Government Corruption Is the Second-Biggest Issue for US Midterm Voters, Harris Poll Finds

Government corruption has emerged as the second most important issue for voters heading into the US midterm elections, according to an October Harris poll for the Guardian. Only the rising cost of living ranks ahead of it.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents to the poll said corruption was a problem, a greater share than those worried about AI or immigration.

Among voters planning to vote in the midterms, 65 percent think this corruption is a "major problem," the poll found.

According to the poll, voters are chiefly worried about "elected officials putting their own or their donors' financial interests ahead of the public."

Last year, the US ranked as the 29th least corrupt nation on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, a notch below its rank in the last year of the Biden administration and down from 18th in 2016, the year before Trump first came into office.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has pressed a campaign against fraud in social safety net programmes. JD Vance's anti-fraud taskforce recently announced the discovery of $40 million defrauded from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Snap. Speaking in Ohio, Vance said some people steal from the mouths of hungry children in order to enrich themselves.

Vance had earlier announced that the administration had ended the health coverage of 760,000 people insured under Obamacare on grounds of fraud. Trump has also offered a bounty to whoever catches people defrauding the government, saying that if a person reports $1 billion in fraud, that person will receive a 1 percent commission.

Vance, however, claimed he had not seen a single shred of evidence that Trump participates in or sanctions corruption, reminding the electorate that Trump was a billionaire before he ever got into politics.

The report noted that Trump made $2.2 billion in his first year back in office, including $1.4 billion from crypto. It said Trump's Securities and Exchange Commission paused a fraud lawsuit against a crypto billionaire who had bought $40 million worth of $Trump meme coins and invested $75 million in another Trump crypto business. It also cited the disbanding of the justice department team that investigated illegal uses of crypto and the dropping of investigations into crypto companies including Coinbase, Ripple and Kraken.

Democratic congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has compiled a list of the many ways Trump is enriching himself, his family and his allies while in office, the report said. The list includes the Qatari government's gift of a luxury jet, potentially violating the emoluments clause of the constitution.

The list also cited the UAE gaining access to tightly guarded, high-end American AI chips soon after an investment firm linked to its ruling family secretly bought a $500 million stake in World Liberty Financial, and examples of wealthy people facing criminal charges donating to Trump's political operations and then seeking pardons or clemency, including former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced and banker Julio Herrera Velutini.