Sludge com
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SLUDGE
Working alongside Elon Musk in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is another “special government employee” who doubles as a public affairs consultant and represents companies that are looking to profit from the slashing of federal programs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, DOGE aide Katie Miller is also drawing a full salary from P2 Pathway Public Affairs, a Republican consulting firm where she has worked as a principal since 2021. The Journal highlighted her work for Apple as a corporate client, but Miller’s role at P2 also connects her to a wider network of firms under the umbrella of GP3 Partners, which included GuidePost Strategies, a lobbying outfit that specializes in defense acquisitions and federal appropriations.
GuidePost and P2 work collaboratively to give clients federal lobbying representation alongside public affairs campaigns aimed at influencing public sentiment. According to GuidePost’s website, “Through our partnership with our sister firm, P2 Pathway Public Affairs, we possess the toolkit and expertise to lead national campaigns that rally support for policy, shape public opinion, and drive action in your favor."...
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sludge
Billionaire Pharma Investors Fund Privatized 'Strike Team' at the FDA
By David Moore
Published on Jul 9, 2025
Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a close ally of Elon Musk who announced the project, and his Koch network funding partner each have extensive investments in healthcare startups subject to FDA regulations.
On Monday, venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a prominent Trump supporter and Elon Musk confidante who has extensive investments in health care startups, announced that he is funding an initiative inside the Food and Drug Administration that he says will “upend America's health bureaucracy” and enable faster approval of cures. His announcement comes after the Trump administration cut thousands of FDA jobs this year, as Musk’s DOGE team slashed capacity at federal agencies under a Trump executive order.
While Lonsdale describes the project’s mission as ensuring the U.S. does not fall behind China in biotech advances and patient outcomes, his portfolio is set up to profit from an overhaul at the FDA. The initiative he unveiled will embed personnel who he funds to “sit desk‑to‑desk with reviewers” at the FDA—with more significant funding from libertarian billionaire Charles Koch.
Lonsdale’s firm 8VC lists investments in dozens of life sciences and biotech companies, including startups developing personalized treatments, products in areas like microbiomes, and gene therapies using the CRISPR technology. Many of the companies have business before the FDA and could benefit from being advanced by friendly reviewers. For example, the 8VC portfolio company Cellino Bio recently announced it had received an FDA designation as an Advanced Manufacturing Technology, and portfolio company Synthego published a post in April discussing FDA guidance documents.
Lonsdale’s blog post said that the Utah-based Abundance Institute, a new nonprofit closely tied to a Charles Koch-funded academic center, will partner with the Koch network’s gigantic “dark money” group Stand Together to raise $4 million for the project. Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture capital arm of Koch Industries, also lists more than a dozen healthcare startups in its portfolio developing AI-powered cell research, gene therapies, and other machine-learning data plays.
The money will be used “to place a strike team of 15-20 AI-native software engineers, data scientists, and product leaders inside the FDA to accelerate the FDA's latest AI initiatives and bring outsider perspectives on new areas to iterate on fast,” Lonsdale wrote. The new personnel will “wire modern data pipes into legacy silos,” among other things. Lonsdale wrote on X that he and his friends, whom he left unnamed, were donating to launch the project and that he will personally be sponsoring one of its engineers.
SOUNDS DOGE-Y
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FEB 2019
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SLUDGE
Former law professor Neomi Rao is facing headwinds in her judicial nomination, so Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity is stepping in.
:{:{Billionaire manufacturing magnate Charles Koch has for decades used his enormous wealth and political power to install elected officials (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/19/koch-and-adelson-come-to-the-rescue-of-trump-devotee-ron-desantis-in-florida/),}:
government administrators (https://www.salon.com/2016/06/19/big_men_on_campus_the_koch_brothers_university_donations_are_a_veiled_political_weapon/), and regulators (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/04/koch-backed-sec-commissioner-claims-corporate-law-is-in-the-public-interest/) who will keep the business interests of Koch Industries and other giant, heavily polluting companies in mind.}:
But Koch is also dipping into the judicial arena. One of his protegés has been nominated by President Trump and is poised to join the second-most powerful court in the United States, and Koch’s premier political spending group wants to make sure it happens.
In 2016, the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) and a mystery donor combined to give $30 million to the George Mason University (GMU) law school, renaming it after the late, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Koch’s foundation put in $10 million, and the remaining $20 million, it was later discovered, was administered by Federalist Society officials through a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, BH Fund.
:{:{The grant established 12 new law professorships—nearly all the hires had ties to the conservative Federalist Society (https://legacy.tyt.com/2018/05/18/after-donation-administered-by-federalist-society-leaders-gmu-hired-professors-tied-to-the-federalist-society/)—}:
and founded two ideological law school centers (https://ia601201.us.archive.org/24/items/GMUASSLawMOU2016/GMU%20ASSLaw%20MOU%202016.pdf#page=6),
the Center for Liberty and Law and the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. The founder and director of the latter center was Neomi Rao (https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/faculty/cv/rao.pdf), who had been a law professor at GMU since 2012. She previously clerked for the most conservative Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, and was associate counsel and special advisor to President George W. Bush. She has never been a judge.}:
Rao took a leave of absence from George Mason in 2017 when President Donald Trump appointed her as director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Trump’s “regulation czar.”
