All posts by Rick Hasen

My New One at Slate on the Supreme Court Potentially Killing the Remaining Pillar of the Voting Rights Act: “The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term”

redistricting, Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:

Reading the tea leaves from cryptic Supreme Court orders can be perilous business because the justices are not bound by the questions they ask at oral argument, the offhand comments they make at a judicial conference, or even their monumental “shadow docket” rulings on emergency petitions that have become all too common. But a technical briefing order in a long pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court’s website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous. The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. Such a monumental ruling, likely not coming until June 2026, would change the nature of congressional, state, and local elections, all across the country, and likely stir major civil rights protests as the midterm election season heats up….

We waited weeks for the court to issue its rescheduling order and when it came this past Friday it was a doozy. The court pointed specifically to a set of pages in plaintiffs’ brief which argue that Section 2 is unconstitutional, at least as applied in this case, and that the Voting Rights Act cannot serve as a compelling interest to defeat a racial gerrymandering claim when race predominates. “The parties are directed to file supplemental briefs addressing the following question raised [in that brief]: Whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.”

Although the court’s order did not explicitly mention Section 2 or even the Voting Rights Act more generally—unquestionably to obscure things further—there is no doubting what’s going on here. The court is asking the parties to consider whether Louisiana’s compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by drawing a second majority-minority district—as the earlier Ardoin case seemed to require—was unconstitutional under a view of the Constitution as requiring colorblindness.

If the Supreme Court moves forward with this interpretation it would be a sea change to voting rights law. A reading of the Constitution as forbidding race-conscious districting as mandated by Congress to deal with centuries of race discrimination in voting is at odds with the text of the Constitution, with the powers granted directly to Congress to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and with numerous precedents of the Supreme Court itself. It would end what has been the most successful way that Black and other minority voters have gotten fair representation in Congress, state legislatures and in local bodies. It would be an earthquake in politics and make our legislative bodies whiter and our protection for minority voters greatly diminished. Even if the court less drastically says that Section 2 could not be used to require the second congressional district in this case, such a superficially more minimal ruling would mean the quick unraveling of most Section 2 districts because if the facts in Louisiana don’t justify drawing a second district, most other Section 2 claims would fail too….

Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice. But that’s a short term strategy. Come next June, any decision to strike down what’s left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.

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Yale “MFIA Clinic Report Provides Roadmap for Attorneys to Challenge Election Disinformation”

cheap speech, chicanery

Important report released by Yale Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic:

Students from Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic have released a new white paper titled “Using the Ku Klux Klan Act to Combat Election Disinformation: A Guide for Practitioners.”

The guide offers a roadmap for attorneys seeking civil remedies against certain forms of digital election disinformation, such as lies about how to vote, impersonation of candidates or officials, and misinformation intended to intimidate voters.

Read the white paper: Using the Ku Klux Klan Act to Combat Election Disinformation: A Guide for Practitioners 

The report focuses on two underutilized provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871: the “Support-or-Advocacy” clauses of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) and the companion “Neglect-to-Prevent” provision of 42 U.S.C. § 1986. Though originally passed to combat Reconstruction-era voter intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan, these statutes remain powerful tools for modern election protection, according to the clinic. The white paper argues that § 1985(3) can provide a private cause of action when election-related disinformation arises from a conspiracy and amounts to a common-law tort (such as intentional interference with the right to vote, misappropriation of likeness, or false-light invasion of privacy) carried out “on account of” someone’s support for a federal candidate.

Additionally, § 1986 may create liability for third parties like robocall vendors, group leaders, or public officials who knowingly fail to prevent such conspiracies when they have the power to do so.

While the First Amendment rightly shields much false speech about elections, the report outlines scenarios where challenges to election disinformation may prevail despite the First Amendment, such as when the disinformation at issue constitutes a lie about election mechanics or an impersonation of a candidate, or when it is particularly likely to undermine election integrity. Drawing on legal precedent, historical context, and real-world examples — including social media ads that promote “texting to vote” and robocalls that impersonate candidates — the report offers a path forward for legal practitioners aiming to challenge harmful election lies without infringing on protected speech….

