POL OP 3 CONSULT
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ESTB 8 25
freedom 250 fuckery
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AN 10 26
Sources inside the White House say Trump and company are "panicking" as his administration masterminds jump ship for more lucrative jobs elsewhere, says the Daily Mail.
“Susie Wiles summoned her top advisers to her West Wing office just after 8.15 am Friday for a crisis meeting as a wave of stories about Trump allies cashing in on their access threatened to swamp the White House,” reports the Daily Mail, and the president's chief of staff was “panicked,” said a source familiar with the meeting. Wiles and the administration are still coming to grips with the political and media fallout from two of the president's top political lieutenants taking profitable paydays with foreign entities.
Additionally, Daily Mail said anxiety was building around reports about Wiles’ own daughters' pro-Russia foreign lobbying work, according to two sources familiar with the mood in the building.
The Daily Mail's sources relay that the White House was “blindsided last week” after reports that Chris LaCivita and James Blair, Trump's trusted political hands, had spent the October 4 weekend in the Balkans, advising a Putin-aligned government that was claiming election victory. Reports claim the men traveled to Republika Srpska, a self-governing part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There they "consulted" on voting issues ahead of Sunday's election for the nationalist party.
Trump was infuriated at the news LaCivita and Blair — the leaders of Trump's political operation for the 2026 midterms — were out of the country “scoring handsome consulting fees” with just weeks to go before November and Republicans fighting for their lives to preserve House and Senate majorities.
According to the Daily Mail, White House sources say Wiles “first met with her policy right-hand Walker Barrett before assembling other top White House aides, including Megan Bauer, head of Cabinet Affairs, for the early-morning powwow.”
When contacted, White House spokespeople described the meeting as just the 'usual' Friday morning meeting, but an administration official said Trump was 'furious,' and the president has been desperately “working the phones, calling allies to ask how he should handle the embarrassing disclosure about LaCivita and Blair.”
The Daily Mail adds that the White House declined to describe the nature of the conversations she had with staff that Friday.
Days earlier, Trump claimed he saw no conflict with LaCivita and Blair’s off-site money-making, but sources say behind the scenes “that tenor had changed,” with the turmoil handing Democrats fresh ammunition just as early voting begins and the party’s grip on Congress appears slippery, Republican operatives told to the Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail says representatives for LaCivita, Blair was and Jared Kushner were contacted for comment, but failed to respond in time for the Wednesday article.
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2X? AN 2026
The Trump administration is illegally using the Social Security email list to spew political propaganda. That email list likely includes everyone with an online Social Security account—over 100 million people, both current and future Social Security beneficiaries. The purpose of the list is for the government to share important information about Social Security benefits.
On July 2, the Trump administration sent an email from Commissioner Frank Bisignano, ostensibly to mark America’s 250th birthday. The email, like a similar one sent a year ago, is a fully political document.
Bisignano begins by bragging about President Donald Trump’s tax bill without mentioning:
- Trump’s bill cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which is causing hospitals around the country to close—a disaster for seniors, especially those living in rural areas.
- Trump’s bill gives massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy, including trillionaire Elon Musk.
- Trump’s bill does not end taxes on Social Security benefits, but does weaken Social Security’s long-term finances.
Bisignano then goes on to tout allegedly improved customer service. Widespread media reports show that customer service has massively deteriorated since Musk’s DOGE pushed out more than 8,000 of Social Security’s most experienced, knowledgeable workers. These reports include first-person stories where even highly educated people with Social Security expertise have faced months-long nightmares to resolve simple errors that cut themselves or their family members off from benefits.
Shortly after Bisignano was confirmed last year, Social Security removed longstanding customer service metrics from its website. Since then, Bisignano has cherry-picked his own metrics and used them to mislead.
Bisignano moved many of the remaining Social Security office workers to answering phones, while other essential work piles up. Then, he brags about shorter waits on the phone. What he doesn’t mention is that if you hang up in frustration, or talk to someone who can’t help you because they aren’t adequately trained, it still counts toward a short wait on the phone. The only metric that really matters is if people are getting the help they need. On that count, Bisignano is failing miserably.
The situation is particularly dire for people who need help in person. The country is dotted with Social Security “ghost offices” that aren’t officially closed (because that’s bad publicity for Trump and Bisignano) but have only a skeleton crew of workers remaining. These offices can’t meaningfully serve the community, and people are losing their hard-earned benefits as a result.
The same week that Bisignano sent out his political propaganda email, the Social Security Administration announced that the Freedom 250 logo will appear on the Social Security Cards of all babies born for the rest of 2026.
Freedom 250 is a semi-private, partisan entity. Trump and his allies are using it to turn the celebration of our nation’s 250th anniversary into profit for themselves. Freedom 250 has a history of harvesting data, and employs former DOGE operatives. Bisignano claims that the Social Security Administration isn’t paying Freedom 250 a licensing fee, or sharing data with it. But we already know that Bisignano lies as easily as he breathes.
Trump’s hijacking of Social Security is just the latest example of his corruption. Like the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, and the White House, Social Security is a sacred American institution that Trump is abusing for his own financial and political gain.
Social Security is a nonpartisan program, with overwhelming support from Democrats, Republicans, and independents. By using it for political purposes, Trump and Bisignano are betraying the American people.
Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening organization of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition -- a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans.
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REF 1 WAPO
Donors were misled by Trump-backed Freedom 250, House Democrats allege
The lawmakers’ report alleges that Trump allies worked to divert funds away from America250, a bipartisan effort to mark the nation’s semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 denies the allegations.
July 2, 2026
President Donald Trump wraps up his speech at the opening of the Great American State Fair on the National Mall on June 24. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
By Ben Binday
and
Some donors who intended to give money to a bipartisan effort to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary were, instead, steered to a White House-backed initiative under false pretenses, House Democrats allege in a report released Thursday morning, citing whistleblower interviews and newly obtained documents.
The donors meant to give money to America250, a congressionally chartered initiative to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, according to Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee. They instead were given routing and account numbers that directed their funds to Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump established last year to organize anniversary events, the report says.
The report does not identify the donors. In interviews, Democrats said they needed to protect the identity of whistleblowers who worked with the panel. But they said their report — which includes other allegations of Freedom 250 officials and allies explicitly steering money away from America250 and toward projects shaped by Trump — shows how the president transformed a bipartisan celebration of the nation’s anniversary into an initiative that benefited him and his allies.
“I’m a lawyer, and I know better than to pronounce that a crime has been committed,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), who oversaw the report as the committee’s top Democrat. “But I do know the elements of fraud, and there is evidence of all those elements here.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) speaks May 14 at the site of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary in Arlington, Virginia. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The White House referred questions to Freedom 250, which denied that donors had been misled by its fundraising activities, said it was “unequivocally false” that Freedom 250’s routing and account numbers were given in lieu of America250’s, and criticized Democrats for the timing of their report.
“This so-called ‘report’ is nothing more than a partisan smear from politicians who would rather manufacture division than celebrate America’s 250th birthday alongside the rest of the country,” Freedom 250 spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.
