Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025
DeSmog –
“As scrutiny of Project 2025continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme. In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical” about the endeavor.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of “panic-mongering” and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply “melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups.” This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe.
- But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiative’s advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below.
- Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.
- Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower after work instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite…
…The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts. They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.
Related: See DeSmog’s coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn’s Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025
Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election
Mother Jones – “From nationalizing voter suppression to flooding the streets with federal agents, the president and his allies are using all the tricks in the authoritarian playbook to tilt the midterms in their favor. The scale of Trump’s interference in the midterms has become crystal clear in recent weeks.
The president pressured Texas to pass a mid-decade redistricting plan last month that would add five more Republican seats in the US House. Shortly thereafter, he vowed to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” through an executive order.
“If we do these TWO things,” he wrote on Truth Social, “we will pick up 100 more seats.” The stakes for the midterms are incredibly high. It’s the last chance for Democrats to hold Trump accountable at the national level before he leaves office (unless he attempts to follow through on his musings to seek an unconstitutional third term).
At the same time, nearly 100 state-level races for offices like governor, secretary of state, and attorney general are on the ballot, which will determine who’s in charge of supervising elections in 2028. But unlike 2018, when Trump was still a political novice, or 2022, when Democrats controlled the presidency and Congress, the 2026 midterms will take place under a radicalized Trump administration that appears hellbent on crushing its opposition.
“Our elections have faced an elevated level of risk for some time and now there’s one additional factor that’s going to exacerbate all the other risks, which is a weaponized federal government that might be deployed in ways that can disrupt or interfere in free and fair elections,” says Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice. “That’s a dramatic new factor this year.” Here are 10 ways Trump and his allies are tilting the midterms in their favor before anyone has cast a vote…
- Nationalizing Voter Suppression
- Silencing His Enemies
- Dismantling Efforts to Prevent Election Interference
- Targeting Democratic Officials
- Weaponizing the Justice Department
- The North Carolina Model for Overturning Elections
- State-Level Voter Suppression and Election Subversion
- Trump-Dominated Courts Gutting Voting Rights
- Re-Gerrymandering the States
- Blocking Election Certification…”
Epstein Files Are Out. The Coverup is Worse Than You Think.
See also Greg Olear – The Real Epstein List – A survey of the rich & powerful individuals who elevated Jeffrey Epstein, hired him, funded him, enabled him, befriended him, and/or partook of his services. Includes name and bios and information about each person’s relationship with Epstein.
Dean Blundell – “The House Oversight just published Epstein estate records—including the 2003 “birthday book.” Trump/MAGA cried “fake,” “forgery,” and “hoax.” The receipts say otherwise. I spent the last 9 hours scouring documents handed over to the House Oversight Committee via the Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s Estate. Not a news story from MSM. Not social media posts. Hard evidence that has been sealed by the DOJ and kept hidden by the Epstein Estate until now. For transparency, we’re including the following links so you can do your own research:
- Epstein’s Birthday Book (victim’s names redacted)
- Epstein’s last will and testament
- Epstein’s Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA)
- Verified court docs of Maxwell’s Sealed Testimony
- Epstein’s Black Book
- Epstein’s “Lolita Express” Flight Logs
I’ll summarize the worst of the worst here for anyone who doesn’t have the stomach for it:
- The “Birthday Book.” Compiled for Epstein’s 50th, it’s a who-knew-whom snapshot from the era when proximity, favors, and introductions were currency. Whatever one thinks of the now-public page bearing Trump’s name, it’s now in Congress’s custody. That alone blows up years of “it doesn’t exist” denials.
- The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement. The sweetheart deal that let Epstein skate remains the hinge of the whole scandal. Set it against the money flows and contact logs from the same period and you get cause, effect, and possible cover.
- Address/Contact Books (1990–2019).Think of them as a network map across decades. Frequency. Seasons. Patterns. Introductions. Which dinners preceded which payments. That’s not a “client list.” It’s better.
- Bank Information. Even high-level account data can surface Suspicious Activity Reports, correspondent banks, and compliance escalations. Follow the money, and you often find the truth.
Put simply: you don’t need a single silver-bullet “list” when you have time series, cross-references, and money trails. Prosecutors and congressional investigators build cases from exactly this kind of mosaic…”
