Category Archives: campaigns

Federal Court in Kohls v. Bonta, in Striking Down California Deep Fake Law on First Amendment Grounds, Sees Constitutional Path for More Narrowly Tailored Laws Aimed at False Statements About When, Where, and How People Vote

campaigns, First Amendment theory

Via Eugene Volokh (who is cited in the court’s opinion), here’s a snippet from Kohls v. Bonta:

AB 2839 regulates a broad spectrum of election-related content that is “materially deceptive” and permits any recipient of this content to sue for general or special damages. Cal. Elec. Code §§ 20012(b)(1), 20012(d). AB 2839 defines “materially deceptive” content as “audio or visual media that is intentionally digitally created or modified, … such that the content would falsely appear to a reasonable person to be an authentic record of the content depicted in the media.” AB 2839 includes exceptions for candidates who make and share deepfake content of themselves and for satire or parody. In both these cases, the content must include a disclaimer that meets AB 2839’s formatting requirements and must state that the content has been digitally manipulated….

The Court finds that AB 2839 discriminates based on content, viewpoint, and speaker and targets constitutionally protected speech.

The Court’s preliminary injunction Order recognized that AB 2839 was likely unconstitutional because it was content-based. By its terms, AB 2839 prohibits “materially deceptive” (defined as content that would falsely appear to a reasonable person to be an authentic record) audio or visual communications that portray a candidate or elected official doing or saying things he or she didn’t do or say and that are likely to harm a candidate’s reputation or electoral prospects. The statute also punishes such altered content that depicts an “elections official” or “voting machine, ballot, voting site, or other property or equipment” that is “reasonably likely” to falsely “undermine confidence” in the outcome of an election contest. As evidenced by the statutory language, AB 2839 facially regulates based on content because the “law applies to particular speech because of the topic” —a political candidate, elected official, elections official, ballot, or voting mechanism. Moreover, it delineates acceptable and unacceptable speech based on its purported truth or falsity meaning that non-materially deceptive content is excluded. See Order at 11.

On top of the content-based distinctions, AB 2839 regulates speech based on viewpoint and speaker. The state law only punishes content that could “harm” a candidate’s electoral prospects or content that could “undermine confidence” in the outcome of an election while leaving positive representations unregulated. In other words, materially deceptive content that helps a candidate or promotes confidence would not be subject to penalty under AB 2839….

Moreover, AB 2839 also engages in speaker-based discrimination because the law imposes different obligations on different speakers depending on who they are. Under AB 2839, candidates posting about themselves, broadcasters, and internet websites are subject to more lenient rules while other speakers, such as Plaintiffs, are categorically barred. Candidates and broadcasters can post “materially deceptive” content as long as they attach disclaimers. Additionally, broadcasters and internet sites are exempt from “general or special damages.” AB 2839 treats different speakers dissimilarly, subjecting certain individuals to stricter rules and other speakers to more lenient rules. All together, these content, viewpoint, and speaker-based distinctions at minimum trigger strict scrutiny….

Attempting to avoid the content, viewpoint, and speaker- based problems with AB 2839, Defendants analogize the statute to narrow categories of historically recognized exceptions to the First Amendment such as defamation or fraud…. However, AB 2839 goes beyond these historical categories. For example, the statute diverges from defamation law because it proscribes content that is merely “reasonably likely” to cause harm, which is speculative and prophylactic rather than remedial or concrete. Moreover, the statute also goes beyond reputational harms to include amorphous harms to the “electoral prospects” of a candidate.

So too do AB 2839’s regulations go beyond the definition of fraud because unlike fraud, AB 2839 does not require reliance or actual injury. See United States v. Alvarez (2012) (Breyer, J., concurring). California responds that falsehoods “meant to deceive viewers and manipulate voters to change their voting behavior” do cause legally cognizable harm, but intent to “deceive and manipulate” alone is not sufficient under Alvarez, which recognized that even knowing falsehoods are constitutionally protected….

Notably, the most significant manner in which AB 2839 goes beyond historically recognized exceptions to the First Amendment is by deputizing a much more expansive category of plaintiffs. Unlike defamation or other tort remedies that limit plaintiffs to persons actually harmed, the category of plaintiffs AB 2839 cognizes is almost boundless because it allows the government as well as any recipient of materially deceptive content to “seek injunctive or other equitable relief.” Plus, these recipients can seek “general or special damages” and “attorney’s fees and costs,” even against a person who merely “republishe[s]” prohibited content. Allowing almost any person to file a complaint creates the “real risk” of malicious lawsuits that could chill protected speech. Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus (2014).

