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Olivia George, WP The internet’s reactionary machinery is churning at full force over Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.

Jeremy Portnoy, RCI Topline: Medicare paid an estimated $255.1 million in claims for hospice patients who either did not have a documented terminal illness or never signed a statement electing…

Michael Stratford, Politico Federal regulators have directed banks and credit unions to more closely scrutinize the loans they make to immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Jim Pettit, National Review Despite the governor’s changing political rhetoric, the promotion of DEI continues.

To Sen. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.), the billionaires are to blame for driving the culture of corruption in American politics, and he has appointed himself as the man to put a stop to it. He could start by taking a look at his own campaign, which has accepted nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions from billionaires so far this election cycle.
Ossoff, a liberal who is widely considered the most endangered Democratic incumbent senator heading into November, has garnered presidential buzz—and a national profile—with his fierce denunciations of billionaires, the Trump family, and “the Epstein class.” But his self-styled “grassroots campaign” for a second full term has accepted contributions from 39 billionaires since the start of 2025, according to Forbes and Federal Election Commission records.
Ossoff’s roster of prominent billionaire benefactors, none of whom appears to be from Georgia, includes progressive megadonor George Soros and his son, Alex Soros, as well as Jeffrey Epstein associate and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, hotel heir and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) and his sister, Harvard Corporation senior fellow and former Obama secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker, and Microsoft divorcée Melinda French Gates, contributions that, according to Ossoff’s own logic, could make him beholden to their interests ahead of his own constituents.
“We have to be about change and reform, and money in politics is, like, the root of all of this,” Ossoff said on Pod Save America in September. “We have to focus on that. … The vast sums of corporate and billionaire money in our political system, with or without Trump, are why ordinary people are so ill-served by elected officials and by Congress.”
Ossoff’s reliance on billionaires to fund his campaign could open him up to charges of hypocrisy as he has made anti-corruption measures the signature theme of his reelection bid. As Ossoff tells it, American politics is a “coin-operated” system, with money coming in from billionaires and politicians delivering them favors in return. The Georgia Democrat says the Trump administration is a “government of, by, and for the ultra-rich” and has attacked his Republican opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R., Ga.), as being a lackey of the ultra-wealthy willing to defund rural hospitals in order to “take care of billionaires and himself.”
Going by his own logic, Ossoff owes political favors to an ever-growing roster of billionaire donors. Since 2017, when he first ran for Congress, Ossoff’s political campaigns have accepted contributions from at least 70 billionaire donors, Fox News reported.
Alongside billionaires, Ossoff also points to corporations as vectors of corruption in modern American politics and says his campaign won’t accept contributions from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists. Ossoff can’t say the same about his billionaire donors, whose campaign contributions he hasn’t returned.
Ossoff and fellow Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock made history together in 2020, when they won their respective elections in what was once considered a deep-red state. Now, Ossoff’s race is considered a must-win for the Republican Party if the party wishes to regain control of the upper chamber. Ossoff has raised more than $60 million for his reelection campaign, and recent polls show him with a narrow lead over Collins.
The Ossoff campaign did not return a request for comment.
A comprehensive list of the donors follows below.

Ossoff Billionaire Donor Names
Total $
State

Adam Norwitt
$10,500.00
CT

Don Levin
$10,500.00
IL

J.B. Pritzker
$10,500.00
IL

James Chambers
$10,500.00
NY

John Morgan
$10,500.00
FL

John Morgridge
$10,300.00
CA

Jennifer Pritzker
$9,900.00
IL

Katharine Rayner
$9,500.00
NY

Pat Stryker
$9,050.00
CO

Amos Hostetter Jr
$7,000.00
MA

Amy Goldman Fowler
$7,000.00
NY

Brian Schimpf
$7,000.00
VA

Chris Larsen
$7,000.00
CA

Christopher Stolte
$7,000.00
WA

Christy Walton
$7,000.00
AR

Dirk Ziff
$7,000.00
NY

George Soros
$7,000.00
NY

Henry Laufer
$7,000.00
FL

John Doerr
$7,000.00
CA

John Henry
$7,000.00
NY

Jonathan Tisch
$7,000.00
NY

Lynda Resnick
$7,000.00
CA

Melinda French Gates
$7,000.00
WA

Penny Pritzker
$7,000.00
IL

Reid Hoffman
$7,000.00
WA

Seth Klarman
$7,000.00
MA

Stephen Mandel Jr
$7,000.00
CT

S Donald Sussman
$6,950.00
FL

Michael Novogratz
$6,176.47
NY

Brian Armstrong
$6,000.00
CA

Laurie Tisch
$5,000.00
NY

Robert Clark
$5,000.00
MO

John Pritzker
$3,500.00
CA

Joshua Bekenstein
$3,500.00
MA

Jon Stryker
$2,600.00
NY

John Arnold
$400.00
TX

Robert Fisher
$80.00
CA

Francis Najafi
$10,500.00
AZ

The post Meet the 39 Out-of-State Billionaires Bankrolling Jon Ossoff’s Campaign After Senator Denounced ‘Billionaire Money’ and ‘Coin-Operated’ System appeared first on .