Alvarez also criticized America250, saying that the bipartisan organization — which Congress established in 2016 — “had nothing to show” for its 10 years of planning and spending.
“Freedom 250 was created because the American people deserved better,” Alvarez said.
America250 declined to comment on the specific allegations in Democrats’ report.
“America250 will continue to focus on the values-based programming approved by our bipartisan Commission at the local, state, national and international levels, including once-in-a-lifetime celebratory moments during the 4th of July weekend,” Rosie Rios, who chairs America250, said in a statement. “We are supportive of the many other organizations planning events for the 250th at the federal, state and local level, so all Americans have ample opportunities to join in the celebration.”
Trump has extolled Freedom 250 in public remarks, saying that the initiative has organized multiple special events. The public-private partnership, which the White House launched in December, has overseen a flurry of high-profile announcements, including some from the Oval Office. Its branding has also been applied to events organized by IndyCar, the UFC and other groups in partnership with the Trump administration.
“We’ll have a Freedom 250 Grand Prix right here in Washington around the Capitol,” the president said last week in remarks kicking off the Great American State Fair on the National Mall — another Freedom 250-backed event.
People use American flag posters to shield themselves from the sun ahead of Trump’s speech at the opening of the Great American State Fair. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
The Trump-backed initiative has overtaken some efforts led by America250, which is directed by a bipartisan board created by Congress a decade ago.
America250 originally applied for and received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for so-called Freedom Trucks, mobile museums inspired by the American Freedom Train that crisscrossed the country from 1975-1976. The institute is a federal agency that provides financial support for museums and libraries.
Officials have said the grant was later voluntarily transferred to Freedom 250, which is now operating Freedom Trucks that provide a sanitized version of the nation’s founding, according to administration critics.
PRAGER?
America250 officials have said they reoriented their initiative to organize events outside Washington, while Freedom 250 focuses on events in the nation’s capital. But the dueling organizations and approaches have confused some corporate leaders and lawmakers, and tensions between the groups have grown, The Washington Post reported earlier this year.
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The Democratic lawmakers’ report offers further examples of how the two groups have come into conflict.
Some donors and sponsors interested in donating to America250 were told by the Trump administration that they lacked a “green light” to do so, according to the Democrats. The report also claims that administration officials pressured donors to redirect donations from the bipartisan effort to Freedom 250, with the Trump-backed group conducting outreach to America250 sponsors with donation requests.
Some corporate executives did not understand the difference between the two organizations and were confused by this process, the report says.
Freedom 250 officials also worked to deprive America250 of money, the Democrats charge, citing new examples of Trump allies pressuring donors to reallocate funds away from the bipartisan initiative. They also allege that Trump allies worked to shift public financial support away from America250, including $75 million of congressionally allocated funds that America250 leaders were expecting to receive. The remaining funds are likely to be kept by the White House, the report says.
The reduced funding posed challenges for America250 to execute planned programming, according to the report, including grants, educational initiatives, and volunteer programs. Redirected federal funding created “significant headwinds” for this programming, the Democrats said, though the group still sought to execute all planned events through additional private fundraising.
The Freedom 250 Ferris Wheel and the U.S. Capitol are seen June 26 during the fair. (Jen Golbeck/AP)
Though America250 is still organizing anniversary celebrations in large cities across the country, its programming has been overshadowed by that of Freedom 250. The Trump-backed group helped promote last month’s UFC fight on the White House lawn, helped organize this week’s opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota and is coordinating a Trump rally and fireworks show scheduled for the evening of Independence Day.
Huffman said that if Democrats retake the House this fall — and obtain the power to issue subpoenas — they will open broader investigations into Freedom 250.
“If and when we have more tools at our disposal to do investigation and oversight, perhaps in the next Congress you will see a lot more information on this, I’m sure,” he said.
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REF 2
Ranking Member Huffman Releases Report on How Trump Hijacked America's 250th Birthday to Enrich Himself, Sell Access, and Harvest Americans' Data
Whistleblower accounts and internal documents reveal how the White House captured a beloved national charity, deceived donors out of their money, and sold access to the President
July 02, 2026
Washington, D.C. – Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released a new 55-page report following months of investigative work by Committee Democrats exposing how Donald Trump hijacked what was supposed to be a unifying, non-political celebration of our country's 250th birthday and made it all about him – his vanity projects, his political and religious agenda, his business ventures, and his cronies who gorged on public funds under cover of a shadow corporation shielded from public scrutiny.
The report, "From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday," traces how the machinery Congress built for a national commemoration that would be above politics was commandeered, over a period of months, into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President's ego, political agenda, and personal financial interests.
Watch Ranking Member Huffman discuss the report's findings.
“Donald Trump’s hijacking of America's 250th birthday will go down as one of the most corrupt, brazen abuses of public trust in presidential history, even by the dubious standards of this administration. As our country prepared to celebrate a milestone that belongs to every American, Trump and his operatives launched a hostile takeover of the bipartisan commission established by Congress to lead the celebration. When that failed, they sidelined the commission, siphoned its resources, and infiltrated a beloved national charity under cover of a shadow corporation that shielded them from public scrutiny. Then they proceeded to deceive donors, solicit foreign money, sell access to the President, award no-bid contracts to Trump loyalists, harvest Americans’ personal data, and push a white-washed, Christian nationalist version of history,” said Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif).
“But they didn’t account for us. Over the past year, our investigation has pursued the truth about the machinations, schemes and abuses of trust they’ve tried to hide. We’ve uncovered extensive evidence of corruption, self-enrichmentand potential crimes. The Republican majority in Congress, which has far more investigative tools and power than we do, could have joined us in conducting serious oversight and demanding answers. Instead, they’ve used their power to shield the individuals and entities involved.
“The American people deserve to know the truth about how the official national celebration of our country’s 250th anniversary was stolen, along with a large – and so far unaccounted for – sum of their taxpayer dollars. So, today – against the obstruction and resistance of our Republican colleagues – we are dragging this fiasco out of the shadows and shining a bright light on the corruption and fraud surrounding Freedom 250. We can’t stop from tarnishing the country’s July 4th celebration, but we can stop it from ever happening again – we can protect the next government program, the next fund, the next thing that's supposed to work for all of us, from being exploited and misused this way. That’s why we must confront this grift and corruption now. From our earliest days, America has stood for government by the people, not powerful tyrants. We will fight to keep it that way.”
When the nonpartisan, congressionally chartered America250 Commission refused to bend to the President's demands, the White House built a replacement - Freedom 250 LLC – and declared it the central platform for the national celebration. The White House lodged this shadow organization inside the National Park Foundation so it could exploit the credibility and donor relationships of a beloved public charity while operating outside the transparency rules Congress wrote into law for the commission.
Key Findings
- The President put himself at the center of the nation's birthday. Trump issued an executive order making himself and the Vice President Chair and Vice Chair of a White House task force, then staged his own birthday as a national event twice: the Army's 250th military parade on June 14, 2025, and a UFC fight on the White House South Lawn on June 14, 2026, run under the Freedom 250 banner.