Rather than targeting content that procures tangible harms or materially benefits a speaker, AB 2839 attempts to stifle speech before it occurs or actually harms anyone as long as it is “reasonably likely” to do so and it allows almost anyone to act as a censorship czar….

[S]trict scrutiny is the appropriate standard for a content-based restriction that implicates political expression like AB 2839…. To withstand strict scrutiny, AB 2839 must advance a compelling state interest through the least-restrictive means possible….

While the Court acknowledges that California may have a compelling interest in protecting election integrity, the tools it deploys to achieve its interest must be the least restrictive means of achieving such goal when significant speech issues are at stake. As Plaintiffs argue, the most glaring issue with AB 2839 is that the statute is not narrowly tailored because it captures even constitutional deepfakes and all “materially deceptive content.” The First Amendment does not “permit speech-restrictive measures when the state may remedy the problem by implementing or enforcing laws that do not infringe on speech.” “Because restricting speech should be the government’s tool of last resort, the availability of obvious less-restrictive alternatives renders a speech restriction overinclusive” and unconstitutional.

As the Court previously recognized in its preliminary injunction Order, existing statutory causes of action, including “privacy torts, copyright infringement, or defamation already provide recourse to public figures or private individuals whose reputations may be afflicted by artificially altered depictions peddled by satirists or opportunists on the internet.” Indeed, several other narrower constructions might allow the statute to align with historically recognized First Amendment exceptions. For instance, California could limit AB 2839’s reach to false speech that causes legally cognizable harms like false speech that actually causes voter interference, coercion, or intimidation.

California could also limit the statute’s reach to factual statements that are demonstrably false like the time, date, place, or manner of voting. See generally Eugene Volokh, When are Lies Constitutionally Protected?, 4 J. Free Speech L. 685, 704–09 (2024) (contrasting lies about “election procedures”—an area where a “narrower restriction[] might pose fewer problems” with lies about election campaigns and government officials—areas that should be “categorically immune from liability”).

Another narrower construction might be for California to limit potential plaintiffs to political candidates actually harmed by unprotected false speech, which would mirror defamation law more closely. Plaintiffs also suggest that California could encourage alternatives that are already working in the free market such as fact checking or counter speech.

California could even fund its own AI educational campaigns or form committees on combatting false or deceptive election content. While California’s expert explains that political deepfakes are “sticky” and this type of misinformation spreads too quickly for governments to counteract it, Plaintiffs have offered evidence from their expert that shows fact-checking alternatives like “Community Notes and Grok are already … scalable solutions being adopted” in the real world.. These misinformation flagging tools crowdsource identification and labeling to educate citizens rather than relying on censorship to eradicate potentially misleading content. Thus, California provides no substantial evidence that other less restrictive means of regulating deceptive election content are not feasible or effective….

This point about narrow tailoring is important, and it’s why I’ve thought the current California law is unconstitutional but a narrower law could work. I wrote about the case in my Yale Law Journal piece when the court issued a preliminary injunction, and much more in Cheap Speech on why laws that regulate false statements about when, where or how people vote are constitutional, while broader laws targeting campaign lies are likely not.

Here’s what we wrote in our Mackey amicus brief:

[Limiting Section 241’s reach to false statements about when, where or how people vote] eliminates the concerns raised in Alvarez about regulation of false speech about political campaigns and related matters because Section 241, so construed, only incidentally regulates false speech when it is part of a tortious course of conduct imposing “a legally cognizable harm.” 567 U.S. at 719. Statements about when, where, or how people vote are empirically verifiable, and punishing deliberate lies about voting mechanics and procedures does not raise issues of discretion or interpretation: saying “Democrats vote on Tuesday and Republicans vote on Wednesday,” for example, is easily proven false by reference to earlier-published election materials. It has nothing to do with the kind of contested lies warned of in Alvarez. It requires no judgment todetermine the truth of the statement about the mechanics of voting, compared to, say, an arguably false statement that the last election was “rigged.”

