Politics
Hundreds of Big Post-Election Donors Have Benefited From Trump’s Return to Office
Since President Trump was elected a second time, he and his allies have raised nearly $2 billion for his favored political causes and passion projects. That total, which was confirmed by four people involved in the fund-raising, likely eclipses the amount raised to support his 2024 campaign.
The astounding haul hints at a level of transactionalism for which it is difficult to find obvious comparisons in modern American history. The identities of the donors behind much of the cash are not legally required to be, and have not been, publicly disclosed. In some cases, Mr. Trump’s team has offered donors anonymity.
To shed light on what has been a largely opaque fund-raising apparatus, The New York Times conducted a comprehensive investigation. It relied on previously unreported documents and public campaign finance filings, as well as interviews with dozens of people who are familiar with the solicitations or are involved in the fund-raising. It traced a large portion of the funds raised — more than half a billion dollars’ worth — back to 346 donors who each gave at least $250,000. It also found that more than half of them have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House or federal agencies.
It is not possible to prove that any of the donations directly led to favorable treatment from the Trump administration. And the contributions do not personally enrich Mr. Trump, unlike some of his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.
But many of the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations who have given large sums have a lot riding on the administration’s actions, raising questions about conflicts of interest.
Each of these dots represents a person or company that has given at least $250,000 to a group or project supported by Mr. Trump since he was elected to a second term.
The president’s inaugural committee raised nearly $240 million, more than double the record, which Mr. Trump himself set in 2017. The 284 donors shown here each gave at least $250,000.
284 red dots are arranged into a circle on the screen.
After Mr. Trump won, the fund-raising didn’t stop for a super PAC devoted to him and run by his advisers. At least 81 donors gave $250,000 or more to MAGA Inc. It raised $200 million from Nov. 7, 2024, to June 30, 2025.
81 of the dots separate from the main group and are highlighted.
According to Mr. Trump, $350 million has been raised for his White House ballroom project, which is largely being processed by the Trust for the National Mall. The Times has identified pledged or completed donations from 14 ballroom donors, which amount to about $100 million.
The original group of dots re-forms and a new group of 14 dots separates and is highlighted.
The biggest donors to the White House Historical Association to support this year’s Easter Egg Roll, including the four shown here, were offered new types of branding opportunities and access to an event beforehand with Melania Trump, the first lady.
The original group of dots re-forms and a new group of four dots separates and is highlighted.
The president’s team has also raised money for America250, a nonprofit group that was formed to produce celebrations for the country’s semiquincentennial birthday. Eight of the donors identified by The Times sponsored this group after the 2024 election.
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Of the 346 donors identified by The Times, at least 197 have benefited, or are in industries that have benefited, from policies or actions of Mr. Trump or his administration. Those include pardons, favorable regulatory moves, the dropping of legal cases, access to the president and more.
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Hover or tap on each of the circles here to learn more about the individual and corporate donors who have given at least $250,000 to Trump-approved causes. (Dollar figures may be undercounts, since some kinds of donations do not need to be disclosed.)
The dots return to their original arrangement in a circle.
Presidents of both parties have raised funds for their inaugurations, and many major companies have long histories of donating to them. But second-term presidents usually begin winding down their own fund-raising after their inaugurations, focusing instead on boosting their parties’ committees and candidates.
Mr. Trump, on the other hand, was emboldened by the record-breaking sum of nearly $240 million raised by his inaugural committee. He immediately tasked his fund-raising team, led by his campaign’s finance director, Meredith O’Rourke, to raise money for an array of groups and causes supported by the president, according to three people involved in the fund-raising. They requested anonymity to discuss nonpublic information, as did five others who discussed other elements of the fund-raising.
It is a buffet of options that allows donors to pay tribute to Mr. Trump and sometimes receive access to him to pitch their own interests. While the groups raising funds are independent from one another, and some are nonpartisan, they are presented to donors as part of a fund-raising apparatus to which Mr. Trump or his allies would like them to give, according to four people familiar with the fund-raising. They said Mr. Trump closely tracks which companies have given, and how much, debriefing regularly with Ms. O’Rourke.
Lobbyists with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit recommend that their clients donate to these groups to try to win him over, said five people familiar with the fund-raising.
“In this town, money talks, and that is going to give you an opportunity to at least have a seat at the table,” said Harrison Fields, a former Trump White House official who left in August and became a lobbyist. His firm, CGCN Group, has represented companies that have donated to projects Mr. Trump supports, including the new White House ballroom, America250 and MAGA Inc.
“These people are not getting coerced. They are making business decisions,” said Mr. Fields.
At least 51 of the donors have given to more than one of the groups in this analysis since the election.
While MAGA Inc., the inaugural committee and the Republican National Committee (another entity for which Trump-allied fund-raisers are soliciting money) are required to disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission, there is no such requirement for contributions to other groups for which the president’s allies are raising funds.
Those groups include the Trust for the National Mall, America250, the White House Historical Association, a political nonprofit group called Securing American Greatness and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Mr. Trump’s allies have remade in his own image, including adding his own name to the title and the building’s facade.
The Times’s investigation identified a number of donations, or potential benefits to donors, that had not been publicly known.
