Clockwise from the top left: Billionaires Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, Tim Dunn, and Dick and Liz Uihlein.
The sheer amount of billionaire wealth and influence that flowed into the 2024 election cycle, the topic of the first post in this series, was unprecedented. But while many elite donors approached the election in a purely transactional way — pursuing their material class interests, or making sure they bought access to whoever won — others had overlapping, farther-reaching motives.
Several blocs of ideological billionaires instrumentalized the 2024 election to advance their wider political agenda and worldview, sensing a key opportunity with a Trump win to move the needle on certain issues or even reshape the basic axis of government and society. Now virtually merging with the Trump administration, some of these ideological billionaires have become true oligarchs, sitting at the high nexus of economic and political power, backed by unprecedented levels of personal wealth and business empires.
This posts maps out four of these key blocs — Christian Nationalists, Rightwing Tech Barons, the Ideological Corporate Hard Right, and Pro-Israel Billionaires — who aggressively intervened in the election and, since then, in shaping the new Trump administration, aiming to advance their larger worldviews.
Christian Nationalism’s Billionaire Backers
Christian Nationalists view the U.S. as a white Christian nation and support policies toward openly implementing that vision — and they are big winners from Trump’s reelection. Top Trump appointees include Christian Nationalists like Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Russell Vought for director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Mike Huckabee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
The Christian Nationalist agenda has a powerful elite backer in the oil billionaire Timothy Dunn, a major Trump donor and prolific funder of the extreme right.
Dunn is a fracking billionaire who made his fortune from his private oil company, CrownQuest, which partnered with Lime Rock Partners, a private equity firm, to form a joint venture, CrownRock, one of the top drillers in the Texas Permian Basin oil field. In late 2023, Dunn announced he was selling CrownRock to fossil fuel giant Occidental Petroleum for $12 billion.
For the past two decades Dunn has used his oil wealth to become the key power broker and megadonor behind the Texas GOP’s slide to the far-right. Dunn’s aggressive political operation in Texas includes a range of politicians, PACs, and policy groups geared toward advancing his libertarian Christian nationalist vision — including recent successful efforts to bring the bible into public school curriculum.
Dunn believes that the bible “should profoundly affect” politics and backs a group called the Convention of States that wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Some think that Dunn is a Dominionist, which ProPublica called the “extreme end” of the Christian Nationalist spectrum. One research group calls Dominionism “one of the most significant, yet little-known ideological forces in the U.S.,” based on “the theocratic idea that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions”
Dunn was the 25th biggest donor during the 2024 election cycle, and his contributions included a $5 million donation to the pro-Trump SuperPAC Make America Great Again Inc. But more than a big Trump donor, Dunn has emerged as a major player and funder behind key policy groups that are providing the agenda and personnel for the Trump administration.
As the Wall Street Journal reported in February, Dunn hopes to nationalize his Texas-style political operation through shaping the second Trump administration. To this end, Dunn has funded and participated in a range of groups who — through their policy work and personal ties — are deeply shaping the new Trump regime.
Dunn is a funder of the Center for Renewing America, a rightwing think tank that until recently was led by Christian Nationalist Russell Vought, who Trump appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget overseeing the federal budget. Vought is a key author of Project 2025. Dunn is also a funder of America First Legal, the group led by the far-right Stephen Miller, who Trump appointed as his deputy chief of staff for policy.
But maybe most critically, Dunn has close ties to the key think tank that has shaped and populated the top leadership of the new Trump administration: the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).
While there has been much focus on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the Trump-loyalist AFPI may be the more important intervention. A quick scan of AFPI’s team, board and advisors reveal a slew of Trump’s top picks within his cabinet. As the New York Times wrote, AFPI “developed a plan for staffing and setting the policy agenda for every federal agency” for a second Trump term, and “one that prioritizes loyalty to Mr. Trump and aggressive flexing of executive power from Day 1.”
Dunn is a backer and founding board member of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), whose CEO, Brooke Rollins, was appointed as Trump’s agriculture secretary. Rollins recruited Dunn to AFPI as founding board member and also worked with Dunn at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a powerful rightwing group in Texas, of which Dunn is a board member and big funder.
