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Report Names 'Corporate Oligarchs' Who Are Cashing In as Trump-GOP Austerity Assails Workers
"Trump's presidency is a vehicle for billionaires to loot the government and line their own pockets, while working people bear the cost," said one advocate.
Jun 18, 2025
Climate action, pro-democracy, and other civil society groups have warned for months that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are intent on cutting essential programs that millions of Americans rely on while providing the richest households and corporations with at least $5 trillion in tax cuts and other benefits.
But while tech CEO Elon Musk has been highly visible since President Donald Trump took office and selected him to spearhead the administration's slashing of hundreds of thousands of federal jobs at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—an advisory board Musk has since left—other billionaires who are among the top people set to cash in from Trump's policies are less known to the public, even as they wield considerable influence over corporate regulations, privatization, and right-wing attacks on renewable energy.
In a report released Tuesday, the grassroots group Popular Democracy in Action details how six of the top beneficiaries of Trump's assault on social services and his xenophobic, pro-corporate, anti-science policies are cashing in while people across the U.S. struggle with the rising cost of living; fear the administration's mass deportation campaign; and brace for cuts to Medicaid, education, and Social Security.
Along with household names like Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—a former Trump critic—the report, titled Trump's Corporate Oligarchs, points to fossil fuel billionaire Harold G. Hamm, founder and chair of Continental Resources, as someone who has spent years working "behind the scenes to advance oil and gas interests."
Hamm is not among the more than 10 billionaires who have nabbed powerful positions within Trump's administration—making his Cabinet the richest in U.S. history, with a collective net worth of $460 billion. But with close ties to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Hamm has pushed to undo former President Joe Biden's fossil fuel regulations within the Inflation Reduction Act and urged Trump to fast-track drilling permits, likely harming poor and rural communities that are disproportionately used for fossil fuel extraction.
Last year, it was Hamm who organized a dinner at Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where the then-presidential candidate allegedly promised 20 oil and gas executives he would repeal environmental regulations if they raised $1 billion for his campaign.
Hamm's company reported over $714 million in tax savings in 2018 from Trump's so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which included the corporate tax cuts that the GOP now seeks to make permanent—while taxpayers pay more than $20 billion per year toward fossil fuel subsidies, putting their own communities at risk from climate disasters.
Hamm and Trump's other wealthy donors are able to benefit directly from their chosen candidate's policies—to the detriment of the American public—"because the U.S. is currently functioning as an oligarchy: a government where a small group of powerful, wealthy people are calling the shots," reads the report.
George Zoley is another lesser-known oligarch who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump's campaigns and is now reaping the rewards as the private prison corporation he founded, GEO Group, benefits directly from the president's mass deportation campaign.
Zoley told shareholders shortly after Trump was reelected in November that the coming anti-immigration crackdown would present an "unprecedented opportunity" for GEO Group, which provides 40% of the beds used for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and is the largest provider of ICE transportation services.
The company was also awarded a $1 billion, 15-year contract to open and run the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey.
"GEO Group is incentivized by profit to be a willing and enthusiastic partner in the Trump administration's mass incarceration,
detention, and deportation plans," reads the report. "GEO Group has been and will continue to be a key force behind the targeting and criminalization of poor, working-class, marginalized communities—including immigrants."
Trump's anti-immigration agenda is also being partially fueled by big data firm Palantir, co-founded by another of the oligarchs profiled by Popular Democracy in Action: Peter Thiel, a former mentor of Vice President JD Vance who, despite publicly criticizing Trump during his first term, provided "mission-critical" digital profiling tools to ICE to help track immigrants and conduct raids.
Thiel's "anti-democratic, libertarian philosophy" also underpinned the Trump administration and DOGE's work "dismantling federal agencies, attacking diversity and equity programs, pushing deregulation, and dismantling public aid."
Despite his past criticism of Trump, Thiel's often secretive firm is projected to report more than $2.6 billion in revenue from government contracts in 2025 as Palantir provides support to the president's mass deportation agenda.
