Of the roughly 800 U.S. billionaires on the Forbes list, approximately 300 -350 lean Democratic and 250-300 lean Republican. Yet, of the $1.9 billion spent on federal campaigns by the richest Americans, $1.36 billion went to support Republicans while about $700 million supported Democratic. Specifically:

• Elon Musk spent about $277 million on Trump’s presidential campaign and PACs that support him,
• Timothy Mellon’s $165–197 million political donations went overwhelmingly to Republicans that support Trump.
• The vast majority of Miriam Adelson’s $132 million donation went to Trump’s presidential campaign, Republican super PACs, GOP candidates and his self-glorifying construction projects. 
• Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman who initially distanced themselves from Trump gave substantial sums to support him after he  was nominated.  

Most Republican billionaire donations went to support Trump’s efforts, while Democratic billionaires spent more on the public good. 

For example, Republican billionaire money is helping Trump: 

• Fix election outcomes (he’s already trying),
• Control the judiciary (they already control the  Supreme Court),
• Consolidate full government control in Trump,
• Continue to weaponize the DOJ against Trump critics and political opponents, and
• Abolish freedom of the press by
  • Allowing Trump loyalists to buy news outlets. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post,
  • Controlling online platforms. Elon Musk bought Twitter, 
  • Using bogus Lawsuits to extract monetary settlements from the press.
  • Funding cuts to Public Broadcasting,
  • Blocking multi-billion-dollar deals that media companies need to survive.
  • Exchanging political favor for the surrendering editorial independence.

In contrast, Democratic billionaires such as George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Reid Hoffman funded causes such as expanding voter registration, protecting voting rights, environmental policy, gun safety, and public education. 

Although these causes benefit Americans more than what Republican billionaires are funding, it’s urgent that Democratic billionaires start more heavily funding projects that arrest Trump’s path to dictatorship. There’s plenty more they can fund, such as: 

• Stronger messaging, for example messaging that directly shames Trump-enabling Republicans, 
• Legal defense for journalists facing retaliatory lawsuits so Trump can’t bully them into settling.
• Injunctions that prevent election interference,
• Real-time public factchecking during Trump and other GOP misleading public addresses.  
• Reviving local newspapers that have disappeared to:
  • Inform locals on the issues that impact their lives, 
  • Motivate civic engagement and higher voter turnout, 
  • Reduce reliance on misinformation on social media,
  • Fund local election campaigns of Democrats. (Republicans have been funding their candidates for decades.)

Why do Republican billionaires fund policies that enrich them, like tax cuts and less business regulation, and Democratic billionaires mostly fund causes for the public good?

Republican billionaires argue that lower taxes encourage economic growth and more jobs. But history paints a very different picture. Starting with President Reagan, every Republican administration cut taxes and promised that it would spur economic and job growth. It didn’t do either. Instead it resulted in record deficits and U.S. Treasury debt. And the cuts benefitted mostly the top 20% of earners. Shamefully, the Republican tax law requires Medicare and Medicaid cuts. That means lower earners will suffer lower take-home income.

The best way to throttle the path to a dictatorship is for Democrats to recapture both majorities in Congress. But first, Democrats need to stop Trump from rigging the midterms. Here’s how.

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The post BILLIONAIRE REPUBLICANS ARE OKAY WITH A DICTATORSHIP. BILLIONAIRE DEMOCRATS WANT TO RECAPTURE OUR DEMOCRACY  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump may not obey injunctions, but the individuals who carry out his illegal orders will out of fear of fines and incarceration for violating them. An injunction against the acts of an Executive agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security, applies to any individual who assists in the violation. And Trump and his administration have satisfied the legal requirements for unconstitutional and other illegal acts to be enjoined in advance. Courts can also require the government to reverse acts already committed by the administration. 

Trump and his administration have:

• Eviscerated the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission (EAC), preventing it from distributing funds to advance safe, secure, accurate, and accessible elections. Congress authorized the EAC to make grants to states for election security, appropriated funds for it, and directed the EAC to distribute them pursuant to a statutory formula. Neither the president nor the EAC has authority to impair what Congress has authorized and appropriated for. Such behavior violates the law and Constitution’s core requirement of separation of powers.

