Business
Column: Here are the billionaires in thrall to Trump, and why
They’re hedge fund operators, cryptocurrency and AI promoters, scions of and heirs to family fortunes, and others who have it all and want to keep it all. They’re the billionaires who have lined up to support Donald Trump’s reelection campaign with tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions, in donations.
The eye-catching torrent of cash has made the role of America’s billionaires in the electoral system, and their sedulous backing of Trump, a front-burner political issue especially among progressive commentators.
The American Prospect, a progressive website, titled its analysis of tech entrepreneur support for Trump “Valley of the Shadow.” It focused much of its coverage on contributions by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, partners in the Silicon Valley venture investing firm a16z, citing a July podcast in which they wrung their hands over then-Democratic candidate Biden’s technology policies.
“The future of our business, the future of new technology, the future of America is literally at stake,” Horowitz said. “For little tech [whatever that is], Donald Trump is actually the right choice.”
That’s a clue to the fundamentally transactional nature of billionaires’ electoral investments. Many are voting their pocketbooks, enticed by Trump’s record of providing tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation for corporations and promising more of the same in a second term — Trump’s open threats to the democratic model be damned.
As the veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse observed on Slate.com, “They’re far more concerned about slashing taxes and regulations than about the risks of electing a demagogue who hails Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, as a model.”
Some may wish to curry favor with Trump, or fear his retribution if they don’t support him. Backers with interests in the crypto and AI industries such as Andreessen and Horowitz are irked at the Biden administration’s regulatory campaigns. Indeed, the official GOP platform for 2024 bowed to those sectors directly.
“Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown,” it read, replicating Trump’s diction. “We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control. … We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”
The future of our business, the future of new technology, the future of America is literally at stake. … For little tech, Donald Trump is actually the right choice.
— Venture investor Ben Horowitz
They’re not alone among Silicon Valley investors backing Trump. As my colleagues Wendy Lee, Laura J. Nelson and Hannah Wiley reported, Trump attended a fundraiser in June at venture capitalist David Sacks’ San Francisco mansion that raised $12 million. It was Trump’s first visit to the city in at least a decade.
There can be no question that the financial weight of America’s billionaire class has landed on the side of Trump and his fellow Republicans. Of the top 25 individual donors in the current election cycle, 18 have given exclusively or chiefly to Republicans, according to a compilation by Open Secrets of campaign disclosures.
The largest single donor, Timothy Mellon, had given $165 million to Republicans through Aug. 21. An heir to the family of Andrew Mellon, the plutocrat who served as Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, and the source of millions of donations to right-wing causes over the years, Timothy Mellon has given $125 million to the Trump super-PAC Make America Great Again, including $50 million on May 31, the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in connection with the payment of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The top-ranked donors who have concentrated their funds on Democrats, according to data released by the Federal Election Commission as of Oct. 17, are former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($42.2 million), LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman ($25.9 million) and the late hedge fund operator and philanthropist James H. Simon and his wife, Marilyn. Andreessen and Horowitz have also contributed to Democrats, though their donations are heavily skewed toward Republicans, who have received $8.6 million combined from the two investors, versus $3.1 million for Democrats.
Almost all the donors on the full list are billionaires or near-billionaires. That underscores a major issue in the American economy: its extreme inequality. As I’ve pointed out before, the Founding Fathers themselves considered the accumulation of dynastic wealth to be a threat to the pursuit of happiness and to democracy itself.
“Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in October 1785, “it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.”
Madison in 1792 viewed the duty of political parties as acting to combat “the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches.” Benjamin Franklin urged the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, albeit unsuccessfully, to declare that “the state has the right to discourage large concentrations of property as a danger to the happiness of mankind.”
Combined with the infamous 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which eliminated constraints on corporate political donations, and the consequence are clear: the domination of American election campaigns by big-money donors, who have come to use their wealth to pressure political leaders to enact policies they favor, then exploit those policies to build up their wealth.