- The White House built Freedom 250 on deceit. Musical performers, among others, were misled about programming and connections to Trump’s political machine. Fundraisers may have misled donors who intended to support America250 and handed them Freedom 250's banking information, routing contributions meant for the nonpartisan foundation to the President's substitute entity instead. The report finds that, if true, this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia law.
- Freedom 250 sold access to the President and courted foreign money in America's name. The organization circulated sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10 million, backed by a "historic photo opportunity" with President Trump. Its CEO solicited foreign governments, corporations, and individuals at the World Economic Forum in Davos to fund the President’s priorities. If foreign funds reach the President's vanity projects, the report finds the conduct would clearly violate the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause.
- Trump and his operatives cashed in. Event Strategies, Inc., the firm that helped plan the January 6th rally, has collected tens of millions in federal contracts connected to the anniversary, including a master contract worth up to $100 million. Trump traded in the stock of companies that donated to Freedom 250 and staged a White House UFC fight that shamelessly promoted his own investments and business ventures. Freedom 250's event registration process was run through Campaign Nucleus, the firm founded by Trump campaign operative Brad Parscale, which uses artificial intelligence to score visitors and target "persuadable" voters. Thousands of unwitting fans handed over their personal information at a free FIFA World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall. Freedom 250’s official merchandise is sold by the Trump campaign’s official merchandise vendor, Ace Specialties, and agencies have purchased the merchandise and required employees to wear it.
- The White House imposed a false, Christian nationalist history. Federally funded "Freedom Trucks" carried revisionism and outright falsehoods to schoolchildren, including an AI rendering of George Washington claiming, "our rights are a gift from God," a statement Washington is not documented to have made. The Interior Department also urged employees to wear Freedom 250 pins and threatened discipline against those who refused the pin, which anonymous employees took to calling their "Vichy pin," a reference to World War II-era lapel pins that served as loyalty and propaganda badges.
- Freedom 250 created a blueprint for corruption. The report concludes Freedom 250 is "a blueprint, not a one-time abuse," already test-driven at the Department of Agriculture, where the administration steered companies with business before the government to donate through a conservation charity into a fund the Secretary controls.
The investigation drew on confidential disclosures from sources interviewed by Committee Democrats, internal Freedom 250 documents and talking points obtained by the Committee, sworn testimony from two Committee hearings, and written responses from the National Park Foundation and the National Forest Foundation.
Republicans on the Committee refused to conduct any oversight to hold the administration accountable, even when Democrats repeatedly raised evidence of wrongdoing at Republicans’ own hearing entitled, “All in for America250: Public-Private Partnerships Supporting America’s Semiquincentennial on our Public Lands.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum testified he was "not aware of the final decisionmaker" behind Freedom 250, and the Department has refused to provide that information since.
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REF 3 GUK
Trump hijacked US’s 250 anniversary to serve ‘political ideology and pet projects’, congressional report says
This article is more than 1 month old
House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes
David Smith in Washington
Thu 2 Jul 2026
Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation released on Thursday.
The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).
The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.
‘A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks
“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects”.
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How Trump is making the US’s 250th anniversary about himself – video
In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the non-profit America250 Foundation, to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a non-partisan basis. However, under Trump, the White House launched a sustained pressure campaign to subsume the commission.
When America250 leadership resisted its demands to shift focus toward partisan, campaign-style spectacles, the Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the congressionally chartered NPF.
The interim report finds that, by taking control of the NPF board and installing key campaign operatives such as Meredith O’Rourke and Chris LaCivita, the White House secured an opaque vehicle that enjoyed the NPF’s non-partisan credibility and tax-exempt status while operating outside standard government transparency laws.
Jared Huffman, a California congressman who is the top Democrat on the natural resources committee, said: “I can’t, in my time here in Congress, remember anything even remotely like this: watching this trusted, venerable charity organisation, the National Parks Foundation, literally be hijacked for a craven political agenda that tries to steal the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and turn it into something that’s all about Trump, advancing this very divisive agenda and even enriching Trump and those around him.”
The interim report alleges that Freedom 250 surreptitiously diverted resources intended for America250 for its own benefit, leaving America250 scrambling for funds.
Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee said fundraisers including O’Rourke misled prospective America250 donors by providing them with Freedom 250’s banking and routing numbers instead. The report finds this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia law.
This deceit extended to the entertainment industry. Artists recruited for the kickoff of the Great American State Fair – including Martina McBride and Young MC – were assured the event was non-partisan, only to face social media backlash when the event was revealed to be a Trump-backed rally. In the words of Young MC, the booking was a “bait and switch”.
The investigation also outlines how Freedom 250 effectively put a price tag on presidential access, circulating sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10m for tiered recognition, culminating in a “historic photo opportunity” with Trump.
The report also points to perhaps the most clear example on 14 June when the White House hosted a huge Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the South Lawn to celebrate the president’s 80th birthday. The event was heavily sponsored by corporations facing impending federal regulation and used vast government resources for “Super Bowl-level security” marshalled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Fighters received bonuses in “USD1”, a cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, a trust run by the president’s children, and Trump personally bought up to $50,000 in stock in the UFC’s parent company weeks before the event.
Freedom 250 has also functioned as a conduit for steering federal funds to Trump campaign loyalists. Event Strategies – the same firm that planned the January 6 rally that preceded the US Capitol attack – was awarded 18 federal contracts totalling roughly $40m, along with an indefinite delivery master contract worth up to $100m.
Beyond lucrative contracts, the administration is accused of building a partisan political database disguised as a government domain. Freedom 250’s website, initially managed by former “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge) employees known for past data leaks, extensively logs user data.
Event registration is powered by Campaign Nucleus, a firm founded by Brad Parscale, a veteran of Trump election campaigns. Campaign Nucleus openly boasts about using artificial intelligence to analyse personal data and target “persuadable” voters. Unsuspecting visitors, such as attenders of a free Fifa World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall, unwittingly fed their personal information directly into this Republican campaign apparatus.
The report also focuses on the ideological overhaul of the semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 replaced America250’s civic engagement focus with overt Christian nationalist programming, operating in tandem with the Religious Liberty Commission, which recently recommended repealing the Johnson amendment to allow churches to engage in partisan politics.
A central feature of this effort was “Freedom Trucks” – a federally funded fleet of mobile museums dispatched to schoolchildren across the nation. Supplied with content from the conservative PragerU [the Prager University Foundation] and Hillsdale College, these exhibits recast the founding of the US as an exclusively Christian project, embracing demonstrable falsehoods.
Exhibits include an AI-generated George Washington claiming that “our rights are a gift from God”, a statement the first president is not documented as having made, alongside antisemitic tropes suggesting that Jewish merchants financed the revolutionary cause while omitting they also fought and died for it.
