A new club is coming to Washington — and you probably can’t get in.
Donald Trump Jr., megadonor Omeed Malik and several other investors are launching an invite-only club that costs more than half a million to join with an exclusive post-White House Correspondents’ Dinner gathering, according to an invite obtained by POLITICO and two people with knowledge of the venture, granted anonymity to discuss the private organization.
The “Executive Branch” is the brainchild of Malik and the president’s eldest son, and their partners at conservative fund 1789 Capital. It will be located in Georgetown.
Their goal, the people familiar with the plans say, is to create the highest-end private club that Washington has ever had, and cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration.
The referral requirements and prohibitive pricing is meant to ensure the C-suite crowd can mingle with Trump advisers and cabinet members without the prying eyes of the press and wanna-be insiders. The price tag won’t be a problem for Trump’s cabinet — given it’s by far the wealthiest in history.
Category Archives: campaign finance
“The Federal Election Commission Is Facing a De Facto Shutdown”
The Federal Election Commission will soon lose its powers to enforce and regulate campaign finance laws, NOTUS has learned.
This de facto FEC shutdown will be triggered when Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson resigns on Wednesday, leaving the six-member FEC with too few commissioners to legally conduct high-level business, three government sources familiar with the matter said.
The independent, bipartisan agency won’t be legally empowered to fine scofflaws, make new rules, conduct audits, issue advisory guidance, vote on the outcomes of investigations or even conduct formal meetings — at least until President Donald Trump nominates one or more new commissioners that the U.S. Senate, in turn, must confirm.
“George Santos’s Closing Act: A Prison Sentence of More Than 7 Years”
NYT:
George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York whose outlandish fabrications and criminal schemes fueled an unforeseen rise and spectacular fall, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison on Friday.
His 87-month sentence was a severe corrective to a turbulent period in which Mr. Santos was catapulted from anonymity to political and pop cultural infamy, a national spotlight that, even when negative, he often relished more than rejected.
Mr. Santos pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He acknowledged his involvement in a variety of other deceptions, including lying to Congress, fraudulently collecting unemployment benefits and bilking campaign donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Trump Says He Would Sign Bill Banning Congressional Stock Trades”
President Donald Trump said he would “absolutely” sign a bill banning congressional stock trading, saying he was concerned lawmakers could be using insider information for an advantage.
“I would be okay with it,” Trump said in an interview with Time Magazine that published Friday. “If they send that to me, I would do it.”
There has long been some bipartisan support for legislation that would limit how members of Congress could buy and sell stocks, as their access to classified intelligence and internal knowledge about the progress of lawmaking offers a leg up on others in the market. In 2020, a bipartisan group of senators drew fire for trading health care stocks after closed-door briefings on the coronavirus pandemic.
“Trump to target ActBlue in presidential memorandum”
In a shot at ActBlue, the left’s major online donation platform, President Donald Trump plans to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, according to a person familiar with the policy and granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-public details.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office is expected to be involved in the crackdown, the person said, though further details about the mechanism she will use were not immediately available. The order is expected to specifically target ActBlue, which Republicans have long claimed could be exploited by foreign actors.
Democrats had been bracing in recent days for potential action from the White House against the platform, casting it as an unwarranted attack on their fundraising efforts. In an email to Democrats on Wednesday referring to a potential coming action from the White House targeting the platform, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones wrote, “Nothing will deter or interrupt ActBlue’s mission and work to enable millions of Americans to participate in our democracy. There is an ongoing and persistent effort to weaken the confidence of the American people in what’s possible. This is the next version of ‘the big lie.’”
“Meet the top donors to Trump’s $239 million inauguration fund”
President Donald Trump raised a record $239 million for his 2025 inauguration celebrations, propelled by contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals — including more than a dozen people Trump has nominated to a variety of roles in his administration.
Inaugural celebrations have become an opportunity for companies and wealthy individuals to support parties orpresidents-elect and to seek to curry favor with incoming administrations. In the most recent inauguration, Trump hauled in more than double the record he set in 2017.
Donors to his inaugural committee included picks for ambassadorships, members of Trump’s Cabinet and firms engaged in actions with federal agencies or those looking for favorable regulatory decisions, according to a Washington Post analysis ofa filing the inaugural committee made to the Federal Election Commission on Sunday.Some companies have sought to influence the new administration’s policies on trade, taxes and government spending.
