Washington, D.C. — JD Vance is locking up ultra-wealthy donors for a 2028 run. The Trump DOJ fired prosecutors for working with abortion-rights groups, then immediately rolled out the welcome mat for anti-abortion lobbyists. And the Trump administration’s DEI crackdown is now being used to sue companies for hosting women’s networking events.
Vance is Running for President. The Billionaires Already Know It.
At a secretive conservative donor summit in Nashville last month, JD Vance wasn’t interested in mingling with the working families whose votes he’ll need in 2028. But he made time for the mega-wealthy patrons who can make or break his already-flailing candidacy. The gathering drew billionaire heirs and heiresses and a who’s-who of tech investors and energy executives.
Vance, whose day job apparently gives him a lot of free time, has assumed fundraising duties for the Republican National Committee, using the full access of the vice presidency to quietly lock up the donor class. Contributors are explicitly told that giving to the RNC is the “main way” to support Vance 2028. It’s a shadow campaign, laundered through the party apparatus. RNC Chair Joe Gruters confirmed as much, saying “people want to be able to start building that relationship” with Vance.
The names on the donor list tell you everything about whose interests a Vance presidency would serve. Hedge fund titan Paul Singer talks to Vance regularly and recently wired the RNC hundreds of thousands of dollars at Vance’s personal request. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Casino heiress Miriam Adelson, venture capitalist and Vance mentor Peter Thiel, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin round out a network that spans old Republican money and new Silicon Valley power, united by the belief that buying access to a potential president is a sound investment.
Vance hasn’t announced. He doesn’t need to. The billionaires already have their receipts, and they’re eager to cash in.
The DOJ’s Abortion Double Standard Is No Longer Subtle
This week’s DOJ news cycle offered a perfect encapsulation of what selective law enforcement looks like in practice. On Wednesday, the Trump administration welcomed anti-abortion advocates into the Justice Department for meetings with Civil Rights Division officials, on the very same day it fired prosecutors for allegedly working too closely with abortion-rights groups under the previous administration.
The prosecutors fired had not been accused of misconduct. Their offense was doing their jobs under a different president. Meanwhile, Harmeet Dhillon and her staff have reportedly been in active discussions with a major anti-abortion group about legal strategies for pursuing actions against Planned Parenthood, conduct that mirrors, almost exactly, what the administration’s own report condemned as disqualifying when done by the other side.
Acting AG Todd Blanche claimed there are “no emails in my inbox from NGOs telling me what to do.” That may be technically true: the meetings are happening in person.
The War on DEI is Now a War on Women’s Networking
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women’s retreat, charging the company with excluding male employees from an employer-sponsored event. The case is a bellwether for what the Trump administration’s anti-DEI campaign looks like when it moves from executive orders to actual enforcement: women’s professional networks, mentorship programs, and employee resource groups are now potential legal liabilities.
The chilling effect is already spreading. Faced with the threat of federal lawsuits, major companies have begun quietly dismantling the gender-focused programs and support structures that women spent decades building. As Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani told USA Today, women created these networks out of necessity, not preference, because the professional world wasn’t built for them. Now the administration is using the force of law to take them away.
That chilling effect is exactly the point: the administration doesn’t even need to win in court. The threat of a federal lawsuit is enough.
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