Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends a campaign rally with Republican nominee Donald Trump on October 5, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In the third quarter of 2024, Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, and Richard Uihlein donated a combined $220 million to super PACs supporting the Republican nominee.
Prominent members of the United States’ billionaire class have shelled out massive sums in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign to elect one of their own, Republican nominee Donald Trump, to the White House, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk donating nearly $75 million in recent months to a super PAC supporting the former president’s bid for a second term.
According to federal filings made public Tuesday, at least six other billionaires joined Musk in donating to pro-Trump super PACs in the third quarter of 2024: Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; businessman Richard Uihlein, the heir to a brewing fortune; David Millstone, co-CEO of Standard Industries; Diane Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply; Kelcy Warren, the chair of Energy Transfer Partners; and financier Ike Perlmutter.
Combined, Musk, Adelson ($95 million), and Uihlein ($49 million) funneled around $220 million over the past three months to super PACs supporting Trump, whose campaign has also received huge financial support from reclusive GOP megadonor Timothy Mellon.
Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the critical social media platform X, sent roughly $75 million in donations to his pro-Trump America PAC, which has been accused of voter deception. The Guardian‘s Hugo Lowell noted that Musk’s PAC is “doing the bulk of the Trump campaign’s ground game work across the battleground states,” and the billionaire has been using his social media platform to incessantly promote the former president.
As The New York Times reported earlier this month, America PAC has offered to pay $47 to those who help the organization “find Trump voters.”
The head of the American Federation of Government Employees expressed alarm last month over Trump’s push for a “government efficiency commission” headed by Musk, warning that the two billionaires only “care about one thing: lining their own pockets.”
NEW: America PAC just released their quarterly filing. Elon Musk funded it to the tune of $75 million. pic.twitter.com/mkBsWyVysk
In an X post early Wednesday, Musk announced that he “will be giving a series of talks” throughout the key battleground state of Pennsylvania over the next several days as part of his effort to boost the Trump campaign, whose fundraising operation has struggled to keep up with that of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“Tuesday’s filings show that a high-dollar fundraising committee that channels money to her campaign and aligned Democratic committees, took in $633 million during the third quarter—four times the amount raised by Trump’s equivalent fundraising arm in that time,” CNN added.
The Washington Post emphasized that “a full picture of the financial strength of the Trump and Harris efforts will not be available until Sunday, when the campaigns and parties file detailed reports with the Federal Election Commission.”
This year’s election is on track to be the most expensive in U.S. history, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, with at least $15.9 billion flowing to candidates for federal office and super PACs—an outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.
A report published last month by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) estimated that by the end of August, just 150 billionaire families in the U.S. had spent nearly $1.4 billion attempting to influence the outcome of the 2024 election.
“Billionaires are making their ‘voices’ heard—make sure theirs don’t drown out yours,” ATF wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, urging people to turn out to vote next month.
More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.
Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found.
More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies.
In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.
“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release.
But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.
Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known.
These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.
Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment.
The Coors Family At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
In 1972, Joseph Coors, grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, kick-started the Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000. For years, he supported the conservative think tank’s growth, ultimately funneling his funds through the Adolph Coors Foundation, the nonprofit he started with his brother Bill in 1976.
“There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote in a 2003 tribute.
Joseph Coors meets with Ronald Reagan in 1981. Credit: Wikipedia
The tradition continues today, with billionaire Peter H. Coors — retired beer magnate and Adolph’s great-grandson — at the helm. The Adolph Coors Foundation funded 22 Project 2025 advisory groups between 2020 and 2023, including $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation. Vance has been connected to Heritage since at least 2017, when he wrote the forward to that organization’s “Index of Culture and Opportunity” and gave a keynote address at a Heritage event promoting the report.
Of the Project 2025 groups, Coors funded Hillsdale College, which The New Yorker called “the Christian liberal-arts college at the heart of the culture wars,” most heavily, with nearly $900,000 in donations since 2020. Former Heritage staffer James Braid, today Vance’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director, spent 10 months as a James Madison fellow at Hillsdale College in 2021. Braid appeared on camera in a Project 2025 training video recently obtained by ProPublica and Documented. Braid was also an advisor at American Moment, another Project 2025 group.
The Coors Foundation gave an additional $5.9 million to DonorsTrust, a not-for-profit that describes itself as a philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors — and that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes annually, including to numerous Project 2025 advisors, as well as other organizations that downplay or deny the science and urgency of climate change.
Charles G. Koch At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
In terms of raw numbers, Charles Koch — the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate with an oil refinery focus — isn’t the biggest donor to Project 2025 groups in the past few years. But his support for the vast fundraising apparatus that powers conservative charities, including dozens of the initiative’s coalition partners, goes back decades, and his influence can’t be underestimated. A review of public financial disclosures by Greenpeace found that the network of charitable foundations linked to Koch and his late brother, David Koch, donated more than $165 million to climate-change-denying groups between 1986 and 2018. That includes more than $23 million to 16 nonprofits that Project 2025 lists among its advisors.