Concurrently, the administration aggressively moved to erase historical realities, removing national park signage detailing slavery, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and climate change. Huffman said it amounted to an attempt to reshape American identity to fit a narrow rightwing agenda.
“It’s a fantasy that airbrushes out the more complicated parts of our history – slavery, the Native American genocide, the actual secular ideals on which our government was founded. It wasn’t the opening of the clouds and some revealed covenant with God as they would have you believe.”
As Washington barrels towards Fourth of July, with another Trump speech and a big fireworks display planned for the national mall, Huffman acknowledges that Freedom 250 is unstoppable. But his goal now is exposure.
“The one thing we can do is make sure the American people know what they’re doing in our name and with our tax dollars,” the congressman said. “We should do that because what they have pulled off here is a potential template for other betrayals of public trust that they and maybe future generations will attempt if we don’t challenge them.”
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The New Democratic Machine — And The Billionaires Behind It
the scandal was minimal, a blip in a Democratic primary race in New York’s Hudson Valley. But the incident was an early sign of a powerful new political machine playing an unprecedented role in Democratic primaries.
The problem emerged in February. Jackie Rosa, a political communications strategist, had been fielding press questions for Cait Conley, a combat veteran vying for New York’s 17th Congressional District, as though she were a campaign spokesperson. But when controversy erupted after Rosa circulated a memo bashing Conley’s opponent as a “far left political operative,” the strategist claimed she’d mounted the attack on behalf of an outside group, not the campaign.
:{:{However, Rosa’s email sign-off listed an affiliation with a different political group — and her email address was tied to yet another organization, a shadowy Delaware consultancy.:}:
Four separate entities, all tied to a single strategist, seemingly collaborated on messaging against a candidate, even though campaign finance law theoretically limits close coordination between campaigns and outside spending vehicles. What exactly was going on?
All of the organizations, it turns out, belonged to a new dark-money-backed enterprise of unparalleled scale and complexity. The influence network brands itself as boosting Democrats’ electoral prospects ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. But the project’s true ambitions go much further.
Born from the ashes of the party’s 2024 defeat, this new operation has taken inspiration from Democrats’ free-market neoliberal turn after stinging defeats in the 1980s and 1990s and infused it with the deregulatory zeal of the abundance movement. Funded by Silicon Valley billionaires with skin in the game, the network is exploiting the country’s increasingly threadbare campaign finance laws to elect a new generation of leaders on board with bringing the party back to the “moderate” middle.
The machine operates as two big-name new organizations, Majority Democrats and the Bench, both tied to a single venture capitalist-turned-secretive Democratic adviser. Under this umbrella, the influence network is dispersing millions through a sophisticated nesting doll of political action committees (PACs), nonprofits, consultancies, and LLCs, while sharing the same big-money donors, political consultants, and often the same policy proposals.
The convoluted arrangements are sowing confusion on the campaign trail about the roles various campaign operatives play and who pays them.
The ambiguity may be the point. Political influence networks backed by super PACs — which have no limits on the money they can collect from billionaire donors — have become widespread. But the many-tentacled network of Majority Democrats, the Bench, and their affiliates appears to be intervening in campaigns’ day-to-day operations to an unprecedented degree.
Experts say these legal workarounds could undermine campaign finance rules governing coordination between political campaigns and outside groups, designed to limit elected officials’ financial obligations to wealthy special interests.
“These groups are major players behind the scenes,” one Democratic campaign strategist, granted anonymity in order to speak candidly, told The Lever. “I’ve never seen a setup like this where the political action committees are openly coordinating with campaigns to the extent that they are.”
In response to The Lever, Majority Democrats and the Bench disputed this characterization.
“These practices are fully compliant with the law and not uncommon,” said a Majority Democrats spokesperson. “We understand the urgency of this moment demands challenging the broken status quo and elevating the next generation of leaders who can build a sustainable majority.”
A spokesperson for the Bench told The Lever that it “has a strict firewall policy [between campaign and super PAC activity] that adheres to federal regulations.”
There’s no denying these groups’ financial might. New filings reviewed by The Levershow that Majority Democrats and the Bench have together raised $8 million so far this year, most of which came from tycoons like hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel and Nvidia board member Tench Coxe, as CBS Newsreported this month. Other major donors to the network include venture capitalist Bill Helman, Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, and crypto CEO Michael Novogratz.
Those donations build on seed funding from the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who spent millions supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris while urging her to go easy on antitrust and Big Tech.
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A substantial amount of the funds is going to pay high-profile political operatives working to elect the influence network’s chosen candidates in pivotal elections, often to the detriment of more progressive challengers.
This setup became a point of controversy in the Texas Senate primary last month and is currently playing a role in Michigan, where the Bench-endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow is facing off against progressive challenger Abdul El-Sayed, a physician endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Democrats may very well embrace these groups’ purported focus on electability and their heavy spending to claw back control of the House and Senate in 2026. But others worry that this new configuration may give wealthy donors an even greater voice in elections extending all the way down to campaign personnel, a corrupting influence that may not necessarily benefit the Democratic Party’s long-term electoral prospects — or democracy itself.
“It seems like a new frontier,” Michael Beckel, the money in politics reform director at advocacy group Issue One, said of Majority Democrats’ network. “When you continue to blur the lines of the existing anti-coordination rules, and when you continue to erode those anti-corruption safeguards in the process, that’s giving wealthy donors more access and influence in dictating the terms of the campaign.”
“A Party Within The Party”
Majority Democrats and the Bench, along with their various offshoots, are the brainchild of Seth London, a venture capitalist and adviser to major Democratic donors.
In the weeks after the Democrats’ disastrous performance in the 2024 elections, which bestowed the GOP with a trifecta of power under President Donald Trump, London released a blueprint, to much media fanfare, for rebuilding the party. At the time, Democratic circles were debating whether the Harris campaign floundered because the party had become too left-wing — or too beholden to corporate power.
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London’s memo firmly aligned with the former viewpoint, calling on the party to moderate on a host of issues and usher in a new generation of “common sense Democrats.” While light on policy prescriptions, the memo aligned its priorities with the “abundance agenda,” a liberal project focused on reducing housing costs and building out clean energy mostly through “supply-side” private-sector solutions.
But abstract ideas of “abundance” and “moderation” would only be impactful if those who agreed with London could wield power in Democratic primary races and shape the ideological character of the party’s foot soldiers. To do so, London’s memo proposed an organizational infrastructure — “a party within the party” — modeled on the Democratic Leadership Coalition, a powerful organ for the corporate neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, financed by Wall Street.
As London’s road map dictated, several new PACs would serve as the central nervous system for this project, to be headed up by high-powered political consultants, including Lis Smith, an alum of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, and Steve Israel, a former New York congressman turned lobbyist.
Months later, as the primary season ramped up, Democratic operatives began to notice a new group of political enterprises amassing outsize influence. The organizations moved together as a pack to back candidates, shared consultants, and appeared to direct the messaging of political campaigns to a remarkable degree.
They all bore London’s imprint.
