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Report Details Massive Federal Contracts, Enforcement Actions Against Trump's Ballroom Donors
"These are not random donations," said Public Citizen. "It's a clear-as-day effort to kiss up to the Trump administration."
Nov 03, 2025
As President Donald Trump has embarked on the $300 million demolition of the East Wing of the White House—a project he insists has been "longed for" for more than a century—he has openly said that he and "some of [his] friends" are paying for the ballroom he is building.
But an analysis on Monday detailed just how "massive, inescapable, and irremediable" the donors' conflicts of interest are, as more than a dozen of the presidents' "friends" have major government contracts and are facing federal enforcement actions.
The White House has denied that corporate donors to Trump's ballroom construction project have any conflicts of interest, but Public Citizen found that 16 out of 24 publicly disclosed contributors—including three identified by CBS News but not by the White House—have government contracts.
The companies, including Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir Technologies, have received $279 billion in government contracts over the last five years and nearly $43 billion in the last year. Lockheed is by far the biggest recipient, having received $191 billion in defense contracts over the last five years. The amount the companies have each donated to the ballroom construction has not been disclosed, but Lockheed spent more than $76 million in political donations from 2021-25.
The money the corporations have spent to build Trump's ballroom, said Public Citizen, "are not random donations. It's a clear-as-day effort to kiss up to the Trump administration."
Lockheed is among at least 14 ballroom contributors that are facing federal enforcement actions, including labor rights cases, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement, and antitrust actions.
The National Labor Relations Board has before it cases alleging unfair labor practices by Lockheed as well as Google and Amazon.
The big tech firm Nvidia, another donor, has previously been accused of entering into a "quid pro quo" arrangement with the White House when it said it would give 15% of its revenue from exports to China directly to the Trump administration. The company has spent more than $6 million on political donations since 2021 and more than $4 million on lobbying, and faces a Department of Justice antitrust investigation into whether it abused its market dominance in artificial intelligence computer chips.
While Trump has sought to portray the ballroom fundraising drive as one in which his wealthy "friends" have simply joined the effort to beautify a cherished public building, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said the companies are not acting "out of a sense of civic pride."
"They have massive interests before the federal government and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration," said Weissman. "Millions to fund Trump’s architectural whims are nothing compared to the billions at stake in procurement, regulatory, and enforcement decisions."
In total, the 24 companies identified as ballroom donors spent more than $960 million in lobbying and political contributions in the last election cycle and $1.6 billion over the last five years.
Weissman said the companies' contributions to the president's pet project amount to corporate America "paying tribute" to the White House in order to stave off unfavorable labor rights and antitrust rulings, energy and financial regulations, and SEC actions and oversight, like an investigation into the cryptocurrency firm Gemini over alleged sales of unregistered securities.
"This is more than everyday corporate influence seeking. Paying tribute is a mark of authoritarianism and in making these payments, these corporations are aiding Trump’s authoritarian project," said Weissman. "They should withdraw their contributions.”
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'This Must Stop': 15 Companies Profiting Off Israeli Occupation and Genocide in Gaza
"It is unacceptable that states and companies are aware that their revenues come from death, destruction, and immense suffering of Palestinians, yet they have decided to look away," said the head of Amnesty International.
Sep 19, 2025
Amnesty International on Thursday published a briefing that pressures governments, public institutions, and companies to stop contributing to Israel's unlawful military occupation of Palestinian territories, system of apartheid against Palestinians, and genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"This must stop. Human dignity is not a commodity," Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a statement. "While Palestinian mothers in Gaza are left to watch their children waste away from starvation under Israel's genocide, arms companies and others continue to reap substantial profits."
The human rights group's new report "identifies actions that states must take to fulfill their obligations, from banning and barring companies contributing or directly linked to Israel’s crimes, to effective legislation and regulation, and including divesting and ceasing purchases or contracts," she noted. "It also lists actions companies should take, such as suspending sales or contracts and making divestments."
