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dark money
Trump's Fossil Fuel Donors Are Getting Their Money's Worth
As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry for its campaign spending by adopting its policy agenda as his own.
Sep 18, 2025
Fossil fuel interests donated heavily to US President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection bid. Months after his victory, oil and gas moguls have continued to pump money into his political coffers. Now, as promised by Trump during the campaign, his administration is embracing their policy agenda and governing in a way that is netting the industry billions.
Trump asked oil and gas executives in 2024 to raise $1 billion for his campaign and told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won. The investment, he said, would be a “deal” given the taxes and regulation they would avoid under his presidency. He also offered to help fast-track fossil fuel industry mergers and acquisitions if he won.
The industry responded by spending lavishly to elect Trump, giving at least $75 million to his campaign and affiliated PACs, thereby making them a top corporate backer of his reelection bid and a crucial source of funding. Several oil tycoons gave millions on their own and hosted fundraisers with Trump and his associates. Some oil and gas executives who hadn’t given Trump money during previous cycles made major donations after attending fundraisers where he pledged to start acting on the industry’s policy priorities as soon as he retook the White House.
That’s just the spending we know about. The 2024 election saw record levels of “dark money” spending, where wealthy interests keep their role secret by funneling money through groups that do not disclose their donors. The fossil fuel industry has a history of deploying dark money tactics, and any such spending in 2024 would inherently be obscured.
The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration. But what about the costs?
Even after Trump’s victory in 2024, oil and gas interests have continued to pour money into his political operation. They gave $11.8 million to his inauguration fund, and even though Trump cannot run for a third term, his main super PAC has raked in millions more from the industry since he took office—including $25 million from oil producer Energy Transfer Partners and its CEO, Kelcy Warren.
As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry by adopting its policy agenda as his own. His signature legislative package—which one executive deemed “positive for us across all of our top priorities”—gives oil and gas firms $18 billion in tax incentives while rolling back incentives for clean energy alternatives. He’s placed fossil fuel allies in charge of the agencies that oversee the industry and fast-tracked drilling projects on public lands. In just his first 100 days back in office, Trump took at least 145 actions to undo environmental rules—more than he reversed during his entire first term as president. Before Trump even reentered the White House, the industry was reportedly pre-drafting executive orders for him to issue.
The profits are already rolling in for the industry. Take Warren and Energy Transfer Partners. Trump ended a Biden-era pause on liquefied natural gas exports and cleared the way for Energy Transfer Partners (which extracts liquefied natural gas) to extend a major project. Warren’s personal wealth grew nearly 10% after the administration green-lit the project as Energy Transfer Partners reported a boost in profits.
There’s also Occidental Petroleum, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, and whose CEO cohosted a major fundraiser for Trump in May 2024. Occidental is especially well positioned to see boosted profits from the sprawling array of favorable subsidies and tax incentives in his signature bill, passed into law this summer.
Now the Trump administration is taking its biggest swing yet for fossil fuel interests: repealing the “endangerment finding,” the federal government’s formal acknowledgement that global warming from greenhouse gases, produced by burning fossil fuels, endangers the public. The finding gives the government legal authority to set clean air rules, and it’s long been the subject of the fossil fuel lobby’s ire, surviving more than 100 challenges in court. Revoking the finding would erase scores of clean air rules that the industry opposes.
The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration. But what about the costs? Extreme weather events such as flooding, wildfires, and severe storms—which overwhelming scientific consensus has concluded are driven by global warming from fossil fuel usage—are becoming increasingly common, inflicting billions of dollars of damage on American communities and costing thousands of people their lives and livelihoods each year. Life-threatening summer heat affected more than 255 million Americans this year alone. It does not appear that these concerns are having any major impact on government policy, and instead, the administration fired hundreds of scientists tasked with tracking these issues.
Trump is far from the first president to use the office in ways that reward wealthy donors. Decades of harmful Supreme Court decisions, decaying anticorruption and campaign finance guardrails, and inadequate enforcement of existing rules around money in politics have enabled an unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power. So while Trump’s embrace of the fossil fuel industry’s agenda isn’t breaking entirely new ground, it offers yet another stark example of how wealthy interests are shaping policies that affect the lives of all Americans.
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'10 Years in the Making': DNC Passes Resolution to Limit Dark Money in Primaries
"Corporate money has been a disaster for progressive nominees," said Our Revolution board member Larry Cohen.
