California saw the most expensive opposition campaign in its history as funding of political campaigns broke records in the US midterms

In the hours after polls closed on election day, tech industry players began praising Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, on social media.

“Huge thanks to Sergey Brin here,” wrote Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator. Venture capitalist Ilya Sukhar posted: “God bless Sergey Brin.” And David Marcus, a crypto entrepreneur, simply wrote: “Hero.”

If Democrats want to keep the blue wave going into 2028, they have to take on the billionaire class

Welcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Last week, Judd Legum shined a spotlight on the role of dark money in US elections. Today’s edition was written by Naomi Klein, Guardian US columnist and author of End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, co-written with Astra Taylor.

To see the battle lines of the post-midterm era in sharp relief, look to Texas.

The oligarchs in this battle seem to have no loyalty to the nations, states and cities that helped them grow their enormous wealth.

Campaign over Prop 40, as measure was known, was most expensive in state history, flush with Silicon Valley dollars

California billionaires won a contentious ballot measure campaign, defeating a proposed one-time tax on their wealth.

The bruising campaign over Proposition 40 was the most expensive in state history and witness to back-and-forth dealing from tech billionaires and democratic leaders, including Gavin Newsom, the governor, who steadfastly opposed the measure. While supporters of Prop 40 cast it as a solution to drastic healthcare cuts from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, opponents led by prosperous billionaires mounted an influential campaign saying the billionaire tax was instead “an everyone tax”.