“Trump to Host Dinner With Top Holders of His Memecoin”
President Donald Trump will have dinner with the top 220 holders of the Trump memecoin, the issuers of the cryptocurrency announced on Wednesday.
At the “intimate private dinner” on May 22 at his private club in Washington, Trump will talk about the future of crypto, according to the organizers. People who want to participate have to register, and a leader board of the top Trump coin holders will be kept to determine attendees. The top 25 Trump coin holders will also be invited to a reception before the dinner with the president, and will be given a tour of the White House.
“From April 23 to May 12, your average $TRUMP balance determines your spot,” according to the Website advertising the dinner. “Get $Trump Memes and climb the ranks.”
“Missouri campaign watchdog is once again unable to function due to vacancies”
Last fall, St. Louis attorney Brad Ketcher read the news that a Republican candidate for the Missouri Senate was using money from his church to help fund his campaign.
As the chief of staff to former Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan in the 1990s, Ketcher helped establish the Missouri Ethics Commission, a state agency that enforces campaign finance and ethics laws.
He was so “appalled” when the Senate candidate in question won the seat in November that Ketcher filed an ethics complaint asking the commission to investigate.
But in April, he learned his complaint was getting thrown out because there weren’t enough commission members to convene a meeting to review it.
“Trump Raised $239 Million for Inauguration, More Than Doubling His Own Record”
President Trump raised $239 million for his inauguration festivities in January, a norm-shattering amount fueled by corporate America’s desire to curry favor with a famously transactional president.
The total, disclosed in a filing with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday, is more than double the previous record of $107 million set by Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee in 2017. About 140 different people or companies gave at least $1 million to the effort, including blue-chip companies like JPMorgan Chase, Delta Air Lines and Target.
The committee, known formally as the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, is required by federal law to report the names of donors and the dollar amounts for contributions over $200 to the F.E.C. no more than 90 days after the Jan. 20 ceremony. It is not required to report how it spent the money.
Many of the donations to Mr. Trump’s inauguration were previously announced — such as $1 million each from tech giants like Meta and Amazon — in part because companies wanted it known widely that they were backing Mr. Trump’s formal return to power. But the report revealed a few names not well-publicized, including several friends of Elon Musk, such as tech investors like John Hering, Ken Howery and Keith Rabois, who each gave $1 million. (Neither Mr. Musk, a top presidential adviser, nor any of his companies donated.)
The three largest contributions came from a poultry producer, Pilgrim’s, which donated $5 million; a crypto company, Ripple Inc., which donated just under that; and Warren Stephens, a Republican donor who gave $4 million on the same day, Dec. 2, that Mr. Trump named him as his pick to be ambassador to Britain….
“Elon Musk focuses donations on GOP lawmakers targeting judges”
Elon Musk targeted a flurry of money in late March to support Republican members of Congress who endorsed legislation to impeach judges or restrict their power, new filings revealed, bolstering his own push to punish judges who rule against the Trump administration.
The spending, which totaled $144,400 in support of nearly two dozen members of Congress, was disclosed Tuesday in filings to the Federal Election Commission.While the amount is a fraction of the millions he shelled out for Republican candidates before the November election, the spending so early in the 2026 midterm cycle further cements the billionaire’s long-term involvement in GOP politics despite a decisive loss for his preferred candidate in this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
The reports, filed by principal campaign committees of the members, reflect only a partial picture of Musk’s political spending in the first three months of 2025. Other contribution outlets controlled by Musk, including his America PAC, are not required to file until the end of July.
Musk gave close to the legal per-race maximum of $6,600 to 21 House members, all of whom had sponsored or co-sponsored resolutions to impeach judges or restrict their power. A GOP-led Congress is not expected to vote on impeaching any judges because the issue lacks overwhelming support, but several impeachment resolutions have been filed. For weeks, Musk has used X — the social media platform he owns — to target judges who ruled against the Trump administration…
“Newer Problems in an Old, Broken Campaign Finance Regime—A Post-2024 Reflection”
John Martin has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, University of Pittsburgh Law Review). Here is the abstract:
Money in politics is ever-increasing in the United States, and the ways in which it manifests is ever-changing. The 2024 election cycle was no different in this regard, with numerous unique issues in campaign finance having arisen. The election now being over, a retrospection of these newer problems seems due. This Paper provides just that. Specifically, this Paper reflects upon a number of newfound ways we saw money in politics complicate the 2024 elections, and, on a higher level, corrode our democratic processes. Structurally, this Paper is organized as a series of five smaller essays that each describes a particular issue we saw in 2024, contextualizes the issue within existing law, and finally offers some thoughts on how we might address the issue going forward either doctrinally or legislatively.