One $2.5 million contribution to MAGA Inc. was given by a South Florida woman whose father months later received an unusually lenient deal from top Justice Department officials to settle charges that he bribed Puerto Rico’s then-governor in 2020.
Another $2.5 million pledged donation — this one to Mr. Trump’s White House ballroom project — came from Parsons Corporation, an engineering firm that has won government contracts for years, including under Mr. Trump, and is jockeying for some of the more than $1 trillion in contracts that could be awarded to build a missile defense system proposed by the president called the “Golden Dome.” Also giving $2.5 million to the ballroom project was the chief executive of Roblox, a popular online video game company that has applauded a Trump executive order and other initiatives involving children’s use of artificial intelligence.
A couple who donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee and $500,000 to MAGA Inc., as well as an undisclosed amount to the ballroom fund, saw Mr. Trump nominate their son to be U.S. ambassador to Finland.
And a company that was accused last year by the Justice Department of colluding over ticket prices donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The president pardoned the company’s co-founder in a separate case this month.
In other cases, The Times was able to quantify large donations for which the amounts were previously unknown. Those included gifts from the technology firm Palantir, which donated $10 million to the ballroom project and $5 million to America250. Additionally, the Palantir co-founder Alex Karp donated $1 million each to the inauguration and to MAGA Inc. In Mr. Trump’s second term, Palantir has secured federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including to develop software to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport people. But a Palantir official said in a previously unpublished response to an inquiry from Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, that the company did not seek and was not offered any special consideration for its donation to the ballroom project.
While a foundation funded by Miriam Adelson, a casino magnate, mostly supports Jewish and Israeli causes, it pledged to donate $25 million to the ballroom project, according to two people familiar with the donation. In a speech at a White House Hanukkah party last week, Mr. Trump praised Dr. Adelson, a physician by training, for donating tens of millions of dollars to help his campaigns and using her access to lobby for greater U.S. backing for Israel. Calling her to the lectern, Mr. Trump said, “When somebody can give you $250 million, I think that we should give her the opportunity to say hello.” The two embraced and bantered about how Dr. Adelson would be willing to donate $250 million more to help Mr. Trump seek an unconstitutional third term.
Mr. Trump’s continued fund-raising is all the more striking given his boasts during his first presidential campaign a decade ago that he was an outsider whose personal wealth made him impervious to Washington’s pay-to-play politics and the manipulation of major donors, including Dr. Adelson’s late husband.
Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, rejected the suggestion that donors were getting special treatment. She said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s “only motivation as the president of the United States is improving the lives of the American people and making our country greater than ever before.” Donors who support him “should be celebrated, not attacked,” she said.
Donors who received administration jobs, government contracts, partnerships and approvals
Hover to see donor details
While the donations far exceed most Americans’ means, the sums pale in comparison to the contracts being sought from the Trump administration.
Take Mr. Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense project, which could yield lucrative work for a number of contractors. Palantir has already held discussions about being involved. Firms including Lockheed Martin and Boeing also are expected to compete for pieces of the work; each company donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. That is the same amount they gave to President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inaugural committee.
But Lockheed Martin also donated $10 million to the Trust for the National Mall for Mr. Trump’s ballroom project and $5 million to America250, according to two people familiar with the sums. Lockheed is the primary maker of F-35 fighter jets, which cost about $80 million to $110 million each. While some national security officials have expressed concern about selling the jets to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump announced last month that he planned to approve such sales. The next day, Lockheed’s chief executive attended a black-tie dinner at the White House honoring Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, which was also attended by executives for other defense contractors.
As for Boeing, two months after the inauguration, Mr. Trump announced that the company would be paid to build more than 180 new advanced fighter jets for the Air Force.
Major defense contracts can take years to develop, bid and execute, and there is no evidence that any such contracts were awarded as a direct result of donations.
Boeing’s ability to pursue federal contracts could have been hindered by criminal charges stemming from two fatal crashes of its planes during Mr. Trump’s first term. But this year, the Trump Justice Department dropped the case, entering into a settlement that required the company to improve its safety and compliance programs and pay hundreds of millions of dollars into a fund for victims.
Presidents have long awarded their campaigns’ top donors with ambassadorships, jobs and appointments to boards and commissions. Mr. Trump appears to have taken that tradition to a new level, tapping at least 32 people for an array of positions — including in his cabinet — who have donated at least $250,000 each to his causes after the election, or whose companies or families have made such donations.
Among them is Howard Brodie, now the U.S. ambassador to Finland. His parents, Elizabeth and Stefan Brodie, donated to the Trump inauguration, MAGA Inc. and the ballroom project after Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. The elder Brodies were invited to the White House dinner last month honoring the Saudi crown prince, and Stefan Brodie attended a dinner the month before for major donors who gave at least $2.5 million for the ballroom.
Another Trump ambassador nominee, the Miami mortgage lender Bernie Navarro, gave a little-noticed $1 million donation to the inaugural committee through an obscure company registered in Puerto Rico. Mr. Navarro, a close ally of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said in a statement that the donation was unrelated to his interest in becoming an ambassador. “In retrospect, he is doing such an amazing job that I wish I would have done more,” Mr. Navarro said of Mr. Trump.
In all, more than a dozen donors have been nominated or confirmed for ambassadorships.
