August Pfluger has represented Texas's 11th District — the heart of the Permian Basin — since 2021. He sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which writes the rules for the energy industry, and he has made "accelerating permitting" one of the three pillars of the budget-bill framework he authored as chairman of the Republican Study Committee.
His brother Karl Pfluger is the president of Oryx Midstream, which describes itself as "a leading midstream crude oil logistics provider in the Permian Basin." It's based in Midland, in the congressman's district. Midstream means pipelines — the business of moving crude out of the ground and to market, which is exactly the business that lives or dies on federal permitting rules.
None of that is secret, and none of it is illegal. It's also not something you'd learn from August Pfluger's financial disclosure, because the disclosure law covers a member's own holdings, their spouse's and their dependent children's. A brother doesn't appear.
Here's what the records do show.
The $9.8 million
In October 2022, Reuters reported on documents a whistleblower had given the Securities and Exchange Commission — William Wilkerson, a co-founding executive of Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. The documents identified who had bankrolled the company in its early days, when it was still raising money privately.
One of the names was Karl Pfluger.
Reuters described him as "president of Midland, Texas oil and energy company Oryx Midstream Services owned by private equity firm Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners," and reported that he put in $5.3 million in December 2021 and another $4.5 million in March 2022 — nearly $10 million.
He was one of the largest identified backers. The others Reuters named were a gym-chain executive, a telecom billionaire, a Trump 2020 finance co-chair, a former ambassador, and a mail-order fruitcake company CEO.
The congressman's office responded that August Pfluger "doesn't have a personal investment in Trump Media & Technology Group," adding: "He earned the endorsement of President Trump long before the creation of Truth Social."
That's a fair point about the endorsement, and it's worth stating plainly: nobody has produced evidence that the congressman holds a stake. The relevant fact is simpler and undisputed. While his brother was putting nearly $10 million into a company owned by Donald Trump, August Pfluger was one of Trump's most reliable votes in the House — including voting to reject Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electoral votes in January 2021, and voting against impeaching Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.
The company's executives fund his campaigns
This part is on the public record at the Federal Election Commission, and it's more direct.
Search FEC contribution filings for donors who list Oryx Midstream as their employer, and the money runs to one place: August Pfluger. Excluding sub-itemized memo entries so nothing is counted twice, Oryx-employed donors have given $117,950 to Pfluger's campaign committee, his joint fundraising committees and his leadership PAC.
The two biggest:
- Brett Wiggs, Oryx's chief executive officer — $40,050, split across August Pfluger for Congress, the Pfluger Victory Fund, the Pfluger Victory Committee and Raptor PAC, Pfluger's leadership PAC.
- Karl Pfluger, the president and the congressman's brother — $27,200 to his brother's campaign committee and joint fundraising committee.
Below them: Oryx's senior vice president of commercial operations, its chief accounting officer, and at least six other employees. Nearly the whole leadership page.
You can look this up yourself. FEC records for Oryx Midstream donors are public and searchable.
What he does with the committee seat
Pfluger's report card already lays out the broader picture: his top donors are Valero, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental, KOCHPAC and Permian Basin operators, and only 7% of his money comes from small grassroots donors.
His voting record matches. The League of Conservation Voters scores every member on clean air, clean water and climate votes. Pfluger's score is 0% for 2025 and 0% for his entire career — not a low score, a floor.
And the framework he wrote for the next budget bill puts it in writing. Its energy pillar is "unleashing American energy dominance by cutting red tape, accelerating permitting, and driving down energy bills and prices at the pump."
Cutting red tape and accelerating permitting is what a crude oil pipeline company wants from Washington. Pfluger's brother runs one. Its CEO is his single largest identified individual donor from that company.
Why any of this matters
West Texas runs on oil. Plenty of Pfluger's constituents work in the industry, and a congressman from Midland-Odessa country being close to it isn't a scandal on its own.
The problem is what the arrangement does to the rest of the job. When you take $117,950 from one company's executives, and one of them is your brother, and the committee you sit on regulates their business, the reasonable question isn't whether anyone broke a rule. It's whose phone call you take first.
The answer isn't hard to find in his record. On the budget bill he voted for, an estimated 1.7 million Texans will lose their health coverage and Texas hospitals stand to lose $39 billion in Medicaid funding over the next decade. When hundreds of his constituents showed up in San Angelo in July 2025 to tell him so, he got booed and a lot of them walked out.
Nobody from Oryx Midstream had to stand in that room to get his attention.
Sources
Who funded Trump's Truth Social? Some answers — Reuters, October 28, 2022. Contribution figures compiled from FEC Schedule A filings for donors listing Oryx Midstream as their employer, excluding memo entries. Photo: U.S. House official portrait via Wikimedia Commons.
