lost 15 percent of our readership overnight. This was a readership we painstakingly built over decades, and it vanished because Google chose corporate greed over a healthy democracy.

We anticipate a loss of roughly $500,000 in online revenue as a result of this massive traffic plunge in the next year alone.

The only way we can keep publishing is with strong reader support. We are asking you to start a monthly donation to Truthout today — anything you can do, whether $5 or $25, makes a difference.