“Two Republican super PACs paid nearly $1 million this month to quietly settle an inquiry into whether they illicitly coordinated with the campaign of Lee Zeldin, a member of President Trump’s cabinet, during his 2022 run for governor of New York,” the New York Times reports.

“Texas Democrat James Talarico has built a national profile railing against GOP billionaires in politics — but has quietly accepted funds from a PAC backed by one of the wealthiest donors in the Republican Party,” Politico reports.

“The single biggest donor to Talarico’s state House reelection bid last year was a group funded by casino mogul Miriam Adelson, according to state campaign finance data.”

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.”

Key takeaway: “A single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.”

“The crypto industry has donated more than $26 million to President Trump this year,” Axios reports.

“The massive infusion underscores how Trump and the crypto industry have been cozying up to one another.”

“In late April, the campaign committee of former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema made an odd expenditure, even by contemporary political standards: It dropped $352 at a self-described ‘naturally based wellness provider’ that provides chiropractic, massage and ‘shockwave therapy’ services from a shopping center in Cave Creek, Arizona,” NOTUS reports.

ProPublica: “In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.”

“In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.”

“Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public.”

“In a shot at ActBlue, the left’s major online donation platform, President Donald Trump plans to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections,” Politico reports.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office is expected to be involved in the crackdown, the person said, though further details about the mechanism she will use were not immediately available. The order is expected to specifically target ActBlue, which Republicans have long claimed could be exploited by foreign actors.”

Don Moynihan: “Money is a an aggressive growing tumor at the heart of American democracy. The 2023 Wisconsin state supreme court race cost $56 million, a national record at the time. The 2025 version blasted that out of the water, and could end up costing almost twice that much.”

“To give a sense of out-of-kilter we are, a single state court race saw significantly more spending than the entire United Kingdom national election.”

“When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s failed congressional campaign amended its filings last week — revealing that she appears to have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive donations that she never paid back — the campaign also revealed that it broke another fundamental rule of political fundraising: don’t take money from businesses straight to the bank, NOTUS reports.

“Before spending donations from businesses, campaigns are supposed to do due diligence to make sure the contribution is allowable. But according to years of reprimanding letters from the Federal Election Commission, Leavitt’s campaign frequently failed to follow these basic legal guidelines. And now, as Leavitt takes the briefing room podium, her unsuccessful campaign from 2022 still owes businesses tens of thousands of dollars.”

“At least four Democratic political committees suspect their former campaign treasurer is behind the “misappropriation” of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds,” Rolling Stone reports.

“The committees — including those led by Virginia’s two U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner — have alerted law enforcement officials and federal regulators and continue to internally investigate the matter.”

“The alleged misappropriations of funds are the latest in a string of high-profile thefts and unauthorized financial transactions that have recently walloped federal political committees of all partisan stripes, collectively costing them millions of dollars.”

A federal judge has rejected Elon Musk’s bid to move the Philadelphia lawsuit over his voter lottery scheme to federal court.

“Elon Musk and his political action committee are seeking to move the Philadelphia District Attorney’s lawsuit targeting their $1 million swing state voter lottery to federal court,” CNBC reports.