Commenting on AFPI, Rollins echoed Dunn’s long-game project of taking his Texas operation national to the Wall Street Journal. “We wanted to create a national organization similar to what we built in Texas,” she said. “This is a 100-year play.”
Other AFPI chairs include key Trump appointees, such as Linda McMahon (AFPI board chair), selected as Trump’s education secretary and also his transition co-chair, as well Trump attorney general Pam Bondi, former Trump trade chief Robert Lighthizer, and EPA head Lee Zeldin. On top of this, Trump picked Christian Nationalist Peter Hegseth to lead the Pentagon.
All told, Tim Dunn — and the Christian Nationalist elite he represents — is one of the biggest billionaire winners from Trump’s election: his money and influence have deeply shaped the network that stands to define the Trump administration and advance Dunn’s financial interests, hard libertarian ideology, and a Christian nationalist vision, on everything from education and abortion to advancing the presence of Christianity and the Bible in public institutions.
Rightwing Tech Barons Become a Political Class
When it comes to money in politics in the 2024 election and the new Trump administration, the biggest storyline has been the forceful emergence of a bloc of Silicon Valley billionaires lining up behind Trump and the GOP.
It’s not that the tech ruling class never had members backing rightwing politicians — Peter Thiel is a case in point. But the heights of Silicon Valley capital, from Reid Hoffman to Eric Schmidt and from Laurene Powell Jobs to Sheryl Sandberg, have long been seen as backing Democrats. Moreover, tech wealth’s support for rightwing politicians was more episodic and less a clear intervention by a powerful fraction of the tech elite.
That’s changed now with the massive, focused and coordinated intervention of the megabillionaires who represent the heights of power in Silicon Valley, pursuing a clear material agenda tied to their own interests of tech, AI, and crypto deregulation and access to government subsidies.
The tech ruling class, which has ascended over the past few decades, was arguably already reaching par with Wall Street in terms of its influence on society and the economy. Now, its significance is only set to strengthen more with the rise of AI and cryptocurrency, which (despite recent hiccups) are being sold as revolutionary developments that will reshape just about everything.
The 2024 election represents a historical turning point where this long-rising fraction of the ruling class, increasingly wealthy and dominant, has emerged as a shaper of national power and politics, intervening decisively at a time of destabilization and realignment in the U.S. party system.
The first part of this LittleSis series mapping the astounding levels of money that tech and crypto billionaires channeled toward elected Trump and his GOP allies: hundreds of millions of dollars through a small constellation of SuperPACs, with powerful industry figures like Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Marc Andreessen stoking the donor momentum.
But what are these numbers serving? We must understand the intervention of the rightwing Silicon Valley bloc as ideological, even if that ideology is both contradictory and clearly and conveniently tied to justifying its own power and wealth.
Key figures in this bloc include:
- Elon Musk, whose business empire includes Tesla, X, and SpaceX, and whose wealth and global influence surpasses any 19th century robber baron.
- Marc Andreeseen, web browser pioneer and co-head of the largest U.S. tech and crypto venture capital fund.
- David Sacks, billionaire tech and crypto investor with stakes in Meta, Uber, Lyft, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, X, Airbnb, and dozens of other companies.
- Peter Thiel, venture capital billionaire and cofounder of the CIA-backed Palantir, whose products include policing and surveillance technology.
Other tech billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, have since groveled toward Trump, with Zuckerberg refashioning himself as a proponent of “masculine energy.” Oracle’s Larry Ellison and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, meanwhile, stand to benefit from Trump’s support of a massive new AI joint venture.
Billionaires like Musk, Thiel, and Sacks go back decades together as founders and early executives of PayPal, a venture which generated wealth used to found a tech empire that include Youtube, Palantir, SpaceX, and beyond. There are clear and interlocked ideological threads that unite all or most of these tech titans.
- Billionaire elitism and class hierarchy. Just as the late 19th century robber barons believed in Social Darwinism, so do today’s rightwing tech barons believe in the inherent rights of corporate elites (themselves, specifically) to rule. They prize the heroic male entrepreneur. They have open contempt for democracy, throw “Let Them Eat Cake” birthday parties, and flirt with the ideas of monarchist Curtis Yarvin.