:{:{The dean of the GMU law school told another donor to her center, corporate lobbyist and longtime Koch ally C. Boyden Gray (https://www.desmogblog.com/c-boyden-gray), that he hoped to lure her back to GMU with a $1.5-million professorship, funded by Gray, according to an email unearthed by GMU alumna Allison Pienta (}:
:{:{http://www.unkochmycampus.org/dec-20-2018-donor-control-at-gmu-update?rq=boyden%20gray).}:
“This chair would help me to entice Neomi to return home to Scalia Law after she dismantles the administrative state (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484188)
while serving at OIRA,” he wrote in a May 2017 letter to Gray. Gray gave another $3 million to the center, and it was renamed in his honor.}:}:
Dismantling the administrative state (p. 2) (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484234)
IFrame Content (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement/annotations/484234.html?embed=true&maxheight=750&maxwidth=500)
View entire document on DocumentCloud (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484234)
But instead of returning to the law school, Rao may be headed to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the seat vacated by the newest Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. Rao’s GMU center hosted a conference (https://administrativestate.gmu.edu/rethinking-judicial-deference/) in 2016 that featured Kavanaugh, a fellow Federalist Society member, as keynote speaker.
Rao’s judgeship nomination is perhaps the crowning achievement of the Antonin Scalia Law School’s initiative to reshape the federal judiciary. In 2017, the law school’s Law and Economics Center, which CKF had been funding for years, drew up a funding proposal (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5751080-GMU-Law-and-Economics-Center-Federal-Judges-and.html) for the center’s “Federal Judges and Attorneys General Initiatives.”
‘Reshaping’ the Federal Bench
“The election of Donald Trump presents a historic opportunity for a new president to reshape the federal judiciary, reform the regulatory state, promote economic growth, and restore constitutional federalism,” reads the proposal.
The program educates newly appointed judges on economics and other issues so they will “be more likely to make sound decisions that support the rule of law and the free enterprise system.” The new Federal Judges Initiative will “cover topics expected to be highly relevant to the current presidential administration’s policy agenda, such as the economics of health care and health financing, financial services regulation, environmental and energy regulation, health and safety regulation, privacy, labor and employment law, and telecommunications regulation.”
As of 2017, over 5,000 judges and 700 state attorneys general had participated in at least one Law and Economics Center program. In the 2018 fiscal year, the Law and Economic Center requested over $1.7 million for its Judicial Education Budget.
“Rao’s transition from the Koch-funded Antonin Scalia School of Law to her nomination to the second-highest court in the country is exemplary of Koch’s successful strategy of leveraging George Mason University to exert influence on the judicial branch for decades to come,” Samantha Parsons, a GMU graduate and director of campaigns at the activist group UnKoch My Campus, told Sludge. “Her nomination should serve as a warning of the anti-democratic agenda we can expect throughout our nation’s judicial system should George Mason University succeed in its goals to facilitate the education and placement of hundreds of new federal judges under Trump’s presidency.”
:{:{In December, when Trump nominated Rao, Koch’s most prominent political advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity, endorsed (https://americansforprosperity.org/afp-endorses-slate-of-highly-qualified-judicial-nominees/) her for the judgeship.}:
But Rao has since encountered some bumps in the road. Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he has “deep concerns (https://www.axios.com/neomi-rao-dc-circuit-nominee-josh-hawley-concerns-228fe428-7944-430a-bc5c-71a50278ec38.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic),” telling Axios that she may not be sufficiently anti-abortion.}:
At a recent Senate committee hearing, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst expressed concerns over Rao’s 1994 essay on date rape (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/neomi-rao-pressed-on-past-writings-on-date-rape-at-hearing-on-her-judicial-nomination/2019/02/05/156b4784-28b4-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?utm_term=.e68dab1a1db9), which alleged that women who are raped while drunk are partially to blame for being raped. Rao’s OIRA has stalled issuing an employer guidance on sexual harassment for 15 months (https://theintercept.com/2019/02/04/neomi-rao-hearing-oira-brett-kavanaugh/), a process that normally takes no longer than 90 days, as David Dayen reported for The Intercept.
:{:{Americans for Prosperity will fund digital advertising and grassroots efforts (https://www.axios.com/neomi-rao-dc-circuit-nominee-josh-hawley-concerns-228fe428-7944-430a-bc5c-71a50278ec38.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic)}:
in an attempt to sway public opinion in favor of Rao this week, according to Axios. On Tuesday morning, the Facebook ad archive (https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&q=americans%20for%20prosperity) listed six AFP ads in favor of Rao, which began running on Monday. Each ad targets one Republican senator, including Ernst and Hawley, urgin Facebook users to tell their senator to vote for Rao’s D.C. Circuit Court nomination. Additional targeted senators are Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), James Lankford (Okla.), and Ben Sasse (Neb.). The Google ad archive did not list any recent AFP purchases.}:
One of Americans for Prosperity’s Facebook ads supporting Neomi RaoFacebook Ad Archive
Americans for Prosperity did not reply to Sludge’s request for comment.