(Disclosure: I gave feedback on an earlier version of this report as well as worked with the clinic and Protect Democracy on the amicus brief filed in the Mackey case.)

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“Texas House Democrats flee the state in bid to block GOP’s proposed congressional map”

redistricting

Texas Tribune:

Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state Sunday in a bid to block passage of a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House next year, raising the stakes in what’s poised to be a national fight over redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm election.

The maneuver, undertaken by most of the Texas House’s 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map. The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt.

“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”

Most House Democrats left Texas Sunday afternoon en route to the Chicago area, where they’re expected to hold a press conference with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Some also headed to New York to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has condemned Texas’ mid-decade redistricting effort and entertained the idea of retaliating with new maps in her state. A third contingent of lawmakers also departed for Boston to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures’ annual legislative summit….

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“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.”

campaign finance, campaigns, chicanery

Must-read from Adam Bonica:

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.…

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 million for canvassing. However, most of the unclassifiable expenditures appear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.

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….

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“Trump and his allies mount a pressure campaign against US elections ahead of the midterms”

election administration, election subversion risk

Fredreka Schouten for CNN:

A few weeks ago, Republican election officials in Colorado began receiving unsolicited calls and texts from a GOP consultant who said he was working with the Trump administration on “election integrity.”

In a text to one of the officials, the consultant, Jeff Small, indicated he was acting on a request from Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. In a phone call with another clerk, Small said he was coordinating with the White House and the Justice Department to “implement” an elections executive order signed by President Donald Trump, recalled Justin Grantham, the top election official in Fremont County.

Grantham and Carly Koppes, who oversees elections in Weld County in northern Colorado, told CNN that Small made a specific request: Would they give a third party access to their election equipment?

Both declined.

“Not only is that a hard no, I mean, you’re not even going to breathe on my equipment,” Koppes said.

The outreach to the Colorado clerks is just one of a flurry of recent federal actions launched by the Trump administration and groups aligned with the president.

While the White House distanced itself from Small, Trump and his allies are collecting vast amounts of voter data and working to change the ground rules for next year’s midterms, often by invoking federal government authority.Next year’s midterms hold enormous stakes for Trump and his opposition. Democrats need to net just three seats in the US House in 2026 to flip control of the chamber from Republicans. A Democratic-led House could block Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations of the president in the second half of his second term.

Samantha Tarazi, CEO of the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab, which has closely tracked state developments, said she believes Trump is gearing up “to use the power of his office to interfere in the 2026 election.”

“What started as an unconstitutional executive order — marching orders for state action regardless of its fate in court — has grown into a full federal mobilization to seize power over our elections,” she said.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Trump is “fighting for election integrity” and will keep doing so “despite Democrat objections that reveal their disdain for commonsense safeguards like verifying citizenship.”

“Free and fair elections are the bedrock of our Constitutional Republic, and we’re confident in securing an ultimate victory in the courtroom,” he said in an email….

AP:

The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.

Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission.

In Colorado, the department demanded “all records” relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election….

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“The Trump Administration’s Campaign to Undermine the Next Election”

authoritarian threats in US, election administration

Brennan Center expert brief:

In 2020, 2022, and 2024, our nation held federal elections. Despite the pandemic, threats of violence, denial of results, and extraordinary pressure, these were secure and accurate. Election officials worked together across party lines. The system held.

This year, however, a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself.

The Trump administration has launched a concerted drive to undermine American elections. These moves are unprecedented and in some cases illegal. They began with the pardon of the January 6 defendants who sought to overturn the 2020 results. They include affirmative attacks on democratic institutions, the repeal and withdrawal of voter protections, and symbolic or demonstrative moves. A clear pattern suggests a growing effort. As the 2026 midterms approach, that effort will likely gather momentum.