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“Millions of dollars in special-election redistricting TV ads scheduled to start airing Tuesday”

campaign finance, campaigns, redistricting

LA Times:

Millions of dollars worth of political TV ads are expected to start airing Tuesday in an effort to sway Californians on a November ballot measure seeking to send more Democrats to Congress and counter President Trump and the GOP agenda, according to television airtime purchases.

The special-election ballot measure — Prop. 50 — will likely shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives and determine the fate of many of Trump’s far-right policies.

The opposition to the rare California mid-decade redistricting has booked more than $10 million of airtime for ads between Tuesday and Sept. 23 in media markets across the state, according to media buyers who are not affiliated with either campaign. Supporters of the effort have bought at least $2 million in ads starting on Tuesday, a number expected to grow exponentially as they are aggressively trying to secure time in coming weeks on broadcast and cable television.

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“This early start is a bit stealthy on the part of the no side, but has been used as a ploy in past campaigns to try to show strength early and gain advantage by forcing the opposing side to play catch up,” said Sheri Sadler, a veteran Democratic political media operative who is not working for either campaign. “This promises to be an expensive campaign for a special election, especially starting so early.”

Millions of dollars have already flowed into the nascent campaigns sparring over the Nov. 4 special-election ballot measure that asks voters to set aside the congressional boundaries drawn in 2021 by California’s independent redistricting commission. The panel was created by the state’s voters in 2010 to stop gerrymandering and incumbent protection by both major political parties.

The campaign will be a sprint — glossy multi-page mailers arrived in Californians’ mailboxes before the state Legislature voted in late August to call the special election. Voters will begin receiving mail ballots in early October.

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“A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers”

campaign finance, campaigns, chicanery

Wired:

In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.

But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce.

In their group chat, influencers debated the details.

“Should we send a joint email (with all of our email addresses) … or, are we just going to send things separately and hope they change everything for everyone?” Laurenzo, a nonbinary creator in Columbus, Ohio, with over 884,000 TikTok followers, asked the group. Some joked about collective bargaining. “Any Newsies fans here?” Eliza Orlins, a public defender and reality TV star known for her appearances on Survivor, posted in the group. “‘We’re a union just by sayin’ so!’”

The influencers in the chat collectively had at least 13 million followers across social platforms. They represented some of the most well-known voices online posting in support of Democrats, and they’re key to wherever the party moves next. But ultimately, the group didn’t make much progress.

“Reading through this revised Chorus contract like: you win some, you lose some,” a reproductive justice influencer named Pari, who posts under the handle @womeninamerica, responded later in the thread. “I also think there’s at least 4 other things that should change 🤣but the vibe I got from their email was that there would be minimal, if any, changes.” (Laurenzo, Orlins, and Pari did not reply to requests for comment.)

“I don’t feel strongly about pushing tbh,” Aaron Parnas, a Gen Z news influencer who has been called the Gen Z Walter Cronkite and has been lauded in legacy media outlets, posted to the chat. “They aren’t going to modify it anymore. Seems like a take it or leave it.” (Parnas declined to comment.)

“I believe we are in Stage 5: Acceptance,” Pari responded. Creators began signing on to the deal….

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“How AOC built a Democratic fundraising juggernaut”

campaign finance, campaigns

CNN:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is building a fundraising juggernaut that is rivaling some of the Democratic Party’s core infrastructure, prompting questions about both her future and the party’s.

Small-dollar donations – contributions of less than $200 – are the lifeblood of campaigns and a key measure of voter enthusiasm. And on ActBlue, Democrats’ largest online fundraising platform, the New York congresswoman received the third-most small-dollar donations in the first half of the year.

That trailed only the Democratic National Committee and the party’s Senate campaign arm, key party infrastructure. Ocasio-Cortez beat the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House campaign arm, and every other individual candidate.

Ocasio-Cortez raised nearly $15 million total in the first half of 2025 from 736,000 contributions, an average of $20 a donor. Notably, her fundraising spiked after the March announcement that she would join Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ national “Fighting Oligarchy” tour….

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“In Private Deal, the D.N.C. Covered $20 Million in Harris Bills Post-Election”

campaign finance, campaigns

NYT:

Not long after Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election, her senior advisers and the Democratic National Committee struck a handshake deal.

Ms. Harris still had bills piling up, and campaign officials had counted on raising more money during a prolonged fight over tallying votes. Instead, the race was called early in the morning after Election Day.