The briefing—titled Pull the Plug on the Political Economy Enabling Israel's Crimes—lists 15 firms for which Amnesty "has gathered credible evidence" of contributing to Israel's illegal actions, based on "primary research, companies' published human rights policies, corporate press releases, transcripts of investor calls, quarterly earnings statements, company promotional material and/or media sources, including statements made by company representatives to the media."
"We cannot allow the immense, unfathomable suffering of the Palestinian people to be ignored for a minute longer."
Amnesty "has documented the abuses by several of these companies for years," the report explains. The group wrote to all of them, "asking questions about their activities" in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), and "expressing concerns of the human rights violations described in this briefing before making them public."
"Eleven out of the 15 companies were contacted at different times from 2017 to 2024 about their activities described in this briefing and asked to provide a response," the briefing details. "In 2025, 13 out of 15 companies were contacted by Amnesty International and five companies sent replies, which are reflected in this briefing and previously published research that is cited; two replies are annexed in their entirety."
Amnesty spotlighted the US multinationals Boeing, which manufactures bombs and guidance kits "being used in unlawful air strikes in the occupied Gaza Strip," and Lockheed Martin, which "supplies and services F-16s and the growing fleet of F-35 combat aircraft—the backbone of the Israeli Air Force." It also targeted Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, "the three largest Israeli arms companies."
However, it's not only the supply of military goods and services that "must be stopped," Amnesty underscored, also advocating for cutting off Israel's supply of surveillance and cloud infrastructure. The report specifically flags biometric tools from the Chinese company Hikvision, facial recognition software from the Israeli firm Corsight, and artificial intelligence products and services from the US-based Palantir Technologies.
The group further argued that "all trade and investment contributing to Israel's unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, or genocide must be banned." It took aim at Mekorot, an Israeli government water company operating in the OPT, as well as the South Korean HD Hyundai, which "produces heavy machinery that has been widely used in demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures, homes, and businesses."
The report also notes that the Spanish firm Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles "provides transportation materials and services to Israel for the Jerusalem Light Rail project, which connects illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem with each other, as well as with West Jerusalem."
Additionally, Amnesty pointed to its 2019 report "that exposed how the operations of online tourism companies such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor contributed to the maintenance, development, and expansion of Israeli settlements in the OPT, namely the West Bank including East Jerusalem, in violation of international law." The group says that it "called on these companies to responsibly disengage from doing business in Israeli settlements, but they continue to do so."
The report emphasizes that "the list is illustrative, nonexhaustive, and preliminary. Nevertheless, the range of industries and sizes of companies included in this document highlights the scale and scope of the role of economic actors that enable and sustain Israel's unlawful occupation and its crimes under international law, including apartheid and genocide."
Callamard—whose group began describing Israel's destruction of Gaza as a genocide last December, after over a year of war—called on "people around the world to take peaceful actions" pushing countries and companies to stop "sustaining a government that has engineered famine and mass killing of civilians and denied Palestinians fundamental rights for decades."
"It is unacceptable that states and companies are aware that their revenues come from death, destruction, and immense suffering of Palestinians, yet they have decided to look away, maintain their business models regardless of the human cost, and indulge in their wealth," she said. "We cannot allow the immense, unfathomable suffering of the Palestinian people to be ignored for a minute longer."
Amnesty is far from alone in highlighting how, as Callamard put it, "every economic sector, the vast majority of states, and many private entities have knowingly contributed to or benefited from Israel's genocide in Gaza, and its brutal occupation and apartheid." The briefing was published just days after over 80 other civil society groups launched the "Stop Trade With Settlements" campaign, which demands that countries ban all trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT.
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Thousands Protest London Weapons Fair Over UK Complicity in Gaza Genocide
"The people who run these companies are war criminals," said one campaigner. "They should be investigated for crimes against humanity, not invited to profit from the unspeakable devastation they have caused."
Sep 09, 2025
Thousands of demonstrators rallied Tuesday outside a major London arms fair to protest what one campaigner called the United Kingdom's "peak complicity in genocide" in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 64,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—and wounded over 163,000 others since October 2023.
