MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting President Trump, raised $198.9 million between the election and the end of June. The fundraising spree is unprecedented just months into a president’s term, made all the more striking because Trump is constitutionally barred from running for reelection.
MAGA Inc.’s haul is more than six times the prior fundraising record for presidential super PACs this early in the cycle, when groups supportive of Joe Biden raised $32.5 million between his election and the midpoint of 2021. During Trump’s first term, supportive super PACs raised just $2.5 million by this point. Barack Obama — the only other lame-duck president since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision deregulating campaign financing — received less than $500,000 in super PAC support by June 2013.
Super PACs were created in 2010 after Citizens United and other court decisions invalidated limits on campaign finance spending that is independent of campaigns and parties. The courts’ theory is that there’s no danger of corruption or the appearance of corruption if a political candidate or party never has direct control of the money, but the massive amounts of money and close connections between super PACs and politicians cast doubt on that idea.
MAGA Inc. is not the only vehicle for big money support for Trump. The nonprofit Securing American Greatness, which is a dark money group because it does not disclose it donors, is raising unknown sums. In 2024, both Securing American Greatness and the predecessor to MAGA Inc. were run by Taylor Budowich, who also worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign and his leadership PAC, Save America. Budowich is now deputy chief of staff for communications in the White House. Anonymous sources claim that the two groups together have raised $400 million, but there’s no way to verify that figure. Records do show that the dark money group has transferred $13.8 million to the super PAC this year.
MAGA Inc. has spent virtually none of its haul so far, but Securing American Greatness reportedly spent $17 million earlier this year on ads targeting members of Congress to pressure them to vote for Trump’s budget. It remains to be seen how much MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness will spend to influence next year’s congressional races.
In a sign that this financing push is almost exclusively a game for the richest of the rich, 96 percent of the money to MAGA Inc. comes from donors who gave more than $1 million each.
The largest chunk was $25 million, half each from Energy Transfer and its chairman and CEO Kelcy Warren. Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, stands to benefit from the Trump administration’s rollbacks of oil and gas regulations.
Pennsylvania investor and longtime Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass was the second biggest MAGA Inc. contributor, giving $16 million. Yass’s investment company, Susquehanna International Group, owns a large stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company. Congress passed bipartisan legislation banning TikTok last year, which Trump has delayed enforcing.
Foris Dax Inc., which does business as Crypto.com, gave $10 million in February. The company had never made political contributions before, other than $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund. Last October, Crypto.com sued the Securities and Exchange Commission to block the agency from regulating its tokens as securities. The SEC decided in March not to pursue enforcement.
Elon Musk gave MAGA Inc. $5 million on June 27, shortly after expressing regret over his social media feud with the president. Days after his donation, he attacked Trump’s megabill again and pledged to support Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for opposing the legislation. Musk was the biggest political donor of 2024, contributing over $290 million boosting Republicans.
The other $5 million donors were crypto company Blockchain.com, substitute skin maker Extremity Care, Sam Altman–founded artificial intelligence company Tools for Humanity, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, and United Healthcare Services. Prior to that contribution, United’s largest political donation was $200,000 in 2022 to a super PAC dedicated to electing Democrats to the House. The insurance giant is the largest provider of plans under Medicare Advantage, for which the Trump administration recently increased the rates insurers can charge.
MAGA Inc.’s unprecedented megadonor fundraising in recent months suggests that the normal lull in fundraising after a presidential election is a thing of the past, even when a president is term-limited. Additionally, the degree to which wealthy donors appear to be using super PAC contributions to curry favor with the Trump administration once again illustrates how wrong the Supreme Court was in Citizens United when it predicted that the “independence” of groups like super PACs would prevent them from becoming vehicles for real or perceived corruption.