This resource offers the first chronicle of the Trump administration’s actions this year to undermine election integrity. They include:

  • attempting to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems;
  • targeting or threatening to target election officials and others who keep elections free and fair;
  • supporting people who undermine election administration; and
  • retreating from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the election process.

Why do we conclude this represents a concerted strategy? Among other things, President Trump tried to do this before. He was the first president to try to overturn the results of a presidential election and used federal power to do so. Institutions and key officials blocked him. These internal checks, however, are now gone, and many public officials will likely carry out the president’s will.

This campaign to undermine elections runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Only Congress and the states can set election rules. The executive branch, especially the Department of Justice (DOJ), is charged with enforcing federal laws. But neither the president nor the DOJ has the authority to set rules governing elections or to supervise the state and local officials who run them.

To be sure, previous elections were marred by rules and practices that hindered full participation. Restrictive voting laws (some of which had already been ruled unconstitutional), skewed maps, and bomb threats at polling places impeded the freedom to vote. Federal officials had an important role in countering disinformation and combatting racial discrimination. This federal protection for fair elections may no longer exist.

This unprecedented federal push will place new pressure on American elections and will require vigilance and actions from those determined to defend the integrity of the vote….

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“New Report Alerts Companies to New Level of Risk from Political Spending”

Uncategorized

Bruce Freed and Jeanne Hanna:

In today’s climate of heightened polarization, intensifying public scrutiny, and shifting political dynamics, companies that engage in political spending face significantly greater risks than in the past. To help companies navigate these growing risks, the Center for Political Accountability recently released Corporate Political Spending: What Are the Real Risks?, a report that lays out the escalating financial, legal, and reputational threats companies now face.

The reports examines both immediate risks and emerging risks. Companies that lack a strong framework to guide their political contributions risk triggering public backlash, boycotts, regulatory retaliation, corruption, and employee dissatisfaction.

The report  details high-profile cases — from Tesla’s stock volatility to Disney’s feud with Florida’s governor and the fallout from FirstEnergy’s billion-dollar bribery scandal — to show how poorly governed political spending can damage a company’s bottom line and credibility.

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“Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel”

authoritarian threats in US, chicanery, Department of Justice

WaPo:

The U.S. Office of special counsel said Saturday it is investigating Jack Smith, the former Justice Department official who oversaw two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, for potentially violating the law barring federal officials from political activity.

The independent agencytasked with overseeing investigations into partisan influence and coercion confirmed its investigation of Smith over potential Hatch Act violations.

The Hatch Act prohibits most federal employees from using their official authority to influence elections or engage in overt political activity on the job. If the office concludes a federal employee has violated the law, it refers the case to the president. Discipline can range from a reprimand to a removal from federal service. Criminal penalties are rare.

Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department in the days before Trump’s inauguration this year, became the public face of the department’s efforts to hold Trump accountable for two sets of alleged crimes. Trump was accused of trying to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and, after leaving the White House upon completion of his first term, mishandling highly classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. Neither case went to trial.

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“Democratic governors advise strong counteroffensive on redistricting”

chicanery, redistricting

Politico:

A  group of Democratic governors is urging its colleagues to get tough in countering Republican-backed efforts to gerrymander Texas’ congressional districts.

“It’s incumbent upon Democrat governors, if they have the opportunity, to respond in kind,” outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly told reporters at a Democratic Governors Association meeting Friday. “I’m not a big believer in unilateral disarmament.”

The advice from Kelly, who chairs the DGA, came two days after Texas Republicans proposed congressional lines that would create five GOP-friendly House districts ahead of next year’s midterms. Democrats need only to net three seats to regain control of the lower chamber.

Kelly didn’t cite California Gov. Gavin Newsom by name, but he is the most high profile, and likeliest, example of a Democrat considering a counteroffensive remapping effort to squeeze more seats from a blue state. On Thursday, Newsom said he’d seek a November special election to have voters approve a new House map that would boost Democrats’ numbers. It’s an expensive and potentially perilous gamble that his Democratic colleagues throughout the country appear to be backing — a notably more aggressive posture for the party….

