Tag: superpacs

BUSTED: Gavin Newsom’s New Book is a Best Seller Because His Own Political Action Committee Spent $1.5 Million Buying Thousands of Copies

Everything about California Governor Gavin Newsom is fake. Even the numbers on his book sales.

His new book is being touted by his allies as a best seller, but the main reason it’s selling so well is because his own political action committee has spent upwards of $1.5 million buying thousands of copies of it.

That’s one way to get on the New York Times best seller list. It’s not honest, but it’ll probably work.

Not a single thing about this man is genuine.

FOX News reports:

Newsom PAC bought thousands of memoir copies about his hardships, juicing sales

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political action committee spent more than $1.5 million buying thousands of copies of his new memoir — accounting for about two-thirds of all copies sold nationwide — according to campaign finance filings.

The PAC spending helped propel Newsom’s memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” onto the New York Times bestseller list and is raising new scrutiny as his national profile builds ahead of a possible 2028 presidential run.

In November, the Campaign for Democracy Committee launched a book campaign asking donors to contribute any amount to the PAC to receive the memoir when it was released on Feb. 24. Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click told the New York Times that the PAC bought about 67,000 copies—representing a substantial portion of the 97,400 total sold.

“We were thrilled with the response,” Click told the New York Times. “Our goal was to deepen the relationship between him and the millions of folks who have already expressed support for Governor Newsom’s work.”

The PAC made two payments totaling over $1.5 million to Porchlight Book Company, according to a FEC filing posted on Wednesday and reviewed by Fox News Digital.

Newsom probably sees nothing wrong with this. He is a member of the same party that busses in paid supporters for rallies and [rotests, after all.

Will Democrats really nominate this faker in 2028?

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DNC panel rejects AIPAC-specific resolution, advances broader measure condemning dark money

A Democratic National Committee (DNC) panel voted on Thursday to reject a resolution condemning “the growing influence” of dark money and corporate-backed outside spending in Democratic races, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). 

At the DNC’s spring meeting in New Orleans this week, the resolutions committee voted to kill the push, which would have been nonbinding, as scrutiny over the pro-Israel lobby grows amid the midterms. 

“The use of massive outside spending to support or oppose candidates based on their positions regarding international conflicts or foreign governments raises concerns about undue influence over democratic debate and policymaking, potentially constraining elected officials’ ability to represent the views of their constituents,” reads the resolution, submitted by Florida DNC member Allison Minnerly, pointing out AIPAC in particular for spending some $14 million in the Illinois Democratic primaries last month. 

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), who was once an AIPAC donor, condemned the group after the primaries — joining a growing number of Democrats once supportive of AIPAC who have turned on the political powerhouse over its involvement in elections this year. 

While the panel on Thursday voted to recommend a broader resolution condemning the influence of dark money in the 2026 Democratic primary elections, it did not specifically call for AIPAC contributions to be rejected, though the attitude was largely implied. 

The resolution calls for “robust” campaign finance transparency and says the DNC “reaffirms its commitment to campaign finance practices that align with the Party’s core values.” It further adds that the aspects of the resolution “shall inform the development of the 2028 Democratic Party Platform.”

The AIPAC resolution’s failure to advance out of the DNC committee shows that while there is an appetite within the party to take a more forceful stance against the organization — an influential pro-Israel group whose opposition against conditions on aid to Israel has made it more divisive in races more recently — it’s not one that many DNC members are comfortable standing behind. 

The DNC resolution panel’s rejection of the resolution means it will not go before the full body for a final vote on Friday. Still, AIPAC remains a wedge issue for the party.

Some political groups cheered the resolutions panel’s decision to reject the resolution.

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AI Influencing Elections: Anthropic Forms PAC Leading into Midterms as It Fights Trump Administration

AI company Anthropic, currently locked in a legal war with the Trump Administration, has filed paperwork to create a new corporate political action committee, claiming that “AnthroPAC” will make bipartisan donations to candidates. This was met with skepticism from conservatives who point out that 99 percent of the company’s past donations have gone to leftists.

The Hill reports that Anthropic submitted a statement of organization on Friday to form AnthroPAC, marking the AI company’s first employee-funded political action committee. The PAC will be financed exclusively through voluntary contributions from Anthropic employees, following a model commonly used by technology companies to participate in electoral politics.

According to information obtained by the Hill, the PAC is designed to operate on a bipartisan basis, with plans to distribute contributions to candidates across both major political parties. The committee will be managed by a supposedly bipartisan board of directors to oversee its activities and donation decisions.

