It's time to name and shame these Trump villains

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
The single biggest contributor is, of course, Elon Musk — the world’s richest person — who has plunked down almost $71 million into Republican midterm campaigns so far.

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.

BROCKMAN
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.

SCHWARZMAN
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.

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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 s--ts sits

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org