• Threatened to withhold 20% of Congress’s $1 billion annual terrorism preparedness grants from states that refuse to adopt voter suppression practices favored by the President. The DHS exceeded the authority Congress gave it and Congress appropriated the $1 billion for such purposes. Use of the DHS to force states to adopt voter suppression practices violates statutes and the Constitution’s core requirement of separation of powers.

• Continues threatening to deploy the military and ICE agents to polling places intending to intimidate voters from making their voices heard at the ballot box. Title 52, Sec. 101(b)provides that “no person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall … attempt to intimidate, …. any other person for the purpose of interfering with their right to vote as they may choose,” and Sec. 101(c) allows injunctions to block such attempts. Democrats could get an injunction against sending ICE agents or other federal officials to the polls where the result is intimidation of voters. The injunction would apply to any individual whose presence at the polls intimidated voters. 

• Using federal investigative powers intended to interfere with lawful state governmental functions and intended to interfere with lawful state governmental functions.
• to intimidate election officials could also constitute a conspiracy against rights (18 U.S.C. § 241), deprivation of rights under color of law (18 U.S.C. § 242), and obstruction of justice, if investigations are 

The above narrative assumes that, on appeal to the Supreme Court, the Republican majority will obey their oaths tosupport the Constitution and administer fair impartial justice instead of mutilating it to empower Donald Trump. 

For a deeper dive into the majority’s betrayal, read Without Precedent by Lisa Graves. She explains how billions of In Without Precedent, Lisa Graves argues that a well-funded, decades-long political campaign succeeded in installing a Supreme Court majority committed to advancing an ideological agenda rather than faithfully applying the Constitution. ultra-right Republican donors funded a three decades-long campaign to install a Supreme Court majority committed to advancing their ideological and political agendas rather than honoring their oaths to faithfully interpret  Constitution.

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The Supreme Court’s Trump-favoring majority (“Trump’s Majority”) blocked both injunctions which freed Trump to replace Democrats with Republicans in the hundreds of agencies created by Congress in the face of Congress’s express prohibition against such firings without cause – something Trump never raised. The agencies were created to perform legislative policies with more expertise than Congress had. The majority’s holding also violated 90 years of  Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States in 1935, followed by a unanimous decision in 1957 holding that Congress intended to create an agency that was “‘entirely free from the control or coercive influence of the Executive.”

Trump’s Majority’s holding allowed Trump to take the next step towards king status. He can now stack the agencies with his loyalists and usurp Congress’s policymaking authority. Take, for example, two feared possibilities: 

• Trump takes control of the NLRB which protects the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Good bye unions …that is that don’t vote for MAGA Republicans.
• The worst calamity would be if Trump’s Majority allows him to fire  Federal Reserve Board members without cause, which they’d have to to be consistent with their holding that let Trump fire the two board members. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for January. If the Court finds for Trump, he would control interest rates, the money supply flowing through the economy, and when to print money. He will have gained extraordinary power to reward his friends and destroy his enemies. 

The prohibition against a president’s firings reflects Congress’s belief that knowledgeable people from both parties [emphasis added] would make decisions that advance the long-term public good. Its intent couldn’t be clearer. 

Trump however dreads bipartisanship. So, confident that the Supreme Court Majority is on his team, he got it to stay the order reinstating the two board members on their boards. Trump’s Majority mangled the Constitution to accommodate him, holding that Congress’s restrictions on the President’s firing authority violated the Constitution’s separation of powers requirement.

The majority Justices also stated their hollow belief that the government faces more risk than the removed officer from allowing the removed officer to remain on their boards. The majority’s belief is credible only if the risk the majority referred to arises from Trump replacing Democrats with the type of unqualified sycophants Trump chose for his cabinet. 

The majority also omitted the obvious – allowing a president to fire employees without cause is as clear a violation as the Constitution’s separation of powers and of its mandate for the independence of the government’s three branches and its blueprint for checks and balances.

The majority Justices violated their Judicial Oaths  “to administer justice without respect to persons and .… impartially [emphasis added] perform all duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution…. So help me God.” By the way,  Its not the first time  Trump’s Majority butchered the Constitution to favor Trump.

In another recent case, the Supreme Court heard  oral arguments  regarding  whether Trump’s firing of Commissioners of the FTC, another independent bipartisan agency created by Congress with legislation prohibiting the President from firing its employs without cause. Sadly, Trump’s Majority is more than likely to overrule its own decision in the Humphrey’s case which would have prohibited Trump’s firings. 