Despite the stated bipartisan intent, several figures aligned with President Trump expressed doubt on Friday about whether the PAC would genuinely support candidates from both parties. Their skepticism stems from Anthropic’s contentious relationship with the Trump administration and the company’s previous political donations, which have been essentially all to Democratic candidates.

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The Shift: The Democratic Party battle over AIPAC heats up

A Democratic National Committee member says she will introduce a resolution rejecting AIPAC spending at this month’s DNC meeting.

“At a time when Democratic voters might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict, this could be one step toward bringing those voters back into the party,” the committee member, Allison Minnerly, told The Intercept’s Matt Sledge.

“Given the recent primaries in Illinois, but also what we’ve seen across the country, I think it’s important that we specify that AIPAC as a growing force in our primaries needs to be specifically addressed when we talk about dark money,” she added.

If Minnerly’s name rings a bell, it might be because she introduced Resolution 18 last year. It called for a ceasefire in Gaza, suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, and recognition of Palestinian statehood. Her effort was ultimately watered down, then unceremoniously dismissed at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minnesota.

“The fight over Resolution 18 was more than a simple vote over a symbolic resolution. The story shows how the Israel lobby is doing all it can to prevent Democratic Party leadership from honoring the overwhelming will of party members. It also is a harbinger of fights to come, as support for Palestine only continues to grow in the party in reaction to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” wrote Nadia Ahmad at Mondoweiss at the time.

The same is true this time around.

The new resolution is also symbolic, but it gets Democrats on the record regarding a lobbying group that has already become a hot-button issue among presidential hopefuls.

One such example is Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who is attempting to distance himself from past AIPAC connections based on the direction of the political winds.

“It became an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump,” Pritzker declared after the group spent heavily in Illinois’s recent primaries. “AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.”

A spokesperson for the Governor reiterated that Pritzker “withdrew his support” from the group after it “became a pro-Trump organization.”

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Developing: Democrat Fundraising Juggernaut ActBlue Likely Lied to Congress About Foreign Donations

In early 2025, the law firm, Covington & Burling out of Washington DC, raised legal concerns that ActBlue’s CEO lied to GOP investigators in a 2023 letter explaining how the organization vetted donations to ensure that they were not illegally coming from foreign citizens.

This shocking development was published in The New York Times this week.

Laura Ingraham and Chip Roy discussed this latest ActBlue scandal on Thursday night.

** The Gateway Pundit Was First to Report on Democrat Money Laundering Using ActBlue – President Trump Called for an Investigation – The Seditious Six Now Implicated

In early December 2022, after the 2022 election, we were the first to report on what we labeled “voter mules”. These were individuals who made sometimes thousands of donations to Democrat politicians across the country, totaling up to millions of fraudulent donations. “Preacher” Raphael Warnock received $24 million from hundreds of unemployed donors, giving over 358,000 donations.

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AIPAC suffers loss in congressional race, millions of dollars squandered helping Chicago mayor’s ally

Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.

Some of the groups’ investments paid off.

For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering “his campaign on attacking Israel.”

However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.

With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.

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Caught in Broad Daylight: Ballot Initiative Signature-Gatherers in California Paying For Signatures – Backed by Billionaire PAC

On Monday, street videographer JJ Smith captured on camera what appears to be election crimes in San Francisco, California.  In broad daylight.

The video shows a line of people at the corner of 6th Street and Mission Street in the SoMa neighborhood, soliciting signatures on Monday afternoon.

The clip begins with Smith walking up on the line with a sign that reads, “Can you read & Write?  Sign Petition for $5.”

Smith asks a man in the line, “What’s the line for?”  He responds that they’re “giving five bucks to sign a petition.”

When Smith asks the two women seated at the table, “I get $5 too?”  She replies, “Yeah.”

“What is it?” he asks.

The woman responds, “Just sign it.”

The woman can then be seen highlighting a paper for another woman in the line but off camera.

“First name is going to be Carol, last name Sanderson.  This is the address right here.  This is the city, Avila Beach, and this is the zip code,” she tells the woman.  As the woman takes the paper and pen to sign it, the worker says, “So remember, first name is ‘Carol’”.

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AIPAC Coordinates Donors in Illinois House Primaries

With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.

The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.

AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC. The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.

The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.

Campaign staffers expect AIPAC to continue using the tactic in this year’s primaries. “In these districts where we have a progressive primary fight, you’re going to see AIPAC put out a network of shell PACs, putting money into races without putting their name on it,” said Usamah Andrabi of the progressive campaign group Justice Democrats.

