US President Donald Trump walks to a bill signing in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on July 16, 2025. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times
President Donald Trump’s super political action committee is sitting on about US$200 million ($340m) that it can spend against his rivals, giving a term-limited president a never-before-seen amount of power in his party’s finances and future.
In the first half of 2025, Trump’s group, Maga Inc., collected about US$177m from the likes of Elon Musk, Trump’s erstwhile ally; TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass; and Silicon Valley executives Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, according to a filing today with the Federal Election Commission.
Trump has been able to capitalise on a thirst from corporate America to get into his good graces.
He held half a dozen fundraisers for his super PAC this year with tickets costing seven figures a seat.
At the dinners, often held at one of Trump’s properties, executives and lobbyists had the chance to tell the President about their businesses.
The super PAC’s exact cash on hand is US$196.1m, according to the filing.
There is no precedent for politicians so aggressively raising money for their own entities when they do not have a campaign to use it for.
In the first half of 2013, a similar political group supporting a term-limited Barack Obama, Priorities USA, raised just $356,000. As of that June, it held $3.4 million, less than 2% of the cash on hand for Trump’s super PAC.
The money raised by Maga Inc. during the first six months of the year is almost twice the amount collected by the Republican National Committee, which is subject to contribution limits.
Yass donated US$15m to the super PAC, and Horowitz and Andreessen combined to donate an additional US$11m.
That Trump is raising so much money for his group has confounded some Republicans.
Some of Trump’s most loyal supporters have argued that he should try to run for a third term, despite it being unconstitutional.
Trump’s aides have argued that he would be foolish not to accept money that is essentially for the taking, and that the assets can be used to target Trump’s rivals, beginning with Representative Thomas Massie, (Republican-Kentucky), whom Maga Inc. is attacking.
Massie broke with Trump on the President’s decision to bomb Iran and on his domestic bill.
With a US$200m war chest, Maga Inc. figures to be a big part of Republican primaries, making Trump’s endorsements in those races all the more important.
The money is sure to be spent on advertising to back Trump’s endorsed candidates.
The sum raised by Trump’s group has scrambled the Republican fundraising landscape and worried some conservatives.
Trump’s group, not those of the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, will most likely be the biggest spender in the 2026 Midterm elections, weakening the power of allies like Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune, the Majority Leader.
Johnson’s and Thune’s groups, the Congressional and Senate Leadership Funds, reported holding just US$32.7m and US$29.7m as of June 30. Super PACs had to file reports with the FEC by today detailing fundraising and spending activity from January to June.
Perhaps the only group that could rival the influence of Trump’s super PAC is Fairshake, a super PAC supported by the crypto industry that entered July with about US$140m on hand, filings show.
Maga Inc. also has an allied political non-profit group that is not required to disclose its donors or total donations but can spend some of its money on political advocacy.
The New York Times reported in May that Maga Inc. and the non-profit had raised about US$400m since last November’s election.
Support from Musk was never guaranteed. He initially pledged to Trump that he would spend about US$100m on the President’s political operation, but his eventual contributions were far smaller — just US$5m. Musk’s relationship with Trump has recently blown up, and Musk now considers himself unaligned politically.
The Tesla chief also made contributions to the Senate and Congressional Leadership Funds, the filings reveal. Musk donated US$5m to each group a few weeks after his public blow-up with Trump, seemingly a signal that he planned to back Republicans in the Midterms.
A few days later, after Trump’s budget bill passed, he pledged to leave the Republican Party and start a rival entity. He has made little headway in that work.
The filings also reveal that Musk spent about US$45m through his super PAC, America PAC, on a Wisconsin judicial race.
Two-thirds of the money that Musk put into the super PAC in the first half of the year went to incentives for people who had signed or promoted a petition hawked by the super PAC, according to its filing. Musk’s chosen candidate lost badly.
Other significant donations in the first half of 2025 revealed this week included US$10m from Yass to a super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio; US$1m from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to support Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-South Carolina), a longtime friend; and millions from Paul Singer, John Paulson, and a group backed by Miriam Adelson to another anti-Massie group, donations that Musk deemed “interesting”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Theodore Schleifer
Photograph by: Doug Mills
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