The so-called “bluenami” that swept across the US on Tuesday is already hitting the breakwater.
With Democrats seizing a firm majority in the House along with the Senate, longtime party loyalist Hakeem Jeffries is poised to take up the mantle as speaker. But for all the progressive excitement around the bruising beatdown delivered to Donald Trump and the Republican party, Jeffries’ own backers include some of the most notorious power players in the tech industry, setting up immediate tension with voters who rallied around an anti-Silicon Valley message to push the Democrats back into power.
As collated by the investigative publication Sludge, Jeffries has a lengthy history of groveling to some of the most divisive tech and weapons corporations on the planet.
His donor list includes controversial figures like Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf and his COO Matthew Grimm, who together spent nearly $150,000 boosting Jeffries’ fundraising committees. Some might recognize Anduril as the AI weapons tech corporation co-founded by Palmer Luckey, a tech billionaire whose recent projects include a company working on genetically enhanced dogs for military purposes.
Another controversial donor includes Mehdi Allhassani, current head of government affairs at the AI surveillance company Palantir, from whom Jeffries received $44,300 this election cycle.
Jeffries also has the backing of cryptocurrency advocacy groups and investment executives at firms including Bain Capital, DE Shaw, and Renaissance Technologies, Sludge reports.
Beyond the incoming speaker, we know that the ultra-powerful tech industry lobbied Republicans and Democrats alike in the runup to the midterm elections. In fact, tech spending on the recent elections eclipsed any other private industry political funding in modern US history — emblematic of the fact that both ruling parties are, first-and-foremost, pro-business.
As lawyer and political consultant Briahna Joy Gray wrote on social, when it comes time to pander to the country’s supremely powerful corporate class, Republicans and Democrats are “two wings of the same bird.”
“The same corporate donors give to both sides,” Gray observed, “so they win regardless of electoral outcomes.”
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