The 2026 midterm elections have been the most expensive
in history, with more
than $11 billion being spent on political ads. While
Democratic candidates have outraised Republicans in
individual donations by appealing directly to voters,
Republicans have received the lion’s share of money from
super
PACs (political action committees) funded by a small
number of the wealthiest elites in the United
States.
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
The single biggest election-cycle donor is,
unsurprisingly, the richest human on the planet. Elon
Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, has poured more
money into influencing the 2026 midterm elections than
anyone has ever done in
any election. His unprecedented contribution totals
nearly half a billion dollars, all of it going toward
electing Republicans. Musk is one
of 50 donors whose combined political spending amounts
to nearly $3 billion. Sixty percent of those donations are
for electing Republicans.
This perversion of democracy
can be traced to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens
United v. FEC, which dismantled the last guardrails
against political spending in elections. Since then,
according to the Brennan
Center for Justice, “the composition of the top 40
donors in the midterms has shifted dramatically: more money,
more support for Republicans, less transparency, and new
industries like crypto surging while older sectors like
labor disappear.”
There is no reason for such
contributions other than an expectation of quid pro quo
favors. Republicans (and to a lesser extent, Democrats)
have long made it a central goal to reward wealthy elites
and institutions. President Donald Trump’s 2025 One Big
Beautiful Bill was designed to overwhelmingly favor
tax cuts for the rich. The four top corporations that
championed Trump’s bill—Musk’s Tesla, Amazon, Google,
and Meta—enjoyed paying a paltry 4.9 percent tax rate on
their massive
$315 billion in profits in 2025 thanks to the new
law.
In other words, Musk and his ilk see political
spending as an investment that will yield windfall returns.
For example, Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike
Rogers is urging voters to elect him so he can “protect
Elon” and prevent an audit of the federal
government.
There was a time when top policymakers,
such as former President Ronald
Reagan, justified enriching the wealthy by relying on
the ludicrous claim that throwing money at the wealthy
results in benefits trickling down to the rest of
us.
With decades of documentation that the rich hoard
their wealth, theories of “supply-side economics” have
been thoroughly debunked.
Even prestigious institutions, such as the London School of
Economics, have published analyses concluding
that tax cuts for the rich merely mean that “[t]he rich
get richer, while unemployment and economic growth are
unaffected.”
Today, instead of relying on junk
economic theories, Republican politicians simply lie about
the benefits of their tax cuts. Trump has repeatedly
said that thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, people will
pay no taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, or overtime
pay—income that low-wage workers and retirees
disproportionately rely on. He has even reframed the bill as
the “Working
Families Tax Cuts.”
What he doesn’t mention
are the numerous caveats
in the law that result in minuscule tax benefits. According
to NBC News, on average, the refund for the 2026 tax season
was only $350 more than 2025. But the president’s war on
Iran has also led Americans to pay, on average, $471
more in gas prices since the end of February, while his
failed tariffs cost households an average of $2,500.
On balance, Trump has fleeced Americans in his second term
while repeatedly claiming the opposite.
Sometimes,
though, he can’t keep his lies straight. In a now-viral
recording of a campaign speech in Texas, the president
promoted his oft-touted bribe of gifting Americans $5,000
checks if his party wins the midterms. He then admitted
that such an amount wouldn’t buy much more than “a
hamburger and a small dessert” at the Florida resort he
owns.
The fact is that wealthy people like Trump—who
is now nearly
$3 billion richer from gaming the presidency to benefit
himself—are so cut off from the circumstances of ordinary
Americans that their moral compass no longer
works.
This is by design. Business schools are
designed to train empathy out of humans and replace it with
a self-serving ethos. University of Cambridge Judge Business
School professor Chris Marquis argued in The
New York Times that business schools ought to be
abolished as they don’t follow curricula based on reality
or include scientific inquiry into how businesses work.
Rather, they train students to internalize what he calls
“the ‘win-win’ story in which the conflict between
private gain and public good simply evaporates.” Business
school graduates walk away convinced that there are market
solutions to all social problems and that when shareholders
win, everyone wins.
This twisted logic is reflected in
treating GDP growth as a measure of a country’s overall
economic health. It explains why experts declare
strong economies even when the majority of middle- and
low-income people can barely make ends meet. The cognitive
dissonance between people’s ability to thrive and the
assertions that the US economy is strong shows the stark
contrast between our hand-to-mouth existence and CEO
compensation packages.
If we want to save democracy
and ourselves, we need to stop unfettered capitalism in its
tracks, and that means curbing the ability of wealthy people
to influence our elections.
In Montana, voters will decide
on November 3 whether their state can redefine corporations
as entities that cannot influence politics. Hawaii already
implemented this idea, called the “Corporate
Power Reset” (CPR), through its legislative
process in June 2026, and many other states
are now considering similar legislation or ballot measures.
Such laws render the Citizens United decision moot
within any state that redefines corporations as politically
neutral.
Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, who conceived of the idea, said in an
email interview that CPR “only affects corporations,”
not obscenely rich people. While it would not stop men like
Musk from spending money in politics, “it would keep him
and other wealthy individuals from laundering their
political spending through dark money groups,” Moore said.
And that’s because “CPR does knock dark-money groups out
of the game.”
According to Moore, “Rich folks want
to spend the money, fine. But they’ll have to have their
names attached to it.” And while that’s not enough to
reverse the flood of political spending, it is a good
start.
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Sonali Kolhatkar is
an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder,
host, and executive producer of “Rising
Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscriber-funded television
and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica
stations. Her books include Breaking
ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA
Fascism(Seven Stories Press, 2026), Talking
About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible
(Seven Stories Press, 2025), and Rising
Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial
Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing
fellow for the Economy
for All project at the Independent Media Institute and
was a senior editor at Yes!
Magazine, covering race and economy. She serves as
the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the
Afghan
Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding
Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors
of Justice
Action Center, an immigrant rights
organization.
This article was produced by Economy
for All, a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
