Donald Trump is finishing what the British started. Despite promises that the White House would be unaffected by the addition of a $230 million ballroom, the historic East Wing has in fact been demolished. The images of the site are so jarring that the Treasury Department has reportedly ordered its employees to stop taking photos of it.

If the destruction of the East Wing is a shock, the money that’s paying for it might be even more of a scandal. The White House, eager to assure Americans that their tax dollars have not been diverted for a vanity project, has emphasized that the ballroom is being financed by individuals and major corporations. Instead of going through a process to obtain and disburse federal funds, Trump simply asked the companies his administration is supposed to be regulating to write checks.

The list of donors released by the White House includes the usual deep-pocketed Republicans, such as casino magnate Miriam Adelson and private-equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman, but also a host of companies whose leaders have huge incentives to maintain good relations with an often vindictive head of state. They include telecom giants and the railroad giant Union-Pacific—which needs the Trump administration’s sign-off on a proposed $85 billion merger with Norfolk Southern. (Union-Pacific did not respond to a request for comment.) And then there’s the tech companies—Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.

The Hill lists them: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5569197-major-companies-fund-whitehouse/