WASHINGTON—In a literally monstrous illustration of corporate kowtowing to the GOP Donald Trump regime, a trove of big U.S. corporations—including at least six that broke worker rights or job safety laws—are among the millionaire and billionaire givers financing Trump’s big, unbeautiful ballroom that will succeed the White House East Wing.
Labor law-breaking firms identified in the OpenSecrets.org study are Amazon, Apple, Alphabet/ Google, Meta, Lockheed-Martin, and Caterpillar. It’s titled “Banquet of Greed: Trump Ballroom Donors Feast on Federal Funds and Favors.”
There is no public quid pro quo for the private funders who put up $300 million for the 1,000-seat project, which will loom over the rest of the Executive Mansion.
We know, however, that the companies involved spent millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Trump and on lobbying that has resulted in lots of profitable deals for them. Those profitable deals result from the tsunami of corporate cash that poured into Trump’s coffers in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles and throughout the period from 2021-25. At a combined amount of $930 billion, the total nears one trillion dollars.
To workers and their allies, the cash tsunami obviously does not pass the smell test. They don’t need a published list of company X that gets this favor in exchange for contribution Y to understand what is really happening.
Trump himself conceded in 2016 that when donors give—as he did, pre-presidency–they expect a return on their investment, in preferential treatment and other favors. Even the Heritage Foundation, creator of Trump’s 2024 campaign platform of total deregulation and corporate greed, Project 2025, says such deals show the system stinks.
“President Donald Trump conducts state business the same way he conducted his own businesses: Everything is or ought to be a quid pro quo transaction,” Heritage said on February 20, long before Trump really got rolling in deal-making from the White House.
The study by OpenSecrets.org found the Trump administration has already awarded $1.278 billion in federal contracts to ballroom donor firms. It does not list contributions by individual firms or GOP donors to ballroom construction, many of whom, of course, are connected to big corporations. It does list, however, what each spent on campaigns and lobbying.
The understated worth of corporate kowtowing
That eye-popping figure gives a glimpse into the slimy business of lobbying and campaign finance. It’s also on the low side.
For example, it does not count other transactions, such as Union Pacific’s $85.4 billion bid to swallow up Norfolk Southern, which need federal approval. Trump already fired the one member of the five-person Surface Transportation Board who might object to it, thus greasing the skids. That board votes on rail mergers.
Union Pacific’s deal draws fire from John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers. He says it would endanger the jobs of 40% of the nation’s 115,000 unionized freight rail workers who work for the two roads, combined. And both railroads have poor safety records, too. Norfolk Southern was responsible for the February 2023 derailment and toxic cloud release in East Palestine, Ohio.
Union Pacific spent $20,282,287 total to influence lawmakers and agencies, the study says: $3,629,018 in campaign cash in 2022-24 and $16,653,269 on lobbying in 2021-25. That, again, doesn’t count as contributing to the Trump ballroom’s construction.
That lobbying had an impact, though OpenSecrets was not specific. The railroad industry as a whole helped derail legislation by then-Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to force the Surface Transportation Board to regulate the nation’s Class I freight railroads, including both Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific, on safety, rather than leaving it to the roads themselves.
One player in weakening the rail safety bill: Then-Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, originally a co-sponsor. He’s now Trump’s vice president.
The overall dollar figures also don’t calculate how much Apple will save in legal fees and restitution to legally harmed workers, because the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel, William Cowen, dropped unfair labor practices charges against the high-tech company and its CEO, Jeff Cook, on September 26.
Cook broke labor law—the formal name is committing unfair labor practices—through his 2021 e-mail to all workers saying Apple would track down and fire whoever leaked information from a confidential meeting about pay equity, abortion, and other topics. “People who leak confidential information do not belong here,” Cook declared then.
The charges Cowen dropped also included illegal confidentiality rules, illegal firing of worker activist Janneke Parrish, and illegal spying on workers.
Cowen’s predecessor as the NLRB’s top enforcement officer, Jennifer Abruzzo, now a top legal advisor to the Communications Workers, filed the charges. Trump fired Abruzzo within days after he returned to the Oval Office on January 20.
Apple spent $48,668,663 total on campaign contributions in 2022-24($7,858,663) and lobbying in 2021-25 ($40,810,000). None of the figures include the money it—or any other donor—has kicked in to finance Trump’s ballroom.
Amazon benefits several ways from Trump
Amazon benefits several ways from Trump, the study says. It, too, gave money for the ballroom project. Founder and controlling stockholder Jeff Bezos contributed to Trump’s inauguration, and Amazon’s video streaming service paid $40 million for a documentary about Melania Trump.
Ex-Amazon executive David Keeling—a former top safety and health official for UPS–now leads the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien backed Keeling.
Bezos is one of three lead corporate titans in a lawsuit, likely headed for the U.S. Supreme Court,declaring the structure of the National Labor Relations Board—and thus the nation’s basic labor law itself—unconstitutional. A Trump-named federal district judge in deep-red rural Texas has already ruled for Amazon and against the NLRB.
