Trump ran on a promise to lower costs on day one, but a year into his presidency, the real beneficiaries are his billionaire donors. Instead of making life more affordable for everyday Americans, Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself and his billionaire allies, while making the largest cuts to Medicaid and food assistance in history and leaving working families behind.

As families struggle with rising costs, Trump has effectively turned the White House into a slush fund, running the federal government like a personal ATM. Public money, political favors and government power are funneled to his friends and family businesses, while regulatory agencies and enforcement mechanisms are hollowed out or weaponized for profit. His oligarch allies, from big tech executives to big oil barons, are already seeing massive returns on their political investments. This is not democracy. It is a hostile corporate takeover and working people are being exploited.

Since he secured the Republican nomination, Trump’s own fortune has nearly tripled, from $2.3bn to more than $6bn, through crypto and licensing deals which present unprecedented opportunities for corruption and influence peddling.

Fossil fuel billionaires such as Harold Hamm and Kelcy Warren poured a collective $443m into electing Trump and Maga Republicans. They are now collecting $153bn in new subsidies, tax breaks and royalty giveaways – a 34,437% return on investment.

Tech titans are doing even better. Big tech companies spent at least $72m to curry favor with Trump, including $7m in donations to his inauguration. Over the last year their CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, Sergei Brin, Larry Page and Sam Altman have seen their combined net worth soar by $494bn as Trump deregulated their industries and fueled an artificial intelligence boom that is poisoning our communities and killing jobs. That is a 686,000% return — a return on interest no hedge fund could imagine.

Oligarchy now functions like an investment portfolio, with government power guaranteeing extraordinary returns for those who attempt to buy political influence. As we watch communities in Minneapolis face the terror of mass deportations and fatal federal enforcement actions, corporations are cashing in while human life is treated as expendable.

Private prison and deportation giants such as GEO Group, CoreCivic and CSI Aviation spent more than $5m backing Trump and GOP candidates in 2024 and now stand to reap over $5bn a year from expanded ICE and DHS contracts. Internal ICE documents show some companies’ revenues will double, and deportation flight budgets have multiplied sixfold, turning violence and fear into profit streams rather than protection.

That 11,000% return on investment is public money traded for human misery. Meanwhile, Peter Thiel’s company Palantir has seen its stock price quadruple since Trump’s re-election, with its technology powering mass raids that feed an enforcement apparatus detached from the value of lives it impacts.

The price of this corruption shouldn’t only be measured in dollars. It is also the destruction of faith in our government as oligarchs pay to play. Big tech companies whose valuations have exploded under Trump paid millions to settle lawsuits, or in Amazon’s case, to finance a documentary about the First Lady. Qatar gifted Trump a $400m private jet, followed by deeper ties to the Gulf state. Justin Sun, a billionaire crypto entrepreneur, invested $75m in the Trump-family-owned crypto business, World Liberty Financial, only to see SEC market manipulation charges dropped against him. The presidency has become a marketplace where foreign governments, corporations and billionaires can buy influence, access and favors outright.

This is why defunding the oligarchy cannot remain a rallying cry alone. It must become a governing standard for accountability that cuts off the financial and political mechanisms sustaining corporate dominance. That means ending taxpayer subsidies and contracts for companies that exploit workers, pollute communities or bankroll political influence and confronting the monopoly power that allows billionaire-controlled firms to dominate entire sectors of the economy. Defunding the oligarchy means stripping away the revenue streams and privileges that enrich the few and redirecting those public resources to meet the needs of the working class.

Democracy crumbles when obscene wealth is allowed to purchase political power. That means taxing extreme wealth, closing the loopholes that allow billionaires and corporations to avoid paying their fair share, and ending a campaign finance system that treats money as speech and investors as voters. Elections should belong to the people, not to oligarchs. Working people will not believe democracy serves them until they see a government willing to challenge the billionaire interests that have captured it and invest instead in affordable health care, housing, education and a livable future.

In the long run, democracy cannot survive if economic power is allowed to remain concentrated in the hands of a few corporations and billionaires. When workers have no voice on the job and communities have no control over their local economies, political power inevitably follows wealth. That is why rebuilding strong unions, protecting collective bargaining and breaking up monopolies are not just economic reforms, they are democratic safeguards. A society where people have real leverage at work and in their communities is a society where government is more likely to answer to voters than donors.

The choice before Democrats is clear. They can continue to warn about oligarchy while leaving its power structures intact, or they can adopt an opposition rooted in anti-corruption, public investment and democratic accountability. Trump has shown that government power can be wielded decisively. The only question is whether it will serve billionaires or working people. Congress can start by supporting our Defund the Oligarchy resolution, which lays out what it means to cut off political profiteering and reinvest in the public good. It calls on Congress to end corporate tax breaks, subsidies and federal contracts for billionaire-backed companies that bankroll political campaigns, and redirect public resources toward healthcare, housing, education and other essentials that meet people’s real needs.

By refusing to reward corporations that buy influence and redirecting public resources toward healthcare, housing, education and good jobs, Congress can begin to restore trust and re-balance an economy that has been rigged against working people for decades.

This is the fight of our time. Oligarchs and authoritarians are betting that Americans will accept a system rigged against them, but we will prove them wrong. The path forward is not simply to criticize oligarchy, but to dismantle it. Not just to resist Trump, but to wield power in service of the people. Not just to promise change, but to deliver it. It is time to defund the oligarchs, fund the people and restore democracy to the hands of those it was meant to serve.

Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution. Rashida Tlaib is a US representative for Michigan