In August 2021, there was a spike in the number of private donations for Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s attempt to build a border wall through crowdfunding. In June 2021, Abbot announced the online site to collect private donations to finance a down payment worth $250 million for the state’s border wall. Donations were flowing in gradually through August mid but jumped considerably in the second half of that month.
The sources of the financial contributions are still unknown, and the website does not report who makes these donations instantly. Therefore, there is uncertainty about what caused the spike in the number of donations. The total donation increased by more than twofold in the last week of August 2021 to reach $54 million.
The Office of the Texas Governor does not voluntarily offer information about donors. Therefore, The Texas Tribune has requested the office to make the information public. The office said that it is acting as per open records acts as well as revealing the information as per what is written in the law concerned. The Texas Tribune reporter James Barragán feels that while it is perhaps true, people expect that the information would be transparent.