And indeed, the same pattern is emerging in three competitive House primaries in Illinois. The pieces of the puzzle can be found in the campaign disclosures of House candidates Laura Fine, a state legislator running in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District for the open seat vacated by Rep. Jan Schakowsky on the North Side of Chicago and its northern suburbs; Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner running in Illinois’s Second District to replace Rep. Robin Kelly on Chicago’s South Side and southern suburbs; and Melissa Bean, a banker and former member of Congress making a comeback in Illinois’s Eighth District in the western suburbs of Chicago. Bean is also running for an open seat to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who like Kelly is running for Senate.

Putting the pieces together, it is clear that AIPAC is again funding super PACs in order to secretly funnel money to its preferred candidates, while also coordinating donors to give to those candidates directly.

Miller is running in a race that features an attempted political comeback by Jesse Jackson Jr., and Fine is squaring off against progressive Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, who became a national figure after she was indicted by the Trump Justice Department for her role in anti-ICE protests. Bean is facing Junaid Ahmed, who supports ending all military aid to Israel.

A look at Miller, Fine, and Bean’s filings betrays an impressively coordinated operation at work. Sixty-five donors who previously gave to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP) have given to both Miller and Fine. These donors delivered $88,066.66 to the Fine campaign. They also contributed $119,746.33 to Miller. A whopping 237 former AIPAC/UDP donors have given to both Miller and Bean, contributing $396,288.01 to Bean and $429,083.00 to Miller. Forty-four of these donors have given to all three candidates, sending a total of $208,753.33 to them.

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Super PAC Targeting Massie Funded By Three Israel-Backing Billionaires

Though it sports a Kentucky- and MAGA-branded name, the new Super PAC launched solely to support a primary challenge against popular Republican Congressman Thomas Massie is funded entirely by three Israel-backing billionaires from Nevada, New York and Florida, according to disclosure filings posted on Thursday. 

The super PAC was launched in June, just days after President Trump threw a social media tantrum over Massie’s condemnation of Trump’s commitment of US forces to Israel’s war on Iran. Massie has long been a thorn in Trump’s side on domestic issues too, from opposing the $2 trillion, Trump-backed Covid-19 “relief package” in 2020 to voting against this year’s Big Beautiful Bill. However, Massie’s opposition to US involvement in Israel’s war seemed to have been the last straw. Trump assigned his top political operatives Tony Fabrizio and Chris LaCivita to start and run the super PAC. LaCivita told Axios the entity will spend “whatever it takes” to oust Massie.

The PAC’s only three donors have two things in common: they’re billionaires, and they’re ardent supporters of Israel. According to the PAC’s first funding disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, it has received:

  • $1 million from New Yorker hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who has also funded a Israel-favoring US think tank and other pro-Israel organizations, and urged Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal 
  • $250,000 from Floridian hedge fund manager John Paulson
  • $750,000 from the Preserve America Super PAC, which has also been led by La Civita and primarily funded by Nevadan Miriam Adelson and earlier, her late husband Sheldon Adelson

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David Hogg’s PAC Accused of Spending Millions on Consultants While Candidates They Back Keep Coming Up Short

Brace yourself for this. It turns out that Democrat anti-gun activist David Hogg might be little more than a grifter.

After being tossed out of the DNC where he served as vice chair for a matter of weeks, Hogg decided to focus on his political PAC. Their goal was to elect younger and more progressive Democrats. That’s not working out too well.

It turns out, the PAC is much better at lining the pockets of consultants. They also reportedly spent a lot of cash on frivolous things like fitness classes.

Hogg’s short-lived pillow company was more fiscally sound than this.

FOX News reports:

David Hogg’s PAC spent millions on consultants, ads and fitness classes, records show: report

Despite pledging to spend $20 million to back younger, more progressive candidates, a PAC led by Democratic activist David Hogg has spent millions of dollars on political consultants, ads and even fitness classes.

The PAC, Leaders We Deserve, spent just $455,000 to back three candidates in tough Democratic primary races over the first eight months of 2025, Axios reported.

That figure stands in contrast to the roughly $2.5 million spent on consultants, $1.1 million on digital ads, $965,000 on building donor lists and nearly $5,000 on the fitness class subscription service ClassPass, according to federal campaign filings.

“We provide a wellness benefit to our employees, like many employers across the country,” Kevin Lata, co-founder and executive director of Leaders We Deserve, told Axios. “Our projections show that every $1 we put into these investments will net $3-$5 by the end of the cycle. This helps to make sure every donation goes farther than it otherwise would.”

Even the liberal media is noticing.

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