The extent of Paxton’s wealth is a focus of attention during ongoing divorce proceedings, as his wife, State Senator Angela Paxon, has made accusations of adultery that are corroborated by photos of the attorney general vacationing in Europe with a Christian influencer. As many people have pointed out, Paxton couldn’t have amassed millions in luxury property solely with his government salary; he earns $153,000 as state attorney general. So, to paraphrase Rep. Joaquin Castro: How the hell did Paxton afford this?

The short answer is corruption.

Last week, End Citizens United named Ken Paxton to its 2026 list of Most Corrupt Politicians. ECU’s Most Corrupt list spotlights elected officials whose corrupt actions consistently align with personal interests over those of their constituents.

Paxton is so corrupt that his track record is genuinely mindboggling. We live in a country where President Trump is enriching himself and his family by the billions with cryptocurrency; members of Congress routinely trade stocks in industries like Big Pharma and Big Tech with insider knowledge; and corporations spend roughly $2.6 billion lobbying per year. But even here, even now, Paxton stands out for his flagrant corruption.

“Ken Paxton has spent his career as Attorney General serving one person: himself,” End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller told the Austin American-Statesman. “He has used the power of his office to protect his own interests, reward the wealthy donors who help keep him in power, and leave Texas families paying the price. That’s not public service. That’s textbook corruption.”

Among the most serious examples of Paxton’s corruption:

• Indicted for bribery and abuse: Paxton has faced three felony indictments for securities fraud and impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives after he fired whistleblowers who reported him to the FBI for bribery and abuse of office, costing taxpayers millions.

• His office gave a sweetheart deal to a pedophile: Paxton has been too distracted protecting his own interests to serve the public, leading to serious failures like negotiating a plea deal of just one day in jail in a case of repeated sexual assault against a child, where an admitted pedophile did not have to register as a sex offender in Texas.

• Committed mortgage fraud, according to the Associated Press. Paxton and his wife owned three homes that they declared as primary residences, allowing them to lock in lower interest rates.

• Funded by the data center industry: Paxton’s campaigns have been heavily funded by business and special interests, including $448,000 from the data center industry while Paxton stalled a decision in the Attorney General’s office.

• Backed by rich donors, including oilmen: Paxton has received major donations from ultra-wealthy oil company owners and executives.

• Engaged in pay-to-play with state money: Paxton also raked in $2.2 million from his investments in Watchguard, after voting for a spending bill that allowed the company to receive lucrative state contracts.

• Accepted crypto industry money: Paxton’s candidacy is supported by $500,000 in spending by a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC.

While Ken Paxton is out vacationing across Europe and shopping for condos, ostensibly celebrating escaping bribery charges, how are most Texans living?

Just like Americans across the country, Texans are watching basic costs of living go up faster than their salaries. According to The Texas Tribune, more than half of the state’s 4.1 million renters are now “cost-burdened.” Meanwhile, households and local businesses are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of gas, utilities, and groceries.

In contrast to Paxton’s self-dealing, this month his opponent in the Senate race, Democratic candidate James Talarico, rolled out an economic agenda designed to address rising costs in the state. “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis,” Talarico said during a speech in Arlington. “For too many of our neighbors – and for too many Texans – the American dream has become an American nightmare.”

Anti-corruption measures are a central part of Talarico’s New American Dream package of reforms. His campaign draws a clear, straight line between politicians like Paxton handing out favors to their corporate and ultra-wealthy donors and everyday people facing a cost-of-living crisis. Because corruption is the root cause of so many economic problems, Talarico is calling for banning super PACs, corporate PACs, and Congressional stock trading.

“I will fight to unrig this economy,” Talarico said, as he unveiled his New American Dream plan. “I will fight to lower your costs and raise your pay. And unlike Ken Paxton, I will fight to put your hard-earned money where it belongs: in your pocket.”

Let’s take a moment to celebrate: Dark money super PACs just spent roughly $20 million trying to defeat Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, an unapologetic progressive, in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, and the deluge of dark money didn’t work: Flanagan won by nearly 20 points.

Flanagan made fighting corruption a central part of her campaign message. “Too many Minnesotans are working hard and still failing behind. An unexpected car repair becomes a financial emergency. A trip to the grocery store includes telling their child to put something back on the shelf. People are skipping the doctor because they’re afraid of the bill,” Flanagan wrote in The Minnesota Star Tribune. “This is the consequence of a broken political system that puts billionaires, corporations and powerful interests ahead of working people.”