Where donors received ambassadorships
Warren Stephens
Gave $6 million
Melissa Argyros Gave $2 million
Dan Newlin
Gave at least $1.5 million
Howard Brodie
Parents gave at least $1.5 million Benjamin León Jr.
Gave at least $1 million
Melinda Hildebrand
Gave combined $1 million together with her husband
Ken Howery Gave $1 million
Tilman Fertitta
Gave $1 million
Bernie Navarro
Gave $1 million Anjani Sinha
Gave $1 million
Peter Lamelas
Gave $250,000
Nicole McGraw Gave $250,000
John Breslow
Gave $250,000
Benjamin Landa
Gave $250,000 Joseph Victor Popolo Jr.
Gave $250,000
Donor
Nominated or
confirmed ambassador to…
United Kingdom
Latvia
Colombia
Finland
Spain
Costa Rica
Denmark
Italy
Peru
Singapore
Argentina
Croatia
Cyprus
Hungary
Netherlands
It is not possible to definitively link donations to nominations.
Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the State Department, in a statement called Mr. Trump’s ambassadors “an America first diplomatic A-team,” adding that they “were chosen to help drive forward historic wins for the American people, and they have done exactly that.”
Four of Mr. Trump’s cabinet officials made personal or corporate donations of more than $250,000.
They include Kelly Loeffler, the administrator of the Small Business Administration. She and her husband, Jeffrey C. Sprecher, the chief executive of the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, donated a combined total of $11 million to groups Mr. Trump favors, including $1 million to the inaugural committee and $5 million to MAGA Inc., as well as previously unreported donations totaling $5 million for the ballroom, according to records and a person familiar with the fund-raising.
Donors who received pardons, relaxed enforcement and other relief
Hover to see donor details
Getting a reprieve from adverse state action can be just as valuable as winning a government contract or appointment.
Extremity Care, a company that makes a pricey form of bandages known as skin substitutes, donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. An executive from the company then attended a donor dinner in March at Mar-a-Lago where he lobbied Mr. Trump, whose administration announced the next month that it would delay a Biden-era plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the bandages. Extremity Care or one of its affiliates subsequently donated $2.5 million to the ballroom.
And Mr. Trump has entered into deals with a number of drug makers, including several that donated to groups he supports, to lower prices in exchange for avoiding punitive measures including threatened tariffs.
In two instances, Mr. Trump pardoned people whose companies or families made donations.
In January, amid scrutiny from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which had identified — but not charged — the venue management company Oak View Group in a lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Oak View donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
The donation did not eliminate legal exposure for Oak View’s co-founder and then-chief executive, Timothy J. Leiweke. Months later, the antitrust division charged him in an unrelated case. He stepped down as head of Oak View, and the company agreed to pay $15 million in penalties. Mr. Leiweke pleaded not guilty. But this month, before the case went to trial, Mr. Trump pardoned him.
David B. Gerger, a lawyer for Mr. Leiweke, rejected a question about whether the donation was intended to avoid legal trouble.
“Any such innuendo — whether coming from ill will or just ignorance — is false,” he said in a statement.
In another case, the former health care entrepreneur Elizabeth Fago, after donating $1 million to MAGA Inc., attended a donor dinner with the president. Mr. Trump pardoned her son, Paul Walczak, less than three weeks later, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence for employment tax crimes.
Another donor with an interest in the outcome of a criminal case was Isabela Herrera, who donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. late last year. At the time, her father, Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, was being prosecuted by the Justice Department for trying to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico.
Mr. Herrera hired a former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, who alleged that the case was an example of the political weaponization of the criminal justice system. Top Justice Department officials appeared to agree, authorizing a misdemeanor plea deal to settle the case and overruling career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.
Mr. Herrera could still face a year in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for next month.
Ms. Herrera and a lawyer for Mr. Herrera declined to comment.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said “the decision to settle this case was made through the proper channels and was not influenced by any donation to MAGA Inc.”
But John D. Keller, who oversaw the Justice Department division that handled the case, said in an interview that the difference between the deal and the more than 20 years Mr. Herrera could have faced if convicted of the original charges was “striking.” Mr. Keller, who resigned in protest when he was directed by Mr. Trump’s appointees to drop another politically fraught prosecution, said the Herrera case “appears to be another example of political considerations dictating the outcome in an individual criminal case.”
A broader relaxation of federal scrutiny has benefited cryptocurrency companies and other corporate interests that have showered donations on Mr. Trump’s groups.
The Securities and Exchange Commission largely abandoned its hard-line approach to crypto trading platforms, ending lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple after the companies each donated $1 million or more to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, and ending an investigation into Robinhood after it donated $2 million to the committee. Coinbase and Ripple also donated to the ballroom, while Coinbase gave to America250.
A spokesman for the S.E.C. said that “politics have had nothing to do with S.E.C. actions” on the cases. “Decisions on these cases turn on long held publicly expressed legal and policy views,” he added.
Donors in industries that benefited from administration policies
Hover to see donor details
In addition to specific benefits enjoyed by individual companies and people, Mr. Trump has also enacted sweeping tax cuts and taken other actions that more broadly advantage a wide range of industries, major corporations and wealthy individuals.
Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to downgrade cannabis from the most restrictive category of drugs, easing some limitations and allowing for more research. It was a major victory for a burgeoning industry that has spent heavily since the election on lobbying and donations, including a $1 million donation to MAGA Inc. from American Rights and Reform PAC, a pro-cannabis political committee; and a $750,000 donation to the inaugural committee from Trulieve, a leading marijuana retailer. Kim Rivers, Trulieve’s co-founder and chief executive, urged Mr. Trump to make the move during multiple meetings with him, including a donor dinner at his New Jersey golf club in August, according to a person familiar with the event, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
“We are really thankful for the president,” Ms. Rivers said in an interview on Thursday. “He has been consistently supportive,” she added. She declined to comment when asked if she would have been granted the presidential audiences without donating.
The crypto industry writ large has benefited from Mr. Trump’s cheerleading, as well as his championing and signing into law a bill creating the first federal rules for stablecoins, a popular form of digital currency. At least 27 companies or executives with interests in crypto gave a total of at least $58 million to groups Mr. Trump favors after the election, The Times found.
Mr. Trump has also favored the fossil fuel industry, directing tens of billions of dollars in incentives to companies, allowing drilling in the Alaska wilderness, and repealing environmental regulations. About two dozen companies with interests in oil, gas and coal donated at least $41 million.
Likewise, the administration has pushed regulatory changes and other executive actions that benefit Big Tech, tobacco interests, private equity firms and the defense and aerospace industry. (In all of the industries discussed here, individuals and firms may have benefited to different degrees from these actions.)
Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the R.N.C., said Mr. Trump “has governed and delivered results for every American,” citing his efforts to secure the Southern border and crack down on fentanyl trafficking, among other initiatives. She said Mr. Trump “is grateful to his donors, but unlike the politicians of the past, he isn’t bought by anyone.”
Donors who received invitations, access and praise
Hover to see donor details
Since retaking office, the president has lavished his post-election donors with praise and access to himself and his inner circle. In some cases, the attention can provide a competitive business advantage. In others, it may only mean bragging rights.
At least 100 donors have attended exclusive dinners and events with Mr. Trump at the White House, accompanied him on overseas trips that include meetings with foreign dignitaries and prospective business partners — or both. About half have popped up at multiple events. Regular visitors to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue include Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia; Lisa Su, chief executive of AMD; Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple; and others.
Mr. Trump is fond of using these presidential forums to call out friends and donors in the room.
“So many of you have been really, really generous,” Mr. Trump told donors to the ballroom project he convened at the White House for a thank-you dinner in October. He singled out defense contractor donors (representatives for Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Palantir were in the room), saying the United States was “the greatest manufacturer of weapons.”
And it’s not just Mr. Trump.
The White House has used government platforms to praise major donors to a wider audience. At least 67 post-election donors have been positively featured, often multiple times, in official press releases, social media posts and other communications.
There is a flip side to Mr. Trump’s willingness to reward loyalty. His efforts to punish perpetrators of perceived slights have been an animating theme of his second term — and a motivating factor for at least some of the donors to his favored causes, according to three people familiar with the fund-raising.
They said that major donors and corporations fear incurring Mr. Trump’s wrath by not giving, or not giving as much as their rivals, and that they donate out of concern that he might publicly attack them or even use the levers of government against them. Donations, they said, serve as a form of protection — or, if things have already soured, as an olive branch.
But it’s no guarantee. For some companies that have given large sums since the election, Mr. Trump and his administration’s actions have not been exclusively helpful.
Pilgrim’s Pride, a massive poultry producer, donated $5 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, making it the biggest donor. Good news for the poultry industry followed: In April, the Trump administration withdrew a Biden-era proposal that would have required poultry companies to keep levels of salmonella bacteria under a certain threshold and to test for six dangerous salmonella strains.
And in June, after years of attempts, federal regulators approved a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange for JBS, the Brazilian firm that owns Pilgrim’s Pride. But then last month, Mr. Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate JBS and three other meat packing giants, accusing them of “driving up the price of beef through illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.”
In another example, Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mark Zuckerberg has been a mixed bag over the years. But when Mr. Trump won last fall, Mr. Zuckerberg and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, took steps that seemed designed to appease the incoming president. Meta donated $1 million to his inauguration, as did other tech companies and executives that had occasionally been crosswise with Mr. Trump, including Amazon, Google and Apple’s chief executive, Mr. Cook. The companies’ executives were given prominent places behind Mr. Trump inside the Capitol rotunda as he was sworn in.
Days after the inauguration, Meta announced that it had agreed to pay $22 million to Mr. Trump’s library foundation to settle a lawsuit. Google agreed to donate a similar sum for the ballroom project to settle a similar suit. (Those settlement amounts are not included in the analysis presented in this article, nor are payments to the Trump library foundation by Paramount Global and ABC News to settle separate lawsuits brought by Mr. Trump.) Meta also donated at least $2.5 million for the ballroom project, according to a person familiar with the fund-raising.
And Amazon, Meta and Google each donated at least $200,000 to the White House Historical Association to sponsor the annual Easter Egg Roll. While Meta and Google had sponsored the event during the Biden administration, top sponsors have not traditionally been expressly offered access to a pre-event brunch with the first lady as a donor perk, according to a person familiar with the event.
The offer came from a private event production firm on contract with the association, and not the association itself, which does not offer access to the White House or first family as an inducement for donations, according to a person familiar with previous fund-raising efforts.
