#Super PACs

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Keeley at NCRM:

Drag queens unite! Drag PAC is looking to challenge anti-trans laws and drag bans around the country.

It was founded by a number of RuPaul’s Drag Race alums, including Willam Belli, Jinkx Monsoon, Miss Peppermint, Monét X Change and BenDeLaCreme, as well as Dylan Bulkeley-Krane, according to The Hill and KFOX-TV. Bulkeley-Krane previously co-founded Disability Action for America, a PAC dedicated to disability rights. Drag PAC announced its existence Wednesday in a new YouTube video, where the queens involved spoke about why they were driven to found it. [...] The queens say that Drag PAC is the first PAC to be led by drag performers. The goal is to “motivate the LGBTQ+ voter base to create a community of empowered and informed citizens that participate in the democratic process, amplifying the values and issues that affect them as unique but equal American citizens,” according to the PAC’s YouTube page. Right now, the PAC’s website is sparse, with the YouTube video, plus links to register to vote and to donate. The PAC has so far raised $15,000 from individuals, according to Open Secrets.

A first in drag politics: drag performer-led Drag PAC is being formed to fight for drag rights as a result of the anti-drag extremism enacted by right-wing government entities, such as drag bans.

The right-wing war on drag is part of the broader war on LGBTQ+ rights and gender nonconforming expressions in public.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: “Drag Race” alumni form historic first-ever PAC led by famous queens

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As of December 2023, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has received 59 allegations that Donald Trump or his committees violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. In 29 of those cases, nonpartisan staff in the FEC’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) recommended the FEC investigate Trump. Yet not once has a Republican FEC commissioner voted to approve any such investigation or enforcement of the law against Trump.

Democratic Vice Chair Ellen Weintraub pointed this out in her December 5, 2023 statement of reasons after the FEC once again failed to garner the votes to enforce the law against Trump after he allegedly violated the law by illegally soliciting or directing money to a pro-Trump super PAC that spent millions on ads opposing Joe Biden in 2020.

Because at least four of the six FEC Commissioners need to approve any FEC investigation, and because only three of those seats can be filled by Democrats, Republicans hold a veto over the agency’s enforcement and have repeatedly used it to shoot down any recommended enforcement of campaign finance law against Trump—and thus successfully shielded him from accountability over and over. Instead of fostering bipartisanship, the split FEC has often become gridlocked and, in cases involving Trump, its ability to pursue action is constrained by the members of one party.

The FEC’s enabling statute, the Federal Election Campaign Act, specifically subjects the Commission’s non-enforcement to review to prevent it from blocking meritorious enforcement. In June 2018, however, two Republican-appointed judges of the D.C. Circuit—including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh—largely gutted that rule, giving commissioners the authority to block enforcement of the law without judicial review if the commissioners claimed that they did so as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion or under Heckler v. Chaney.

So, in 21 of the 29 cases where the FEC received recommendations to enforce the law against Trump, Republican commissioners justified non-enforcement by invoking prudential or discretionary factors in attempts to circumvent review.

When dismissing the recommendations to investigate Trump—and to kill further inquiries into his actions—the Republican commissioners have at times claimed that the FEC should not take any action because “proceeding further would not be an appropriate use of Commission resources” or that the resources would be “best spent elsewhere.” Trump has even falsely declared that the FEC “dropped” one of its investigations into him “because they found no evidence of problems.” As Commissioner Weintraub wrote in a statement of reasons in November 2023, “the data is clear: At the FEC, Mr. Trump is in a category by himself.”

Unless courts restore their check on partisan vetoes on enforcement, the commissioners will continue to fail to enforce federal campaign finance law against the powerful figures they are trying to protect.

[musingsomae]

sharing info on the #flaming swords /super pacs that are doing amazing work to stop this alarming trend in the U.S. Stay tuned to this tumblr

[lasseling]

Elon Musk Is Pumping $45 Million PER MONTH into Pro-Trump Super PAC

X boss Elon Musk is donating a staggering $45 million per month to a new super political action committee (super PAC) to help re-elect President Donald Trump in November.

