Federal Election Commission filings for the first quarter of 2026 showed that billionaires Miriam Adelson and George Soros were the biggest donors backing GOP and Democratic super PACs, respectively, ahead of this year’s midterms, while billionaire Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm poured $25 million into a pro-artificial intelligence Super PAC.

KEY FACTS

• According to the filings published on Wednesday night, GOP megadonor Adelson donated $30 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the major super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates.
• Filings made by the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund—which backs GOP House candidates—showed Adelson had given the super PAC $10 million, bringing her overall contribution to $40 million so far this year.
• Billionaire George Soros, one of the biggest backers of Democratic candidates, donated $50 million to his Democracy PAC in January through an associated group, the Fund for Policy Reform.
• The Democracy PAC then donated $9 million to Senate Majority PAC—which backs Democratic Senate candidates.

FORBES VALUATION

According to Forbes’ Real Time Billionaire’s list, Adelson’s total fortune is worth $37.3 billion, making her the 58th richest person in the world. In comparison Soros’ net worth stands at $7.5 billion as of Thursday morning.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT FUNDING FROM SILICON VALLEY

?Leaders from Silicon Valley launched the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future in August last year, with venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz among its main backers. Wednesday’s filings showed that the venture firm donated $25 million to the political action committee, with $12.5 million each coming from co-founders Benjamin Horowitz and billionaire Marc Andreessen.

BIG NUMBER

$27 million. That is how much Democratic Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico has raised in the first three months of the year so far, according to the New York Times. Talarico’s strong numbers appear to reflect Democratic optimism about the race in deep-red Texas, as the GOP has been besieged by infighting among its top two candidates.

SURPRISING FACT

Filings for a Win for America, a super PAC backed by sports betting platforms, showed it raised more than $40 million in the first three months of the year. FanDuel contributed $19.5 million while DraftKings’ holding company, DK Crown Holdings, donated 17.5 million. An additional $4 million came from Fanatics’ subsidiary FBG Enterprises Opco.

Read the full story on Forbes: By Siladitya Ray

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/04/16/billionaire-adelson-pours-40-million-to-back-gop-soros-gives-50-million-to-his-democrat-pac/

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Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over the weekend that failed to produce a deal, the potential for another round of talks, and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz.

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On "Forbes Newsroom," Emerson Senior Director Matt Taglia discussed a new Emerson poll of the California Governor race after former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) dropping out following rape and sexual misconduct allegations.

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Liz Muller convinced her dad Richard to forego retirement and become an entrepreneur. The result is a revolutionary approach to making atomic energy cheaper and safer.

For more than a decade, Elizabeth Muller and her father have taken a three-mile hike, usually twice a week, through the hills of Berkeley, California, stopping for coffee and brainstorming on the way. “I would have an idea and she would have an idea,” says Richard A. Muller, who devised the modern carbon dating method used to determine the age of ancient plant and animal remains before he was 33 and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award at 38. Now, after 40 years of teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, the 82-year-old physicist is on the verge of having his greatest commercial impact, thanks to his business-minded daughter and those long walks.

“Nuclear brings out big emotions on all sides,” says Liz, 47. “As a kid growing up in Berkeley, all my teachers and friends were anti-nuclear, and the city became a nuclear-free zone.” She too leaned anti-nuke, even though her father’s mentor, Nobel Prize winner Luis Alvarez—who worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the first atomic bomb—was “like a grandfather to me.” But after college at UC San Diego, she moved to Paris in 1999 to earn a master’s at ESCP Business School and worked in international finance there for eight years. In France, she explains, everyone supported nuclear power as a “clean, reliable global warming solution.” She returned to Berkeley determined to tap her dad’s genius. 

In 2022, on one of those walks, the Mullers hatched the idea behind their nuclear power startup, Deep Fission. The concept is surprisingly simple: Drill a 30-inch-diameter borehole a mile into the earth, fill it with water, then insert a teeny-tiny nuclear reactor that will boil the water at the bottom and send it up a separate pipe to run a steam turbine. Each hole will generate 15 megawatts, enough to power 12,000 homes. Put 70 of them in a field and you can power a one-gigawatt artificial intelligence data center. 