- Reactionary techno-futurism. Technological progress, from AI to space travel to brain chips, overseen by John Galt-like corporate billionaire geniuses, is the forward path of history for these billionaires. Anything that stands in the way of billionaire-led technological progress and libertarian genius is the enemy. Some of their ilk are steeped in ideas like trans-humanism and colonizing Mars.
- Reactionary social views and conspiracism. This billionaire bloc, with key members like Musk aligned with the global far-right, is united by the belief that a so-called “woke” state is suppressing free speech, which is often code for the right to openly spew racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and anti-trans views. Conveniently, opposition to “censorship” could also be good for business, supercharging social media algorithms and lightening the costs and burdens of curtailing hate speech. Some, like Musk, seem to genuinely buy into wild conspiracies.
- Alliance between tech elite and the state. While they may profess libertarianism, this rightwing tech elite supports a tight knit alliance with the state. They believe their businesses can drive U.S. military, space, and technological supremacy and desire massive subsidies and contracts, a semi-merger of their interests with the state’s into a renewed military-industrial complex.
Now, this clique of ideological billionaires has been handsomely rewarded for its muscular backing of Trump. Pro-crypto and tech-friendly appointees are being assigned to critical regulatory seats. Powerful figures like Musk (head of the austerity-pushing DOGE) and Sacks (crypto and AI czar) are being given in-house advisory positions that pose astonishing conflicts of interest, with Musk sitting in Trump’s innermost circle and carrying out large scale moves to fundamentally upend entire government agencies. Top economic seats at the Treasury and Commerce departments are being filled with pro-crypto billionaires.
To be sure, these tech barons are pursuing their crass corporate interests — but they’re also doing so with the belief that their interests, self-identities and worldviews should reshape our institutions and politics.
The Ideological Corporate Hard Right
There are members of the ruling class who back Trump largely out of self-interest. The Stephen Schwarzmans and Nelson Peltzes of the world appear motivated mostly by their desire for tax cuts and deregulation. As one private equity executive told the Financial Times, “we’ll get richer if he wins.”
But other business billionaires who back Trump and his GOP allies are motivated by something more than crass self-interest. They are committed to an ideology of corporate rule and privatization.
The most famous example of this may be Charles and David Koch, who built a veritable dark money empire to pursue their business conservative visions for the U.S. As usual, the Koch brothers (now down to one) plowed their wealth into the 2024 election: $43.5 million from Koch Industries, with even more spent by “Stand Together Chamber of Commerce,” a Koch-aligned non-profit.
But Trump and his allies have truly massive donors who have emerged over the past decade as billionaire backers of a hard-right, privatizing, corporate-ruled U.S. We’ll look at two of the most prominent here: Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the shipping magnates and second top donors in the 2024 election, and Jeff Yass, the investment billionaire who was the sixth biggest donor.
The Uihleins
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have made billions off their privately-owned shipping and packaging company, Uline, which they still oversee. The Uihleins have been some of the biggest billionaire donors in US politics over the past decade, both as staunch backers of Trump and also as big supporters of state and local hard-right politicians and causes.
The Uihleins were the second-biggest donors during the 2024 election, throwing $139 million behind conservative candidates and causes. This includes $76.2 million to Restoration PAC opposing (unsuccessfully) Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin’s reelection, $19 million to the business conservative Club for Growth Action PAC, and $10 million toward the pro-Trump SuperPAC, Make America Great Again Inc.
Restoration PAC is dominated by the Uihleins and is one of the key vehicles through which they intervene in politics, recently spending millions on the “pro-life” Women Speak Out PAC, the pro-Republican and pro-Trump Win It Back and Turnout For America PACs, the pro-“family”
American Principles Project PAC, and the budget-cutting Ending Spending Action Fund.
They support groups within the Koch-backed State Policy Network like the Illinois Policy Institute that pursue conservative litigation around labor unions and other issues, and they have also funded election deniers. They’ve also spent big in their home state of Wisconsin and their small hometown of Manitowish Waters, to the chagrin of some residents.
