A new CNN documentary traced the money trail between a small group of Texas billionaires and the state’s far-right political shift — and discovered how two billionaires gave about two-thirds of the Super PAC funding that backed Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) 2016 presidential campaign.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) once demanded “fiscal responsibility” as a 2012 presidential candidate, arguing that America needs a leader prepared to make “tough choices” on spending, Insider reports.

Ten years later, Santorum’s 2012 and 2016 presidential campaign committees both remain deep in debt, owing creditors a combined total of $1 million.

“Donald Trump never stopped raising funds from his supporters after the 2020 presidential race,” Forbes reports.

“His companies, meanwhile, continued to charge his political outfits for goods and services. As a result, the former president has been able to convert about $1.3 million of donor money into business revenue since he lost the 2020 election.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “We’re living through an era of campaign finance abundance, even though most of the prevailing ideas about money in politics come from an era of scarcity. Loosened laws and regulations have brought big new sources of money — some disclosed, some not — into play. Technological change combined with partisan polarization has produced the phenomenon of big little money — millions of dollars raised in small increments, mostly apparently given by party-loyal voters responding to partisan cues.”

“Overall, there’s just a flood of money. Spending on federal elections alone in 2020 more than doubled the previous record; in fact, there was about as much spent on House and Senate campaigns in 2020 as there was spent on House, Senate and presidential elections combined in 2016.”

“What this means is that virtually every serious candidate in a competitive general election for the House of Representatives, Senate, or a governor’s office will be adequately funded.”

“The Supreme Court has boosted high-dollar donors’ abilities to personally enrich candidates — including ones like the wealthy individuals pouring millions into their own campaigns this year — if they prevail on Election Day,” Axios reports.

“The court’s ruling Monday is one more decision bypassing post-Watergate and other campaign finance restrictions.”

“The Federal Election Commission has decided not to take action against former President Donald Trump after commissioners deadlocked over whether his campaign broke the law by masking how it was spending cash during the 2020 campaign,” the AP reports.

New York Times: “The practice is both brazen and breathtakingly simple. To work around the prohibition on directly coordinating with super PACs, candidates are posting their instructions to them inside the red boxes on public pages that super PACs continuously monitor.”

“The boxes highlight the aspects of candidates’ biographies that they want amplified and the skeletons in their opponents’ closets that they want exposed. Then, they add instructions that can be extremely detailed: Steering advertising spending to particular cities or counties, asking for different types of advertising and even slicing who should be targeted by age, gender and ethnicity.”

“A federal judge ordered a special committee to suspend raising campaign money for Gov. Brian Kemp’s reelection bid until the GOP gubernatorial nomination is decided, temporarily eliminating what had been a major advantage Republican lawmakers carved out for him,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

The lawmaker tasked with leading the Indiana House’s budget committee and crafting the multi-billion dollar state budget seems to have misplaced about $30,000 from his campaign account, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports.

“Toyota is once again donating thousands of dollars to Congressional candidates who voted to overturn the 2020 election, in spite of the pledge the company made last year to stop doing so,” Vice News reports.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) “tapped his campaign account for more than $2,300 in costs associated with membership at a private social club in Texas,” Roll Call reports.

“It is illegal to spend campaign funds for personal purposes. The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibits spending on ‘country club memberships’ along with ‘dues and fees for health clubs or recreational facilities.'”

“Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cannot immediately begin raising and spending unlimited campaign contributions under a state law passed last year because she is not yet her party’s nominee,” the AP reports.

“A Canadian steel industry billionaire illegally helped steer $1.75 million in donations to a pro-Trump super PAC and has agreed to pay one of the largest fines ever levied by the Federal Election Commission to settle the case,” the New York Times reports.