Throughout the 1990s, Koch Industries was also a “vital supporter” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Project 2025 advisor. A membership group that connects more than 2,000 state legislators to over 300 corporations and private foundations, ALEC calls itself “a forum for stakeholders to exchange ideas”; New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, describes it as an enormously successful effort “aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.” Foundations linked to Charles G. Koch donated more than $1.2 million to ALEC since 2020, Desmog’s review found, mostly through his Stand Together Trust.
Koch’s largest donations to Project 2025 groups since 2020 included $3.8 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a climate-change-denying nonprofit with close links to both the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump tapped Brooke Rollins, TPPF’s CEO since 2003, for a post at the Office of American Innovation; in 2020, he named her to lead his administration’s domestic policy strategy. By 2019, there were so many connection points between TPPF and the Trump administration that Politico’s E & E News wrote a story about it.
Rollins was succeeded at TPPF by Kevin Roberts, who had been promoted to CEO by 2021, when he left to become president of The Heritage Foundation. Koch-linked nonprofits also donated $845,000 to Heritage since 2020.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. They donate heavily to conservative causes through the Ed Uihlein Foundation, named after Richard’s father, a packaging company entrepreneur whose grandfather was an original founder of the Schlitz beer company.
Among its donations to 13 different Project 2025 groups since 2020, Uihlein’s largest grants went to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($6.6 million), a limited-government think tank that has railed against “the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda,” and the American Cornerstone Institute ($2.5 million), founded by neurosurgeon and former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has called climate change “irrelevant” as recently as 2015.
Outside the nonprofit sphere, the Uihleins are major donors to the Trump campaign. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that the couple donated $10 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in May 2024.
The Scaife Family At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. A billionaire heir to the vast Mellon fortune, which was created thanks to his progenitors’ exploits in oil and aluminum production, banking, and other industries, Scaife provided years of critical financial support to the Heritage Foundation, starting in 1973. A 1999 article in the Washington Post called him the “funding father of the Right.”
Today, two foundations Scaife once controlled — the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation — continue to give heavily to conservative causes, including to numerous organizations involved in climate change denial. DeSmog’s review found that Scaife family foundations gave $4.1 million to the Heritage Foundation since 2022, while also contributing to 22 other Project 2025 advisory groups.
Scaife foundations also donated an additional $1.2 million to the State Policy Network, an ALEC-linked group that supports conservative nonprofits that oppose government regulation, including 25 members of Project 2025’s coalition.
Barre Seid At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors. He is reportedly a major benefactor supporting the Heartland Institute, a Project 2025 advisor organization that The Economist called “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change” — a description Heartland approvingly quotes on its website.
In late 2020, Barre donated 100 percent of Tripp Lite’s shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard A. Leo. In early 2021, Leo sold the shares, netting $1.65 billion. The amount is said to be “among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit,” according to The New York Times.
Since May 2020, Marble Freedom Trust has donated $100 million to Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, a Leo-linked nonprofit. In that time, Concord has donated $22.4 million to eight Project 2025 groups, giving most heavily ($11.9 million) to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Seid also gave $2 million to Independent Women’s Voice, the sister organization of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 advisor. During her time as director for the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation, Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official, authored Project 2025’s chapter on restructuring the EPA — with recommendations that include “cutting its size and scope” dramatically.
The Bradley Family At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015.
But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally.
The Bradley Foundation and a second philanthropic vehicle it supports, the Bradley Impact Fund, donated over $50 million to 29 different Project 2025 advisors since 2020. That’s not including an additional $56 million to DonorsTrust, which a 2013 Mother Jones investigation dubbed, along with its affiliate group Donors Capital Fund, the “dark money ATM” of the U.S. conservative movement. The Bradley Foundation’s Project 2025-linked donations include more than $7.7 million to Turning Point USA, a “powerful ally” of the Trump presidential campaign, which promotes conservative causes on university campuses and is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. Its single largest donation was $27.1 million in 2022 to Project 2025 advisor Turning Point Legal, founded by former Trump advisor, and past president of a coal lobby group, Stephen Miller.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a reception in 10 Downing Street, London, to mark 40 years of London Fashion Week, September 16, 2024
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Starmer has worked to undo the steps taken by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn to empower Labour members, reducing conference to its status under Tony Blair, an extended rally for loyalists to cheer the all-powerful leader.
The crackdown on members’ democratic rights was welcomed by right-wing MPs who resented efforts to make them accountable to the grassroots under Corbyn, but now extends to MPs themselves. They are cast from the back benches for defying the whip — unprecedented authoritarianism in a parliamentary party and one that has left it so cowed that just one MP dared to side with the labour movement and the public in voting against winter fuel cuts.
MPs will only find the courage of their convictions when pressure other than that of the whip’s office is brought to bear — pressure from the trade unions which founded their party and from the constituents who can kick them out.
Defeating Reeves on winter fuel payments at conference might not change government policy right away — but it will encourage the gathering revolt we need.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