Aug 26, 2025
Following years of pressure from progressive advocates, the Democratic National Committee's resolutions panel on Tuesday unanimously approved a measure aimed at limiting dark money—undisclosed independent campaign contributions—in presidential primary elections.
The resolution, which was introduced by Chair Ken Martin, was approved during the DNC's summer meeting in Minneapolis. The measure calls for creating a panel tasked with pursuing "real, enforceable steps the DNC can take to eliminate unlimited corporate and dark money in its 2028 presidential primary process."
Tuesday's move stands in stark contrast with the DNC resolutions committee's past refusals to allow a vote on a dark money ban.
Larry Cohen, a leading campaigner against dark money and board member of Our Revolution, an offshoot of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, told Common Dreams Tuesday that "corporate money has been a disaster for progressive nominees."
"Crypto money and AIPAC knocked out at least three or four people we were all supporting," Cohen noted, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which along with its United Democracy Project (UDP) super PAC spent more than $100 million during the 2024 election cycle. AIPAC's largesse played a key role in helping pro-Israel Democrats defeat former progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—two of Congress' most vocal critics of Israel's genocide in Gaza—in Democratic primary contests.
DNC Resolution 4 opposing dark money in presidential primaries passes unanimously at DNC Resolutions Committee.This is a victory decades in the making after long years of opposition and struggle. Much appreciation to Chair Ken Martin.
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— David Atkins (@davidoatkins.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 7:11 AM
"If this party blocks corporate money in the nominating process and blocks dark money, those are two great steps," Cohen said, noting that the measure which passed Tuesday is "just a resolution of intent," not an actual change to the party's platform or a policy shift.
"The next step is [that] there will be a committee named that will talk about how we implement this for the 2028 presidential election, and that committee has to report back by the [DNC] meeting a year from now with specific implementation points," Cohen explained.
"That could mean that every potential Democratic candidate for president must sign the People's Pledge," he said, referring to the agreement between then-US Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren in 2012 requiring candidates to offset spending by outside groups on their behalf.
"So if a candidate says, 'well I had nothing to do with this, but the money got spent,' in the People's Pledge, the candidate who benefited, Scott Brown, had to make a charitable donation of the same amount of money," Cohen said. "That would be an example of an implementation point."
As for possible legislative solutions like the DISCLOSE Act—a campaign finance reform bill repeatedly torpedoed in Congress—Cohen said that he "wouldn't give that too much weight because you have to change Congress."
"We came close," he said, but then-Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Az.) "blocked a rules change that would have put that bill on the floor with 50 supporters instead of 60… and now you have to imagine getting back to a time when [Democrats] will have 50 again."
"So that's in the resolution, there should be legislative change," Cohen added, "but also in the resolution is that all elected Democratic officials should look at what they can do," including at the state, county, and municipal levels.
"They can adopt rules to limit or eliminate the effectiveness of corporate, dark, and other independent expenditures, like Elon Musk money," Cohen said in a nod of infamy to the world's richest person, who spent upward of $290 million supporting President Donald Trump and other Republicans in 2024.
The US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which allowed unlimited independent financial contributions to support political campaigns, unleashed a tsunami of dark money that has been used by billionaires and corporate interests to sideline progressive candidates and buy elections.
Since Citizens United, nearly $20 billion has been spent on US presidential elections and more than $53 billion on congressional races, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Spending on 2024 congressional races was double 2010 levels, while presidential campaign contributions were more than 50% higher in 2024 than in 2008, the last election before Citizens United.
The DNC's action on dark money was overshadowed by its rejection of another resolution calling for a suspension of US military aid to Israel.
"This party keeps digging its own grave," said attorney and organizer Asma Nizami. "And it's owned by AIPAC."
Correction: This article originally—and incorrectly—labeled former Sen. Scott Brown as a Democrat.
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13,000+ Back Grassroots Push for DNC to Approve Ban on Corrupting Dark Money
"For those of us focused on progressive social change," says the board chair of Our Revolution, secretive spending by corporations and the ultra-rich "has blocked candidates committed to our entire agenda including workers' rights, Gaza ceasefire, financial reform, rent control, Medicare for All, and renewable energy."