Mr. Zuckerberg unsuccessfully lobbied Mr. Trump and his aides to derail a federal antitrust lawsuit against Meta. (A judge dismissed the case on its merits last month.) But the company has won other victories from the administration. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ended an investigation into Meta’s advertising for financial products in September, amidst a Trump-led push to kill the agency. And Mr. Trump this month signed an executive order to neuter state laws that limit the artificial intelligence industry — a major growth area for Meta, Google and other tech companies.
(The New York Times has sued three tech companies that are among, or whose executives are among, the donors in this analysis — Microsoft, OpenAI and Perplexity — claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied the suits’ claims.)
As Mr. Trump’s term moves into its second year, there are signs that the president and his allies intend to continue the fund-raising push.
MAGA Inc. has already announced dinners for donors who give $1 million or more, with Mr. Trump at his golf club in the Virginia suburbs of Washington in January and at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., in February, according to invitations reviewed by The Times.
And the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation has indicated in filings that it intends to raise $950 million before the beginning of Mr. Trump’s final year in office.
If anything, the buffet of options to which donors can give appears to be expanding.
Last week, Mr. Trump announced the creation of a new initiative called Freedom 250, which will raise money from corporations and donors to fund events and projects dear to him as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the country’s independence. Those include an arch overlooking Washington in the style of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, a National Garden of American Heroes, a prayer event on the National Mall and a four-day competition for high school athletes.
Freedom 250 will be housed inside the National Park Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit group. Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration, the foundation quietly added to its board Ms. O’Rourke, who will raise money for Freedom 250, and Chris LaCivita, who helped run Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Ms. O’Rourke did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. LaCivita declined to comment.
Methodology
The Times created a database of every person, company and organization that Federal Election Commission filings indicated had donated at least $250,000 to the inaugural committee or MAGA Inc. after the 2024 election. After establishing this initial universe, The Times, through interviews and other reporting, expanded the database to include donors to Trump-supported groups and projects that — unlike the inaugural committee and MAGA Inc. — are not required to disclose their donors, including the White House ballroom project, the White House Easter Egg Roll and America250.
Reporters combed through documents and interviewed dozens of people to determine the donors behind each contribution (some of their identities were obscured in public filings by corporate structures), as well whether and how each donor may have benefited from actions by Mr. Trump or his administration. This involved reviewing lobbying disclosures; campaign finance and corporate filings; Securities and Exchange Commission reports; agency memos; government contracting databases; corporate and government press releases; White House pool reports; social media posts; transcripts, photographs and video from White House events; and other documents. The Times reached out to everyone identified as having benefited from actions by Mr. Trump or his administration. Some people and companies did not respond or declined to comment. Others said they did not benefit from the administration’s actions. And others did not dispute the characterization.
In some cases, companies had existing contractor relationships with the federal government; this analysis included new contracts and renewals only, not those awarded in previous administrations.
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Congress is one step closer to ending the Homeland Security shutdown after the Senate advanced a new, last-minute deal, but it came at the price of Republicans ceding ground, temporarily, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The Senate unanimously advanced a deal to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the wee hours of Friday morning, 42 days into the shutdown that was spurred by the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota.
It was an agreement that largely gave Schumer and Senate Democrats what they wanted — no funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But it lacked the stringent reforms they desired, like requiring judicial warrants or requiring agents to unmask.
SCHUMER, DEMS BLOCK DHS FUNDING AGAIN, TRUMP INTERVENES TO PAY TSA AGENTS
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that Republicans had made what was likely their “final” offer to Democrats to reopen DHS. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While the deal mirrors previous attempts by Democrats to pass similar legislation that carved out immigration funding, Thune argued that Democrats are still walking away empty-handed in the policy fight over immigration enforcement.
“We’ve been trying for weeks to fund the whole thing,” Thune said. “And, I mean, in the end, this is what they were willing to agree to. But again, it’s different that it has zero reforms in it. I mean, they got no reforms on DHS, which they could have had if they had been willing to work with us a little bit on that.”
Schumer said that if Republicans hadn’t blocked their initial attempts, “this could have been done three weeks ago.”
“This is exactly what we wanted,” Schumer said. “This is what we asked for, and I’m very proud of my caucus. My caucus held the line.”
The DHS funding deal now heads to the House, where Republicans aren’t enthusiastic about not funding key components of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown agenda.
The latest plan came after Senate Democrats blocked a seventh attempt to reopen DHS, after back-and-forth talks throughout the day on Thursday appeared to yield little progress toward a resolution. Trump also announced his intent to sign an order that would pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents as major airports are rocked with staggering lines and eye-popping wait times amid the shutdown.
DEMS BLOCK DHS FUNDING AFTER GOP REJECTS THEIR COUNTER, THUNE SAYS SCHUMER ‘GOING IN CIRCLES’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats rejected Republicans latest deal to reopen DHS, and have promised a counteroffer with reforms in return. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
While a further concession to Democrats, in part, the underlying argument Republicans have made all along is that if Schumer and his caucus wanted reforms, they would have to agree to fund immigration enforcement.
And ICE and CBP are still flush with roughly $75 billion in cash from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” giving the agencies a buffer for a time.
