President-elect Trump is being inundated with so much money from corporations and wealthy donors that his team expects to raise about $500 million by this summer, sources in his operation tell Axios' Marc Caputo.

"The crypto guys are just blowing it out," the Trump adviser said. "It used to be $1 million was a big number. Now we're looking at some folks giving like $10 [million] or $20 million."

Why it matters: A half-billion is a staggering sum for someone who can't run again — and a signal that Trump is ready to help allies, punish opponents and spend big to keep Republicans in full control of Congress through his term.

💸 "The money is just pouring in at Mar-a-Lago," a Trump adviser told us. "Trump doesn't have to lift a finger. Everyone's coming to him."

• It's flowing into multiple accounts, including Trump's inauguration fund, the MAGA Inc. super PAC, a political nonprofit called Securing American Greatness, the RNC and Trump's presidential library fund.

📈 Donors run the gamut: tech, health care, agriculture, insurance, financial institutions.

⛔️ Between the lines: Trump has made it clear in meetings with corporate donors that this is a one-way street. They donate money to support his agenda, but he's not taking their money to support their agenda.

• "A lot of these guys are going down [to Mar-a-Lago] taking victory laps because he's taking their money and they're in for a rude awakening," a corporate consultant familiar with the process said. "Sure, he'll throw an inaugural party with their money. But he owes them nothing."

Even so, donors seem to be giving on the assumption that there's something in it for them.

• "We don't want to get DOGE'd," one lobbyist told Axios.

Keep reading.

Axios and OpenAI this morning announced a multiyear deal to bring Axios Local to four new cities: Pittsburgh ... Kansas City, Mo. ... Boulder, Colo. ... and Huntsville, Ala.

• Why it matters: No company in America is investing in more local expansion than Axios, owned by Cox Enterprises. This expansion will bring us to 34 cities.

In a memo to staff, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei says Axios doubled local advertising in 2024, and will double the Axios Local sales staff immediately.

• OpenAI is helping fund the expansion into four new cities, and providing additional technical assistance to help speed Axios expansion into many more. VandeHei told staff the goal is to spread to 100 or more cities in the future.
• Axios and OpenAI entered into the three-year agreement after deep, months-long discussions about how artificial intelligence can assist with bringing local news to more locations.

💬 "AI can play a transformative role in supporting local journalism," OpenAI head of media partnerships Varun Shetty said.

• "Our partnership with Axios will help establish new operations in four cities. We're excited to see how Axios uses our technology to support quality reporting and tackle opportunities that they, and other local news organizations, face."

Fun fact: All Axios staff now have access to the enterprise version of OpenAI. 50+ of our colleagues have volunteered to help team-by-team AI experimentation.

• We see AI as a vital part of our long-term plans — not to report stories, but to help build a system for creation, distribution and monetization of our journalism.

Go deeper: Sara Fischer's story.

• Sign up for Axios Pittsburgh (coming Jan. 27) ... Meet the Pittsburgh team.

The world's CEOs are much more worried about global trade wars than they were a year ago, Axios Markets co-author Felix Salmon writes from a new survey by The Conference Board.

• As business prepares for President-elect Trump to take office, CEOs' fears of restrictions on foreign investment and conflict in the Asia-Pacific region are also on the rise.

👍 Yes, but: Geopolitical worries don't seem to have dampened broader economic optimism.

• Last year, 55% of U.S. CEOs said the risk of an economic downturn or recession would be a high-impact issue last year. This year, that fell to less than 40%.

Explore the data.

President Biden's last-minute order yesterday to undo sanctions on Cuba and delist the socialist nation as a terrorism sponsor is outraging already dispirited Florida Democrats.

• "This is Joe Biden literally sinking the Democratic Party in the state of Florida. Big time," Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a moderate Florida Democrat, told Axios' Marc Caputo.

🌴 Why it matters: In Florida — where Hispanic voters make up 19% of the electorate — the issue of "socialism" turns off many people with roots in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Colombia.

• Biden's order will be undone almost as soon as President-elect Trump replaces him on Monday, so it will have little practical effect.

🐊 But Florida Democrats fear Biden's move gives Trump a chance to frame their party as beholden to socialists.