[justinssportscorner]

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

Harrison Butker resides at the bottom of the most majestic mountain in the National Football League: the least important player on the most important team. Butker is the placekicker for the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. He is very good at his job, but no matter how many field goals he sends through the uprights, he is the lowest-caste athlete in the locker room, somewhere behind the assistant strength coaches but ahead of the office interns. (Adam Sandler wrote the song “The Lonesome Kicker” for a reason.)

Yet, even though merely a kicker, Butker’s star is on the rise in spaces far from the football field. Looking like the handsome, dashing villain in a World War II film, he is no longer lonesome. Butker has a new home away from football at the right-wing edge of US politics. Earlier this year, Butker “very intentionally,” as he put it, announced his “traditional Catholic” views while delivering a commencement address at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal-arts school in Kansas. Butker chided the women in the audience for their ambition and expressed the trad-Catholic doctrine that their only true happiness would be as a wife and fertile mother. He praised his own wife, Isabella, saying that she would be “the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother” and expressed his joy over the fact that she has embraced “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Butker, true to his predicable anti-LGBTQ views and staunch anti-abortion activism, also criticized “liberal Catholic leaders,” whom he faults with “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” He also attacked the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion” and cried out against “things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media,” which supposedly “all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.” Targeting the male graduates, Butker told them to “be unapologetic in your masculinity,” and to “fight against the cultural emasculation of men.” Happy graduation, everyone!

Butker wants to loudly and proudly spread the belief that the ills of the 21st century are rooted in the resistance of women to get married and “love, honor, and obey” (heavy on the “obey”) their husbands. If this all sounds familiar, it’s the gospel of JD Vance and his contempt for cat-owning single women as well as all women—let’s be real, white women—who don’t see themselves as born to breed. That Butker’s own mother, Dr. Elizabeth Butker, has been a medical physicist at Emory University’s department of radiation oncology since 1988 suggests that he needs less time giving speeches and more time in therapy.

[...]

Butker wants in on this gravy train. He has already garnered headlines for endorsing the insurrectionist cheerer and running enthusiast Senator Josh Hawley, who looks at Butker like Ingrid Bergman stared at Humphrey Bogart. Now, with that friendship in his pocket, he has started a political action committee to encourage Christians to vote for “traditional values.” Its name is UPRIGHT PAC.

[...] Kansas City Chiefs franchise owner Clark Hunt praised Butker for starting the PAC. Hunt’s family has existed in the shadowy right-wing margins of this nation’s politics for generations. (His grandfather the billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt was a white supremacist, and his half-brother Lamar Hunt Jr. is helping to fund the opposition to abortion in Missouri.) [...]

It’s because of Kaepernick’s legacy—and the desire to bury it—that the MAGA GOP is so besotted with Butker. The NFL has traditionally been a cultural space where the right has found comfort, commonality, and votes. Yet there was Donald Trump in 2016 and 2017 calling for NFL boycotts and saying in a Huntsville, Alabama, speech that kneeling players are “sons of bitches” who should be fired. This created confusion among that All-American cross section of men who are NFL fans but also have their nose up Trump’s orange ass. Meanwhile, here is Tim Walz, Mr. Football, running out to the 50-yard-line. In Butker, the hard right—the Christian Zionists braying for the Rapture, the January 6 insurrectionists crying for the freedom to seize the Capitol—finally has a foothold among the NFL players, not just their bosses. Yes, there have always been right-wing players, generations of right-wing Christian quarterbacks, and even more than a few GOP politicians that have come out of the National Football League. But Butker is not just a part of the fellowship of Christian athletes wanting to do Bible study after Wednesday lifts. He sees himself as being in an ideological battle. I have to wonder, though, if he understands the unintended consequences of his political stances so supported by his boss.

Kansas City K Harrison Butker formed a far-right PAC called Upright PAC focused on anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion, and anti-IVF extremism.

[darnellclayton]

Money Talks: Elon Musk Wants Donald Trump To Become President Again

An earlier report about Donald Trump teaming up with Elon Musk The founder of SpaceX, & conquerer CEO of Tesla & X is quietly supporting Donald Trump’s re-election efforts by donating an undisclosed sum of funds to a pro-Trump Political Action Committee (also known as a PAC). Musk has contributed to a low-profile group called America PAC, according to people familiar with the matter, who…

[hezigler]

Elon Musk gets BAD NEWS over Trump-linked scam PAC

Websites where you think you're registering to vote, but you're only giving all your personal information to a Musk funded Trump PAC.

