A GOP Billionaire Donor Isn’t Giving Much Right Now. You Can Blame John Thune.

Billionaire Timothy Mellon is keeping his checkbook in a drawer for now. He was one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors, dumping some $200 million to help Donald Trump and the GOP clinch the presidency. He’s not giving much, with 2026 donations totaling around $3 million. Mellon, a reportedly reclusive billionaire, is displeased that Republicans botched efforts to pass a crucial piece of the Trump agenda: the SAVE America Act. And we can thank John Thune for fumbling the ball there (via NYT):

One of the Republican Party’s biggest donors has sharply reduced his giving ahead of the midterm elections, especially to Senate Republicans, a decision driven largely by the party’s failure to pass a far-reaching bill of voting restrictions.

The donor, Timothy Mellon, a reclusive Wyoming billionaire who is a grandson of the Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, gave nearly $200 million to support President Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election. Only Elon Musk donated more.

Two years later, Mr. Mellon has given just $3 million or so in publicly disclosed donations to Republican candidates or groups. He also made a $20 million donation last month to help House Republicans, according to two people briefed on the contribution, which will not be disclosed until the next financial reports.

But Mr. Mellon has given nothing publicly so far to support Senate Republicans this fall — a move that has been conspicuous in the party’s financial circles, and shows how some influential Republicans remain angry about the party’s inability this summer to pass the voting legislation, called the SAVE America Act.

The electoral significance of Mr. Mellon’s sudden drop-off in giving is uncertain. Republicans have a broad financial advantage in the midterms, with Mr. Trump’s super PAC and other megadonors shoveling tens of millions of dollars into key races.

Still, Mr. Mellon’s tightfistedness illustrates the unexpected and acrimonious fallout inside the Republican Party after its failed push to pass the voting bill.

The legislation, pushed hard by Mr. Trump, would severely limit voting by mail, impose a nationwide voter identification requirement nationwide and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, supported the measure but said the “math” was not there to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Ultimately, the effort sputtered out.

Again, no one cares whether you support the bill, John. Talk is cheap — are you going to threaten chairmanships, cut off campaign funds, etc.? What did you do? You sat around, said the votes weren’t there, and thought confirming a slate of Trump nominees would suffice. It doesn’t. Democrats showed their cards: they’re going to nuke the legislative filibuster. We should do it. It should’ve been done already, but this soft, pathetic deference to procedure is killing us. I’d rather not wait for our enemies to kill us, but Democrats can always count on the GOP to fumble the ball on the goal line. 

We still have too many panican losers who have yet to grasp what winning means in the Trump era, and it’s not about stacking moral victories. 

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