Amazon spent $106,956,249 on politics, the study says. That breaks down to $13,061,249 in campaign contributions in 2022-24, including money funneled through congressional campaign finance committees, and $93.895 million in lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies in 2021-25. Keeling is not on the ballroom donors list.
Amazon is also fighting its workers. Several years after employees at its JFK1 warehouse on Staten Island unionized, the workers still don’t have a contract. They’ve become Amazon Local 1 of the Teamsters as a semi-independent local within the larger union.
“Amazon is the face of unchecked corporate greed, putting profits ahead of both workers and communities,” the Amazon Labor Union tweeted just before Election Day.
“Its abusive business model is built on impossible quotas, unsafe working conditions, and the company’s so-called ‘DSP’ program—a scheme designed to deny drivers fair pay and shield the company from accountability,” the union adds.
In DSP, Amazon hires the drivers through third-party trucking firms. The drivers then become so-called “independent contractors,” barred from organizing, overtime pay, minimum wages, jobless benefits, and workers’ comp. That’s even though they drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, wear Amazon uniforms, and work on Amazon-generated schedules.
That’s not all. The Justice Department is “investigating allegations Amazon fraudulently concealed worker injuries,” OpenSecrets reported. And the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, which enforces the non-discrimination section, Title VII, of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was probing Amazon for “alleged discrimination against pregnant workers.” EEOC has, under Trump, switched directions away from that issue.
In another gift to the ballroom donors from Acting NLRB General Counsel Cowen, he’s junked an agreement between the Labor Department’s worker-oriented divisions, the NLRB General Counsel’s office, and the Justice Department for joint investigations of corporate law-breakers.
That means inspectors for, say, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who also find firms—including ballroom donor firms—shorting workers on overtime pay can’t flag or probe on behalf of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, which investigates those crimes.
Alphabet/Google in NLRB hot water
Alphabet/Google is in constant hot water with the National Labor Relations Board. It’s also spent more than $102 million combined on politics, the study says: $36,130,435 in campaign contributions from 2022-24 and almost double that ($66,634,000) on lobbying in 2021-25.
Meanwhile, Alphabet/Google battles the NLRB in board hearings and in court and fights the Communications Workers’ organizing drive, which aids the grass-roots Alphabet Workers Union at the firm’s Silicon Valley plants.
Google treats its contract workers as independent contractors, not employees, just like Amazon treats its drivers. The Alphabet Workers Union has shown the NLRB that Google exercises enough control over contract workers to be considered their employer, that they’re “employees” covered by labor law—including the right to organize—and that Google should recognize and bargain with them.
In April, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling backed the workers and the NLRB and ordered Google to recognize and bargain with the union.
Caterpillar, the Decatur, Ill.-based farm equipment firm, would benefit from positive trade and tariff moves and changes in “anti-corruption and sanctions policies, financial service regulation, environmental laws, and taxes.” Trump’s deregulation drive—except for his wildly gyrating tariff and trade edicts—helps Cat, whose workers are United Auto Workers members.
Caterpillar shoveled $2,212,873 to politicians in the 2022-24 election cycles, again not counting ballroom donations. It also spent $19,751,800 on lobbying from 2021-25.
Caterpillar is also contesting a 2024 $30,000 OSHA fine for the death on the job of one of its workers in an industrial accident. More to the point, it’s won $852 million in federal contracts from 2021-26, OpenSecrets says. The total is second on the ballroom donors list in getting federal cash. Microsoft, at $2.3 billion, is first. Little of each sum has been disbursed so far by the Trump regime.
The ballroom donors list also includes many big GOP givers. Several are notorious for other reasons, too. Three prominent ones are the Fanjul family, Miriam Adelson, and Harold Hamm.
Hamm was the Oklahoma oil baron who spent years colluding with OPEC to fix the price of crude oil, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Hamm donated $7.92 million from 2022-24 to politicians, including $4.3 million to Trump. Hamm also organized Trump’s infamous fundraiser with fossil fuel magnates at Mar-a-Lago last year. That’s where Trump told them if they gave him a billion dollars, he’d give them huge tax breaks and virtually complete deregulation. He’s delivering both.
The biggest GOP giver of campaign cash on the whole list was the Adelson Family Foundation, which—through third parties—poured in $171.9 million to political candidates. Miriam Adelson, widow of Sheldon Adelson and owner of one of the biggest hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, controls it.
Adelson’s a driving force behind right-wing rich Jewish donors to Trump and to the politically notorious American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She also strongly supports Trump’s ideological companion, corrupt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He, in turn, orders the murderous Israeli slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—using U.S. aid, warplanes, weapons, and munitions.
- Pepe and Emilia Fanjul were the only donors Trump name-checked when he entertained the ballroom’s big givers just before demolition of the East Wing began. They’re the nation’s leading sugar barons, big wheels in the Miami-based Cuban exile community—and recipients of tax breaks, protectionist measures and quotas on imported sugar, all of which keep prices high in the U.S.
The Fanjuls tossed in $9,250,267 for politics in the period the OpenSecrets report covers: $4,080,267 in campaign contributions in the 2022-2024 cycles and $5,170,000 on lobbying in 2021-25.
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