If you’re wondering why Supreme Court Justices would enable Trump’s path to a dictatorship, here’s an answer: 

Every Majority Justice  (John Roberts, Brett Karnaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett), was funded and masterminded by the Federalist Society, piloted by reactionary billionaire Leonard Leo.  It’s not a stretch to say that these Justices repeatedly ruled in favor of their patron’s priorities rather than the Constitution. Take a look: 

• Keeping Trump in office: Trump’s Majority gave him broad immunity and delayed Jack Smith’s criminal trial against him for eleven months, until his win in 2024 election, after which the case was dismissed. In contrast, the Supreme Court took just 16 days to unanimously decide that Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to decide Bush v. Gore. 
  
• Rolling back prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting: In Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP Trump’s Majority upheld a Republican legislature’s removal 60% of Black voters from their Congressional district into a White-denominated district to ensure a Republican win.
• Deregulation of corporations. For decades courts deferred to an agency’s interpretation of unclear legislation. The Trump’s Majority held that only the courts can decide if an agency’s interpretation of an unclear statute is correct. The holding transferred enormous amounts of policymaking to the Judiciary, which lacks the expertise and personnel to do the job — an indirect form of deregulation. 
• Restricting access to abortion.  Enough said.

Tragically, America has lost its last stop to unencumbered justice. If the country wants it back, either Trump-coddling Republicans need to find their true patriotism, or they must be replaced by Republicans not enslaved by Trump, or  Democrats must recapture their Congressional majorities. Then, Trump’s Majority can be replaced by justices – Republican or Democrat — with allegiance to the Constitution.

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Still, Trump and his team plan to push through his other nominees who are allegedly sexual predators, such as Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, who is embroiled in a rape allegation from 2017 that he seemingly kept from the Trump team, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who allegedly sexually assaulted his children’s former babysitter two decades ago.

Senate Republicans will face a difficult test of their courage to reject  Trump’s dangerous nominees. One Trump adviser warned, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary…. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it… The president gets to decide his Cabinet, no one else.” The Trump team’s newest threat makes it clear: No dissent among Republicans will be tolerated. 

One test will be whether Senate Republicans are willing accept responsibility for excessive Covid deaths in order to avoid Trump’s retaliation. Trump’s chose RFK Jr., who is not a doctor and has no medical training, to head the Department of Health and Human Resources. He’s an avid anti-vaxxer who grossly exaggeraties the side effects of Covid vaccines and will discourage their use even though data show that the unvaccinated are 68 times more likely to die from COVID than the fully vaccinated. RFK Jr. vowed to purge entire departments at HSS if necessary to employ his priorities. 

Another such test is whether Republicans will risk a nuclear crisis triggered by Trump and the use of the military against Trump’s “enemy within.” Trump chose Fox News co-host Pete Hegseth, who has demonstrated an unstinting loyalty to Trump, as Defense Secretary. So

Republicans must recall that it took Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Milley to stop him from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency. Milley called the head of China’s military and assured him there was no threat of an attack to prevent a crises. Trump also told Republican donors he wanted to bomb North Korea with a plane he’d put a Chinese flag on. There will be no Milley there if Republicans confirm Hegseth – only a rabidly pro-Trump Fox News co-host.

Hegseth wrote that if Democrats win an election, there’ll be a civil war and the military “will be forcedto choose sides,” echoing Trump’s threats to unleash the US military, on “the enemy within,” Consistent with his rhetoric, Hegseth sports a tattoo of an American flag that displays an AR-15 assault rifle. Trump and Hegseth are planning to purge generals who push back on Trump’s decisions, leaving them free to use the US military as planned.

Confirming Trump’s pick of Pam Bondi for Secretary of Defense would demonstrate that the Republicans don’t value an independent Department of Justice. Bondi, although fully qualified by her credentials, has shown full obedience to Trump over the years.  She’s an election denier, joined Trump’s first impeachment defense, labeled it a “sham” and blamed the prosecutors for Trump’s four indictments, warning that “The prosecutors will be prosecuted…” and that “The investigators will be investigated.” 

If the Senate Republicans don’t have the courage to reject Trump’s dangerous appointments, there will be no doubt he’s subjugated our legislative branch and, because the Supreme Court has already joined his team, Trump could do what he admires most in Vladimir Putin, he could do “whatever the hell he wants.”

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