"Trump's presidency is a vehicle for billionaires to loot the government and line their own pockets, while working people bear the cost," Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper, co-executive directors of Popular Democracy in Action, said in a statement. "These cuts to Medicare, housing, [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits, and immigrant protections aren't accidents—they're part of a calculated scheme to turn public suffering into private profit."
The report names Musk, the world's richest person with a net worth of $389.4 billion, as the top beneficiary of the Trump administration, even though the Tesla CEO has officially parted ways with the White House.
After spending $235 million to help Trump get elected, in addition to wielding unprecedented influence over the administration, Musk is poised to benefit from billions of dollars in government contracts and foreign deals for his Starlink satellite service—all while benefiting from Trump's tax cuts and pushing to gut the social safety net.
The report also highlights Bezos, who has been accused of censoring The Washington Post's coverage of Trump and the 2024 election, as a top beneficiary of the president's second term. Bezos' space technology company, Blue Origin, was awarded a $2.3 billion contract in April, and he has pledged to "help" Trump as he moves toward "reducing regulation"—including by gutting top worker protection agencies and placing low-income workers at Amazon in harm's way.
Popular Democracy in Action also highlighted corporate landlord Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Big Pharma giant Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks. Both have benefited from Trump's tax cuts, while Schwarzman has pushed for corporate deregulation and fought against protections for renters. Ricks was a major opponent of the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare drug price negotiations program, and benefited recently when Trump "signed a healthcare executive order that will create longer delays before Medicare can negotiate certain drug prices," making healthcare more expensive for seniors while raising Eli Lilly's profits.
"In a representative democracy, elected officials are supposed to respond to the priorities and interests of the people," reads the report. "Trump's 'oligarchs' are billionaires who are influencing political decision-making in order to increase their wealth."
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Trump and Musk’s Attack on Government Is an Attack on Equity and Stability
The role of government is to regulate those forces in society that would, if left to their own devices, advance their own interests at the expense of society. Now they are running amok.
Apr 12, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s shared goal of fully privatizing public services from the postal service to Social Security and Medicare will destabilize society, broadening the wide chasm of socioeconomic inequalities already haunting the nation’s politics.
Until the election of Trump and his appointment of Musk, the U.S. government, unlike giant corporations, did not summarily terminate large numbers of workers to achieve “efficiencies” to augment a “bottom line.” Indeed, the present elimination of legions of government workers is wholly arbitrary, having immediate destructive impacts on American society.
Now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.
Governments are not businesses nor should they be run as businesses. Historically, the role of government is to regulate those forces in society that would, if left to their own devices, advance their own interests at the expense of society. By moderating the social and environmental impact of these private entities and their direction, and by addressing the social inequities created by disparities in socioeconomic power, the government ensures the stability and security of society. Citizens are protected from the negative consequences of concentrated wealth and the political machinations employed to maintain and to increase the wealthy and corporate class’ power and privileges. Thus breaking down the legitimate power of government facilitates economic and political concentration, denying equal opportunity to resources and wealth. This is not only an assault on individual political rights; it leads to conflict and anarchy.
Not surprisingly, billionaires are leading the charge to undermine government’s vital roles. This is tantamount to letting the fox inside the hen house. While deregulating and privatizing public services—a movement that has gradually gained momentum with the rise of economic and political conservatism from 1980 to the present—is the general plan of Trump, Musk, and their conservative collaborators, it is these two billionaires who are already profiting from the enterprise. They are each positioned to accumulate multiple tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of greater wealth by promoting market products through their access to mass media, government contracts, and deregulation. And now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host of other public-supported services and investments—from providing funding to enable the University of Maine to improve industry and environment to veterans’ assistance—must be insulated against the vicissitudes of market forces. Government, with its broad taxing capacity, distributes the economic risk across these programs much more securely than publicly traded stocks. Social Security checks should not be directly and irrevocably tied to the market.