NYT on “maximum warfare”:

The aggressive push by President Trump and Republicans in Texas to squeeze as many as five House Democrats out of office before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterm elections has opened up a new chapter in an era of unconstrained partisan warfare.

For six months, Democrats have watched, sometimes haplessly and sometimes hopelessly, as Mr. Trump and his allies have bent much of the country’s political, legal and educational systems to his will.

But the bald attempt to redraw the Texas congressional map to shore up House Republicans has pushed many Democrats, including some longtime institutionalists, to a breaking point. Now, they are vowing to “fight fire with fire” and even to embrace some of the very gerrymandering tactics they have long decried as anti-democratic.

“The Texas Republicans are taking us on a race to the bottom,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who lamented in an interview that his party must reluctantly participate in “this rotten system.”…

The gerrymandering is deeply consequential at a time when a single House race can cost tens of millions of dollars. Republicans won control of the House in 2024 by only three seats, a margin the remapping in Texas alone would more than double.

One person close to the president, who insisted on anonymity to describe the White House’s political strategy candidly, summed it up succinctly: “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

The redistricting push is only one element. Mr. Trump has targeted Democratic law firms with executive actions. He has threatened prosecutions of and ordered investigations into his political enemies, while the Justice Department has dropped lawsuits aimed at protecting voting rights. And his congressional allies are investigating ActBlue, the organization that processes an overwhelming share of online donations for Democrats….

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“Revealed: Elon Musk’s $1 Million Gift to Trump Inauguration”

campaign finance

Influence Brief:

A Jan. 15 in-kind contribution from X Corp., the social media company previously known as Twitter and owned by Musk, never appeared in any of the Trump inaugural committee’s original disclosure or in multiple amendments.

The donation only appeared in a supplemental FEC filing on July 18 — just days before a key federal lobbying deadline when lobbyists are legally required to report political contributions from their clients.

On July 30, a new lobbying disclosure filed by X Corp. confirmed the $1 million contribution.

Despite announcing plans to step back from political spending in May, new campaign finance reports filed July 31 reveal Musk kept making political contributions into at least June — even as his tension with Trump escalated.

Musk gave $45 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC, America PAC, with contributions into at least late June.

But Musk didn’t just give to his own super PAC.

Despite a dramatic falling out with Trump after his departure from DOGE, Musk gave $5 million to Trump’s main super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., on June 27, according to new FEC filings first reported by Politico.

That same day, Musk poured another $10 million to the main super PACs backing House and Senate Republicans — with $5 million of that to Congressional Leadership Fund, which is aligned with House Republican leadership, and another $5 million to the allied Senate Leadership Fund.

Musk’s multimillion-dollar contributions made him the largest individual donor to both super PACs allied with congressional leadership during the first six months of 2025….

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“How the New Texas Map Changes the Outlook for Control of the House”

redistricting

Nate Cohn for The Tilt:

So far this election cycle, most analysts have assumed that Democrats will win the House next November. No, it’s not a guarantee. But the party out of the White House usually does well in midterms, and Democrats need a mere three seats to retake the chamber.

Over the last few weeks, this reasonable assumption has started to get more complicated. It turns out that Democrats might need to flip more than three seats, as President Trump is pushing red states to undertake a rare mid-decade redistricting effort to shore up the slender Republican House majority.

On Wednesday, Republicans in Texas unveiled the first of these efforts: a new map that could flip as many as five seats from blue to red.

It’s still too early to say what might happen beyond Texas. Maybe other Republican states will join; maybe Democrats will retaliate. Obviously, a wider redistricting war could have far greater implications, to say nothing of whether it is healthy for the country. But on its own, while the Texas map makes the Democrats’ path to the House harder, it doesn’t necessarily make it hard. They would still be favored to win the House if the election were held today on the new map, even though they don’t hold a very large lead in the polls….