One idea that has many rich Americans exercised is the possibility of a wealth tax. Liberal politicians such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have proposed such a levy, either by raising income tax rates on the richest, or taxing unrealized capital gains; under current law, capital gains aren’t taxed until they’re sold, which allows wealthy investors to defer taxes on those gains indefinitely, even permanently.
The equivalent of a wealth tax was proposed by the Biden administration in a policy statement that was endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, but the chance of such a thing being proposed by Trump is plainly nil.
Right-wing donor Timothy Mellon stepped up his political contributions to more than $160 million in the current cycle, from only $60 million in the 2020 presidential election; $125 million has gone to the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again.
(Open Secrets)
The billionaire who has attracted the most attention as the election draws to a close is Elon Musk, the owner of the spacecraft company SpaceX and controlling shareholder of EV-maker Tesla.
Musk has placed himself front and center among Trump’s monied supporters. He ranks sixth among the top political donors, all of whom are Republican supporters. He appeared onstage with Trump at the latter’s recent rally in Butler, Pa. Open Secrets reports that he has donated more than $118 million to America PAC, a fund-raising entity devoted exclusively to Trump, which he founded.
Musk’s interest in Trump’s reelection may be multifaceted. He has groused relentlessly about regulatory actions against him and his companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Aviation Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and others. His political statements have aligned more openly with the right wing.
He has railed against “illegal immigration,” for example — including asserting falsely in a tweet on X, his social media platform, that the Biden administration’s policy is “very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible. 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority — a one-party state.” This reflects a fantasy common on the extreme right that Democrats intend to turn undocumented immigrants into a pro-Democratic voting bloc.
Among the high-profile billionaires who have drawn scrutiny for choosing not to take a sides in this contentious presidential election cycle are the owners of two of the nation’s most influential newspapers: The Times, owned by Los Angeles biotechnology entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong; and the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. With only weeks to go before election day, both newspapers declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential race at the behest of their owners.
It has been openly speculated that both owners were concerned about Trump’s potential influence on their business prospects — Soon-Shiong’s research output could be subject to Food and Drug Administration regulation, and Bezos’ Amazon retail operation and Blue Origin space exploration venture are government contractors.
As my colleague James Rainey reported, Soon-Shiong said that he feared that picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country. “I have no regrets whatsoever,” he said in an interview with The Times last week. “In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision. … The process was [to decide]: how do we actually best inform our readers? And there could be nobody better than us who try to sift the facts from fiction” while leaving it to readers to make their own final decision.”
Soon-Shiong also said that he considered himself a political independent, adding that, despite speculation, his stand is not based on any singular issue or intended to favor either of the major party candidates.
Bezos has felt the sting of Trumpian retribution directly. Trump has been plainly irked by the Bezos-owned Post’s endorsements of his Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, as well as its forthright coverage of his presidential policies.
In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon blamed its loss of a $10-billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft on “improper pressure” by Trump, who was determined “to harm his perceived political enemy — Jeffrey P. Bezos.” A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2021. The day that Bezos’ Washington Post announced that it would not endorse either presidential candidate, Trump met with the CEO of Blue Origin in what seemed, if superficially, to be an auspicious sign for the company’s destiny in a Trump administration.
The billionaires’ dollars flowing into the Trump campaign tends to reflect the source of the donors’ wealth. Among the top Republican donors are hedge fund operators and investment bankers; natural resource magnates; and others with specific concerns about federal policies that might affect their enterprises.
Billionaire Jeff Yass, for instance, has become the fifth-largest donor in this cycle, with $84.6 million funneled to Trump and other Republicans. That cash infusion may have influenced Trump to reverse his policy position on TikTok, the social media platform in which Yass holds a substantial stake, from trying to ban the Chinese-owned platform during his presidency to advocating for its preservation.
None of this means that Democratic donors are above advocating for their own interests in a Harris administration. Several, including Hoffman and Mark Cuban, have been pressuring Harris to fire the aggressive antitrust advocate Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission if Harris wins the election. Harris hasn’t commented.
In any case, the numbers tell the story of the 2024 election: Money is talking, and loudly.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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