Tag: politics

Pharma Spent Record $456.9 Million Last Year on Lobbying — With No Signs of Slowing Down

Big Pharma set a new record for lobbying spending in 2025 — and 2026 is shaping up to be another year of big spending, as the industry seeks to influence U.S. healthcare policy.

The pharmaceutical and health industry combined spent $456.9 million on lobbying expenses in 2025, according to OpenSecrets, up 16.7% from 2024. According to The Boston Globe (citing STAT), it was the largest-ever single-year increase in lobbying spending.

This spending was part of what OpenSecrets called a “record” $868 million in lobbying outlays by the healthcare sector in 2025.

Big Pharma’s leading trade group — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) — led the way, spending nearly $38 million on lobbying last year, a 22% increase from 2024, according to Politico. PhRMA was joined by “nine of the 13 U.S. drugmakers on the Fortune 500,” who reported “their highest spending in at least a decade” on lobbying.

There are no signs of a slowdown. OpenSecrets data show the pharmaceutical industry has reported $245.7 million in lobbying expenses so far this year, part of the $459.3 million the health sector overall has spent in 2026.

PhRMA spent a reported $19.8 million in lobbying expenses in 2026, ranking third among business and trade organizations this year — a position it also held in 2025, when it spent $38.19 million.

Among drugmakers, Eli Lilly has spent over $7 million on lobbying this year. Pfizer has spent $6.62 million, and Merck has spent $6.58 million.

According to OpenSecrets, PhRMA’s record spending bucked the overall trend, in which “some of Washington’s biggest spenders, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors, cut back from their 2024 lobbying expenditures.”

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Abdul El-Sayed Top Staffer Quits Campaign—Shares Disturbing Truth About “Manufactured Man”–“Pushed multiple staff to tears”–“Immature”–“Cartoonishly fake masculinity” and “Loves to fart in public”

Jordan Domingue, a top staffer who worked two of Abdul El-Sayed’s campaigns has quit the Democrat’s U.S. Senate race and is now talking. What he describes is a candidate who has faked his way through public life, right down to the “physician” title. This is a lengthy article, but every American needs to understand, from an insiders perspective, how dangerous this man would be if elected to the U.S. Senate.

In a post on X, Jordan Domingue outlines his decision to defect from Abdul’s campaign after working first on his failed gubernatorial campaign and again on his current Senate campaign.

“His foreign policy was driven by a desire to invoke what seemed like misplaced revenge.”

I protected Abdul for two years, I worked as his personal assistant/executive protection lead on his campaigns. I departed two jobs early from working abroad, moved to Michigan twice, and took paycuts averaging 50,000k.

I took his lovely wife to the hospital for visits when she was pregnant. His youngest daughter called me Mr. Jorjan. I painted him an original piece of artwork for his birthday.

I was happy to do and experience all of this. For his gubernatorial run he never mentioned foreign policy. During his senate run, his foreign policy was driven by a desire to invoke what seemed like misplaced revenge.

When I finally realized he didn’t actually care about civilians and peace, everything I had previously ignored or excused made it obvious to who he was and that I was on the wrong side.

Jordan Domingue’s profile on X reads more like that of a Republican: USMC Combat Veteran – International Security Professional – Bjj Brown Belt – Lockheed Liberal – Anti DSA – Democratic Field Organizer – Rugged Individual

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The American Public Has Turned on Israel. Washington Doesn’t Care.

For decades, American support for Israel was a bipartisan consensus. It was believed that only fringe figures, kooks, or antisemites would question the close bond between the two nations, and that this was a relationship forged on the grounds of mutual geopolitical interests.

Well, after years of Israel conducting a mass slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza, and after having successfully convinced President Donald Trump to launch a disastrous war in Iran, American public opinion has taken a turn. According to a Marquette Law School survey from September 2026, 59 percent of American adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to only 29 percent who say they have a favorable view of the country. This is a shocking collapse from where Israel’s support was just years ago.

The policy emanating from the U.S. government, however, has not reflected this change. In fact, our political leaders and media figures have decided that now is the time to showcase their undying loyalty to Israel in a very transparent fashion.