Left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is running as a populist who rails against the wealthy. At the same time, he’s been photographed on the campaign trail wearing an array of luxury watches worth thousands of dollars, a Washington Free Beacon review found. El-Sayed has even bemoaned the “perverse psychological consequences” of Rolex advertisements along the Michigan freeway. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?” he asked in his 2020 book.
As it turns out, El-Sayed, who described himself in an interview with LGBTDetroit in May as a “sucker for automatic watches” and “classic watches,” can afford some pricey wristwear. He even earned a shout-out from a watch podcast the same month for “rocking what looks like the Sinn U-1 SE,” a German diver’s watch that costs roughly $4,000.
“Badass stealthy pick, well done Doc!,” an Instagram post from the Lan Jam podcast declared. The podcast bills itself as “a friendly discussion between two blokes on watches, cars, aviation, movies, and everything in between.”

The following month, in June, El-Sayed posted a video wearing what appears to be an Omega Seamaster DeVille, a vintage watch worth about $3,000.

El-Sayed appeared to wear a pricier Omega—the Speedmaster Moon Phase Chronograph, worth roughly $10,000—in a June campaign video. And he donned a Mühle Glashütte S.A.R. Rescue-Timer, a German nautical watch worth nearly $2,000, while “getting ice cream in Grand Haven, MI.” He also sported a vintage 1950s Elgin “Doctors Watch” worth nearly $2,000.

El-Sayed has billed himself as a crusader for the working-class against the wealthy and has suggested that he struggles to afford groceries and health care. “Why do we have a trillionaire when the rest of us can barely afford groceries or healthcare?” he wrote in an X post earlier this week. In March, he wrote: “How come we work a full time job and still can’t afford a home? The answer: corporations can buy politicians.”
He has also said he has maximalist political views but a minimalist style and has lacerated American “oligarchs,” saying, “We finally need to start taxing billionaire wealth.”
El-Sayed participated in an Instagram video with a self-described “stylist for regular people,” Sophie Strauss, in which she attempted to dress him in a manner that matches his radical politics. When Strauss suggested he wear “something green since you support climate justice,” El-Sayed responded, “Of course, but this feels like money green, and I’m trying to get that out of politics.”

In the video, El-Sayed is wearing a watch that resembles a Rolex Submariner, a luxury piece that costs roughly $15,000. Watchmakers like Tag Heuer and Tudor sell lookalikes that cost roughly $2,500 and $5,000, respectively. The Free Beacon could not identify the exact watch El-Sayed is wearing, and a campaign spokeswoman said El-Sayed does not own a Rolex—though the campaign confirmed that he owns several other pricey watches.
“He regularly wears a SAR Rescue Timer on the campaign trail because he is trying to rescue our politics from corporate corruption,” said El Sayed spokeswoman Roxie Richner. “Sometimes he wears a vintage doctor’s watch because he is a doctor,” Richner said, though El-Sayed has never practiced medicine. El-Sayed attended medical school at Columbia University but did not complete a residency. He has never been licensed to practice medicine, though he has referred to himself as a “physician” on the campaign trail.
El-Sayed railed against luxury watches before running for Senate. In his 2020 autobiography Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, he lamented the Rolex billboards that lined Michigan’s highways, saying the ads “have real power” because they serve as “a reminder to almost everyone on that highway that although they cannot afford one, someone driving on that same highway can.”
“The cheapest of those watches sells for at least $3,000, even when they’re used,” he wrote. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?”
“Consider the perverse psychological consequences of this signaling,” he continued. “This signaling exacerbates material insecurity. It renders poorer people in more unequal societies more likely to pursue luxury items that they are less able to afford.”
El-Sayed’s “impressive” collection earned praise from Josh Rogin, a Washington, D.C., watch collector who runs the Instagram account @WatchTheRamen. He singled out El-Sayed’s Sinn U-1, calling it an “if you know, you know” piece for those who “still want to wear a $5k watch (and not get mugged).”
“He clearly spent years curating it and went way out of his way to collect the pieces he really likes and cares about,” Rogin told the Free Beacon. “Most of them cannot be bought in a retail store.”
El-Sayed’s net worth appears to have risen substantially since he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018. During that campaign, he released tax returns that showed he and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, earned around $237,000 in 2016. Jukaku has since launched a private practice, Mind Work Psychiatry, that does not accept Medicare or any other insurance and requires patients to pay out-of-pocket, the Free Beacon reported. El-Sayed has called for universal health care through a single-payer “Medicare for All” system that would cover every American “from cradle to grave.”
El-Sayed also earned nearly $50,000 from paid speeches between January 2024 and April 2025, according to his 2025 financial disclosure, which also lists him as the owner of an “audio and video media” company, Incision Media LLC, worth between $100,000 and $250,000. In 2024 and 2025, El-Sayed earned $278,939 working as health director for Wayne County. He and Jukaku own at least two rental properties, one in Michigan and one in India, worth up to $500,000 and $250,000, respectively, according to the disclosure.
El-Sayed’s in-laws are also well-off. His father-in-law is a kidney doctor who has donated at least $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s candidacy. Jukaku also serves on the founders’ committee for the Islamic Society of North America and is a former president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Federal prosecutors named both groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the landmark terrorist financing case USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Free Beacon reported.
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