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New Proposal From Trump SEC ‘Makes Buying Politicians Great Again,’ Watchdog Warns
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Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
US President Donald Trump speaks with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins during a meeting on August 19, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
“Donald Trump and his administration are rigging our markets to work for the wealthy and well-connected while working people pay the price.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday proposed axing anti-corruption rules designed to prevent investment advisers from using political donations to obtain business from public pension funds.
Finance industry watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers warned the SEC’s proposal would potentially harm Americans’ retirement accounts and further boost corruption in the federal government, where graft has become increasingly common and overt under the leadership of billionaire President Donald Trump. Better Markets said the SEC’s plan to rescind the agency’s longstanding “pay to-play” regulations “makes buying politicians great again.”
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“SEC Chair Paul Atkins has yet to meet a rule he does not want to rescind,” said Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets. “He has the SEC proposing to rescind a rule that prevents so-called ‘pay-to-play’ practices by investment advisers, where advisers make political contributions to government officials in the hopes that those officials will select them for the lucrative assignment of managing public pension funds and other government assets.”
“Chair Atkins says the SEC is proposing to rescind the rule because it ‘has effectively resulted in the suppression of political speech.’ Not so,” added Schiffrin. “It has resulted in the suppression of corruption. The rule was intended to, and does, ‘combat pay to play arrangements in which advisers are chosen based on their campaign contributions to political officials rather than on merit.’ Chair Atkins apparently believes that such arrangements should be promoted.”
The SEC’s “pay-to-play” rules, enacted in 2010, barred investment advisers from providing paid services to government clients for at least two years after making a political contribution to an elected official or candidate.
The Trump SEC’s proposal will face a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register.
The Lever’s Katya Schwenk and Freddy Brewster noted Friday that “after years of relatively weak enforcement, Biden’s SEC brought several charges against investment advisers for violating the pay-to-play rule in 2023 and 2024.” For example, the Biden SEC charged Obra Capital Management for “continuing to provide investment advisory services for compensation from a government entity following a campaign contribution made by an associate to an elected official with influence over selecting investment advisers for the government entity.”
“Since Trump came to office, the pay-to-play rule has been the subject of lobbying by financial powerhouses that are invested in public pension funds,” Schwenk and Brewster reported. “BlackRock Funds Services Group, LLC, a subsidiary of the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock, Inc., spent more than $1.5 million in 2025 lobbying the SEC, Congress, the White House, and other regulators on the pay-to-play rule, among other matters, disclosures show.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the rules targeted by Trump’s SEC prevent “elected officials from rewarding wealthy campaign donors with lucrative contracts to advise government investments.”
The proposed rollback, said Warren, represents “another example of how Donald Trump and his administration are rigging our markets to work for the wealthy and well-connected while working people pay the price.”
Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
6 September 2026
Who funds Reform? Farage’s party bags £15m from crypto and finance donors
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Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Darren Staples/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Reform has accepted more large donations than any other party in 2026, despite mounting funding scandals, new data shows
Nigel Farage’s party received large donations totalling almost £15m in the first six months of this year, according to Electoral Commission records, including millions of pounds from a crypto billionaire who was pardoned by Donald Trump last year.
Reform’s fundraising operations continue to prove highly effective in spite of its ongoing scandals. The party is amassing a massive financial war chest ahead of the next general election, which many in Westminster believe could take place as soon as next autumn.
The latest donations data comes as Reform suspends two senior aides pending an investigation, after an undercover sting exposed their alleged role in facilitating secret donations, including from impermissible donors overseas. Rival parties said they have reported Reform to the police, while the Electoral Commission said it is “considering all relevant information” and is “in touch with the Met Police”. Reform has denied any wrongdoing.
The events have overshadowed the party’s conference in Birmingham this weekend, and are the latest in a series of scandals the party has faced over its funding this year. In July, openDemocracy travelled to Montenegro to investigate the lives and business interests of key Reform allies and donors, including ‘Posh George’ Cottrell and billionaire crypto investor Christopher Harborne, in the glamorous coastal resort of Tivat.