On September 29, the Senate voted on a resolution introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), that sought to force the State Department to report to Congress on the killing of U.S. citizens by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The resolution was rejected with a 47-51 vote, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) being the only member of the GOP to buck party lines and support the resolution.

Besides Paul, every Senate Republican – as well as Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) – voted against transparency on the issue of American citizens being killed overseas by violent settlers. What could the possible justification be for such a vote?

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), who voted “nay”, claims that the resolution was “another cynical ploy by Democrats to isolate our closest ally in the region.”

Not really a substantive rationale for opposing transparency on American civilians being attacked and killed abroad.

The GOP isn’t the only place where loyalty to Israel remains unshaken. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, has again made statements that, at first glance, seem almost comically deranged.

In a recent virtual appearance at the “Pray Vote Stand Summit,” Huckabee was asked to identify the greatest threat facing Israel (as if that should be the primary concern of a U.S. official). He responded by saying that Israel’s most pressing danger does not come from a regional enemy, but from the collapse in support among the American populace.

“I think the greatest threat to Israel,” Huckabee explained, “is that they would be abandoned by those who should be their natural allies. Let me begin with the United States. We get more from Israel than we give to Israel, but most Americans don’t know it.”

“What I’m seeing happen in Europe, their turning against Israel and against the Jewish people,” Huckabee added. “This is setting up for a real challenge and a conflict not between countries, but between heaven and hell, light and darkness, truth and lies.”

“Some of the nations… have created for themselves a disastrous future by saying, yeah, we’re going to curse Israel. Well, based on Genesis 12, I don’t recommend it.”

Huckabee is implying here that by withholding support for Israel, European nations – and those who would do the same in America – have enacted a curse upon themselves and their countries. Huckabee’s position, therefore, is that we can never withdraw support for Israel, regardless of whether or not it’s in our nation’s interests. In doing so, he fears, we would be sentencing ourselves to hell.

Huckabee has articulated this stance before, so it comes as little surprise that he would make such an outlandish statement. Yet one can’t help but be startled by the fact that this man – delusions and all – is a government official.

A core source of Israeli influence is the neoconservative media. A cast of pro-Israel characters have been busy over the last few years doing damage control, attempting to reverse the draining of American support for Israel.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), is one of the most prominent advocates for a close U.S.-Israel relationship. He published an article in FDD on September 6 discussing the risk of Israel becoming financially isolated on the global stage. In his piece, he gave the Israeli government advice on how to prepare for such a scenario. One of his recommendations was deeply concerning:

“Israel and the United States should deepen their military, technological, intelligence and economic integration,” Dubowitz said, “to such an extent that inflicting financial harm on Israel would also carry a significant cost for Washington.”

Dubowitz went on to reiterate this message, saying in an interview later that month that Israel has “got to make the relationship deeper.”

“You’ve got to make Israel so valuable… that weaponizing that financial relationship against Israel is going to impose costs on the United States.”

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Schumer says he won’t quit as Dem Senate leader post-midterms, warns GOP may ‘steal the election’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is adamant that he will remain in charge of upper chamber Democrats following next month’s midterms — and has issued an inflammatory warning that Republicans could attempt to “steal the election.”

“I am running for re-election for leader,” Schumer insisted to Politico in an interview published Wednesday. “Period.”

The Brooklyn native, 75, added that Democrats are “totally unified” and have the “edge” in their battle to regain the Senate after two years in the minority.

“It’s 50-50. We’re right on the edge of winning. Two things could have us lose. One, they steal the election,” Schumer told Semafor in a separate interview, also published Wednesday.

“The second thing is money. They have obscene amounts of money,” he continued. “All we need is enough to be able to answer the s— they’re going to throw at us, and we’re doing well there.”

A rep for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request to clarify the senator’s “steal the election” comment.

The Republican National Committee currently has about $126 million cash on hand, compared to the Democratic National Committee’s $16.9 million cash on hand and $17.6 million debt.