End Citizens United made an early and consequential decision to endorse Flanagan in the primary back in February. Even though ECU had previously endorsed her opponent, Rep. Angie Craig, in her House races, supporting Flanagan became the clear choice when she joined ECU’s Unrig Washington campaign, refusing corporate PAC money, committing to take on dark money, and supporting a ban on Congressional stock trading..

“Lt. Gov. Flanagan has spent her career taking on those fights, from raising the minimum wage to championing paid family and medical leave,” said ECU President Tiffany Muller. “By rejecting corporate PAC money, she’s making it clear that she answers to Minnesotans, not corporate special interests.”

Flanagan was able to cite ECU’s endorsement to back up her stated commitment to refusing special interest money. For example, she said on Fox 9 Morning Sunday, “I’m the only candidate who’s supported by End Citizens United because I want to be beholden to Minnesotans and one else.”

Flanagan’s win is a massive victory in the fight against the wealthy special interests influencing elections, corrupting our democracy, and harming regular people while enriching megadonors. This race reinforces what we saw when Abdul El-Sayed defeated over $60 million in outside spending to win the Michigan Senate primary and Juliana Stratton defeated more than $10 million in AI spending in the Illinois primary: A candidate who promises to work for everyday people, not special interests, can defeat megadonors and corporations and win even the toughest races.

“It’s time to fight for what people actually need,” Flanagan told the Guardian. “And so often I think Democrats are like: “What do we think we can win? Instead of: What are the fights that we should be picking?”

Flanagan is picking the right fights. Throughout her campaign, she called out crypto, AIPAC, health insurance companies, Big Oil, billionaires, and dark money groups repeatedly and by name. She drew the direct connection between her opponent’s funders and the issues that matter most in Americans’ lives.

At a rally in Saint Paul, Flanagan told the crowd:

“There are some very powerful interests that are fighting like hell to protect the status quo. Super PACs and secretive dark money groups have already spent more than $15 million trying to defeat me, trying to defeat us, to buy this Senate seat. And that’s more money than has ever been spent before in a primary election in Minnesota. And you know what? It’s pretty gross.

They’re spending a million dollars a week — or $142,857 a day to defeat us. They’re spending all of this money filling our televisions and phones with nasty ads and AI-generated lies. And here’s the deal: it’s left Minnesotans asking the simple question, who is spending this money and why? These outside groups aren’t spending millions of dollars because they care about how much your groceries cost. They’re doing it because they know Angie Craig will do their bidding, and I won’t.”

This race is also a sign that the midterm elections will be a referendum on the failures – and the extreme violence – of the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration has enacted incredible harm in Minnesota, including ICE injuring many people and murdering two U.S. citizens. This month, Minnesotans came out in very high numbers, and they rejected the Republican candidates that supported Trump’s ICE campaign. According to her campaign, Flanagan won more votes last night than the entire field of Republican Senate candidates combined. There was massive turnout: It was the highest voter turnout in a Minnesota state primary ever.

Flanagan is the model of what a Democratic candidate can achieve when they tell voters loudly and clearly that they’re in it to win for the many, not the money.

The plan is to build this enormous campus on U.S. Department of Energy land that’s still contaminated from a government uranium plant that made nuclear weapons during the Cold War. A subsidiary of the Japanese investment company Softbank, an investor in OpenAI, has recently leased the land. Nuclear and natural gas energy will power the massive data center, which is supposed to open in 2028 (although technical experts are skeptical that will be possible). The Trump Administration is clearly enthusiastic: Both U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke at the groundbreaking.

The Piketon campus is projected to be the world’s first 10-gigawatt data center. The plan is for the Japanese company to build a massive power plant to fuel it. To comprehend the scale of the potential energy use: 1-gigawatt is the equivalent of the energy used to power as many as 800,000 homes. So, it follows that a 10-gigawatt data center would use enough energy to power 8 million homes. That means the Trump Administration, a Japanese investment firm, and OpenAI want to throw together a behemoth power plant and AI data center in rural Ohio that would use the same energy as some of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. And, despite the unprecedented scale of energy use, Trump officials are simultaneously promising that local residents won’t pay more in their utility bills.