Once up and running, it should also be cheap (about six cents a kilowatt hour, they estimate), because sticking a reactor deep in the ground under 160 times atmospheric pressure eliminates 80% of traditional power plant costs, which go to concrete buildings and thick steel vessels. “We are using the gravity of the water to give the reactor the same pressure,” Richard explains. 

Last August the Department of Energy inclu­ded Deep Fission as one of ten companies in its Reactor Pilot Program, designed to quickly test a new generation of smaller reactors that are easier to build. “The pull of electric demand from data centers warranted a new approach,” says Rian Bahran, deputy assistant secretary for nuclear at the DOE. While the other reactors are innovative in their own ways, they’re all variations of the traditional above-ground model.

Read the full story on Forbes: By Christopher Helman

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2026/04/02/acclaimed-physicist-and-his-daughter-are-burying-tiny-nuclear-reactors-a-mile-underground/

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President Donald Trump is considering moving U.S. troops from North Atlantic Treaty Organization members that have not backed the war against Iran and moving them to more supportive countries, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, while he also mulls trying to withdraw the U.S. from NATO altogether.

KEY FACTS

The proposal would involve removing American troops stationed in countries Trump believes were not supportive of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and moving them to countries deemed helpful amid the conflict, the Journal reported.

The potential punishment against some NATO members is one of several being circulated in the White House, according to the Journal.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who met with Trump in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, did not speak to the validity of the Journal’s report in an interview with CNN, remaining tight-lipped and saying he had a very “frank” and “open discussion” with Trump.

Trump and Rutte’s meeting came after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has considered withdrawing from NATO, the 32-member alliance that acts as a collective military defense for the countries under its banner.

But Trump cannot unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NATO under a 2023 law that says withdrawal requires a two-thirds Senate approval (right now, including at least 14 Democrats supporting it) or a formal act of Congress.

That law was co-sponsored by then Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Trump’s secretary of state, who recently told Fox News that after the war with Iran, “we are going to have to reexamine” the U.S. relationship with NATO.

TANGENT

The U.S. and Iran reached a ceasefire agreement Tuesday night, with Trump saying the two countries would “work closely” to establish a regime change and remove nuclear materials. The agreement was reached after Trump threatened strikes on civilian infrastructure alongside a statement in which he said “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Iran accused the U.S. of breaking the ceasefire after Israel conducted bombings in Lebanon. Trump and Vice President JD Vance claimed Iran misunderstood the terms of the ceasefire and that Lebanon was not included within it.

WHAT NATO COUNTRIES HAVE BACKED TRUMP’S WAR ON IRAN?

Canada, the Czech Republic, Albania, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Latvia are the only NATO countries to issue letters of support for the strikes the U.S. and Israel have carried out against Iran.

Read the full story on Forbes: By Antonio Pequeño IV

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/08/trump-mulls-pulling-us-troops-out-of-nato-countries-opposing-iran-war-report-says/

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Steve Forbes explains why free markets are the cure to the disease of out-of-control healthcare costs and will spare us from the disaster of a government-run single-payer model.

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Steve Forbes slams Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D-NY) proposal to impose a 75 percent tax on nicotine pouches, pointing out that doing so may encourage smokers to stick to cigarettes and end up causing untold deaths. Follow ⁠Steve Forbes: What's Ahead⁠  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more: https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes: http://forbes.com Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

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Just under 12 hours before President Donald Trump's self-imposed 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he warned on Truth Social that a "whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” This comes after his Easter morning missive, where in an expletive-laced post, he said in part, "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!" Behnam Ben Taleblu, Senior Director of the FDD's Iran program, joined Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss President Trump's latest statements and what they mean for the war against Iran. Stay Connected Forbes Breaking News on X: https://x.com/ForbesTVNews Forbes Breaking News on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@forbestvnews More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

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Steve Forbes breaks down the ugly truth about the cost—and efficacy—of alternatives to fossil fuels like windmills and solar panels, which have stifled Europe's economy and will do the same to the U.S.

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One of President trumps most loyal allies, Attorney General Pam Bondi is officially out as the leader of the Department of Justice. Attorney Jo-Anna Nieves joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss Bondi's legacy. Stay Connected

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