At the same time, a number of news reports raised serious questions about Cottrell and Farage, after The Sunday Times reported the Clacton MP had failed to disclose in-kind support from the 32-year-old convicted fraudster. The allegations led to calls for an investigation by parliamentary authorities, which were already probing a £5m gift that Farage allegedly failed to declare having received from Harborne.
Reform’s crypto funding
The latest data shows Reform continues to bring in significantly more from large donations than the other parties: £5.3m in the second quarter of 2026, compared to £3.6m for Labour and £2.8m for the Conservatives.
That brings the party’s total donations this year to almost £15m, meaning it has accepted almost twice as much as Labour (£8m) and more than double the Conservatives (£7m).
Reform receives the vast majority of its funding from a small number of high-value donors, with Harborne, a crypto investor based in Thailand, by far the party’s most significant donor to date.
Now, the party has added another crypto billionaire with offshore links to its ranks of mega donors; Sheffield-born Ben Delo gave the party £4m in April, following two £2m donations in January and March.
British crypto entrepreneur Delo has rapidly become one of Reform UK’s largest individual donors, having given the party £8m across the first half of 2026 – £4m in each quarter. If he continues this trend throughout the rest of the year, he could surpass Harborne’s current total.
Delo is one of many Reform donors with strong interests in the crypto sector. He was a software engineer at IBM and later built high-frequency trading systems at JPMorgan and GSA Capital in Hong Kong, before co-founding cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX. In 2020, US federal authorities charged the BitMEX founders with violating the Bank Secrecy Act over inadequate anti-money-laundering controls; Delo pleaded guilty in 2022, paid a $10m penalty and served 30 months’ probation, which ended in December 2024. Trump pardoned him in March 2025.
Delo’s latest donations come after the government imposed a £100,000 cap on donations from overseas residents in March 2026. At the time, Delo said he would move back to the UK to sidestep the restriction, and he has reportedly signalled plans to keep funding the party from Britain going forward.
Big finance and former Tories
Reform also continues to add new donors with interests in the financial sector. Over the past year, senior figures in the party have engaged with lobbyists in the City of London, seeking both policy ideas and financial support.
Lucas Bitencourt, a young finance entrepreneur, gave the party £100,000, while private equity firm Bryden Capital gave £50,000 and a Jersey financial adviser who works with “the world’s first bitcoin investment fund” gave £25,000.
A Scottish corporate lawyer specialising in private equity and technology continues to provide funding, giving £100,000 in May. He has now given the party £300,000 in total.
An investment firm linked to Chelsea owner Todd Boehly – a significant donor to conservative politics in the US – also gave the party £75,000.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, also received a significant donation after defecting to the party from the Conservatives. Jenrick received £50,000 from a donor with ties to financial services and crypto, Michael Cohen of Capital Group, an investment firm that the Wall Street Journal last year reported was “ploughing billions into crypto”.
Three former Tory donors continue to make up a significant portion of Reform’s funding base: Bassim Haidar, Johan Christofferson and Roger Nagioff all contributed six-figure sums in recent months and have now given over a million between them since the last election. Excluding Harborne, who gave Boris Johnson £1m in 2022, former Tory donors have given Reform over £3m since the 2024 vote.
Article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Nigel Farage is scathing at the £250,000 cost to the taxpayer of his unnecessary and ridiculous Clacton-on-Sea election campaign that he caused to avoid scrutiny and acccountability for the £5MILLION ‘gift’ that he didn’t declare.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage admits to being a whore willing to do anything for someone with a big fat wallet and asks whether drinking pints and smoking fags is not enough for the stupid plebs.
