Meet the Billionaires Spending Big to Rig the Midterms

NATO leaders agreed not to mention the World Cup to Trump, Indiana's lieutenant governor wants to ban Muslim prayers, and the FDA won't limit forever chemicals in your food

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Republican-leaning megadonors have poured $880 million into the 2026 cycle, with a newly minted trillionaire among the top individual donors. NATO leaders quietly agreed not to mention the U.S. World Cup loss to Trump for fear of how he’d react. Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith wants the state to ban Muslim calls to prayer. And the FDA just rejected a petition to limit “forever chemicals” in food even after its own testing found the toxic compounds in 70% of seafood samples.

Before we dive into it: AlterNet has no advertisers, no billionaire owner, and no broadcast license anyone in Washington can threaten to pull. We’re funded by the people who read us, which is why we can say plainly that a sitting lieutenant governor wants to outlaw a religion’s prayers. If you want that to keep landing in your inbox, become a paid subscriber today.

Now, let’s dive in.

Megadonors Have Spent $1.3 Billion on This Election

A handful of billionaires have collectively spent more on the midterms than you will earn in several consecutive lifetimes, but sure, your vote counts too.

The top donors in American politics have poured more than $1.3 billion into the 2026 cycle so far, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data. The money leans heavily Republican, and it could decide whether the GOP keeps Congress in November.

In the first half of 2026, Republican-leaning donors gave $880 million. Democratic-leaning donors gave $290 million. Bipartisan and special interest groups chipped in another $200 million.

Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, gave $85.1 million, most of it to his own America PAC. Venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen topped the individual list at $91.2 million, largely to pro-tech and pro-crypto super PACs. George Soros led the Democratic side at $102 million.

Most of the money, regardless of party, went to super PACs, which can legally accept unlimited sums. That is the entire point of a super PAC.

Democracy: now available in bulk at Costco prices.

NATO Leaders Agreed Not to Mention World Cup Loss to Trump

The most powerful military alliance on earth spent part of last week working out how to avoid upsetting a man about a soccer game.

NATO leaders reportedly agreed not to mention the United States’ World Cup loss in front of Donald Trump out of fear of how he might retaliate during a two-day summit in Ankara. The summit began on July 7, one day after Belgium beat the US 4-1 and knocked the American team out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said he planned to avoid the subject entirely. Trump, he noted, “has the reputation of sometimes reacting a bit irritably to things that he doesn’t like, and I think this defeat will hit hard.”

The loss followed Trump personally asking FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review a US player’s red card because he “didn’t think it was a foul.” FIFA overturned the suspension. The team lost anyway.

One senior NATO officer summed up the mood, telling The Times that Trump “made a big mess with FIFA and now nobody knows how happy he is going to be.”

NATO has survived seventy-seven years, two generations of nuclear brinkmanship, and the entire War on Terror. Whether it can survive a 4-1 loss remains to be seen.

Corporate media will cover the summit. We’ll cover the part where the Belgian prime minister had to pretend soccer doesn’t exist so the American president wouldn’t tank a military alliance. Independent journalism doesn’t have a boss who golfs with the guy we’re writing about — it has readers. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, today is a good day to become one.

Indiana’s Lt. Governor Wants to Ban Muslim Prayers

Earlier this year, Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith boasted that he was giving Hoosiers “permission to hate” Islam. When that generated the outrage it was designed to generate, he doubled down and called attacking Islam “a political winner” for Republicans.

Now he has gone further. On the Conservative Review podcast, Beckwith called for banning public calls to prayer, telling mosques the state can simply forbid them from using loudspeakers.

He described those calls to prayer as “words of death and destruction” that he does not want in city streets.

His legal theory is that the Supreme Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District ruling established that “we are a Christian nation” where “Christianity takes precedent over all other faiths.” Everyone can worship how they want, he explained, but you cannot put the Quran on a school wall. The Ten Commandments, however, are fine.

For the record, the Kennedy decision said nothing of the kind. It was about a football coach whose postgame prayers grew from a private ritual into a team-wide event that at least one parent said their child felt pressured to join. The court ruled his prayer was protected speech. It did not declare the United States a Christian nation.

Beckwith essentially got “Christian nation” out of it the way a kid gets “no bedtime” out of “we’ll see.”

The FDA Won’t Limit Forever Chemicals in Food

Ten blueberries from North Carolina can put you over the federal chemical limit. Eleven is presumably fine because the FDA didn’t say otherwise.

The Food and Drug Administration has rejected a legal petition asking it to set limits on PFAS “forever chemicals” in food, calling the evidence “insufficient.” This is despite the EPA finding that food is now the single biggest source of PFAS exposure for Americans.

The petition came from the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force, which filed it in November 2023 and then scaled it back in 2025 to a modest ask: advisory thresholds for two of the most dangerous compounds in seafood and milk. The FDA said no to that, too. The group now plans to sue.

The scale is not small. Recent FDA testing found 70% of seafood samples contained the chemicals. Independent milk testing found them in 12% of samples, with extremely high levels in Whole Foods and Kirkland Signature brands. Eating ten blueberries grown near a North Carolina PFAS plant was found equivalent to drinking a liter of water above the federal chemical limit.

PFAS are a class of at least 16,000 compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, kidney disease and decreased immunity. They persist for thousands of years, which is why “forever” is in the name.

The FDA says it will instead set “action levels,” which are non-binding and do not require contaminated food to be pulled from shelves. Actual limits would have made selling tainted food illegal.

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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