A Tale Of Two Groups
In July 2025, a new group with ambitions to “remake the image” of the Democratic Party staged its launch: Majority Democrats. London was “involved” in the project, per The New York Times, though his precise role remained elusive.
In an inaugural post on Majority Democrats’ Substack, London argued that Democrats’ main problem was their “fear of backlash from interest groups, donors, and online activists; fear of being labeled racist, transphobic, or a sellout.” Majority Democrats, he announced, would “replace fear with confidence” in order to “revive a party that can compete everywhere.”
Majority Democrats’ executive director, Rohan Patel, a former Tesla executive and Obama White House official, was more explicit in a subsequent post. He noted that “a party that can win everywhere” required “recruiting candidates who can credibly compete in tough general elections,” and “rejecting the notion that they need to adopt unpopular, left-wing positions in the primary.”
At launch, Majority Democrats touted a roster of around 30 lawmakers. Those include Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), both first-term Senators elected in 2024 and already rumored to be presidential contenders in 2028. All are relatively young, consistent with Majority Democrats’ criticism that the party establishment is too old.
For the most part, the politicians and candidates endorsed by Majority Democrats align ideologically with the establishment wing of the party, although some have adopted more unorthodox platforms. (At least one of their candidates, Bob Brooks, a House contender in Pennsylvania, has been endorsed by Sanders.)
By the end of last year, Majority Democrats had amassed a multimillion-dollar fundraising war chest and had embedded itself in a number of Democratic primary races for both House and Senate seats.
Then, in January, another organization staged a splashy launch: the Bench, advertising a supposed mission of “changing the Democratic Party from the inside.” The Bench promised to “help strong candidates launch with the tools they need to succeed — from communications and digital strategy to fundraising and staffing — so they can focus on what matters most: talking with voters and winning tough races.”
The Bench has endorsed a broad slate of candidates, including McMorrow in Michigan, James Talarico in Texas, Josh Turek in Iowa, Angie Craig in Minnesota, and Conley in New York.
Although they are separate entities on paper, with slightly different organizational structures, Majority Democrats and the Bench share a deeply interlinked fundraising apparatus and ground game.
In March, for example, Majority Democrats announced a nationwide “Built to Last Tour,” featuring several Bench-endorsed candidates.
While those operations hit the campaign trail, the Searchlight Institute, a new center-left D.C. think tank founded in part with London’s financial assistance, has served as the policy brain trust for both groups’ positions on various issues, seemingly shaping the platforms of their endorsed campaigns.
For instance, in March, McMorrow’s campaign in Michigan released its platform on data centers — a plan that mirrored a Searchlight Institute white paper recommending “data center developers pay their way,” a tech-friendly alternative to the moratoriums on data center development that some lawmakers are advancing.
Majority Democrats and the Bench also share a joint fundraising arm, the Majority Fund, which pools fundraising hauls with minimal contribution limits, allowing different players in the network to benefit from the same large donations. Mandel, a billionaire hedge fund manager whose portfolio is now significantly invested in the data center build-out, and his wife, Sue, are the network’s largest financial backers, having collectively donated $9.3 million to entities tied to Majority Democrats and the Bench since their inception.
Other donors have also provided hefty support. Mark Heising, a billionaire tech mogul, has contributed $2.1 million; Tench and Simone Coxe, a megadonor couple with ties to AI chipmaker Nvidia, have given nearly $300,000. And James Murdoch, one of the heirs to the Murdoch media empire, has with his wife Kathryn given over $300,000.
Several of those donors, including Simone, sit on the Searchlight Institute’s board.
[The “Moderate” Think Tank Backed By AI Money
The Searchlight Institute has pushed Democrats toward lighter regulation of AI and data centers while keeping quiet about board ties to Simone Coxe, whose family fortune is linked to Nvidia.
These megadonors have provided the operation with significant financial firepower to intervene in Democratic primaries. For example, Majority Democrats’ joint fundraising arm is the largest outside contributor to Craig’s Minnesota Senate campaign, transferring $100,000 to her operation in September and another $32,000 last month.
Mapping out the connective tissue of these operations quickly becomes a difficult endeavor. The Bench operates a super PAC, a traditional PAC, a joint fundraising committee, and a 527 nonprofit — a hodgepodge of entities that can engage in political spending with varying restrictions. All of them raise and spend money, at times in coordination with Majority Democrats, which has its own small galaxy of political committees.
All of these entities tie back to London, including through a shadowy Delaware consultancy: Precinct LLC, which per state business filings obtained by The Lever, was incorporated in January 2025 with London’s signature.
The entity — which has no website or hardly any other online footprint — appears to operate as a kind of central hub for the network. The firm’s managing director is Ami Copeland, a senior advisor to Majority Democrats.
The Bench’s PAC, which has no full-time staff of its own on payroll, has paid Precinct over $750,000 for general consulting costs, amounting to almost two-thirds of the PAC’s total operating expenditures for 2025. Precinct also collects regular payments from campaigns. In total, it has received over $1 million from campaigns and PACs associated with Majority Democrats.
“Bench candidates work with a variety of teams, including Precinct, among many others,” said a Bench spokesperson in response to The Lever’s questions. “Precinct’s work for campaigns is not subsidized by the Bench.”
Rosa, the Conley consultant, has used an email address associated with Precinct — as have other consultants in the Majority Democrats network, including Smith and communications strategist Andrew Mamo. One of those operatives, Stef Feldman, also works as a senior fellow at Searchlight.
A spokesperson for Majority Democrats, who was using a Precinct email address, initially declined to answer questions about Precinct. However, when The Levercontacted other Precinct affiliates, Rodericka Applewhaite, the rapid response director at Majority Democrats, subsequently answered several questions on Precinct’s behalf.
Asked about Precinct’s relationship with the Bench and Majority Democrats, Applewhaite said, “Precinct works with a variety of clients including campaigns, non-profits, and other mission-aligned organizations.”
Majority Democrats and the Bench share other top-brass consultants, most prominently Smith, the Buttigieg campaign alum, who sits at the head of the operation, working as a senior adviser for both the Bench and Majority Democrats and advising several campaigns supported by those groups.
A Majority Democrats spokesperson said that while the Bench and Majority Democrats are “aligned,” they are separate organizations.
Supercharging Citizens United
Majority Democrats and its affiliates, including the Bench, rely on a series of campaign finance law loopholes and rollbacks originating from the *Citizens United* Supreme Court case, which made it easier for moneyed interests to dominate campaign races.
The high court’s 2010 decision tore apart long-standing campaign finance restrictions and greenlit unlimited election spending through outside spending vehicles known as super PACs. While PACs must disclose their donors, Citizens United left the door open for so-called dark money to be funneled to PACs through opaque nonprofits, so the original donors couldn’t be traced.
Such dark money, which is now more prominent in Democratic campaigns than in Republican ones, has fueled Majority Democrats’ fundraising machine. One arm of the operation, a nonprofit called the Bench 527, has received nearly $2.5 million over the past three years from one of the largest Democratic dark money groups, Our American Future. The group’s donors are unknown, even though it spends tens of millions on elections.