“The good news is we anticipated this a year ago. I mean, one of the reasons we front loaded, pre-loaded up the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ with advanced funding for Homeland Security was because we anticipated this was likely going to happen, and it did,” Thune said. “I still think it’s unfortunate. The Dems wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up getting no reforms.”
The same process used to pass that colossal legislative package will likely be turned to again fund immigration enforcement.
DHS DEAL IN LIMBO AS DEMOCRATS DEMAND TOUGHER ICE CRACKDOWN DESPITE GOP COMPROMISE
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer’s badge and gear. (Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., envisions funding ICE and CBP for several years.
“Democrats are trying to shut down ICE funding for the remainder of the fiscal year — ultimately they won’t be successful,” Schmitt said on X. “In response, I’ll be pushing to lock in funding for deportation operations and salaries for a decade.”
Doing so could be difficult, still, given that Republicans want to dump several other priorities into the mix, including portions of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act and funding for the Iran war.
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And some Republicans are already couching expectations on what can and can’t be accomplished in the party-line process, given that anything in the bill has to pass muster with strict rules in the Senate.
“I think we have to set our sights a little bit lower on this reconciliation bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital. “It’s got to be targeted to fund ICE for 10 years, I think that’s the number one thing to us.”
It’s like that time Pinocchio became a real boy: News that was labeled “fake” last week is real today, per the Kennedy Center, and Bill Maher will indeed be the 27th person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
The White House strongly dissed the Atlantic’s reporting (followed by unreporting) last week that Maher was the next in line for the 2026 prize that Conan O’Brien got last year and Kevin Hart picked up the year before that. The Twain honor has been bestowed on comics almost annually since 1998 by the Kennedy Center, a “tired, broken, and dilapidated” building that President Trump slapped his own name on in December and plans to close for two years’ worth of renovations starting July 4 — hence the response from White House flacks.
“Literally FAKE NEWS,” said Steven Cheung, White House director of communications, on his official X account reacting Friday to the Atlantic story. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement to the publication, “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.”
But People reported Thursday that although the Atlantic’s news was deemed “fake” at the time, according to word from a White House official, the situation had “evolved” in the six days since then.
You say tomato, I say to-mah-to? At any rate, Bill’s getting the Twain, given previously to comedic luminaries including Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Dave Chappelle.
Maher had no response on social media, perhaps reserving his reaction for the upcoming “Real Time With Bill Maher” episode due out Friday on HBO or his next “Club Random” podcast. But he did issue a dryly amusing statement Thursday in a Kennedy Center news release, saying, “Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win.”
(Maher’s show has been nominated for Emmy Awards 22 times, from 2004 through 2024, including 13 nods for variety series and the rest for writing, directing and personal performance. It has won exactly zero of those times. Even Susan Lucci only had to wait through 18 Daytime Emmy nominations before she finally won on the 19th — and proceeded to lose out on two more.)
The comic’s statement continued: “I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said in a statement of her own. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse — one politically incorrect joke at a time.”
Maher, a self-described liberal who has no love for the Republican Party, found himself in strange-new-respect territory among conservatives in recent years after he started slamming far-left ideology as ruthlessly as he slammed the far right. Then last spring he accepted an invitation for dinner with Trump at the White House, and many heads exploded.
“OK, as you know, 12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock because we share a belief that there’s got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,” said Maher, who lives on the West Coast, on the April 11, 2025, episode of “Real Time.”
“And let me first say that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you’re ridiculous. Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have — I have no power. I’m a f— comedian, and he’s the most powerful leader in the world. I’m not the leader of anything except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.”
Maher said he brought with him to the dinner a list of almost five dozen epithets the president had hurled his way over the years, intending to ask Trump to sign it for him. Which the president did. And after sharing some anecdotes from the visit, including some snappy retorts, Maher told his audience that Trump was “much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.”
The Mark Twain Prize will be given to Maher at a gala set for June 28, with Netflix streaming the event at a later date, yet to be determined.
When President Trump sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and remain in power, resistance from within his own government helped to stop him.
Top Justice Department officials rejected his specious claims that the vote had been marred by widespread fraud. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security refused to go along with his outlandish efforts to seize voting machines. Cybersecurity experts praised the count as secure, and the intelligence community sidestepped his requests to declare that foreign nations had interfered in the results.
But Mr. Trump’s second term looks very different. The president has filled his administration with people who are sympathetic to his baseless claims that the presidential race more than five years ago was stolen.
These officials have been put into positions across the federal government, at the White House and in agencies where they could play a role in undermining the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential cycle.
At the same time, Mr. Trump has maintained allies in Congress and in state governments who could wield significant power over the process of counting votes and the seating of members of the House.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, sidestepped questions about Mr. Trump’s personnel decisions and instead asserted that he was “committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections.” She pointed to the president’s efforts to have Congress pass legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to vote, prohibit mail-in ballots and bar the practice of ballot harvesting — having one person turn in mail ballots for several others.
“The vast majority of Americans support President Trump’s common-sense election integrity agenda,” Ms. Jackson said.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the agencies were focused on keeping elections safe and secure, and were working to carry out the president’s policies on elections. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
With Mr. Trump consistently seeking to sow doubts about the integrity of elections, the number of election deniers he has installed across the administration means he would face fewer checks on any efforts to undermine an outcome he did not like, and could more easily amplify baseless claims of fraud.