The breakdown of covered topics is as follows: Part I looks at a phenomenon we saw in the 2024 presidential primaries that I call “cash for donations,” where multiple candidates offered gift cards in exchange for $1 donations that helped them gain a spot on the debate stage. Part II similarly analyzes Elon Musk’s “cash for registration” scheme, in which he offered cash prizes to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition put out by his super PAC. Part III maintains a focus on Musk, discussing his use of X to ban accounts raising money for Kamala Harris’s campaign. Part IV shifts focus to self-funded candidates, in two parts: The first considers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offering his running mate position to Nicole Shanahan in exchange for her enormous self-funding capabilities, and explores the implications this apparent quid pro quo should have on how current campaign finance doctrine treats regulations on self-funded campaigns. The second section meanwhile examines the rise in self-loaning among federal candidates following the 2022 Supreme Court decision FEC v. Cruz, which struck down the federal limit on self-loan repayment. Lastly, Part V discusses the uncertain future of regulations that limit the ability of “foreign-influenced corporations” from engaging in political spending.
“Trump IRS Pick Was Just Enriched By Tax Schemers; New documents show Billy Long’s $130,000 personal debt was suddenly paid off by donors at firms policed by the tax agency he’d lead.”
President Donald Trump’s choice for Internal Revenue Service director just had his six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors whose firms have significant, often contentious business before the tax agency he would lead, according to federal records reviewed by The Lever.
The revelations come as lawmakers call for a criminal probe of how tax credits were used by these donors’ firms — many of which have previous ties to U.S. Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), Trump’s IRS nominee whose confirmation is pending in the Senate.
In new campaign finance filings, Long disclosed an outstanding personal loan of $130,000 that he had made to his failed 2022 U.S. Senate campaign. The dormant Senate campaign committee had raised less than $36,000 in the last two years, which could have forced Long to absorb the losses on the loan.
But after Trump named Long to head the IRS, the committee suddenly raked in nearly $137,000 in less than three weeks in January — money that Long then used to remunerate himself, according to disclosure documents filed this week.
“Making political contributions to aid Billy Long seems like a surefire way to ingratiate yourself with the man poised to lead the IRS, especially when we’re talking about contributions to help repay campaign debt that is just loans to the candidate himself and contributions to his leadership PAC,” said Michael Beckel, the senior research director of the campaign-finance reform organization Issue One, who first spotlighted the donations. “People often criticize campaign contributions for being legalized bribery, but in this case, we’re truly talking about money being given to Long to repay himself.”..
My New One at Slate: “What Elon Musk Won in Wisconsin”
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:
Democrats and progressives rightly celebrated the victory of liberal Susan Crawford over Trump-endorsed Brad Schimel for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. But the left is prematurely gloating over how Elon Musk’s deep support of Schimel appears to have backfired. There’s every reason to believe that the same pathologies in U.S. elections and election law on exhibition in Wisconsin will continue. So too will the outsize involvement of Musk and other billionaires in American elections, although the Wisconsin race is more likely to push Musk and his compatriots into the shadows.
One could teach an entire course in election law by studying just this one race. …
And not to be missed are the stakes themselves. Aside from a high-profile abortion rights case, the most important issue likely to come before the Wisconsin justices soon involves the question of whether partisan gerrymandering violates the state Constitution. Wisconsin has some of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country, and when conservatives controlled the court, they rejected arguments to require the drawing of fair districts under the state Constitution. The court could now reverse such a holding with Crawford’s victory. (The opposite happened in North Carolina, where the left-leaning state Supreme Court first recognized partisan gerrymandering claims only to see that reversed when the right took control of the court.)
Redistricting, more than anything else, probably explains why Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into this race and made numerous statements and even a personal appearance to boost Schimel. He said on the Sunday before the election: “If the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side. … Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.” Indeed, he also said: “What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives—that is why it is so significant. … And whichever party controls the House to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”…
And then in the middle of the night the weekend before the election, he announced on X—the platform he owns and uses to promote his political causes—that he would give away $1 million to some people who voted in the Wisconsin race. That announcement likely violated Wisconsin election law, as I explained soon after it was made. He quickly reworked his plan so that it no longer required proof of voting, in order to give it a sheen of legality, but the message was out there. Indeed in another message that Musk’s people posted and then took down, one of the $1 million winners of Musk’s giveaway (which apparently also wasn’t a random lottery) said she got the money in part for voting.