One of the few restrictions spared by Citizens United bars super PACs from coordinating with campaigns on advertising and media buys. But political operatives and donors have spent the last decade and a half chipping away at that restriction.
The result is a new frontier in American politics where campaigns effectively outsource ever more of their work to big-money super PACs, which aren’t subject to the same campaign finance restrictions, operating at donors’ beck and call.
“The [Federal Election Commission]’s approach to coordination has been very problematic,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel on campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, a legal advocacy group working on campaign finance and ethics. The agency’s weak enforcement, Ports said, has “created an atmosphere where voters don’t have much faith that campaigns and super PACs are actually functioning as separate entities.”
In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC, the primary arm of the Israel lobby, and other big election spenders stretched these campaign finance loopholes to new limits to work more closely with campaigns — including taking over their door-knocking operations, typically work that campaigns alone would conduct.
That included billionaire Elon Musk, whose America PAC ran on-the-ground canvassing operations in key battleground states for the Trump campaign. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) opened the door for this activity by issuing a March 2024 opinion that allowed outside groups to canvass on behalf of campaigns.
The barriers between candidates and outside groups are also eroding thanks to joint fundraising committees, which allow multiple campaigns to band together to solicit donations collectively. Through a joint fundraising vehicle, a major donor can cut a single large check for multiple candidates, evading typical campaign contribution limits.
In August 2024, the FEC released an opinion that expanded the power of joint fundraising committees by allowing super PACs and campaign committees to jointly fundraise together.
Now, Majority Democrats’ network is pioneering a supercharged version of this model.
Its joint fundraising committee, Majority Fund, currently funnels donations to 31 candidates’ direct campaign committees as well as hybrid super PACs Majority Democrats and the Bench are using to support those campaigns, which have no limitations on how much they can collect from billionaire donors. (Hybrid PACs are super PACs with a separate arm that can give directly to campaigns.)
The new arrangement is now being deployed in Democratic primary elections to benefit candidates approved by Majority Democrats’ operation.
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Ground Zero
The Michigan Senate race, which is expected to see razor-thin margins in the general election, has become ground zero for the Majority Democrats network’s efforts to shape the Democratic primaries.
In that primary, the new political machine has thrown its weight behind McMorrow, a millennial state lawmaker who quickly rose to leadership in the state Senate and
in 2022 bashing Republican demagoguery on LGBTQ issues.
She’s facing off against El-Sayed, a progressive who has campaigned with popular streamer Hasan Piker, and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is favored by Democratic leadership and widely considered to be the pick of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
McMorrow is endorsed by the Bench, and her campaign committee is part of the Bench’s joint fundraising committee, although she has yet to receive any cash from the committee. Heising, the private-equity billionaire and key donor in the network, has also donated to McMorrow’s campaign. (McMorrow’s website proclaims that she doesn’t take “any corporate PAC money.” Her campaign did not respond to The Lever’s request for comment.)
But Majority Democrats’ donors aren’t just contributing money to McMorrow’s campaign; the network also appears to be staffing her war room.
At least three consultants paid by the McMorrow campaign are also working for super PACs and other entities connected to Majority Democrats and the Bench.
Last year, McMorrow paid $78,000 in consulting fees to Smith, the senior adviser to both the Bench and Majority Democrats, and $60,000 to Mamo, the Majority Democrats communications adviser who’s also a spokesperson for the Bench.
In one case, a salaried staffer on the McMorrow campaign payroll was at the same time paid by Majority Democrats’ hybrid PAC through his D.C. consultancy, an unusual arrangement.
Majority Democrats declined to comment on the overlapping consultants in McMorrow’s campaign, saying that the candidate was not a Majority Democrats member but rather supported by the Bench.
“All required disclosures have been made,” a spokesperson for the Bench said of the arrangements.
The prevalence of high-paid consultants in Democratic politics playing both sides is not unprecedented.
“That’s how consultants and political operatives really make their money — by getting hired by lots of different groups,” said Sarah Bryner, the director of Public Agenda, a political accountability organization. “It’s also how these groups become more powerful.”
But the practice can quickly enter a legal gray area, given that campaign consultants have access to privileged information about the campaign that can’t always legally be shared with outside spending outfits.
“Whenever you see a person showing up with both a campaign and a super PAC or hybrid PAC, it raises questions, and I think it warrants a hard look,” Ports said. In particular, she noted, “a campaign staffer is not allowed to work for a super PAC” if that super PAC is spending money on the same race.
“That would violate coordination rules,” Ports said.
But there are widely used loopholes that can allow arrangements like the ones Majority Democrats and the Bench have now adopted on a much larger scale. Under some circumstances, consultants can work for both campaigns and outside PACs as long as they maintain a strict “firewall” between their various projects.
A Majority Democrats spokesperson told The Lever that the Bench maintains a firewall for any paid media work, but Majority Democrats’ PAC does not need to, as it “does not do independent expenditures.”
Hybrid PACs can provide campaign services to candidates, but the cost of that work has to be limited to the same financial caps as monetary contributions and registered with the FEC as “in-kind contributions.”
Although the Bench at its launch touted that it would provide staff, fundraising, and digital services to campaigns, no candidate’s campaign has disclosed in-kind contributions from the Bench or from Majority Democrats.
The Bench noted that while the organization “advises Bench candidates on strategy, press, and messaging,” it “does not incur expenses that support any specific candidate” beyond its firewalled independent expenditures.
“A Mockery And An Outrage”
It’s not just the McMorrow campaign that’s receiving heavy-handed support from the Majority Democrats network. At least four other campaigns — including U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Conley in New York — are paying consultants who are also working with the outside operation.
“Unless the individual claims to have multiple personality disorder, I don’t see how you can work on both sides [to this extent],” said Larry Cohen, the former president of the Communications Workers of America and Democratic National Committee member who has spent decades working on campaign finance reforms. “In any functioning democracy, that’s a mockery and an outrage.”
The arrangement sparked controversy in the Texas Senate primary race, where Talarico, a state lawmaker, defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) last month.
At a campaign event in February, Crockett bashed her opponent for his affiliation with Smith, the senior adviser to both Majority Democrats and the Bench, because of her past work on behalf of disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.). Crockett claimed that Talarico had been “running away” from his ties to Smith. In news reports, Smith was described as a strategist for Talarico; she said on a
that she had “done some work” for the campaign, but then later claimed she was not involved in the race.
In a comment to The Lever, Smith clarified that she “gave [Talarico] advice pre-launch, but wasn’t involved during the campaign.”
However, Majority Democrats and the Bench backed Talarico and contributed to his campaign through various spending arms — and Talarico’s campaign paid Precinct, the Delaware consultancy affiliated with the Bench and Majority Democrats. Smith advises both groups and has a Precinct email address.
According to campaign finance experts, Precinct’s mysterious operations raise further questions. Consultancies like Precinct aren’t subject to the same disclosure rules as PACs. So it’s not always clear precisely what services the firm is providing to campaigns like Talarico’s and McMorrow’s and what it is spending its money on.