The Independent reported at least three arrests for alleged assaults on police officers outside the the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) UK trade show, which is being held at Excel London at the Royal Victoria Dock. At least one person was also reportedly taken away in an ambulance.
Video posted to social media showed police officers shoving people to the ground, as well as DSEI attendees smirking and recording on their phones as they passed demonstrators.
Protesters chanted "shut it down," waved Palestinian flags, and held up signs with messages like "stop arming Israel," "only war criminals past this point," and "we hope that the screams of babies will haunt them in their sleep."
Ajahn Santamono, a Buddhist monk taking part in Tuesday's protest, lamented to Middle East Eye that "people who contribute to genocide and mass murder are protected and supported, while people of conscience who try to protest this are the ones who are arrested, criminalized, and treated with violence."
On Monday, members of the direct action group Shut the System sabotaged fiber optic internet cables and splashed red paint over portions of the DSEI venue.
"How can anyone with a shred of humanity build their fortune on mass slaughter?" the group asked. "Shut the System's answer—they are a symptom of a global financial system that prioritizes extreme, psychopathic profiteering for growth's sake alone, above solid healthcare and the natural support systems underpinning all life on Earth."
More than 50 Israeli arms manufacturers and US weapons giants including Lockheed Martin—which makes the F-35 fighter used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to bomb Gaza—are among the approximately 1,600 exhibitors taking part in DSEI.
The United States is far and away the world's leading enabler of Israel's war on Gaza, which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Some of the IDF's most powerful arms—including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs that have been repeatedly used to massacre Palestinian civilians—are provided by the United States and the tens of billions of dollars in armed aid it lavishes upon Israel.
"The US and Europe-backed slaughter of families in Palestine is the frontline of our struggle for climate and social justice globally," said Shut the System. "If we can't stop this genocide, power holders will use it as a blueprint to commit genocides elsewhere."
The advocacy group Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said ahead of DSEI that the UK government "keeps insisting it is doing everything in its power to hold the Israeli government to account for its actions."
However, a report published by the group last week shows that "this is an outrageous and offensive lie."
The report notes that "the UK is deeply complicit in supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza: through arms sales, [Royal Air Force] reconnaissance flights over Gaza, from which it is suspected intelligence is shared with Israel, training of Israeli soldiers, and other forms of military cooperation."
According to the report:
Despite the government's decision on September 2, 2024 to suspend arms export licenses to Israel... they are still allowing the supply of crucial components for Israel's 45 F-35 combat aircraft, so long as they are supplied indirectly via the US or other countries, rather than directly to Israel. These are used to bomb Gaza, at an extraordinary level of intensity, requiring a constant supply of spare parts. By its own admission at the time of the decision, the government accepts that these UK-supplied components may well be used by Israel to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza.
CAAT media coordinator Emily Apple said that the UK has "reached peak complicity in genocide in allowing 51 Israeli arms companies to exhibit at DSEI."
"It is allowing companies to market their genocide tested weapons to human rights abusing countries around the world," Apple added. "The people who run these companies are war criminals. They should be investigated for crimes against humanity, not invited to profit from the unspeakable devastation they have caused in Gaza."
Other actions Tuesday included a Quaker meeting at Waterloo Station attended by around 200 people, part of No Faith in War Day.
As part of the No Faith in War day, 200 people joined our Meeting for Worship, creating a grounded space in the face of the violence embodied by the DSEI arms fair.Tomorrow, join us to hand in a demand to stop DSEI. Meeting Waterloo train station, 11am: tinyurl.com/stop-dsei📸 Michael Preston
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— Quakers in Britain (@quaker.org.uk) September 9, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Anti-DSEI protests are set to continue Wednesday, when the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is planning a 5:00 pm "pots and pans protest" meant to "greet the arms traders with a wall of noise."
The protests against DSEI follow last weekend's arrest of nearly 900 supporters of the banned UK-based group Palestine Action in London's Parliament Square.
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