The private agreement was this: The party would pick up the tab for any outstanding 2024 bills, allowing Ms. Harris to claim she did not end the race in debt. In turn, Ms. Harris would raise the money to cover all of those leftover costs, leaving the party whole financially as it sought to navigate the second Trump era.

Left in the dark were the small donors who received nearly 100 email solicitations sent from the Harris operation this year alone on behalf of the D.N.C. The emails did not disclose that funds raised from those emails were essentially earmarked for leftover bills. Convincing donors, both big and small, to pay for debts is typically a tough sell.

The arrangement was described by four people with knowledge of it and corroborated through Federal Election Commission disclosures. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Though the deal was struck before the current party chairman, Ken Martin, was elected in February, it has continued during his tenure.

The total tally in post-election bills that the D.N.C. has covered so far is $20.5 million, federal records show. While significant, that sum amounted to less than 2 percent of the $1.5 billion that the presidential campaign spent in 15 weeks….

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“The D.N.C.’s New Leader Seeks to Curb Dark Money Influence in 2028 Primaries”

campaign finance, campaigns

NYT:

Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chairman, is taking a symbolic step toward curbing the influence of undisclosed and corporate funds in his party’s 2028 presidential primary, a move that is likely to instigate a broader conversation about the role of big money in Democratic politics.

Mr. Martin’s proposal, which was included in a packet of documents to be sent to D.N.C. members that was obtained by The New York Times, seeks to have a new reforms committee propose “real, enforceable steps the D.N.C. can take to eliminate unlimited corporate and dark money in its 2028 presidential primary process” by the summer of 2026.

The move is the first significant maneuver from Mr. Martin to shape the party’s next presidential nominating process. How much bite the effort has will be determined in large part by the enforcement mechanism the party seeks to implement.

Efforts to curb the influence of super PACs, which can take in unlimited contributions but must disclose their donors, in the 2020 Democratic primaries failed when the party’s leading candidates — from Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Elizabeth Warren — accepted and encouraged support from such outside groups….

It is unclear how the D.N.C. could enforce possible penalties against candidates who have support from outside groups with whom they may not be coordinating. Or whether, as President Trump and Republicans are moving to curb Democrats’ ability to regain power in 2026 and beyond, the party is willing to repel progressive donors who are willing to give unlimited amounts of money….

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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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“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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“The Great Political Money Gap; When it comes to attracting mega-donors, Republicans are crushing Democrats.”

campaign finance, campaigns

NYT:

There are many signs that the Democratic and Republican Parties are in different places. Here’s one: The main Republican presidential super PAC controls almost $200 million. The main Democratic presidential super PAC is still repaying millions of dollars it accepted from someone who is now a convicted felon.

Such is the state of big-dollar political fund-raising, as last night’s filings with the Federal Election Commission made clear. When it comes to attracting mega-donors, Republicans are crushing Democrats. That could mean a lot more ads for conservatives than for liberals in next year’s midterm elections.

MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, collected about $177 million in the first half of 2025, in large part from cryptocurrency interests eager to curry favor with Trump.

The corresponding group for Democrats, Future Forward, had a slightly different tie to crypto: It spent the last six months disbursing $3.4 million to what is known as the FTX Recovery Trust, repaying money it had accepted during the 2022 election cycle from crypto-exchange executives like Sam Bankman-Fried. (Last year, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of stealing billions of dollars from his customers.)…

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“Top Biden Aide Had $4 Million Incentive to Secure a 2024 Win”

campaigns

NYT:

Mike Donilon, the longtime strategist and confidant for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., told congressional investigators Thursday that he would have received a $4 million bonus had Mr. Biden won re-election last year.

That shows how Mr. Donilon held a financial interest in Mr. Biden’s remaining in the presidential race, all while Mr. Donilon was part of a very small inner circle of aides who kept damaging information from Mr. Biden. Mr. Donilon had also warned him that his “biggest issue is the perception of age.”

The admission from Mr. Donilon, revealed by a person briefed on his testimony who also confirmed that Mr. Donilon said he was paid $4 million for his work on the campaign, came during testimony before a House Republican-led Oversight Committee investigation into Mr. Biden’s mental acuity during his term in office. It was earlier reported by Axios.

Mr. Donilon was among the Biden aides who resisted calls for him to end his re-election campaign even after a debate performance that prompted a swell of opposition from within the Democratic Party. As recently as March, well after Mr. Biden left office, Mr. Donilon told The Harvard Political Review that Mr. Biden should have remained in the race and could still serve as president. “I still think he’s the best person to be president today,” Mr. Donilon said then….