5 September 2026
Reform UK has a new target in its sights: Disabled people
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Article by Fazilet Hadi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Nigel Farage drinks a pint at The Ship pub in Clacton on 13 August 2026. Ben Montgomery/Getty Images
With its discriminatory plans for PIP and social housing, Farage’s party has made clear that we’re not part of its gang
Reform’s political statements are short, blunt and make crystal clear who it does and doesn’t want in its gang. So far, refugees and other foreign nationals have borne the brunt of the party’s hostility and vitriol, but in recent weeks, it has also turned the spotlight of rejection on Disabled people.
Last month, Nigel Farage’s party announced that, should it take power at the next election, it will abolish Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The benefit is paid to Disabled people who experience barriers to living independently, and there are around four million recipients across England and Wales, 83% of whom are of working age.
Having a disability adds an average of £1,095 a month to household bills, according to research by Scope, a disability charity. PIP recognises and contributes to these extra costs (although, even at its highest rate of £778.40 a month, it often doesn’t cover them in full). It helps pay for charging an electric wheelchair or turning the heating up in a cost-of-living crisis; for pre-prepared food and specific diets; for the specialised transport needed to hold down a job; for the essential personal care that enables a person to get out of bed in the morning, and any other support that allows Disabled people to live independently in their communities.
The vast majority of Disabled people don’t receive PIP; accessing the payment is widely recognised as an arduous, barrier-heavy process that often deters or denies the very people it is supposed to support. Rather than overhauling the system to reduce the unwieldy bureaucracy or fix the high error rates – two-thirds of PIP rejections are overturned at tribunal, with no new evidence presented in the vast majority of cases – Reform wants to scrap it altogether.
The party plans to provide payments only to an ill-defined group of Disabled people whom it deems most in need. The rest of us will be forced to go cap in hand to local authorities for support, much as Disabled people in the 19th century were required to depend on the charity of the parish. Rather than ‘saving taxpayer money’, as the party has claimed, such proposals will offload costs onto an already crumbling NHS and underfunded social care sector, while driving Disabled people towards institutionalised care.
The party’s attack on Disabled people hasn’t stopped there. Also last month, it said it would prioritise British-born working people under 35 for social housing, with additional preference given to married couples with children. The discriminatory divisiveness of this policy proposal is breathtaking. To base the allocation of scarce social housing on where a person was born, their employment status, age, or relationship status, rather than on their need, is unfair and unjust.
Entire sections of our society would effectively be excluded from social housing under the policy, including: older people, Disabled people of all ages who are unable to work due to impairments or health conditions, single people, and everyone born outside the UK, including those who have fled violence in their home countries.
These deeply divisive policy statements fail to provide the underlying analysis that led to the plans, or any vision for system change. The stats show that a large number of people on the social housing waiting list are Disabled people, so what is Reform’s rationale for turning their back on this real and sizeable need?
Disabled people already face significant societal disadvantages. Around half of those in poverty are disabled or have a Disabled person in the household. We experience physical and digital barriers to education and employment. Navigating the street can be challenging, and public transport is often a no-go zone. We are over-represented amongst homeless people, struggle to pay high rents in the private sector, often live in homes that are not accessible and are placed in inaccessible and inappropriate temporary accommodation for far too long.
So, how do the above Reform policy announcements address this kind of deep-rooted, long-standing discrimination? They don’t. The party has no plans to make society more inclusive and equal, no plans to make the social security system fairer and no plans to allocate social housing based on need. We’re just not part of its gang.
Article by Fazilet Hadi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Nigel Farage admits to being a whore willing to do anything for someone with a big fat wallet and asks whether drinking pints and smoking fags is not enough for the stupid plebs.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.
5 September 2026
‘What a Disgrace’: Trump Treasury Dept. Refuses to Close Billionaire’s Private Jet Loophole
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Article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
SUN VALLEY, IDAHO – JULY 10: Private jets parked at the Friedman Memorial Airport during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 10, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Every year, some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful figures from the media, finance, technology, and political spheres converge at the Sun Valley Resort for the exclusive week-long conference hosted by boutique investment bank Allen & Co. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“While working families struggle to afford groceries, housing, and gas,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Trump administration “focuses on tax breaks for billionaires—including tax breaks for private jets.”