• "The timing of this is a Harvard textbook case of political malpractice by Biden," said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a nonpartisan business group.

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⚡ Chris Wright, President-elect Trump's pick for Energy secretary, will celebrate his 60th birthday today by introducing himself to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as a "science geek, turned tech nerd, turned lifelong energy entrepreneur," Axios' Hans Nichols reports.

• Why it matters: Increased energy production is central to Trump's overall economic strategy, and he'll need an Energy secretary who can translate his vision of an oil and gas boom into a practical reality.

"Previous admins have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is," he will say.

• "Federal policies today make it too easy to stop projects and very hard to start and complete projects ... This makes energy more expensive and less reliable." His top 3 goals.

🌐 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the Secretary of State designee, will say during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing today:

"The postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us. And all this has led us to a moment in which we must now confront the single greatest risk of geopolitical instability and generational global crisis in the lifetime of anyone alive here today."

"Ultimately, under President Trump, the top priority of the United States Department of State must be and will be the United States," Rubio adds.

• Rubio opens by saluting his parents, "who arrived here on May 27th, 1956, from Cuba with nothing but the dream of a better life. Because of them, I had the privilege to be born a citizen of the greatest nation in the history of the world. And to be raised in a safe and stable home, by parents who made their children's future the very purpose of their lives."

🔎 John Ratcliffe — who is Trump's pick for CIA, and was director of national intelligence for the final months of Trump's first term — will rail against the politicization of the intelligence community during his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today, a transition source tells Axios.

• He'll vow to eliminate political biases and "wokeness" in the agency's workforce policies, and instead focus on "the mission."

Ratcliffe will portray tech as both a target (Where's China on hypersonics, quantum and AI?) and as a tool (How are analysts utilizing large language models and AI? How are spies beating ubiquitous technical surveillance?)

• Ratcliffe thinks the agency — with a complex matrix of tech-focused directorates, mission centers and positions — has struggled to keep pace with the rapid technological advancements in the private sector.
• He plans to accelerate efforts to coordinate with U.S. private-sector firms at the bleeding edge of technological advancement.

Ratcliffe will focus on China, as reported in a Wall Street Journal banger, "Trump's CIA Pick Expected to Push for Bare-Knuckle Spycraft Against China."

🪖 Pete Hegseth looks set for confirmation as SecDef after Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a combat veteran who had been skeptical, announced she'll back him.

• Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said on Fox News: "Pete Hegseth hit a home run."

⚖️ Go deeper: Pam Bondi hearing for attorney general today.

• 🗓️ The confirmation hearing for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security has been postponed to Friday.

Latest schedule.

Flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff during President-elect Trump's inauguration on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced.

• Flags are at half-staff to honor former President Carter, and they typically stay there for 30 days when a president dies. That would be the end of the month.
• But Trump complained repeatedly about the somber symbol casting a shadow over Inauguration Day. "Nobody wants to see this," he said on Truth Social.

Republican governors in Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas have also ordered flags raised on Monday.

Above: Workers install security fencing yesterday outside the Waldorf Astoria, formerly the Trump International Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Morale inside TikTok has fallen as employees wait to find out whether their app will still be legal in the U.S. after next week, The Verge reports.

• Executives sought to reassure employees yesterday in an internal memo, but weren't able to offer specifics — saying only that they're "planning for various scenarios and continuing to plan the way forward."
• "The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience," the memo states. It says TikTok's offices will remain open "even if this situation hasn't been resolved."

🛒 The latest: Chinese government officials are reportedly discussing the possibility of letting Elon Musk buy TikTok's U.S. operations. TikTok has denied that talks are happening.

Helicopter rides. Shopping sprees. Vats of caviar. Inauguration packages at D.C. hotels are uber-extravagant this year — with eye-popping price tags to match, Axios D.C.'s Anna Spiegel reports.

• Over a dozen D.C. hotels offer inauguration packages in the tens of thousands of dollars, advertising lavish suites and over-the-top amenities.

🚁 The hot seller so far: The Watergate, whose "Head of State Package" has been booked "multiple times," according to reps.

• The $73,500 experience includes roundtrip Blade helicopter transportation from NYC to Reagan National, and a daily chauffeur driving an armored Maybach.

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