Corporate America has largely abandoned its post-January 6 promises on democracy

Since the January 6 insurrection, over 2,000 corporate and industry group PACs have given over $174 million to members of the Sedition Caucus—those 147 lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election as well as Donald Trump and the new members of Congress who ran on the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The attack on the Capitol was an alarming illustration of the violence that can result when people in power spread dangerous lies. It was also an existential threat to the continuing viability of American democracy, if election results can be met with violence from those who don’t like the result. Such a cataclysmic event should have marked a turning point in the political spending behavior of corporations—and for many corporations, at first it did.

In the aftermath of January 6, over 200 companies pledged to no longer donate to lawmakers who voted against certifying the election. In the months that followed, CREW began tracking corporate contributions to members of the Sedition Caucus, suspecting that the commitments would crumble as Washington returned to business as usual and corporations started to feel pressure to begin maximizing access and influence again. After more than four years of tracking this corporate capitulation to those who continue to undermine democracy, this particular project is wrapping up, but CREW’s efforts to hold corporations and the anti-democratic politicians they fund continue. With Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, the calculus for corporations changed, as the person who inspired the 2021 insurrection regained control of the executive branch of the government, and his supporters now control both houses of Congress. Perhaps more than ever, CREW believes that the risks posed by corporations supporting leaders who undermine democratic institutions are extremely severe—to all Americans, and to the stability needed for companies to thrive. Over time, this project documented how more and more companies sacrificed their support for fundamental democratic principles to political pressures, resuming or continuing support for lawmakers who tried to overturn an election or spread election lies. In 2021, the Sedition Caucus received nearly $22 million in donations from corporate PACs. In 2023, the next non-election year, this annual amount had increased by over 90 percent to more than $42 million. In 2024, corporations stepped up their support again, donating over $49 million to the Sedition Caucus. This increase in corporate money to seditionists is particularly concerning as political scientists and scholars have been sounding the alarm about the Trump administration’s slippery slope towards authoritarianism. By continuing to financially support anti-democratic lawmakers, these companies and trade groups fail to grasp the serious business consequences of such a dangerous political trajectory

New election deniers

Short-term gains, long-term consequences

If corporations did not acknowledge the economic implications of democratic backsliding during the first Trump administration, many are being forced to reckon with them now. As CREW has written before and numerous studies have demonstrated, democracy grows economies, and inversely, the erosion of democracy stifles them. Under autocratic regimes, markets become a mechanism for governments to buttress political power. Autocrats may, for example, punish their corporate adversaries by imposing punitive regulations, revoking critical licenses or refusing to award them government contracts. 

CREW warned about this in a 2022 report that detailed how businesses benefit from democracy and the rule of law and, conversely, how vulnerable they are when those bedrock principles are undermined by an authoritarian leader. We have already witnessed retaliatory measures of the kind CREW warned about made by the Trump administration against perceived opponents in the corporate world. For instance, Trump has targeted law firms that provided legal services to his political adversaries or employed perceived opponents, squeezed media companies for perceived slights and after implementing tariffs with no apparent planning, threatened companies like Walmart and automakers if they don’t eat the jump in costs—just months after many of these companies gave generously to Trump’s inauguration. 

Businesses that rely heavily on government contracts are especially vulnerable to “sudden and arbitrary” state decisions in autocratic regimes. Many corporations, including those who have donated generously to Trump and seditionist lawmakers, are learning this the hard way. For example, Deloitte, which donated over $400,000 to members of the Sedition Caucus, lost more than 120 contracts worth more than one billion dollars due to DOGE’s cost-cutting measures. 

But there is perhaps no clearer example of how the Trump administration is attempting to refashion markets to exercise political power than the feud between President Trump and his former advisor, Elon Musk. After Musk criticized Trump’s spending bill in addition to making other negative comments online, the president threatened to retaliate by targeting Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Tesla. Both of these companies have business interests that are entangled with the federal government—SpaceX is one of NASA’s largest contractors, and Tesla benefits from clean energy tax credits. SpaceX has donated over $750,000 to the Sedition Caucus, and Musk himself spent a staggering $288 million on helping elect Trump and other Republicans. Still, Musk’s criticism of the President could reportedly cost SpaceX $22 billion worth of contracts. 

The election denialism movement has continued to gain ground, and the acquiescence and support of corporations and other institutions could well be playing a role in that growth. According to the States United Democracy Center, in 2025 election deniers occupy 179 seats in congressional and state-wide offices. Since CREW’s last report on corporate giving to the Sedition Caucus, six additional election deniers have been elected to Congress: Representatives Tom Barrett, Brandon Gill, Abraham Hamadeh, John McGuire, and Derek Schmidt, and Senator Bernie Moreno. These lawmakers have either attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results or subsequent elections through public statements or actions, such as refusing to concede a race even after the results were officially audited. 