“Here’s how I sum up the election in one sentence: Can an enormous Republican advantage in dollars defeat an enormous Democratic advantage in candidates and in political climate?” Schumer added to Semafor. “I think we win.”

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Trump DOJ Opens Investigation Into Texas Democrat PAC After Operative Caught on Tape Bragging About a “Roundabout” Way of “Paying People” for Votes

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Texas Majority PAC after a viral undercover video showed a since-fired organizing manager spelling out what he called a “roundabout way of paying people for their votes” ahead of the midterms.

A source familiar confirmed the probe on Wednesday. The investigation was first reported by Fox News Digital, which said two sources familiar with the matter confirmed the department is looking at the Democrat operation that dumps millions into flipping Texas blue.

The footage that forced the feds’ hand was released by Townhall on September 16. Sky McAdams, then an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, sat down with an undercover journalist and walked through the loophole he said the group uses to skirt federal election law while boosting Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico.

“We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things,” McAdams said on the tape. “So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.”

He did not stop there. McAdams told the undercover reporter you cannot hand someone cash and say, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” What you can do, he said, is pay them to sit through a class. “And then the class just talks about the importance of… It’s a little gray.”

He named the program. “It’s called the Paid Relational Program.” He added that he thought “Rally Texas” was the official name. Then he said the quiet part out loud: “If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f**k.”

The Gateway Pundit reported the tape the day it dropped. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Talarico is trying to beat, did not mince words.

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Hilton Mocks Becerra for Saying Tax Breaks for Those Earning Under $150K Benefit ‘the Wealthiest’

Democrat California gubernatorial hopeful Xavier Becerra started his CNN debate by claiming that his Republican opponent, Steve Hilton, supports tax breaks for the “wealthiest” Californians. Hilton immediately pointed out that the tax breaks will actually benefit people who earn under $150,000 a year.

One of the key points to take away from the debate interchange below, besides the fact that Democrats are going to have to cheat egregiously to boost an obviously sour and disconnected Becerra, is that Democrats are never content with targeting billionaires. All those deluded taxpayers who think they will vote for higher taxes on the wealthy should remember that Democrats’ definition of “the wealthy” is pretty much anyone who earns a good enough salary to be independent of government assistance and government programs.

Becerra lectured at the Wednesday debate, “If you start making tax breaks for the wealthiest, you damage our working families like my parents, Mr. Hilton.” Grinning, Hilton shot back, “I love the way that Xavier says the wealthiest are people who are earning less than $150,000 a year, struggling. But first of all, I just want to say thank you to CNN for bringing Xavier out of hiding. He’s barely been seen in public since the primary, four months ago.”

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Battleground Democrats Are Snubbing Two 2028 Presidential Contenders

Democratic candidates in several of this fall’s most competitive House and Senate races are keeping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Vice President Kamala Harris off their campaign trails – even though both women rank among the party’s leading prospects for the 2028 presidential nomination.

The Democratic bench for 2028 includes Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Two of those six are women of color, from the demographic the party has spent a decade calling its moral center and its electoral future. Both now sit on the do-not-call list in the districts that will decide control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

According to an Axios report, Democrats in several key battlegrounds are keeping Ocasio-Cortez at arm’s length. Party officials say candidates in other close races have told her team outright to stay away. That is an electability problem for a politician whose whole pitch to primary voters is that bold progressivism, including Medicare for All, wins more votes than cautious centrism does.

Candidates in tight races reject that theory today even though they embraced it only months ago in their primaries. Sam Forstag, a progressive House candidate in Montana, rallied with Ocasio-Cortez in May on his way to the Democratic nomination. He has since scrubbed her endorsement from his campaign website.

“The polling is atrocious for her,” a senior Democratic strategist working in a key swing district told Axios. “She’s a lightning rod.”

Her own team offered no evidence to the contrary. When Axios asked whether she had campaigned in person for any of the party’s top House or Senate candidates this cycle, her office could not point to a single one.

