I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:

Although it has been more than a decade since judicial and administrative rulings freed the ultrawealthy to contribute unlimited sums to outside political groups, 2024 marked a sea change in the financing of federal elections—and those changes are already spreading to state and local elections, including the upcoming high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race. It’s not just gimmicks like Elon Musk’s offer of $100 to registered Wisconsin voters who sign a petition against “activist judges,” and $100 more for each additional voter they persuade to do the same. Musk and other megadonors have blown past previous spending records in a way that threatens a new American oligarchy.

In the 2024 elections, the top six donors supporting or opposing federal candidates each reported contributing at least $100 million, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Those donors—Musk ($291.5 million), Timothy Mellon ($197 million), Miriam Adelson ($148.3 million), Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein ($143.5 million), Ken Griffin ($108.4 million), and Jeffrey and Janine Yass ($101.1 million)—all exclusively supported Donald Trump and other Republican candidates (with the exception of the Yasses, who gave a nominal $1,500 contribution on the Democratic side). The biggest donor on the liberal side was former New York City mayor and publisher Michael Bloomberg, who gave $64.3 million total, with all but $1 million going to the Democratic side.

We have never seen so many nine-figure donors in an election, and with such lopsided giving. In the 2022 midterm elections, the sole nine-figure donor was George Soros ($178.8 million), with his contributions going to Democrats. In earlier election seasons, donations of this size were also rare: There were two in 2020 (Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Michael Bloomberg) one in 2018 (Sheldon Adelson), and none before that.

These numbers do not take into account all the spending and contributions by these ultrawealthy individuals (or the amounts given to non-disclosing political organizations). Take the expenditures of the world’s richest man, Musk. Even the $291.5 million figure does not include the value of content on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which reaches hundreds of millions of users. Researchers found that Musk seems to have tweaked the platform’s algorithm to promote content favorable to Trump, something quite valuable but hard to precisely value. Nor do these figures include the value of the publicity for his controversial get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states, among them a $1 million a day lottery for registered voters that could well have violated federal law.

The rise of the nine-figure donor raises two fundamental questions: Why is this happening now? And how will this new spending affect American elections and public policy?….

One might pooh-pooh the rise of the nine-figure donor and say it doesn’t matter. In the 2024 presidential election campaign, according to OpenSecrets data, Kamala Harris and her allies raised nearly $2 billion compared with Trump and his allies’ $1.45 billion. Overall, money was not as big a factor in the outcome of the election as other aspects that influenced voter choice, given that each side had ample funding to get out their message and run their campaign.

This minimization of the problem ignores two key points. First, the presidential election is unique in that it always attracts large amounts of money with high stakes and high interest. Money, even from a megadonor, is unlikely to be determinative: Both sides will be amply financed. But this is not necessarily true of other races. When Musk, for example, seeks to spend significant sums to influence the outcome of a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, or when Nicole Shanahan (RFK Jr.’s running mate for president) threatens to fund super PACs supporting Republican candidates to challenge incumbent senators who do not support Trump’s Cabinet nominees for confirmation, money can be much more influential—especially in otherwise noncompetitive general elections in which the real fight is for the party primary.

More important is what the money buys. Even putting aside the possibility of quid pro quo deals, the money secures influence and access. Musk has gained unprecedented access to Trump and unparalleled influence over the new administration through his White House office and activities for the amorphous Department of Government Efficiency, which is cutting federal employees and programs and engaging in the deep mining of governmental data (in many cases on issues with which Musk, the world’s richest man, has a financial conflict of interest). Republican senators toed the line and voted for Trump’s Cabinet nominees potentially out of fear of a Shanahan- or Musk-funded GOP primary….