A group of Democratic Caucus members in the US Senate on Thursday denounced the US Treasury Department under President Donald Trump over its refusal to close a gaping loophole in the federal tax code that allows some of the wealthiest people in the country to reap tax benefits from their ownership and use of private jets—even as working people and the middle class families struggle to make ends meet in Trump’s economy.
In response to a previous request made in July by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to close a rule that allows the wealthy “to substantially undervalue the taxable cost of personal travel on a corporate private jet,” a letter from a top Treasury official on Thursday said such an effort would be too “burdensome,” including for the uber-rich taxpayers subject to it.
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Known as the Standard Industry Fare Level (SIFL) loophole, the lawmakers have argued that it has been exploited by the extremely wealthy to lower their tax burden even as they travel the country—and the world—in the least energy efficient and most polluting way possible.
“President Trump’s 2017 tax law and Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill handed billionaires and big corporations massive tax breaks on private jets,” said Sen. Whitehouse in a statement. “The Trump administration now says it would be ‘burdensome’ to close the private jet tax loophole because this is an administration hell-bent on using the powers of government to make the ultra-rich even richer, and they don’t care if middle-class taxpayers get stuck with the tab.”’
Alongside their July letter, the lawmakers shared analyses detailing the loss of the revenue made possible by the SIFL loophole. According to the Whitehouse’s office,
analyses by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation detailing the boom in private jet sales after passage of Republicans’ tax cut for corporate jets and highlighting the extent of the tax revenue lost by the abuse of the SIFL loophole. One analysis responds to an inquiry from the senators on the tax consequences of the SIFL loophole, finding that a wealthy executive would pay roughly between $1,577 and $1,804 less in taxes for a flight from JFK airport in New York City to DCA airport in Washington, D.C. under the SIFL method. The fair market value of that flight could range from $4,500 to $5,112, but under SIFL, that executive would only have to report a value of $235.77.
Van Hollen on Thursday denounced the shamefulness of yet another Trump administration position that rewards the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working people.
“Trump’s priorities revolve around enriching himself and his billionaire friends. While working families struggle to afford groceries, housing, and gas, this Administration focuses on tax breaks for billionaires—including tax breaks for private jets,” said Van Hollen.
“What a disgrace,” he added.
Article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
4 September 2026
Jackdaw gasfield set to be approved by ministers this month, sources say
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/04/jackdaw-gasfield-set-to-be-approved-by-ministers-this-month-sources-say
Climate activists protesting against the new fields. Consultations on Jackdaw and Rosebank closed last month. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Ministers are poised to approve a controversial new gasfield in the North Sea later this month, according to government sources, and are also likely to approve a major oilfield later this year.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, will give her recommendation to approve the Jackdaw field off the coast of Aberdeen as soon as next week, according to people close to the decision, with the formal approval following as soon as a week after.
She is also likely to approve the Rosebank mega-oilfield in the coming months, though officials are looking for ways to make sure the proceeds from that project go towards clean energy projects, as happens in Norway.
Both projects have become emblematic of the government’s commitment to the North Sea, with green campaigners calling for them to be abandoned while the US president, Donald Trump, urges the prime minister to open them up.
A spokesperson for the energy department said: “The North Sea remains a vital national asset, supporting jobs, growth and the UK’s energy security. We are clear that oil and gas will continue to play an important role in our energy system for decades to come, alongside transitioning to clean power to protect jobs and tackle the climate crisis.”
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The original article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/04/jackdaw-gasfield-set-to-be-approved-by-ministers-this-month-sources-say
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
dizzy: Nigel Farage and his Reform 2025 limited company pretending to be a political party are in the news today – their conference is on and there are concerns over dodgy donations yet again. Andy Burnham could take his place in this image … “We ignore the many examples of extreme weather made worse by climate change …”
4 September 2026

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