[an-onyx-void]

Jamaal Bowman loses New York primary to pro-Israel George Latimer

[garthnadermemestash]

AOC PAC Money

[kp777]

By Edward Carver

Common Dreams

Aug. 26, 2024

The top 50 contributors "skew Republican" but the list includes donors to both major parties, an analysis from The Washington Post showed.

Just 50 donors have contributed more than $1.5 billion in total to the 2024 federal elections, The Washington Postreported Monday, based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

The Post's top 50 list, which includes contributions reported by August 20, is comprised mainly of individual megadonors but also includes some organizations. Most of the contributions accounted for in the list have gone to super political action committees (PACs), which can accept unlimited funds from individuals and corporations, thanks to the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that loosened campaign finance law.

Monday's list led critics of the political system to lash out on social media, with one X user arguing that billionaire influence is undemocratic and leads to policies that hurt the working class, and another positing that it showed "capitalists bankrolling both capitalist parties."

The Post reported that those on the list "skew Republican" and the top several individual donors on the list are in fact Republicans.

The top donor is Timothy Mellon, an 82-year-old billionaire who was heir to a banking fortune and has given $165 million in total this cycle. He contributed $125 million to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) Inc. super PAC, which supports Republican nominee Donald Trump, and $25 million to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s now defunct campaign.

Kennedy withdrew from the presidential race Friday and endorsed Trump. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who's now a a professor and progressive commentator, said the Trump-Kennedy union was no surprise, given that they shared the same "billionaire nepo baby" donor.

Number two on the Post's individual list is Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund manager who's given $75.7 million this cycle, largely to congressional races. The top individual Democratic donor is Michael Bloomberg at $41 million.

The list's top organizational donor is Coinbase, a corporation that hosts a cryptocurrency exchange platform and pushes for deregulation of the industry. Coinbase made an $86 million contribution to the pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake, which spent heavily to influence primaries in both parties. For example, Fairshake spent $2 million to help defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a progressive who was also the target of pro-Israel super PACs.

Coinbase is one of several cryptocurrency organizations on the list, as the industry moves to expand its influence in Washington. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, reportedly has ties to cryptocurrency interests.

Super PACs aren't legally allowed to coordinate their electioneering efforts with campaigns but regularly do so, according to media reports, and in any case can wield great influence by, for example, buying advertising to support—or attack—a candidate. The FEC has also eased coordination rules for canvassing and paid materials.

Progressives have recently amplified their calls for campaign finance reform. Last week, OpenSecrets, a nonprofit campaign finance watchdog, released an analysis showing that super PACs had spent over $1.1 billion on federal elections through August 15, more than half of it on the presidential election.

OpenSecrets said this was roughly double what super PAC spending had been up until the same point in the 2020 cycle. The group found that MAGA Inc. was by far the largest super PAC spender so far this cycle, with about $125 million in outflows.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke forcefully about the need for a better campaign finance system in a speech at the Democratic National Convention last week.

"Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections," he said. "For the sake of our democracy, we must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move toward public funding of elections."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

An Elon Musk Super PAC is allegedly targeting voters in “more than a half-dozen swing states that could determine the outcome of the 2024 election,” harvesting personal data under the guise of helping prospective voters register to vote, according to a CNBC report. After they hand over their personal information, the website says “thank you,” possibly leading them to believe they have registered to vote, when they have not. “If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and zip code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign up section. But for users who enter a zip code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different,” CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reports. “Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cell phone number, and age,” CNBC explains. “If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a ‘thank you’ page.”

CNBC also reports this 15-second video ad is from Musk’s America PAC, and uses video of the Trump assassination attempt to encourage prospective voters to the PAC’s website.

On Musk’s social media site X, Schwartz writes, “Billionaire Elon Musk has created a PAC collecting voter data from those living in key states through an online ‘register to vote’ form that does not directly register people to vote. All of this in an effort to help Donald Trump become president.” Spyware, phishing, and disinformation researcher John Scott-Railton posted what appear to be screenshots of his experience at Musk’s Super PAC site, which he calls “Elon Musk’s America PAC bait-and-switch voter registration page.”