Here is a look at some of the key players.
The White House has no formal or legal role to play in administering elections, but Mr. Trump recently created a presidentially appointed position to oversee election integrity and security.
That job has largely been involved in investigating the 2020 election.
What happened in 2020
Mr. Trump has always been the government’s most avid promoter of false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. And in 2020, he routinely used the force of the Oval Office — albeit unsuccessfully — to strong-arm state officials and federal appointees to act on his claims.
Kurt Olsen
Director of election security and integrity
Mr. Olsen was central to opening a recent F.B.I. investigation that led to the search of a Fulton County, Ga., election office in January.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Mr. Olsen was a pro-Trump lawyer who in late 2020 contacted senior Justice Department officials on Mr. Trump’s behalf, pushing them to file a motion to nullify the election with the Supreme Court.
After 2020, he worked with Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a longtime election denier, to bring many unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the results of other elections and the use of voting machines, based on debunked conspiracy theories. While representing Kari Lake, a former candidate for governor in Arizona, he was hit with sanctions for making false and misleading claims.
Ms. Lake, who tried to reverse her defeat in the 2022 race, has served as the effective head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. A judge ruled Ms. Lake’s appointment invalid, but the administration says she still works for the organization.
Clay Parikh
Special government employee with a background in cybersecurity
Mr. Parikh is working closely with Mr. Olsen to re-examine claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and was cited as a supposed expert in the F.B.I. affidavit supporting the search of Fulton County’s elections office.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Mr. Parikh took part in Ms. Lake’s failed efforts to reverse her defeat in the 2022 Arizona governor’s race, and has served as a witness in other cases brought by Mr. Olsen challenging the use of voting machines.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
In his first term, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that gave the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the ability to make determinations about foreign interference in elections. Such declarations could allow the president to declare national emergencies surrounding elections.
What happened in 2020
Several advisers to Mr. Trump tried to push the intelligence community to determine that foreign entities had meddled in the election, in an effort to justify a move to seize voting machines. The consensus opinion among intelligence agencies was ultimately that countries like China and Russia had not interfered in a significant way.
John Ratcliffe, then the director of national intelligence, disagreed about China’s supposed role, but did not issue his dissent until Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the election had been certified.
Tulsi Gabbard
Director of national intelligence
Ms. Gabbard is helping oversee the Trump administration’s effort to investigate supposed voting irregularities in Georgia, and was present at the F.B.I. search of the Fulton County elections office. Her office also recently seized voting machines in Puerto Rico, to examine them for vulnerability to hacking by foreign entities.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Unlike others Mr. Trump has installed in government, Ms. Gabbard did not have a history of supporting Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud. She started to back such claims publicly as the director of national intelligence.
The Justice Department has the power to open investigations into allegations of fraud in elections, a move that could, if nothing else, undermine faith in the results of the upcoming midterms.
What happened in 2020
After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump pressured the department to investigate his baseless claims that the voting had been marred by fraud. He wanted to use those inquiries to persuade state legislatures to refuse to certify his defeat.
Attorney General William P. Barr rejected Mr. Trump’s claims that the count had been compromised, and refused suggestions from the president’s advisers to seize voting machines. Mr. Barr was replaced by Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general, in late December of that year. He similarly resisted Mr. Trump’s efforts.
Pam Bondi
Attorney general
Last spring, the Justice Department began seeking detailed voter roll data from states, to compile a national voting database. Under Ms. Bondi, it has sued at least 29 states and territories in an attempt to force them to turn over data.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
As a private lawyer, Ms. Bondi helped the Trump campaign seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She appeared at a news conference with the Trump ally Rudolph W. Giuliani, and falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won Pennsylvania, even though not all of the ballots had been counted.
Ms. Bondi later served as the litigation chairwoman for the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute, which brought a series of lawsuits seeking to hinder ballot box access or disenfranchise groups of voters.
Kash Patel
F.B.I. director
Mr. Patel is overseeing a criminal investigation into supposed irregularities in the 2020 presidential election that has so far led to the seizure of voting records at the Fulton County election center in Georgia, and the subpoenaing of records in Maricopa County, Ariz.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
During his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Mr. Patel sidestepped questions about whether Mr. Trump had lost the 2020 election, responding only that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been certified and sworn in as president.
Last summer, Mr. Patel promoted an unsubstantiated theory on his social media account that thousands of fake driver’s licenses seized by customs officials in 2020 were part of a Chinese plot to throw the election that year to Mr. Biden.
Harmeet K. Dhillon
Assistant attorney general for civil rights
Ms. Dhillon has led the Justice Department effort to obtain complete, unredacted voter roll lists from every state in the country, including suing more than half the states in an attempt to force them to turn over the data.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Ms. Dhillon advocated efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, and encouraged people to donate to his legal defense fund. Shortly after the election, she appeared on Fox Business urging Mr. Trump’s appointees on the Supreme Court to “step in and do something” to help him win the race.
She also served as a campaign lawyer for Ms. Lake and assisted her efforts to overturn her 2022 Arizona governor’s race loss.
Eric Neff
Acting Chief, voting section
Mr. Neff leads the voting section at the Justice Department, which is supposed to enforce the civil provisions of the federal laws that protect the right to vote.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
As a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Mr. Neff was placed on administrative leave in 2022 after basing a prosecution of the chief executive of the election management company Konnech on tips from a right-wing group, True the Vote, which has promoted conspiracy theories centered on election fraud.
