After a midterm election race characterized by deep polarization between voters over Democratic and Republican candidates, a sea of blue prevailed and swept both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from Republican control. Make no mistake: The division between the Democratic and Republican parties has been historic, amplified and certainly not coincidental. Rather, the closeness of the midterm race was a direct result of the unchecked money and time elites invested in swinging states — investments that happened primarily under the table. We now exist in a system characterized by the decline of democracy, because of the lack of guardrails that make backsliding possible.
The midterm race was close because political campaigns are almost entirely bolstered by money, with mass media corporations and elites profiting off our desire to engage with politics. Donald Trump’s unique ties to oligarchs led the SCOTUS, under the Trump administration, to loosen limits on political party spending in June of 2026. Consequently, our political system is now structured in a way that gives oligarchs and their allies the greatest potential to rise to the top of the political ladder. Oligarchs control the government and affect the content we consume through media ownership and influence — they shape so much of what we see, from our social media feed to the political campaign ads they fund, that it allows them to steer public opinion in their favor. This system creates favorable conditions for authoritarian rule, and in order to fight this democratic backsliding happening all around us, we must first understand the systems and powers that are committed to reinforcing this structure.
With the rise of informal news, dramatic headlines, cherry-picked facts and inflated stories are what keep readers’ attention and alter their political beliefs. Publications are forced to prioritize whatever drives viewership in order to keep up with informal social media outlets and their algorithms, often at the expense of journalistic integrity. But these standards exist as guardrails to ensure that misinformation or bias, whether intentional or unintentional, is minimized. When those guardrails of journalistic ethics disappear amid the world of social media, viewer opinion becomes much easier to sway.
Even as our algorithms become more precise about the content they feed us, the content itself is becoming less and less refined. The rise of social media and influencer culture is exponentially increasing the volume of content that does not undergo strict scrutiny to meet journalistic standards before publication. Influencers’ TikTok pages and Substack accounts are becoming a new form of ‘journalism’ that many people consume with the same respect they once reserved for credible news sources. Meanwhile, a September 2026 study found that one in four Americans say influencers have swayed their vote.
Rather than strengthening credible media sources to counter influencers swaying political opinion, the Trump administration has sought to undermine them through executive overreach, fearing that factual evidence will position voters against him. As Robert Dahl theorizes in his book “Polyarchy,” democracy cannot function adequately if citizens are polarized and under-informed.
For the modern-day media industry, attention is the true battlefield — and the most profitable. Social media, other personal-brand platforms and their CEOs are concerned with keeping us engaged by any means so they can profit off of our engagement and their ads, a shift further embodied in David Fincher’s “The Social Reckoning.” For example, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta ran more inflammatory ads and circulated more content that they deemed “politically polarizing” to keep more users engaged on the app. These intentional algorithmic changes intensified political polarization, even if that wasn’t the primary motive. We have a responsibility to recognize that media compromise pushes us toward incomplete perspectives; critical thinking and factual evidence may be some of the only tools we have left to combat coercion by our current political administration.
These CEOs can readily accelerate democratic backsliding by feeding us fragmented information that favors their preferred political candidate. In the 2026 midterms, a small group of billionaires, including Elon Musk, poured $474 million into Republican Party political action committees in an attempt to deliver a victory.
The role of funders in American politics has always been widely contested, especially after the Citizens United v. FEC ruling in 2010, which allowed unlimited independent expenditures. However, the abolition of these guardrails has been uniquely exacerbated by Trump’s position within these elite circles; he began his term with a handful of tech oligarchs at his inauguration and has exponentially multiplied his wealth since entering office. In a last-ditch attempt, Trump even offered $5,000 checks, called the Trump Dividend, if the House and Senate remained Republican.
Many citizens recognize the Trump administration’s corrupt nature. But the administration has responded by strategically barring us from taking action, weaponising our increasing fear of outward resistance. Midterms are taking place at a time when nearly one million individuals have been deported in the last 18 months, and several migrants have now been denied entry into the United States for making anti-Trump statements. How can we feel confident exercising the free speech our democracy is supposed to grant if those in power are consistently willing to ignore the core tenets of that same democracy?
We should fear not only the deterioration of our democracy, but the active exacerbation of this process. We are actively witnessing our president and his tech oligarchs manipulating the democratic political system at our expense. We must educate ourselves about the deliberate nature of these manipulation tactics to hold the Trump administration accountable for the strategic backsliding on which it capitalizes.
In the meantime, we have a responsibility to engage with content beyond our algorithms — most importantly, journalistic sources from credible publications, which are increasingly under threat. Likewise, we must remain wary of political coercion enacted by money flow. If we take anything from this midterm, it should be that we have the power to resist being passively coerced by mass media, swayed by money and manipulated by the agendas of elites.
Olivia Brinkman Schooler PO ‘29 would like to thank David Menefee-Libey and Finn Rigby for inspiring this piece.