For instance, in the Hudson Valley primary race, the controversial opposition memo, originally produced by the Conley campaign, appears to have been potentially shared with the Bench via Precinct and then distributed to the press on the PAC’s behalf.
“This would be another situation where I think you’d need more facts to know what exactly is going on,” Ports said.
“From a public policy perspective, it’s not ideal that it’s this murky,” Ports added. “Voters should be able to look at an arrangement and just know that everything is aboveboard and have confidence that campaigns are working separately from super PACs.”
Conley’s campaign did not respond to The Lever’s request for comment.
The power players running Majority Democrats’ “party within the party” seem to recognize voters’ concerns about outside groups and special interests playing an ever larger role in U.S. elections.
At its launch, Majority Democrats promised it would not accept “corporate PAC money,” a claim repeated by several of the candidates it’s supporting.
But the pledge is a sleight of hand. The term “corporate PAC money” conveniently excludes billionaire donors and billionaire-funded super PACs that are pouring money into the network.
Yet voters are catching on. In Texas, Minnesota, and New York, the billionaire and dark money support being funneled to Majority Democrats’ candidates has become a flash point. In Michigan, McMorrow’s opponent, El-Sayed, has seized on the issue.
He’s now opening his speeches with a tagline: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket.”
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AN 12 25
A prominent group of anti-Trump former Republicans are spending big to combat President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress, pouring support into Democratic candidates to "defeat MAGA," according to a new Politico report.
The move comes from the Save America Movement organization, a political action committee (PAC) co-founded by former moderate Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who also helped found The Lincoln Project, another anti-Trump PAC. While the Lincoln Project is specifically directed at Trump, the Save America Movement is more directly focused on opposing the broader Republican Party under his leadership.
To this end, coming off of bruising electoral losses for the GOP in recent off-year elections, the PAC has now launched an effort to "pour up to $100 million into as many as 60 GOP-controlled House seats ahead of the midterms," Politico explained. This will be the PAC's first attempt at direct electoral advocacy, "after it has spent significant capital protesting [Trump's] return to office, which it deems a fundamental threat to American freedoms."
“The Save America Movement was started with the express mission of defeating MAGA, but the electoral side, particularly the 2026 elections, are absolutely critical to that mission,” Mary Corcoran, co-founder and executive director for the PAC, said in a statement to Politico.
The parties in opposition to the sitting president are typically favored in midterm races, but the most recent off-year elections have given Democrats even more reason to expect a strong showing in 2026. Earlier last month, the likes of Mikie Sherill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Zohran Mamdani in New York Citysaw significant margins of victory over their GOP and independent opponents, and crucially saw major wins with key demographics that swung for Trump in 2024. While the party lost a recent Tennessee special election for a vacant House seat, the loss by only 9 points in a district Trump won by 22 also signaled a major shift in voter support away from Republicans.
The Save America Movement already has a list of 10 House seats it is hoping to pour fundraising dollars into for 2026, "spanning Alaska to Florida," according to a memo shared with Politico.
"The seats the group is already targeting range from battleground areas like WI-03 — where Democrat Rebecca Cooke is making another run at unseating GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden after losing narrowly last year — to the solid red MN-08, where GOP Rep. Pete Stauber won by 17 points in 2024," Politico explained.
When pressed about the feasibility of the fundraising goal, Corcoran shared with the outlet, "what I can tell you is that the response from donors has been very positive.”
The PAC is also looking to beat Republicans at their own game and try to reach voters early, much earlier than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee typically does for midterm races.
“Republicans have always been really good about speaking to voters early,” Corcoran explained. “We need to fill that gap and ensure by the time the candidates are actually campaigning, the voters already have a perspective in their minds about how they’re going to vote.”
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AN 10 25
Miles Bruner, a top Republican strategist who "worked inside GOP circles through Trump’stakeover of the party" is quitting the party and encouraging others to do the same, he writes in The Bulwark.
Under President Donald Trump, the Republican party, he writes, has "devolved into a cult of personality that mirrors the worst authoritarian regimes of the last one hundred years."
But Trump hasn't worked alone, Bruner says. "While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms," he writes.
For 12 years, Bruner worked in various facets of the GOP, from grassroots voter outreach to digital fundraising.
"I worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party, his initial downfall, and his resurgence in 2023–2024. At every step along the way, I rationalized, compartmentalized, and found excuses to stay tethered to the party, even as I grew to believe it was undermining the foundations of our constitutional republic," he says.
Bruner says he could no longer rationalize any of it, leading to his decision to leave the party.
"But over the last few months, the compartmentalization and coping stopped working to silence my conscience," he says, using this piece in The Bulwark as his resignation letter.
"I quit. I quit the Republican party and my job as an accomplice to the party in the throes of an authoritarian cult. Today, I resigned from my career as a senior fundraising strategist for one of the leading Republican digital fundraising firms in Washington, D.C," he says.
Bruner says his decision was twofold: "first, to shed light on why someone would continue to work for an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian political party despite their divergent ethical and political beliefs; second, to convince any number of consultants, staffers, and former colleagues to follow their consciences and leave with their integrity still intact."
Bruner says that he wasn't fully on board with Trump at all in the beginning and he didn't take him seriously either.
"The thinking was that Trump’s candidacy was a joke—why alienate the sliver of voters Trump was holding when he’d be out of the race in a few months? From that point on, my anxiety began to fester," he says.
As political coordinator for Republican Janet Nguyen’s state senate campaign in California, Bruner says they were horrified at the Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist rally which Trump excused with that now infamous "good people on both sides" statement.
"We buried the condemnation of Trump on Twitter, believing that fewer of her Republican supporters would see it," Bruner says, but within minuTes, Nguyen was attacked by Trump supporters.
"It was the first time I should have drawn the line and said I quit. But, again, I stayed," he said. And it weighed on him.
"The emotional and mental weight one feels when one’s career suddenly conflicts with one’s beliefs," he says. But when a new job came along, Bruner found himself deeper in the Trump world.
"In my new position, I became enmeshed in the D.C. Republican consulting ecosystem that was now fully orbiting around Trump," he says, and his clients were "100 percent pro-MAGA."
After President Joe Biden won and theJanuary 6insurrection at the Capitol happened, Bruner thought Trump would go into exile at his Palm Beach country club "as a political pariah."
As Bruner's career took off during the years after, which went by "uneventfully," Bruner writes, "at a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager."
And it wasn't Trump that broke him out of his "comfortable cocoon," Bruner says. "Rather, it was the rightward lurch of theSupreme Court and the lengths to which the right was willing to go to undermine established legal precedents and access to reproductive rights."
Bruner says it was his and his wife's experience trying to start a family that broke him out of his staunch pro-life stance and he "slowly became pro-choice."
To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked," he admits.
"It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur," he adds.