‘Regulatory Obstruction’
The American Constitution Society says OIRA, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget, “has embraced politicized regulatory obstruction (https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/a-lesson-in-failure-oira-neomi-rao-and-deregulation-at-any-cost/) as its raison dêtre” under Rao. In OIRA’s 2018 report (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-Unified-Agenda-Cutting-the-Red-Tape.pdf), entitled “Cutting the Red Tape,” Rao writes, “we are working to push back the expansion of the administrative state, which has placed undue burdens on the public and impeded economic growth.”
Under Rao’s leadership, OIRA, has approved sweeping environmental deregulation by the EPA. Koch Industries, which Charles Koch runs, is a giant manufacturing conglomerate with subsidiaries that refine and transport oil, create paper products, and produce chemicals. The company is among the country’s biggest air and water polluters and has paid hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental violations. Koch and his brother David are lifelong libertarians who have fought taxes and regulations for decades.
“Rao has never seen a regulation she didn’t hate, and as a judge would dismantle 40 years of environmental and social progress,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-nominates-neomi-rao-brett-kavanaugh-seat) in a statement to Buzzfeed News. “Her confirmation would be the most damaging and regressive yet by Trump after Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.”
GMU is by far the biggest recipient of grants from the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF), which gives tens of millions of dollars each year to free-market higher education programs. Since 2005, CKF and the Charles Koch Institute have donated nearly $129 million to GMU, including over $34 million for the free-market Mercatus Center, according to Sludge’s analysis. Another free-market-focused GMU center, the Institute for Human Studies, has received $8.7 million.
The university has come under fire for allowing the CKF to impact hiring decisions (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight). In the case of Florida State University, CKF was even allowed to control economics curricula (https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/koch-foundation-proposal-to-college-teach-our-curriculum-get-millions/).
AFP isn’t the only Koch-linked group to spend money to influence the judiciary. The Center for Media and Democracy reports that Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that wealthy conservatives including Koch use to score tax deductions and potentially anonymize their donations to nonprofits, has bankrolled right-wing groups (https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/02/13449/donorstrust-bankrolled-right-wing-judicial-appointments-trumps-acting-ag-and) such as the Judicial Crisis Network and its sister organization, the Judicial Education Project, which spent millions of dollars on ads supporting the Supreme Court confirmation of Neil Gorsuch. Donors Trust also funds the Federalist Society and, as Sludge recently reported, several Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups (https://readsludge.com/2019/02/19/americas-biggest-charities-are-funneling-millions-to-hate-groups-from-anonymous-donors/).
Related:
Charles Koch Is Funding Rightwing, Pro-Trump Media, New Disclosure Reveals (https://readsludge.com/2018/11/21/charles-koch-is-funding-rightwing-pro-trump-media-new-disclosure-reveals/)
Koch Brothers Continue to Influence Tax Policy After Huge Cuts Last Year (https://readsludge.com/2018/06/18/koch-brothers-continue-to-influence-tax-policy-after-huge-cuts-last-year/)
Koch-Backed SEC Commissioner Claims Corporate Law is in the Public Interest (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/04/koch-backed-sec-commissioner-claims-corporate-law-is-in-the-public-interest/)
Author profile](https://readsludge.com/author/alex/)
Alex Kotch (https://readsludge.com/author/alex/)
Alex is a reporter at Sludge and a contributor to The Young Turks. He was previously part of the award-winning investigative team at International Business Times, and his other work has appeared in T
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Here Is How Much AIPAC Has Funneled to Every Member of Congress
By David Moore
Published on Feb 28, 2026 — 5 min read
2026CongressSusan CollinsMike JohnsonPAC donations
Summary
Sludge analyzed FEC data to create a searchable list of AIPAC’s donations this cycle to every member of Congress.
💸
The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, which has opposed efforts at diplomacy with Iran and is applauding the U.S.-led strikes, has delivered $28 million to the campaigns of members of Congress in the 2025–2026 election cycle, according to a Sludge analysis of FEC data, including earmarked PAC contributions.
The money AIPAC PAC contributes is overwhelmingly provided by U.S.-based individual donors who use the group’s website to select which candidates to support. The money is disbursed by AIPAC PAC, and the group highlights on its website that credit goes to both the individual donor and AIPAC, strengthening the pro-Israel group’s ties to the candidates.
Here is how much every member of Congress has received from AIPAC PAC from Jan. 1, 2025 through the end of January 2026.
David Moore
Co-founder, Sludge
## AIPAC Donor-Tied Group Drops Six Figures for Foushee
A mysterious super PAC, Article One PAC, has spent $600,000 supporting Rep. Valerie Foushee in the NC-04 Democratic primary against challenger Nida Allam.
26 Feb 2026
David Moore](https://readsludge.com/author/david/)
## Crypto, AI, and AIPAC Set up to Smash Super PAC Spending Records
The groups are sitting on massive war chests for 2026 midterms, according to new disclosures.
02 Feb 2026•6 min read•
Members
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