When did America replace “for the people, by the people” with “for the wealthy, by the wealthy”? Wealthy donors are increasingly shaping our policies, institutions, and even the balance of power, while the American people are left as spectators, watching democracy erode before their eyes. The question is not why billionaires need wealth — they already have it. The question is why they insist on owning and controlling government — and the people.
Back in 1968, my Government teacher never spoke of powerful think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, now funded by billionaires determined to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Yet here in 2025, these forces openly work to control the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court through Project 2025. The corruption is visible everywhere. Quid pro quo and pay for play are not abstractions — they are evident in the gifts showered on Supreme Court justices.
Billionaire Harlan Crow purchased and renovated Clarence Thomas’s mother’s home, allowing her to remain rent-free. Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing trip from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose firm later had cases before the Court. These were not harmless tokens; they were violations of ethics and moral conscience, exposing how billionaire money bends justice to privilege.
Billionaire influence seeps even into prisons, creating a pattern of billionaire privilege. The rule of law collapses when billionaires and their allies receive leniency while ordinary citizens face harsher realities. In prison, the late Jeffrey Epstein secured perks and delays unavailable to ordinary inmates. Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of aiding his crimes, likewise received privileges that ordinary prisoners could never expect. Money and influence bend the rules of justice for the rich, while ordinary prisoners live under rigid, standardized conditions — yet we are supposed to believe that no one is above the law.
Meanwhile, across Congress, billionaire influence may be silent, but it is bold in the policies and laws they shape — and in the campaign funds that sustain leaders. The billionaire‑driven, Big Beautiful Bill is proof: it slashed Medicaid, SNAP, and student aid while delivering billions in tax breaks to the wealthy. Families in every state pay their fair share while billionaires avoid theirs.
In this current system, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer — Republican, Democrat, or Independent, in red, blue, and purple states. The damage done by billionaires affects the well‑being of all Americans, regardless of party. Politicians in Congress do not appear to empathize with their own constituents crying out for food, housing, and healthcare relief — begging for a piece of the American dream, hanging on the promises made in the Constitution’s principles. Instead of listening, too many leaders bend to donors, leaving families desperate while billionaire interests thrive.
Trump claims to serve the forgotten men and women of America, yet he openly embraces quid pro quo. His presidency itself left a money trail — donations in, favors out — and Americans watched as it happened. He refused to divest from his businesses, allowing foreign governments and lobbyists to funnel money through his hotels. He staffed his properties with immigrant workers on temporary visas, even as he railed against immigration. His golf courses abroad carried heavy debts, yet he used taxpayer-funded trips to promote them. And now, he seeks to reacquire his former Washington, D.C. hotel, once a hub for foreign dignitaries and lobbyists, to again profit from public office. Transparency is undermined, and hypocrisy is glaring, as citizens cannot see where public duty ends and private profit begins.
At the same time, Elon Musk illustrates another dimension of billionaire privilege. The trail of money to Elon Musk is visible and cannot be overlooked. His billions are fueled not only by private ventures but also by taxpayer-funded government contracts. Musk’s billions also influenced the 2024 election, as his platforms and contracts amplified billionaire voices while ordinary citizens were drowned out. His wealth was not just private fortune — it became political leverage. In the billionaires’ world, ordinary citizens have no place. Families struggle to keep health care, while billionaires use their power to strip protections away. Equality is shattered, as billionaire money bends institutions while ordinary citizens are excluded.
By contrast, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden demonstrated what it means to work for the people, by the people. Obama expanded health care through the Affordable Care Act, created jobs with the Recovery Act, and protected families with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Biden lowered prescription drug prices through the Inflation Reduction Act, capped insulin costs, and defended voting rights. These policies lifted ordinary Americans. Yet Project 2025 proved to be a blueprint for wealthy conservatives to control government — expanding tax cuts for billionaires, dismantling social programs, and silencing diversity.
The people elect leaders to serve us, yet too many ignore their oaths and work instead for billionaires. The Constitution they swore to uphold becomes secondary to donor checks, luxury gifts, and promises of power. Their allegiance is not to the citizens who trusted them, but to the wealthy interests that fund their campaigns and shape their votes. This betrayal is the money trail in action — democracy bent to serve the powerful, not the people. Thus, the principles of democracy — popular sovereignty, equality, justice, accountability, transparency, representation, and rule of law — are compromised when billionaire money dominates.
The money trail runs long and spreads wide. In silence, billionaire money and influence in our country are taking over our Republic. Yet silence is complicity, and when the people stay silent, they surrender to billionaire power.
To refocus on the people, to reclaim government for the people, by the people, citizens must demand campaign finance reform; insist on transparency in Congress and the Supreme Court; hold leaders accountable to their oaths; and press for binding ethics laws that prohibit donor‑driven policymaking and protect social programs from cuts designed to enrich the wealthy.
The Supreme Court must adopt enforceable ethics codes; end acceptance of gifts; strengthen recusal rules; and reaffirm equal justice under law. Citizens must also demand transparency laws requiring full disclosure of donations, lobbying contracts, and government perks; dismantle dark money networks; end gerrymandering through independent redistricting commissions; and protect election integrity with stronger safeguards.
Above all, I demand that Congress and the Supreme Court honor their oaths, hold themselves accountable, and have the courage to act ethically, make moral decisions, exercise the checks and balances, and the separation of powers. I demand that our country return to a sense of normalcy.
The money trail must be broken — and democracy restored.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and advocate for ethical leadership and healthcare justice.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.