Her travel log shows where she is welcome, and it’s clearly not in races that matter. Ocasio-Cortez made stops in Buffalo and Ithaca this week but skipped New York’s competitive 17th District in the lower Hudson Valley. She also stumped for Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon, a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, in a state that has drifted so far red that no serious Democrat expects Nixon to flip the seat. Buttigieg, Kelly and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, by contrast, have all drawn invitations from Democrats in competitive districts and states over the past month.

Kamala Harris is also getting snubbed despite polling the best of any 2028 contender. Last month, The Hill reported that Democrats in the most competitive midterm contests were shutting her out in public. Iowa supplied the most brutal data point. At the Iowa State Fair in August, a reporter asked gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand whether he wanted Harris to campaign for him.

“No thanks,” Sand said. “Let’s move on. We need some new leadership.”

Josh Turek, the party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, got the same question and answered with a smiling “No.” In Alaska, Senate candidate Mary Peltola distanced herself from Harris after Harris’s political operation sent out a fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf without telling her first.

This pattern runs counter to every assumption baked into those primary polls. Harris is a former vice president, the first woman to hold the office, the party’s 2024 nominee and one of its most recognizable faces.

For a party that spent a decade insisting diversity was its destiny, this dynamic carries a certain irony. Democrats built their brand on elevating women of color, and the two women of color on their 2028 bench are getting the cold shoulder.

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Chuck Schumer Orders Democrats to Block Bill That Aims to Force Data Centers to Cover Increased Energy Costs

Senate Democrats are working to short-circuit a bill aimed at protecting consumers from the costs of data centers.

The Ratepayer Protection Act passed the House 417-3 in the 435-member House.

However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opposes the bill, which he called “a fraud,” according to The Hill.

“Americans are demanding real guardrails on AI and data centers, but all the Republicans offer is a toothless messaging bill,” he said Tuesday.

The bill requires 60 votes to pass a procedural hurdle. Although Republicans have a majority in the Senate, it would take Democratic votes to move the bill forward.

Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, who had been the lone Democrat supporting the bill, said he has changed his mind.

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Why Our “Populist Moment” Keeps Failing

Ever since Donald Trump shocked the legacy press, “expert” pollsters, and the political establishment more broadly in November of 2016, we’ve seen endless attempts to explain what was, at the time, seen as a perennial sea change in American politics.

A consensus quickly emerged that pointed to a “populist surge” on the right, driven by rural white voters who were angry about the financial crisis and the political class’s failure to “stem the tide” of illegal immigration. The establishment tried to frame this all in a way that was flattering to themselves. Trump’s popularity, we were told, came from a particularly nasty group of uneducated rural whites who were enraged about having to compete with non-white people and stupid enough to fall for Trump’s lies.

But anyone looking closely could see that that characterization was, at best, a gross and overly narrow simplification. While rural white populations provided a lot (not all) of the votes and fuel for the Trump movement, its ideological thought leaders were largely young men living in or around blue cities, connecting and interacting with each other online.

Also, at the same time, there was a significant populist surge on the left. This was a bipartisan, or even non-partisan, political phenomenon. Establishment Democrats have done a far better job than their Republican counterparts at keeping their populist wing in line—largely thanks to its political leader, Bernie Sanders, who was always willing to roll over and support the establishment candidate when the time came. That said, the success of several “post-woke” democratic socialists in this year’s primaries suggests that establishment Democrats are now also losing control.

So it’s not merely some handful of uneducated rural white voters. There has been a widespread sense, across the political spectrum, that America’s institutions are not merely failing, but are actively working against the interests of everyday Americans. And that is true.

The massive federal government built up in DC over the last century or so was never meant to serve the interests of the American people as a whole. It has always been a tool for enriching the political caste and their well-connected friends in the “private sector.” They’ve done that directly with tax-and-spend programs and indirectly by using rules and regulations that warp entire industries to benefit some well-connected firms already on top.

The political establishment has gone to great lengths to hide their expropriative activities behind deceptive propaganda and fake appeals to the common good. But especially after they’ve taken the opportunity to greatly ramp up their schemes in response to crises of their own making—like the 2008 financial crisis—it became a lot harder to stop people from noticing that, somehow, the elites are ripping them off.