[...] Don Moynihan, McCourt Chair of Public Policy at Georgetown University‘s McCourt School of Public Policy, remarked: “Getting people’s personal information on the promise of helping them to register to vote, and then not helping them to register to vote definitely seems like election fraud. This is what Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC is reportedly doing.”

Right-wing wanker Elon Musk’s America PAC is under scrutiny for data harvesting under the guise of helping prospective voters register to vote.

[wack-ashimself]

For all you stupid Biden teet suckers, let me say one sentence that will finalize this entire mentality. Trump did not commit genocide. It doesn't matter if he could, it doesn't matter if he almost did; he did not. Biden DID commit genocide. Biden is worse than trump. Yes, they're both evil. But trump, combining all of his Decades of work, has literally killed less than biden. By significantly a lot. But the fact that you actually think Trump is more evil when the actions and facts refute you shows how much the stupid mentality of blue no matter who will actually God damn fuck you over too, you morons. Biden's a failure. Trump is a failure. But Biden is worse. This is not a debate. This is based solely on his voting actions since the 90s. Which by the way Trump wasn't even in politics back then. Dumbasses. Throw both of them in jail, do not allow any of those affiliated with those two run, and let's get some actual fresh faces. Maybe if we didn't make running just to get onto the ballot millions of dollars we could actually have decent people in the running. But you don't think about that. Like the Electoral college. Or super pacs. Or lobbying. Or citizens united. All things that determine the president more than your fucking vote does. But again don't think about that. Cuz it's easier not to think isn't it? Because if you had to think, ACTUALLY THINK, you would have to admit basically your votes never mattered, you did vote for the lesser of two evils but that's still endorsing evil pushing us closer to evil more each time, and now we have a genocide of an entire people due to a democratic president. Blood is on your hands. That's why you want it ignored. Cuz you can't find the fucking soap...(hint there isn't strong enough soap to clean away the sins you have ignored)

[megslay]

Gotta vent for a min! 😤 House Rep. Katie Porter ran to be CA's next senator. Her opponent was backed by corporate interests and they spent a sh!t TON of money to make Porter look BAD. Anyway, she said the election was "rigged" on Threads.

Well, well, well... pearl clutching neo-liberal mayo sapiens are having a MELTDOWN 🌋 and comparing her to Trump for stating the TRUTH.

Like, I was CRINGING 😬 because are they honestly that oblivious? Had to copy/paste this as a reply until Threads told me to cool it:

"She's correct though. Thanks to Citizens United, politics is rigged by corporate interests. It allows unlimited spending by corporations on political campaigns, which effectively amplifies their voice over yours. You should be upset at the state of politics, not Katie speaking truth to power."

Like, LAWD 🙏. Do voters NOT look into who is FUNDING 🤑 candidates before voting for them? Do they NOT KNOW about Citizens United?!?? Do they think it's "normal" and "okay" 👌 for billionaires and corporations to have more power than the people??? The lack of CRITICAL THINKING and COMMON SENSE is WILD. 😭

We have to overturn Citizens United ASAP!!!

[worldwatcher3072]

"We The People" Are Supposed To Have The Power, But Do We Really?

As Americans, we are taught from a young age that we live in a democracy where "we the people" have the power to elect our leaders and shape the policies that govern our lives. But recent events have raised questions about whether that power truly resides with the people or if it has been usurped by wealthy interests and political elites.

The rise of Super PACs and dark money in politics has allowed corporations and wealthy donors to wield enormous influence over our elected officials and the policy decisions they make. The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in our elections, effectively giving corporations the same rights as individual citizens when it comes to political speech.

As a result, we have seen the rise of a political class that is more responsive to the interests of big donors than to the needs of ordinary citizens. This has fueled widespread cynicism and distrust in our political system, as many people feel like their voices are not being heard and their votes do not matter.

But there are signs of hope. Grassroots movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Women's March have mobilized millions of people to demand change and hold our leaders accountable. These movements have demonstrated the power of ordinary citizens to effect change and challenge the status quo.

The upcoming elections will be a test of whether the power truly resides with the people or if it has been completely captured by special interests. We must continue to demand transparency, accountability, and a level playing field for all citizens in our democracy. Only then can we truly say that we the people have the power to shape our collective future.

[gwydionmisha]

I don't understand how this is legal.