After Musk lost, he downplayed the importance of the race, but his political people signaled he is going to stay involved in supporting Republicans in 2026 and beyond. The lesson he’s likely to learn is the lesson other billionaires already have learned. If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it. People are turned off by the display of money being converted to raw political power….
My New One at Slate: “The Ultrarich Have Reshaped Presidential Elections. Here’s Where They’re Looking Next. Billionaire money could have even more of an impact on these races than it did on the 2024 election.”
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins:
Although it has been more than a decade since judicial and administrative rulings freed the ultrawealthy to contribute unlimited sums to outside political groups, 2024 marked a sea change in the financing of federal elections—and those changes are already spreading to state and local elections, including the upcoming high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race. It’s not just gimmicks like Elon Musk’s offer of $100 to registered Wisconsin voters who sign a petition against “activist judges,” and $100 more for each additional voter they persuade to do the same. Musk and other megadonors have blown past previous spending records in a way that threatens a new American oligarchy.
In the 2024 elections, the top six donors supporting or opposing federal candidates each reported contributing at least $100 million, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Those donors—Musk ($291.5 million), Timothy Mellon ($197 million), Miriam Adelson ($148.3 million), Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein ($143.5 million), Ken Griffin ($108.4 million), and Jeffrey and Janine Yass ($101.1 million)—all exclusively supported Donald Trump and other Republican candidates (with the exception of the Yasses, who gave a nominal $1,500 contribution on the Democratic side). The biggest donor on the liberal side was former New York City mayor and publisher Michael Bloomberg, who gave $64.3 million total, with all but $1 million going to the Democratic side.
We have never seen so many nine-figure donors in an election, and with such lopsided giving. In the 2022 midterm elections, the sole nine-figure donor was George Soros ($178.8 million), with his contributions going to Democrats. In earlier election seasons, donations of this size were also rare: There were two in 2020 (Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Michael Bloomberg) one in 2018 (Sheldon Adelson), and none before that.
These numbers do not take into account all the spending and contributions by these ultrawealthy individuals (or the amounts given to non-disclosing political organizations). Take the expenditures of the world’s richest man, Musk. Even the $291.5 million figure does not include the value of content on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which reaches hundreds of millions of users. Researchers found that Musk seems to have tweaked the platform’s algorithm to promote content favorable to Trump, something quite valuable but hard to precisely value. Nor do these figures include the value of the publicity for his controversial get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states, among them a $1 million a day lottery for registered voters that could well have violated federal law.
The rise of the nine-figure donor raises two fundamental questions: Why is this happening now? And how will this new spending affect American elections and public policy?….
One might pooh-pooh the rise of the nine-figure donor and say it doesn’t matter. In the 2024 presidential election campaign, according to OpenSecrets data, Kamala Harris and her allies raised nearly $2 billion compared with Trump and his allies’ $1.45 billion. Overall, money was not as big a factor in the outcome of the election as other aspects that influenced voter choice, given that each side had ample funding to get out their message and run their campaign.
This minimization of the problem ignores two key points. First, the presidential election is unique in that it always attracts large amounts of money with high stakes and high interest. Money, even from a megadonor, is unlikely to be determinative: Both sides will be amply financed. But this is not necessarily true of other races. When Musk, for example, seeks to spend significant sums to influence the outcome of a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, or when Nicole Shanahan (RFK Jr.’s running mate for president) threatens to fund super PACs supporting Republican candidates to challenge incumbent senators who do not support Trump’s Cabinet nominees for confirmation, money can be much more influential—especially in otherwise noncompetitive general elections in which the real fight is for the party primary.
More important is what the money buys. Even putting aside the possibility of quid pro quo deals, the money secures influence and access. Musk has gained unprecedented access to Trump and unparalleled influence over the new administration through his White House office and activities for the amorphous Department of Government Efficiency, which is cutting federal employees and programs and engaging in the deep mining of governmental data (in many cases on issues with which Musk, the world’s richest man, has a financial conflict of interest). Republican senators toed the line and voted for Trump’s Cabinet nominees potentially out of fear of a Shanahan- or Musk-funded GOP primary….