The “populist anger” against the elites that resulted has enabled Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party and fueled an escalating civil war within the Democratic Party that appears to be nearing a similar establishment defeat. And this anger has been the defining feature of American politics for at least ten years now.

What, then, has this populist moment accomplished? What has been done to liberate the American people from our corrupt political class, or at least to meaningfully improve the safety and material well-being of everyday Americans?

The truth is, on nearly all fronts, the results have been abysmal.

Broadly, this populist wave was meant to end the “corruption” in DC—or to stop politicians and bureaucrats from using government to enrich themselves and their friends. It was meant to end the endless series of wars fought to benefit foreign groups and governments along with well-connected firms in the “defense” and energy sectors. And it was meant to reorient the American system from one that serves the interests of corporate giants and financial elites to one that serves small businesses and local communities.

On the right, populists also wanted to stop or reverse the demographic changes resulting from the post-1965 immigration system. And populists on the left wanted to reverse the rising levels of economic inequality.

Over the last decade, every single one of these problems has gotten worse. Why?

There are, of course, plenty of specific mistakes, shortcomings, or outright failures we could examine on all these fronts. But, at the end of the day, all come back to the same fundamental problem: the populist right grew bored with economics.

The truth is, the current wave of anti-establishment, anti-elite political sentiment did not really begin ten years ago with the election of Donald Trump. It began earlier, right in the wake of the financial crisis. There was, of course, the Occupy movement on the left, but that mostly boiled down to calls to send bailouts everywhere in the economy rather than just to the big banks, or even for a full-on socialist revolution. Economic literacy was never at home in that movement.

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New Jersey Democrat Rebecca Bennett Dodges Net Worth Question Three Times Despite Calls for Transparency

New Jersey Democrat congressional candidate Rebecca Bennett repeatedly declined to disclose her net worth during a Sunday debate against incumbent Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), even as she campaigned on removing money from politics and criticized the incumbent over his financial dealings.

Bennett has pledged to “get money out of politics” and accused Kean of lacking transparency with New Jersey voters. During Sunday’s debate, however, a moderator asked her three times about her own net worth without receiving a figure.

“What is your net worth?” the moderator asked.

“I don’t know the exact number. I’m happy to follow up later, but I will say that ultimately, I think what I hear loud and clear from people is that we need to get money out of politics,” Bennett responded.

“I mean, it is deeply corrosive. I think you can draw a line from the Citizens United decision to where we are as a country right now,” she continued. “And so, what I want you all to know is that I am going to work to get dark money out of politics to end Citizens United to make sure I’m not taking any corporate PAC money because I want you all to know that I am doing this to serve all of you, and not to serve any special interests.”

“And I think that’s a clear contrast to my opponent, Congressman Tom Kean Jr. who has traded over $3 million worth of stocks and who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate PAC money,” Bennett added.

“I’m looking just for a number, rough estimate on your net worth,” the moderator pressed.

“My net worth is very similar to what we see of a lot of families around here, you know, it’s that both my husband and I work, and so we are very fortunate that we’ve been able to build the life we want,” Bennett responded.

“I want to just try and get a number. You know, let me see if I can just be more broad. Are you worth over a million dollars?” the moderator asked.

“My, like I said, I’ve been very,” Bennett began before the audience erupted in laughter.

“My husband and I have worked really hard for where we are right now. I was able to go to college on an ROTC scholarship. I used the GI Bill for my MBA, and so ultimately, this is about making sure that we are fighting for the version of the country that we’re going to leave for my daughters and the next generation,” Bennett continued.

Bennett’s refusal to disclose her net worth comes as Kean’s campaign has raised questions about her previous career in the healthcare industry.

“As a health care executive, my opponent set up lucrative deals with companies that put profits over people,” Kean wrote in a September 27 post on X. “Patients deserve leaders who will put their health, safety, and access to quality care first. Not the bottom line.”

Kean also disputed Bennett’s allegations about his stock trading during Sunday’s debate.

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