At the same time, those who prosper most from the publicly funded infrastructure (i.e. educated workforce, highways, ports, etc.) must pay substantially more taxes than ordinary citizens. With fully-levied progressive taxation the government will be able to transfer wealth to less wealthy Americans in the form of programs improving peoples’ livelihoods and welfare, ensuring greater economic, social, and political stability.
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Authoritarian Clickbait: Trump’s Spectacle Distracts From His Corporate Power Grab
While the world watches Trump’s political theater, his administration is quietly engineering one of the most aggressive transfers of public wealth to private interests in modern American history.
Mar 24, 2025
Traditionally, authoritarian regimes were defined by their capacity to control information. Critics were silenced, press outlets were shuttered, and opposition voices were imprisoned or worse. Power was exercised through fear, secrecy, and violence. But in President Donald Trump’s America, authoritarianism has evolved. It no longer hides behind walls of censorship—it thrives in plain sight.
Trump’s political style isn’t about suppressing attention. It’s about seizing it. Whether threatening to annex Greenland “one way or another,” mocking Canada as the “51st state,” or pressuring Columbia University to abandon free speech protections, the goal isn’t to avoid controversy. The aim is to create it.
In Trump’s case, the provocation is the point.
This shift reflects a deeper transformation in how power is exercised in the 21st century. In a world governed by algorithms, virality, and information overload, authoritarianism no longer seeks silence—it seeks spectacle. Trump’s provocations are not mere outbursts. They are designed and timed to dominate headlines, crowd out serious scrutiny, and keep the public in a state of reactive agitation.
These performances are not without precedent. But in Trump’s case, the provocation is the point. His administration has leaned into fascist-style imagery, with symbolic salutes, rallies drenched in nationalism, and open threats against political dissidents—both foreign and domestic. But this isn't authoritarianism for the sake of totalitarian control. It’s authoritarianism repurposed for an attention economy—where outrage drives clicks, and distraction enables deeper, quieter abuses of power.
The Distraction Machine: Authoritarianism in the Age of Virality
In previous generations, authoritarian leaders worried about hiding abuses. Trump, by contrast, seems to invite public attention to his most outrageous behavior—not in spite of its controversy, but precisely because of it.
What happens when Trump threatens journalists? When his administration cracks down on campus protests, or fans conspiracy theories about foreign states? The media—both traditional and social—explodes with takes, outrage, and analysis. These cycles create a spectacle that consumes public attention. And while Americans are arguing over whether Trump’s statements are ironic, dangerous, or “just trolling,” his administration is quietly enacting policies that concentrate wealth and corporate power behind the scenes.
This is by design. When Trump publicly praised authoritarian leaders while floating the idea of withdrawing the U.S. from NATO, or when he staged a militarized inauguration complete with nationalist salutes and fascist-style imagery, outrage predictably dominated headlines and flooded social media. While commentators debated the symbolic threats to democracy, far less attention was paid to the administration’s simultaneous efforts to expand fossil fuel drilling, dismantle environmental protections, and push through financial deregulations that directly benefit corporate donors and billionaire allies.
This is the sleight of hand that defines contemporary authoritarian populism. Performative controversies act as bait. While political opponents and the press react to each new provocation, policy moves quietly. Headlines focus on Trump’s tone, but not his taxes; on his insults, but not his infrastructure contracts; on his speeches, but not his subsidies.
As Trump escalates mass deportations, including the forced removal of immigrants to El Salvador, the moves are framed as tough-on-crime, anti-immigrant theater—crafted to energize his base and dominate the media cycle through performative spectacle. But behind the headlines, there are real victims: parents separated from children, asylum-seekers denied due process, and vulnerable people sent back to life-threatening conditions. At the same time, while public attention is consumed by immigration crackdowns, the administration is quietly advancing energy deals and deregulation efforts that benefit economic elites.
Rather than suppressing debate, Trump drowns it in noise. His style weaponizes the velocity of modern media, not to clarify public discourse, but to overwhelm it. And in that chaos, the structure of governance shifts: away from democratic accountability, and toward unregulated corporate control.