For another, recent electoral trends have positioned Democrats to win House elections more easily. The Republican advantage in the early 2010s was partly a reflection of the geographic distribution of the Obama coalition, which showed its greatest strength in urban areas where Democrats had already been winning House elections. Since then, Democrats have made big gains in highly educated suburbs, flipping many previously Republican-leaning districts. At the same time, the collapse of the Obama coalition cost Democrats many popular votes in urban and rural areas but didn’t cost them many House seats. Put it together, and today’s congressional map is arguably the most balanced map since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Perhaps the easiest way to tell: Democrats barely lost the House popular vote in the last two elections, and they barely lost the chamber. By some measures — including the so-called efficiency gap promoted by redistricting reformers — the current House district map actually leans slightly to the left. By others — including my preferred measures — the map leans slightly to the right.

Either way, the fundamentally balanced House map is the backdrop to the new Texas map. While a few more Republican seats will certainly help the G.O.P., it will take more to give Republicans a major structural advantage in the fight for the House….

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“Texas House panel advances redrawn congressional map that would add more GOP seats”

redistricting

Texas Tribune:

A Texas House panel on Saturday advanced a draft congressional map aimed at adding five new Republican districts next year over protests from Democrats that the proposal would suppress the votes of people of color.

The chamber’s redistricting committee approved the map on party lines, 12 to 6, after spending much of Friday hearing testimony from U.S. House Democrats from Texas and members of the public largely opposed to the plan. The map could be considered by the entire state House as soon as early next week.

Earlier in the hearing, GOP lawmakers said that they are redrawing the state’s congressional map to advantage Republican candidates, setting aside a legal justification offered by the U.S. Department of Justice and making their political motivations explicit for the first time.

“Different from everyone else, I’m telling you, I’m not beating around the bush,” Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican carrying the bill, said about the goal of the map. “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.”

Texas Republicans launched the redistricting effort after pressure from President Donald Trump’s political operatives, who demanded state leaders redraw the map to help Republicans maintain their slim House majority ahead of a potentially difficult midterm election.

The House redistricting committee released its proposed redo of the map Wednesday. It slices up districts in the Houston, Austin and the Dallas areas, yielding five additional districts that would have voted for Trump by at least 10 percentage points in 2024. In 2024, Trump won 56.2% of votes in Texas. Under the current lines, Republicans hold 66% of Texas’ 38 House seats. The new map aims to push that share to 79%….

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“Donor List Suggests Scale of Trump’s Pay-for-Access Operation”

campaign finance, campaigns, lobbying

NYT:

When the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Eric Schiermeyer heard that President Trump was holding small group dinners with major donors, he saw opportunity.

Mr. Schiermeyer reached out to a lobbyist with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who arranged for him to attend a dinner with the president at his private Mar-a-Lago club on March 1 in exchange for donations to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc. totaling $1 million.

The personal and corporate donations were among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from crypto and other interests revealed in a campaign finance filing on Thursday night that hinted at the access Mr. Trump accords those willing to pay.

At the dinner, Mr. Schiermeyer, who had never given a federal political donation before, presented an idea for a cryptocurrency called “U.S.A. Token” that would be distributed to every citizen, according to interviews and a flier he distributed to attendees that sets out details of the proposal. He hoped it could be supported through a federal contract with his company.

“I don’t usually put time and attention on politics,” Mr. Schiermeyer said in a text exchange with The New York Times. But, he added, “I was able to say my piece, and the idea is clearly making the rounds, so mission accomplished from my view.”

While the Trump administration has not given Mr. Schiermeyer any indication it is pursuing the U.S.A. Token idea, the episode underscores the face time that Mr. Trump has been willing to grant to deep-pocketed interests seeking business, preferential treatment or protection from him and his administration.

It also reveals how lobbyists, political consultants and others in the influence industry have capitalized on Mr. Trump’s aggressive fund-raising while in office to deliver for clients and earn chits with a president who keeps close tabs on who is delivering cash and listens to their appeals. It is a cycle that has helped Mr. Trump fill the coffers of his political groups, defying the gravity that sometimes drags down the fund-raising of term-limited presidents….

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