The chief executive of ActBlue, the Democratic Party's primary small-dollar fundraising platform, has agreed to testify before Congress regarding the organization's procedures for screening foreign donors, according to The New York Times. Republicans in Congress have directed scrutiny at ActBlue over whether its vetting processes adequately block illegal foreign contributions to Democratic candidates at federal and state levels.
Political campaigns and outside groups are directing money to social media influencers to promote political priorities while bypassing disclosure requirements, according to The New York Times.
The arrangement exploits a gap in campaign finance law that leaves audiences with no way to identify who is funding the content they see.
The Trump administration is close to settling the president's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over leaked tax returns, with the expected deal centering on a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to ABC News. Commission members overseeing disbursements would serve at the president's discretion and could be removed without cause, with no required disclosure of decision-making, and entities associated with Trump would not be explicitly barred from filing claims against the fund.
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rick Scott (R-FL) introduced legislation that would permanently bar former members of Congress from registering as lobbyists or engaging in lobbying activity, according to The Hill. The bill pairs one of the Senate's most prominent progressives with a close Trump ally, a pairing that underscores the rare cross-ideological appetite for restricting the congressional-to-K-Street pipeline.
Hawaii's legislature passed a bill that would remove the ability of for-profit companies, dark-money nonprofits, unions, and chambers of commerce to spend on most political causes, according to The Atlantic. The bill passed the state Senate unanimously and cleared the House with one dissenting vote; dark-money nonprofit spending in federal elections has grown from $359 million in 2012 to $1.4 billion in the most recent presidential cycle. Said bill sponsor State Senator Jarrett Keohokalole: "Corporations are not people. They are granted powers and privileges by the state."
Hawaii's legislature passed SB 2471, which would prohibit corporations from spending money on elections or ballot measures, sending the bill to Gov. Joshua Green (D), according to Ballotpedia News. The House vote was 50-1; the Senate passed it unanimously. Said sponsor Rep. Scot Matayoshi (D): "If the states are not brave enough to challenge Citizens United and other court rulings at the highest court in the land, those rulings will stand forever."
Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed LD 2000 into law, requiring party committees to disclose all expenditures made to influence a campaign and updating contribution-reporting thresholds for the 14-day pre-election window, according to Ballotpedia News. The Legislature also failed to expand ranked-choice voting to state general elections after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled the proposal unconstitutional, finding it conflicts with the state constitution's plurality-winner requirement.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has become the largest known political spender in the current election cycle, according to the New York Times. Said Marc Andreessen in 2000: "If you think there's a lot of money in politics now, you haven't seen anything yet."
A super PAC with Republican ties is intervening in Democratic primary races, including backing a Texas candidate — a sex therapist facing antisemitism accusations — according to The New York Times. The PAC's involvement raises questions about outside money shaping which Democrats appear on general-election ballots.
Strategists in both parties say House midterm advertising will center on Donald Trump for Democrats and Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris for Republicans, while Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries go largely unmentioned despite billions in spending aimed at determining who holds the speakership, according to Axios. Said one framing from party operatives to Axios: neither congressional leader generates the partisan animosity that makes an effective attack-ad target.
The Department of Labor has released a new public tracking tool for union spending, according to The Hill, covering how $11 billion in annual union dues are allocated — including political activities. The move is framed as a transparency measure for union members and the general public.
Here's the strategic read: disclosure requirements applied asymmetrically are a political weapon, not a principle. Unions must now expose every dollar to public scrutiny. Corporate dark money — the anonymous 501(c)(4) and LLC pass-through machinery that Citizens United opened — faces no equivalent federal disclosure mandate. That asymmetry doesn't serve democratic accountability; it defunds one side of the table.
The $11 billion figure is real and union members deserve to know how it's spent. But transparency that flows only toward labor while corporate political spending stays in the shadows isn't reform — it's targeting.
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) introduced a resolution Thursday to amend House rules and prohibit members and their staff from trading on prediction markets, according to Bloomberg Politics. The move targets a gap that existing congressional stock-trading rules never contemplated — Kalshi and similar platforms let you bet real money on policy outcomes that legislators directly influence.
The strategic read: this is a low-cost, high-optics play for a Republican majority that needs cover on the insider-trading question without touching the thornier STOCK Act enforcement debate. Hinson gets a reform credential; leadership gets a pressure release valve.
The tell is what's missing: no companion Senate push, no enforcement mechanism mentioned in the summary. A House rule change binds House members only and dies the moment a new majority rewrites the rulebook. Real conflict-of-interest reform requires statute, not chamber housekeeping.
Senate and House Democrats have sent letters to more than a dozen pardon and commutation recipients demanding financial records, lobbying contracts, and donor disclosures — building a paper trail around what they call "pay-to-play dynamics" in Trump's clemency operation, CBS News reports.
Said Rep. Dave Min: "Now the victims get hit twice, because not only are the people that defrauded them not serving their time — not paying their debt to society — they're literally not paying their debts to the people they defrauded."
The minority can't subpoena anyone yet. But the ledger they're assembling — Changpeng Zhao's $2.1 billion crypto deal with the Trump family, Trevor Milton's $3 million in campaign donations before a $680 million restitution wipeout, David Gentile's commutation erasing $15.5 million owed to 17,000 victims — is designed to be midterm ammunition.