Authoritarian Theater, Corporate Power
While the world watches Trump’s political theater, his administration is quietly engineering one of the most aggressive transfers of public wealth to private interests in modern American history. The façade of populism masks a policy agenda deeply aligned with corporate elites, billionaire donors, and the industries that stand to gain from the dismantling of public regulation and oversight.
Tax policy remains one of the clearest examples. The tax law passed during Trump’s first term overwhelmingly favored the wealthy, while doing little to stimulate broad-based economic growth. Now, in his return to power, he’s doubling down. His 2025 budget proposal slashes funding for housing, food assistance, and healthcare. Meanwhile, Trump and Elon Musk gleefully proclaim they’re slashing government waste in the name of efficiency, yet remain conspicuously silent on the bloated corporate excesses of defense spending—where billions vanish into unaccountable contracts, overpriced weapons, and Pentagon boondoggles cloaked in patriotic branding.
The U.S. faces a dangerous convergence: a political class that performs populism while practicing plutocracy.
Trump’s cabinet and advisory circle are drawn from the ultra-rich—CEOs, private equity barons, and political megadonors. The revolving door between his administration and industries like oil, finance, and private prisons ensures that public policy is crafted not to serve the electorate, but to entrench elite interests. The prison industry, in particular, has seen surging stock prices and expanding contracts as Trump ramps up deportation efforts and privatizes detention infrastructure.
Energy policy tells the same story. While the administration rails against international climate accords and environmental “wokeness,” it is quietly threatening to sell off public lands and roll back environmental policies as a windfall for the fossil fuel industries. The beneficiaries are not small businesses or working Americans. They are multinational corporations and a handful of ultra-wealthy shareholders.
This isn’t an accidental byproduct of Trumpism—it is its core. Despite branding himself as anti-elite, Trump’s political machine is funded and sustained by America’s richest families and corporate lobbies. His alliance with figures like Elon Musk reflects a broader trend: the convergence of authoritarian populism with a new form of oligarchic capitalism—one where billionaires publicly attack “the establishment” in order to pursue their own profitable agenda.
As inequality deepens and democratic norms erode, the U.S. faces a dangerous convergence: a political class that performs populism while practicing plutocracy. This is the new authoritarianism—not built on repression alone, but on distraction, deregulation, and the strategic manipulation of spectacle.
Looking Beyond the Noise
Donald Trump’s political style is often dismissed as chaotic or unserious—a constant stream of tweets, outbursts, and provocations. But behind that chaos lies a deliberate structure: a feedback loop of distraction and policy, performance and power.
What looks like madness is often method. The attention-consuming controversies, the culture war posturing, the outlandish threats and statements—all function to consume public focus while his administration executes a radical, elite-centered program of capitalist plundering.
The real danger of Trumpism is not just what he says and does, but what it prevents us from seeing. As media cycles churn and social media outrage erupts, entire layers of policy are being written to serve corporate interests, privatize public goods, and redirect national wealth upward.
This isn’t just about optics or inflammatory rhetoric—it is a substantive and growing form of authoritarianism. Trump is using real tools of state power to target dissent, intimidate opposition, and punish vulnerable communities, turning repression into a political strategy. From aggressive crackdowns on student protesters to the mass deportation of immigrant families, these actions are not symbolic—they are deliberate mechanisms to consolidate control and clear the path for a hyper-capitalist plutocratic agenda. The victims are real, and the consequences are structural, not theatrical.
To resist this model of governance, we must not only confront its authoritarian aesthetics and the very real victims it creates—but expose its oligarchic foundation. It requires dismantling the capitalist plutocracy that thrives within—and actively sustains—this viral authoritarian political and media culture. That means cutting through the noise, tracking the money, and asking not just what Trump is doing, but who is benefiting too often in the shadows while the cameras roll.
In the end, Trumpism thrives not on silence but on spectacle—a new model of power built on authoritarian clickbait, where outrage fuels distraction, and distraction clears the path for profiteering.
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