That's when he began plotting his exit from the Republican party, and while he previously excused Trump's role on Jan. 6, "his lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic," and his "migrants are rapists tirade," Bruner says "our nation has arrived at a moment in its history where staying silent for personal comfort isn’t an option anymore."
"I know now that if I continue to stay, I won’t be able to explain to my children why I didn’t take a stand when I had the chance," he says. "I wish I had realized this sooner and I applaud my colleagues who did so long before me."
Bruner's clarion call encourages those who care about the country to speak out and do something.
"If you believe in this country now is the time to refuse to ferry its destruction for a tainted livelihood. Take a stand. Speak out. Show your pride as an American who believes in the Constitution and the values we grew up with. Today, I quit allowing my complacency to destroy America, and I urge you to quit, too."
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ECU MOTHERSHIP ON TEXT MSG SKIM SCAM
https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation
GRFX
The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine
How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.
Aug 03, 2025
The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It's a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.
The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it's a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.
We all have that one obscure skill we’ve inadvertently maxed out. Mine happens to be navigating the labyrinth of campaign finance data. So, after documenting the spam tactics in a previous article, I told myself I’d just take a quick look to see who was behind them and where the money was going.
That "quick look" immediately pulled me in. The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.
*(A repo with all the code needed to replicate this analysis is available for download here. A data visualization of the findings is at the bottom of this post.)
From Party Insiders to Extraction Engineers
To understand Mothership's central role, one must understand its origins. The firm was founded in 2014 by senior alumni of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC): its former digital director, Greg Berlin, and deputy digital director, Charles Starnes. During their tenure at the DCCC, they helped pioneer the fundraising model that now dominates Democratic inboxes—a high-volume strategy that relies on emotionally charged, often hyperbolic appeals to compel immediate donations. This model, sometimes called "churn and burn," prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term donor relationships.
After leaving the DCCC, Berlin and Starnes effectively privatized this playbook, building a business around the party's most aggressive tactics and turning an internal strategy into a fundraising powerhouse for the Democratic Party—or so it might seem on the surface.
They became the operational heart of a sprawling nexus of interconnected political action committees, many of which they helped create and which now serve as their primary clients. These are not a diverse collection of grassroots groups; they are a tightly integrated network that functions primarily to funnel funds to Mothership. Their names are likely familiar from the very texts and emails that flood inboxes: Progressive Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, and End Citizens United to name a few.
The relationship between the firm and this network is cemented by blatant self-dealing. The most glaring example is End Citizens United. In 2015, just one year after founding their consulting firm, Mothership principals Greg Berlin and Charles Starnes also co-founded this PAC. It quickly became one of their largest and most reliable clients, a perfect circle of revenue generation that blurs the line between vendor and client.
Follow the Money
The core defense of these aggressive fundraising tactics rests on a single claim: they are brutally effective. The FEC data proves this is a fallacy. An examination of the money flowing through the Mothership network reveals a system designed not for political impact, but for enriching the consultants who operate it.
To understand the scale of this operation, consider the total amount raised. Since 2018, this core network of Mothership-linked PACs has raised approximately $678 million from individual donors. (This number excludes money raised by the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns, focusing specifically on the interconnected PACs at the heart of this system.) Of that total fundraising haul, $159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees, accounting for the majority of the $282 million Mothership has been paid by all its clients combined.
But the firm's direct cut is only part of the story. The "churn and burn" fundraising model is immensely expensive to operate. Sending millions of texts and emails requires massive spending on digital infrastructure. For instance, FEC filings show this network paid $22.5 million to a single vendor, Message Digital LLC, a firm that specializes in text message delivery.
The remaining hundreds of millions disappeared into a maze of self-reported categories: $150 million to consulting/fundraising, $70 million to salaries and payroll. There are some disbursements to what seem to be legitimate advocacy and organizing–for instance Progressive Turnout Project reports paying Shawmut Services $19 millionfor canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.
[
](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HCO2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abe0136-84a8-46e3-9501-4ffb780c1636_712x851.gif)
How much of the money raised by these groups actually makes it to candidates and party committees?
After subtracting these massive operational costs—the payments to Mothership, the fees for texting services, the cost of digital ads and list rentals—the final sum delivered to candidates and committees is vanishingly small. My analysis of the network's FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees.
But here's the number that should end all debate:
This represents a fundraising efficiency rate of just 1.6 percent.
Here's what that number means: for every dollar a grandmother in Iowa donates believing she's saving democracy, 98 cents goes to consultants and operational costs. Just pennies reach actual campaigns.
Why the Party Looks the Other Way
This parasitic ecosystem could not thrive without the tacit approval of the Democratic establishment. The relationship between the Mothership network and the official party is not adversarial; it is deeply symbiotic.
The firm's founders are, as noted, alumni of the DCCC. They didn't just bring their contacts; they brought the "churn and burn" playbook, which was developed and honed inside the party's own campaign arm. They simply privatized the party's dirtiest tactics. This is not a rogue operation; it is an outgrowth.
While the network keeps most of the money it raises, it maintains the relationship by funneling a small portion back to the party's central committees. Of the paltry $11 million that makes it to campaigns, approximately half goes to the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC. This provides the party with a trickle of revenue and plausible deniability, allowing it to benefit from the fundraising without taking direct responsibility for the deceptive tactics. In return, the network gains a veneer of official legitimacy.
The infection runs deep. The firm's client list extends far beyond the PAC network to include the party's own heavyweights, like the House Majority PAC, and high-profile, establishment-backed candidates such as former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. The distinction between the party and this network dissolves with one final fact: the Democratic establishment itself is a client, actively hiring the firm at the heart of the vortex.
The Democratic Party Must Clean House
The evidence from federal election filings permits only one conclusion: the “necessary evil” defense is a lie. A fundraising model with a 1.6% efficiency rate is not a pragmatic fundraising strategy.
The financial waste, staggering as it is, pales beside the deeper damage. Every fabricated deadline, every manipulative text, every email screaming that democracy will end without your $15—each one burns through something more valuable than money: trust. The party that claims to defend democracy is systematically deceiving the very people who believe in it most.
None of this, as far as I can tell, is illegal. But since when is legality the bar? The question isn’t whether the party can tolerate this parasitic ecosystem. It’s whether it should. And the data screams the answer: when consultants pocket $282 million, it reveals a system working exactly as designed—just not for Democrats.
The prescription is simple. Cut ties with firms and any vendors that they do business with that treat donors as marks. Establish and enforce efficiency standards. Demand that fundraising operations deliver actual value to campaigns, not just commissions to consultants.
Most crucially: Recognize that Democratic donors deserve the same honesty the party demands from everyone else.
The party faces a choice. Continue feeding the vortex, or shut it down. Continue enriching consultants who’ve perverted its message, or reclaim its integrity. Continue treating supporters as ATMs, or start treating them as partners.
A party that prides itself on taking the high road doesn’t get to make exceptions for its own fundraising. Not when the cost is this clear. Not when the damage is this deep.
The numbers don’t lie. The Mothership vortex has consumed enough.
Shut it down.
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