Mr. Neff also served at one point as a lawyer for Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock chief executive, who advised the Trump administration to seize voting machines during the 2020 election.
Christopher Gardner
Trial attorney, voting section
Mr. Gardner is taking part in a Justice Department effort to secure voting records from Georgia officials.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
As a private lawyer, Mr. Gardner helped file a lawsuit seeking to prevent officials in Georgia from certifying the state’s 2020 election results. He also worked with other Trump-allied lawyers, including Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell, to provide legal advice to a fake slate of electors in Georgia. Those electors claimed that Mr. Trump won the state even though Mr. Biden actually prevailed.
Megan Frederick
Trial attorney
Ms. Frederick participated in a Justice Department effort demanding voter rolls from officials in the District of Columbia.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Ms. Frederick served as a lawyer representing the Trump campaign during the Dane County, Wis., recount in 2020, and took part in efforts to challenge more than 200,000 ballots in the state.
She also worked as a leader of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, which is part of the election-denying Election Integrity Network, an umbrella organization run by Ms. Mitchell, a stalwart pro-Trump lawyer who tried to overturn his election loss.
Joseph Voiland
Trial attorney, civil rights division
Mr. Voiland is active in the Justice Department’s efforts to gain access to Wisconsin’s voter registration list.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Mr. Voiland, a former Wisconsin county judge, served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, and sought to have thousands of ballots in the state thrown out.
Sigal Chattah
First assistant U.S. attorney in Nevada
Last July, Ms. Chattah pushed the F.B.I. to investigate claims that illegal immigrants in her state had cast ballots in the 2020 election, according to Reuters. After a federal judge ruled that she had been unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney, the Justice Department put her in the role of first assistant and gave her a second title as special attorney.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Ms. Chattah joined the Republican National Committee in 2023 to advocate taking a more hard-line stance on elections, and to oust its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, who was seen by Trump loyalists as not doing enough to help Mr. Trump overturn the election results in 2020.
Ms. Chattah was a defense lawyer for one of the people who served as a so-called fake elector in Nevada in 2020. She also sued unsuccessfully to stop a bill that made it illegal in Nevada to harass election officials.
Jeanine Pirro
U.S. attorney in Washington
Ms. Pirro oversees a key federal prosecutor’s office that handles many matters related to the administration of the government.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
After Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Ms. Pirro, then a Fox News host, used her show to amplify false allegations that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been used to rig the tally. Fox ultimately paid nearly $780 million to settle claims by Dominion that the network had defamed it through its coverage.
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security oversees multiple departments that have critical roles in election security, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
It has also been leading a review of election records, looking for proof of noncitizen voting. (It has not found much.)
What happened in 2020
In the immediate aftermath of the election, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying that the election was “the most secure in American history.” It contradicted claims of interference and noted that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
The statement drew the ire of Mr. Trump, who fired the agency’s director, Chris Krebs, days later.
Markwayne Mullin
Secretary of Homeland Security
The Senate confirmed Mr. Mullin on March 23. During his confirmation hearing, he suggested that he supported the federal investigations into the 2020 election.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
After the 2020 election, Mr. Mullin was one of the more prolific voices in Congress calling for further investigations into vote tallies. He signed a letter to Mr. Trump asking him to direct the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.
Heather Honey
Deputy assistant secretary for election integrity
Ms. Honey has asserted that the Trump administration could declare a “national emergency” to justify dictating new election rules to state and local governments.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Ms. Honey repeatedly made claims of voting irregularities in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election, and was centrally involved in the recount of Arizona’s vote tally. She also served as a witness for Ms. Lake’s failed 2022 election challenge in Arizona in a case in which Mr. Olsen worked as a lawyer. She was a leader in Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network.
Marci McCarthy
Director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
The agency works to help secure election systems and assets like voting machines.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Ms. McCarthy also worked closely with Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network and helped place far-right activists on the local election board in DeKalb County, Ga. She was instrumental in forcing out a member of the Georgia State Election Board who voted against a rule to end mail voting.
Gregg Phillips
Associate administrator of FEMA’s office of response and recovery
While the Federal Emergency Management Agency plays no formal role in assisting elections, its Homeland Security Grant Program has been used for cybersecurity and other election protections in the past, including in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
After the 2016 election, Mr. Phillips claimed without evidence that millions of illegal immigrants had cast votes — an assertion later amplified by Mr. Trump. Leading up to the 2020 election, he worked with the right-wing group True the Vote to attack mail voting as fraudulent.
He also served as the executive producer on the movie “2000 Mules,” a documentary by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza that falsely claimed that a network of “mules” had illegally gathered large numbers of ballots to swing the 2020 election away from Mr. Trump.
David Harvilicz
Assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy
Mr. Harvilicz oversees policies for maintaining the security of the country’s election infrastructure, including voting machines.
Prior support for claims of election fraud
Mr. Harvilicz has done business with James Penrose, a former intelligence officer who took part in several efforts to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in an attempt to undermine Mr. Trump’s defeat in the race, according to ProPublica. He has also called for doing away with voting machines, and has questioned victories of Democratic candidates.
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