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“Elon Musk gave Trump and the GOP $15M even as he was fighting with the president”

campaign finance, campaigns

Politico:

Elon Musk gave $5 million to Donald Trump’s super PAC during a dramatic and bitter falling out with the president, new filings show.

The donation to MAGA Inc. was made a month after Musk said he had “done enough” political spending, and he also gave $10 million that same day to help Republicans keep control of Congress.

The contributions came weeks into Musk’s public feud with Trump, as the tech billionaire was slamming Republicans for voting for the megabill that he argued would blow up the deficit. Still, the SpaceX CEO donated $5 million each to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Senate Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc. on June 27, according to the groups’ filings with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. Those are the top super PACs supporting the House and Senate Republicans and the Trump political operation.

The next week, the world’s richest man said he would start his own political party.

Musk, who spent $290 million of his own money to boost Trump and other Republicans last year, led the cost-cutting efforts of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the first few months of the Trump administration. When he left that role in May, he also suggested he was done with political giving for the time being: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I don’t currently see a reason,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum.

The $5 million donation to the Trump-linked super PAC MAGA Inc. came weeks after Musk had torched Trump on social media, first over policy differences surrounding the president’s megabill, but also in escalating personal attacks. Musk later deleted some posts, but resumed his criticism of Trump, including his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, in July….

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“Trump, Term-Limited, Amasses $200 Million War Chest for Political Ambitions”

authoritarian threats in US, campaign finance, campaigns

NYT:

President Trump’s super PAC is sitting on about $200 million that it can spend against his rivals, giving a term-limited president a never-before-seen amount of power in his party’s finances and future.

In the first half of 2025, Mr. Trump’s group, MAGA Inc., collected about $177 million from the likes of Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s erstwhile ally, the TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass and the Silicon Valley executives Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, according to a filing on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.

Mr. Trump has been able to capitalize on a thirst from corporate America to get into his good graces. He held a half-dozen fund-raisers for his super PAC this year with tickets costing seven figures a seat. At the dinners, often held at one of Mr. Trump’s properties, executives and lobbyists had the chance to tell the president about their businesses.

The super PAC’s exact cash on hand is $196.1 million, according to the filing.

There is no precedent for politicians so aggressively raising money for their own entities when they do not have a campaign to use it for. In the first half of 2013, a similar political group supporting a term-limited Barack Obama, Priorities USA, raised just $356,000. As of that June, it held $3.4 million, less than 2 percent of the cash on hand of Mr. Trump’s super PAC.

The money raised by MAGA Inc. during the first six months of the year is almost twice the amount collected by the Republican National Committee, which is subject to contribution limits. Mr. Yass donated $16 million to the super PAC and Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Andreessen combined to donate an additional $11 million. His group also collected several seven-figure contributions from crypto companies, an industry that Mr. Trump has embraced, and $5 million from a crypto entity co-founded by the OpenAI chief Sam Altman.

That Mr. Trump is raising so much money for his group has confounded some Republicans.

Some of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters have argued that he should try to run for a third term, despite it being unconstitutional. Mr. Trump’s aides have argued that he would be foolish not to accept money that is essentially for the taking, and that the assets can be used to target Mr. Trump’s rivals, beginning with Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican whom MAGA Inc. is attacking. Mr. Massie broke with Mr. Trump on the president’s decision to bomb Iran and on his domestic bill.

With a $200 million war chest, MAGA Inc. figures to be a big part of Republican primaries, making Mr. Trump’s endorsements in those races all the more important. The money is sure to be spent on advertising to back Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates….

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“Old money: Campaign finance and gerontocracy in the United States”

campaign finance, campaigns

Adam Bonica and Jacob Grumbach have written this article for the Journal of Public Economics. Here is the abstract:

Politicians in the United States rank among the oldest globally. This study examines how money in politics contributes to age inequality in political representation. Using record-linkage to construct a novel data set combining the ages of voters, donors, and candidates, we find that the median dollar in US elections comes from a 66-year-old — significantly older than the median voter, candidate, or elected official. Results from within-district and within-donor analyses confirm that age proximity with candidates increases contributions on the extensive and intensive margins. Finally, we simulate candidate fundraising by age under a hypothetical campaign finance voucher policy.

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