Because they are enormous donors to candidates and causes outside the Republican mainstream, the Uihleins have helped push the party further to the right — a similar strategy as Texas’s Tim Dunn. The Uihleins also stand to save big if Trump’s tax cuts are made permanent.
Jeff Yass
Like the Uihleins, Jeff Yass is one of the wealthiest billionaires you may have never heard about. Worth an astounding $50 billion, Yass is the cofounder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading and investment firm whose holdings include the parent company of TikTok.
Yass is a hard-right libertarian who loves markets and competition and disdains public schools and labor unions. He’s emerged as one of the very biggest political donors over the past decade, shelling out tens of millions to elect conservative politicians and advance a pro-business, pro-privatization agenda, especially around K-12 schools.
In the 2024 election, Yass and his wife Janine, spent nearly $100 million, with more than half of that going through conservative SuperPACs Club for Growth Action, Congressional Leadership Fund, and Protect Freedom PAC.
Yass spends big on a network of SuperPACs to fight things like taxes and labor unions, but perhaps his biggest political passion is school privatization. Yass has poured millions into pro-charter school groups in his home state of Pennsylvania. Moreover, he’s been a top donor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in large part as part of his pursuit of school privatization.
Yass (who didn’t donate to Trump himself) stands to benefit from a new Trump administration’s tax policies, but even more, from Trump’s policies toward TikTok, one of Yass’s prized portfolio investments. Indeed, some believe that Trump switched his position on banning TikTok in 2024 because of Yass’s influence. Upon taking office in January 2025, Trump suspended the recently-passed TikTok ban.
With core backers like the Uihleins and Yass making huge donations to Trump and the GOP, hardline corporate and conservative ideologies will have a place in shaping Trump’s agenda on everything from taxes and deregulation to education policy and labor unions.
Pro-Israel Billionaires Push Zionist Extremism
The first Trump administration openly supported Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a strong backer of Israeli power and settler expansion, was a key broker for supporting Israeli interests in Trump’s first term.
Behind Trump’s pro-Israel policies rested a set of major donor blocs — extreme Zionist megabillionaires, some whom are also Christian Nationalists — who are now emerging as clear winners from a second Trump presidential victory.
The leading power player here is Miriam Adelson, worth around $35 billion. Miriam is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who died in 2021. The Adelsons were core Trump megadonors in 2016 and 2020.
In 2024, Miriam gave an astounding $100 million towards Trump’s reelection, donating through the Preserve America PAC, and $132 million in total to Republicans during the election cycle, making her the third top individual donor during the entire election.
During Trump’s first term, the Adelsons pushed Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to back out of the Iran nuclear deal. Sheldon even offered to pay for the construction of the new U.S. embassy. With Trump now reelected, Miriam Adelson — who the New York Times called “fiercely hawkish on Israel” — is so far reaping the fruits of her massive donations.
So far, Trump has appointed extreme pro-Israel officials to key positions on foreign policy and Israel. These include Marco Rubio as U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Waltz as his National Security Adviser, Elise Stefanik U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Steve Witkoff as special envoy for the Middle East, and Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel.
While strong U.S. backing of Israel is nothing new, Trump’s appointees are more aggressive and extreme in their support for the Israeli far-right. Some in Israel hope that the new Trump administration will support Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which Huckabee supports, and which Miriam is rumored to have advocated for. Now, Trump has declared, as the New York Times put it, that the US “should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave.”
Other avowedly pro-Israel billionaires, such as Paul Singer, Jan Koum, the late Bernie Marcus, and others, were also big donors to Trump and Republicans.
* * *
We’re just a few weeks into the second Trump administration, and it’s clear that on everything from crypto and AI policy to government austerity and education policy, the billionaire ideologues who bankrolled Trump’s campaign are being rewarded with key appointments and major policy shifts, and are carrying out a wider political blitz that has stunned many.
At this moment, many feel discombobulated by the quick and brazen moves by an administration accelerating toward authoritarian executive power and oligarchic state capture. But as the immediate disorientation passes and popular forces of opposition recompose themselves, it’s vital to remember a core tension underlying the Trump’s billionaire-directed regime: this clear oligarchic plunder provides a continued opening for a politics truly aimed at taking on the billionaire class.