While these freshmen members were not in Congress during the 2020 election certification vote, many have made public statements undermining the legitimacy of the 2020 election results and, sometimes, the U.S. electoral process more broadly. In 2022, for example, Senator Bernie Moreno publicly tweeted, “Big tech, the corporate media, and the swamp conspired to rig the 2020 election. Unequivocally true that, had this story been covered truthfully, Biden would have lost Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia … thus losing the electoral vote.” According to FEC data, Senator Moreno received over $600,000 in corporate contributions, including just over $8,000 from private prison company GEO Group—also a big Trump backer. Representative Tom Barrett, a state lawmaker at the time of the 2020 election, signed a letter urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to postpone the counting of electoral votes. Barrett has received thousands of dollars from the corporate PACs of the American Hospital Association ($3,500), Honeywell International ($2,500) and DTE Energy ($3,000). After Trump won the 2024 election, freshman Representative Abraham Hamadeh tweeted, “Not only did President Trump win 2024, in many ways he proved that 2020 was rigged. 20 million missing Democrat voters, where’d they go?” Hamadeh has received nearly $45,000 from corporate PACs.

Spending on the most antidemocratic members

Concerningly, corporate donations to lawmakers with the most apparent hostility to fundamental democratic principles has increased over the past few years. CREW uses several variables to evaluate lawmakers’ track record on democracy issues, including lawmakers’ expressed support for absolute presidential immunity and whether or not they voted against Trump’s second impeachment. Six lawmakers stand out for their lack of support for democratic principles: Chuck Fleischmann, Roger Marshall, Mike Kelly, William Timmons, Lance Gooden and Glenn Thompson. Between 2021 and 2024, the total annual donations to these six lawmakers increased from $1.45 million in 2021 to $2.72 million in 2024. Rather than being held accountable by the corporate world, lawmakers who go further to harm our democracy are being rewarded for it.

Major donors

Koch Industries is the largest corporate donor to the Sedition Caucus, spending $2.21 million on the campaigns and leadership PACs of 113 seditionist lawmakers. Koch has given the most financial support to House Speaker Mike Johnson ($70,000), Rep. Morgan Griffith ($45,000) and Rep. Jim Jordan ($42,500). In 2024, Koch Industries spent more on the Sedition Caucus than it ever has since CREW began tracking spending in 2021, spending a total of $636,500 that year. Other top donors among companies are American Crystal Sugar ($1.51 million to 117 lawmakers) and AT&T ($1.5 million to 133 lawmakers)—which Trump publicly attacked just weeks after his company announced its own mobile phone service. 

Top 3 corporate donors to the sedition caucus

Among trade association PACs, the top donors to the Sedition Caucus are National Association of Realtors ($2.64 million to 155 lawmakers), National Association of Auto Dealers ($1.94 million to 142 lawmakers) and the American Bankers Association ($1.92 million to 142 lawmakers).

Major beneficiaries

As donations flowed into the Sedition Caucus over the past four years, a disappointing, albeit predictable, pattern has emerged over time: when seditionists ascend to powerful positions in Congress, corporate money tends to follow. Within the Sedition Caucus, the largest beneficiaries of political spending by corporations and industry groups combined were Representatives Jason Smith ($7.04 million), Steve Scalise ($4.90 million) and Richard Hudson ($4.24 million). 

Speaker Mike Johnson—who, until becoming House speaker in October 2023, was a relative unknown—went from raising $480,250 in corporate PAC contributions in the 2022 election year to raking in more than $1.9 million in the 2024 election year, his first full year as speaker. PACs tied to FedEX, Amazon and other companies ignored Johnson in 2022, only to lavish him with thousands of dollars in contributions in 2024. 

These lawmakers’ powerful positions and committee assignments are enticing for business interests. As the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Smith holds considerable influence over key tax and spending provisions, including those featured in the Trump administration’s recently passed spending bill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith’s appointment as chairman of the committee coincided with an increase in annual donations. In 2022, the year prior to his appointment, Smith received $1.38 million in corporate donations. The following year, after becoming chairman, he received $2.1 million. Top corporate donors to Smith include the National Multifamily Housing Council, which advocates on behalf of the apartment industry, and the American fuels producer Valero Energy. Representative Hudson received the most donations from the tobacco company Altria ($45,000) and Valero Energy ($45,000). Both companies belong to industries that are overseen by the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which Hudson is a member.

Promises kept and promises broken

Of the nearly 250 companies that condemned the violence at the Capitol and pledged to align their political giving with democratic principles, just 15 companies have stood by these pledges. These include major Fortune 500 companies such as Salesforce and Expedia Group. 

Twenty-three corporations have resumed supporting seditionists since the publication of our report last August. Only six companies promised to stop donating to members of the Sedition Caucus permanently—and one of those, Hewlette Packard, committed to close its PAC entirely, only to turn around and start giving contributions to members of the Sedition Caucus.

The commitments of the other companies to review and rethink political spending in the aftermath of January 6 appeared to signal a greater intention to support democracy, and, in turn, refuse to support those who threaten it. This includes companies that appealed to broad democratic principles when announcing their decisions to suspend political donations after January 6. Biogen, for example, said in a press release after the January 6 attack that it “supports the rule of law and democratic process and calls for a peaceful transition of power.” A serious commitment to the “rule of law” and “democratic process” should be reflected in a company’s political spending behaviour. Yet, Biogen resumed donations to the Sedition Caucus in October 2024 and has since donated a total of $12,500 to its members. 

These are the 15 companies that have stood by their pledges not to support anti-democratic lawmakers. 

Photo by Tyler Merbler under Creative Commons license