Good Q -- the methodology for the two pieces is different! The top 20 list looks at current billionaires, which includes a lot of folks who aren't currently in the top 100 (Soros, Steyer, JB Pritzker, etc.), meaning their giving isn't in the 2024 datapoint on that chart.

For one, there are no donation caps on 527 nonprofits! And even if someone's only giving directly to candidates and normal PACs, a big donor could give a fair amount. They just have to split it across lots and lots of committees.

We didn't look at 501c3/c4 giving for this piece (individual donations to those nonprofits are much harder to track), but lots of billionaires give huge sums to charity. Here's a Musk nonprofit: projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

We looked at Bezos's giving, yep, along with the rest of the 902 American billionaires.

And we've got gift links!
wapo.st/48nkqMN

Hi! Thanks for reading. We looked at state + federal political giving by all 902 American billionaires, including Bezos, for this — he just hasn't given that much, comparatively speaking! (I think he gave about $10m federally in 2018... not much $ otherwise.) www.opensecrets.org/elections-ov...

hey now, what's wrong with a nice bar chart?

We do not! State-level disclosure laws vary, but we generally don't see total election spending until the January after at the earliest. Not sure what the situation is with NYC, they may be slightly earlier. But we just capped it at 2024 for our piece. (And hi Fed!)

Thanks David!!

There are a couple! Sam Bankman-Fried, for instance, was a big donor and past F400 guy but not current billionaire, on account of the court-ordered asset forfeiture. But definitely not super common, no. www.forbes.com/profile/sam-...

The story, with
@bethreinhard.bsky.social @aaronschaffer.com
Naftali Bendavid, Luis Melgar, Tucker Harris:

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

And our look at the top 20 billionaire donors (Elon Musk is not #1!)

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Why do they give?

“If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” John Catsimatidis told @bethreinhard.bsky.social. “I worry about America and the way of life we have.”

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

The partisan divide has grown, too. The wealthiest 100 tended to give more to Republicans than to Democrats before last year. But giving to the GOP spiked in 2024, with *84%* of donations going to back Republicans or conservative PACs.

🚨🚨🚨 The jury has reached a verdict. Sean Dunn, aka the DC Sandwich Guy, has been found NOT GUILTY of assault.