Naming names
Friends,
It’s important that we demonstrated against Trump’s
assertion of royal powers.
It’s at least as important to follow the money — and learn
the identities of America’s billionaire royalty who crowned Trump in the first
place. They’re now spending another regal fortune to keep Congress under his
control.
Today I’m going to name names.
As of March 1, according to a new
report from Americans for Tax Fairness, the 50 biggest-spending
billionaires in American politics had already contributed over $433 million to
the upcoming midterm political campaigns.
Not surprisingly, 80 percent of this haul is in support of
Republican candidates or conservative issue groups.
Given how early we are in the process, and how contributions
tend to accelerate closer to Election Day, 2026 will almost surely set a new
record for billionaire money in midterm elections. (Because of our current
pathetically weak campaign
finance laws, courtesy of the Supreme Court, fat-cat contributors are
funneling huge sums through super PACs. While such spending is supposed to be
independent of the campaign being supported, rules against coordination are
now going
largely unenforced.)
WHO THEY ARE
MUSK
Musk contributed a total of $278 million in the 2024
election cycle, mostly for getting Trump reelected. His “investment” has paid
off nicely. Musk’s net
worth has grown 220 percent since Trump won in 2024.
Musk’s latest cash infusion to Republicans came after his
short destructive stint as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,”
where he helped place his cronies
into high-level positions throughout the federal government.
Yes, I know. Musk and Trump had a falling out. But since
then both have realized they have more to gain as political partners. And now
that Musk’s SpaceX satellite system is integral to Pete Hegseth’s Department of
“War,” Musk has filed for an initial public offering, seeking a valuation over
$2 trillion and potentially raising $75 billion, which would make it the
largest IPO in history.
The New York Times reports that Musk participated in a phone call on Tuesday with Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. Musk’s companies have taken on significant investment from sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and he has long coveted a greater commercial presence in India.
YASS
Musk is followed in the billionaire-spending-on-politics sweepstakes by Wall Street financier Jeff Yass, who has contributed more than $55 million so far in this midterm election cycle. He’s donated $16 million to MAGA, Inc., Trump’s super PAC, dedicated to supporting candidates he backs.
The Yass donations came as Trump was deciding whether to
delay the forced sale of the social media app TikTok, in which Yass was a major
investor. Trump repeatedly delayed the sale, saving Yass’s
lucrative investment.
In addition, Yass has donated $10 million apiece to the anti-tax Club for Growth PAC; to another PAC that wants to drain funds from public schools to support private ones; and to a PAC that supports the political ambitions of former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Yass has also donated $7.5 million to a PAC dedicated to supporting House members of (and House candidates aspiring to belong to) the radical-right Freedom Caucus.
In third place is San Francisco AI tech mogul Greg Brockman, who has given $25 million in midterm money so far — mostly to Trump’s super PAC, presumably because Brockman wants to dismantle state-level AI regulations through federal preemptive action and thinks Trump will help him.
As president of OpenAI, Brockman recently agreed to let the Pentagon use his company’s AI technology — which his competitor Anthropic publicly refused to do over concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
UIHLEIN
Packaging titan Dick Uihlein has long been a major
donor to right-wing candidates and causes. (Among the beneficiaries of
his largesse have been many politicians who denied Donald Trump’s loss to Joe
Biden in the 2020 presidential election.)
The biggest recipients of Uihlein midterm money so far are
two super PACs for which Uihlein and his wife are the principal backers: $5
million to Restoration of America, supporting conservative political
candidates; and $3.5 million to Fair Courts America, which the Uihleins founded
to support conservative candidates for judicial office.
Private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman has long been a major Republican
Party megadonor. As CEO of the giant investment management company Blackstone,
Schwarzman has built a career on predatory
business practices and disregard
for the public good, while leveraging his immense wealth to rig the system
in his favor.
So far in the midterms, Schwarzman has spent: $5 million for
Trump’s super PAC; $5 million for the Republican Senate Leadership Fund; $1
million for the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund; and $1 million to a
super PAC exclusively backing Republican Senate Whip John Cornyn.
***
As we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence
from the British monarchy, it’s more important than ever to commit ourselves to
getting big money out of American politics.
As I’ve noted, here’s a
potential way to do this without waiting for the Supreme Court to reverse
its Citizens United decision or amending the Constitution.
Another is through small-donor
financing. The two aren’t mutually exclusive; indeed, we should push for
both.
Billionaires are not singularly responsible for corrupting
our system of government, of course — and not all billionaires are doing this.
But as wealth continues to concentrate at the top, America
finds itself in a doom loop in which giant campaign donations from the
super-rich buy political decisions that make them even richer.
This doom loop is the power behind the throne on which
Trump shits sits.