Aug 22, 2025
Ahead of the Democratic National Committee's upcoming summer meeting in Minneapolis, organizers with the grassroots advocacy group Our Revolution on Thursday delivered a petition with 13,000 signatures calling on committee members to adopt DNC Chair Ken Martin's proposal to take a major step toward banning dark money in presidential primaries.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, Martin's proposal directed the DNC Committee on Reforms to identify "real, enforceable steps the DNC can take to eliminate unlimited corporate and dark money in its 2028 presidential primary process."
The panel is set to vote on the issue on August 27 as the DNC wraps up the summer meeting.
The DNC has in the past declined to allow votes on resolutions that sought to ban dark money—undisclosed and corporate funds that can go towards election efforts through issue-advocacy groups—with the committee's resolutions panel refusing to bring the issue up for a vote twice in five months in 2022-23, after super PACs had spent $1.35 billion on the 2022 midterms.
While super PACs are legally required to disclose their donors, many effectively act as dark money groups because the sources of their funding are difficult to trace.
"For too long, billionaires and corporate super PACs have drowned out the voices of working people," said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, on Thursday. "Democrats can't claim to be the party of working people while letting dark money groups and corporate elites choose their presidential nominees. This resolution is about putting power back where it belongs—in the hands of voters, not billionaire donors."
Paco Fabian, campaign director for Our Revolution, told Common Dreams that Democratic leaders have long been driven by the "fear of scaring away funders that provide a lot of money to the party."
"This resolution is about putting power back where it belongs—in the hands of voters, not billionaire donors."
Our Revolution backed Martin's run to lead the DNC earlier this year in part because of his call for the party to rein in corporate and dark money spending in elections, said Fabian.
"I think he understands that in the past, especially in Democratic primaries, they haven't necessarily been shared contests," Fabian said. "The DNC can really make it a fairer process where it's not about who spends the most money. It's really about who convinces the most people to support them based on their policy positions."
Martin's proposal does not seek to ban super PACs from Democratic primaries, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has demanded, but the progressive senator—whose 2016 presidential campaign led to the founding of Our Revolution—applauded the step urged by the DNC chair earlier this month.
"Congrats to the DNC for starting the process to ban Big Money from presidential primaries," said Sanders.
Martin's proposal notes that the Democratic Party must "demonstrate its willingness to reject certain types of donations if it hopes to win the trust of voters," according to The New York Times.
"The DNC encourages Democratic officeholders and candidates at all levels of government to support efforts to reduce the influence of corporate and dark money in their campaign policy platforms, and to lead by example in rejecting such donations," reads the resolution, which does not specify how candidates would be held to account for accepting dark money from outside groups.
Larry Cohen, board chair of Our Revolution, wrote in The Nation on Friday that "candidates could be required to sign some version of the 'People's Pledge' agreed to by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown in the 2012 general election for the U.S. Senate," which required a candidate benefiting from "big money independent expenditures [IE] to donate a similar amount, from their campaign funds to a designated charity."
"Campaign funds are far more valuable than IE money, providing a powerful deterrent," wrote Cohen.
Cohen emphasized that in Democratic primaries, "big money has often weighed in on behalf of centrist Democrats and against progressives," with independent expenditures including dark money hitting record highs in 2024 "as millions of dollars poured into several districts in the weeks before primary elections, demonizing leading Democratic candidates" such as former Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.).
Cohen added:
For those of us focused on progressive social change, this spending has blocked candidates committed to our entire agenda including workers' rights, Gaza ceasefire, financial reform, rent control, Medicare for All, and renewable energy. The Congressional Progressive Caucus which had been advancing towards a majority of the Democratic Party Caucus, has now seen incumbents defeated and new progressive candidates blocked by the onslaught of money from crypto, fossil fuel, and an endless parade of corporate spending, AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) and other right-wing groups, as well as Republican billionaires.
Our Revolution delivered the 13,000 petition signatures a day after the Times reported on the Democratic Party's plummeting voter registration numbers, with all 30 states that track voter registration by political party finding that Democrats ceded ground to the Republicans between 2020-24.
While Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between those years' presidential elections, the GOP gained 2.4 million.
Fabian expressed hope that Martin's resolution could be the first step towards "a real boon" for the party.
"It can really bring in folks to the party where they're like, 'Okay, it's not about money now. It's about people. And that means I feel like my voice will be heard, as opposed to the current system where my voice will only be heard if I bring a bag of money with me.'"
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