Data centers are wildly unpopular among the American public. At least seven out of 10 Americans oppose having a data center near their home. The disapproval cuts across demographics. Republicans, Democrats, rural, suburban, it doesn’t matter. The majority of Americans don’t like data centers and don’t want them built nearby. The reasons are obvious: They use enormous amounts of electricity and water, they spew pollution, and they drive up costs. There are roughly 200 data centers across Ohio, and some Ohio residents have seen their utility bills increase as much as 30% this summer. While regular people absorb the harms, extremely wealthy tech and financial executives and investors take the profits.

The current Republican candidate for Ohio governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, whose net worth is roughly $3 billion, is one such ultra-wealthy investor. And, no surprise, on the campaign trail he’s said he favors data center expansion in the state and opposes a moratorium.

His campaign illustrates why data center expansion is a physical manifestation of our corrupted political system.

Because, look, who profits from banks and AI companies teaming up to build the largest data center in the world in a struggling rural community? The project will create some new construction jobs, but the vast majority of them will be temporary and gone once the build-out is over. According to a report by the nonprofit Innovation Ohio, one recent Ohio data center project received a state tax exemption worth $4.5 million to create 10 jobs. Temporary construction jobs are not where the money is.

The real money – hundreds of millions in profits made off that labor and our country’s electricity supply – will benefit the tech, energy, and financial executives who are already so obscenely rich that they can buy off politicians to get permission to pollute our drinking water and forever disrupt the entire labor market.

Major donors funding a pro-Ramaswamy super PAC stand to profit from AI data center expansion. According to FEC reports, V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims has raised roughly $41 million in total. Just look at the millions in contributions from tech and financial industry titans to the super PAC supporting Ramaswamy:

• $20 million from Jeffrey Yass, co-founder of a giant Wall Street firm and part owner of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, and whose net worth is an estimated $64 billion.

• $6 million from Ross Stevens, a hedge fund executive who advocates for bitcoin so passionately that he has called it “a human rights treasure.”

• $5 million from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and first trillionaire, who owns multiple tech ventures.

• $5 million from Ratmir Timashev, the founder and former CEO of a giant software company, whose net worth is an estimated $5.4 billion.

• $1 million from Bill Ackman, the hedge fund executive whose net worth is an estimated $8 billion, and whose fund is heavily invested in AI companies – with as much as 39% of its holdings invested in AI as of 2025.

Companies with a direct financial stake in AI data center expansion in Ohio have also contributed to Ramswamy’s campaign. For example: The utility company American Electric Power has already submitted a pre-application for a 50-mile gas transmission line that would serve the Piketon data center, according to an in-depth report from Inside Climate News. The PAC associated with that same utility, The American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government, has made a direct contribution to Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy is personally heavily invested in the data center industry, according to a detailed report from Innovation Ohio. He holds investments in companies involved in the whole data center supply chain, from chip manufacturers like Nvidia (also reportedly involved in the Piketon data center), hardware suppliers, real estate developers, tech companies, and in the crypto industry. Strive Asset Management, the financial firm he co-founded and still owns a majority stake in, has an enormous amount of stock in Nvidia and Intel, whose businesses rely on data centers, and in bitcoin. Ramaswamy will personally profit, likely by the millions, if those businesses are able to grow because data centers are expanding.

As governor, Ramaswamy would have a direct conflict of interest between his financial holdings and his government position. Governors have outsized influence over data center expansion. As in many other states, Ohio lawmakers have introduced several bills that would regulate the data center industry. The next governor will decide whether to sign or veto any data center legislation, as well as oversee the Public Utilities Commission tasked with regulating utility companies and other state boards related to data centers.

The Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, a physician from Youngstown, Ohio, supports a conditional moratorium on data centers, while the state assesses potential labor, cost, and environmental risks.

Unlike her famously corruptable opponent, Acton is refusing to accept corporate PAC money. When you’re not relying on Elon Musk or OpenAI or the local utility company’s PAC to fund your campaign, taking positions that those billionaire tycoons don’t like doesn’t come with the risk of losing your financial backers. Candidates not worried about their bank account have less of a bias when deciding whether they think we really need to spend enough electricity to power eight million homes to help OpenAI expand its business.

If elected officials push back on giant companies, maybe the tech and hedge fund executives won’t like them, but, given how people feel about data centers, there’s a good chance that many Americans will.

Former chair Ellen Weintraub served on the U.S. Federal Election Commission from 2002 to 2025. During her tenure, Commissioner Weintraub served as a consistent voice for meaningful campaign-finance law enforcement and robust disclosure.

Brian stands a real chance of flipping this seat in November –delivering a major pickup for Democrats and a victory against Big Money in Washington.

“When times get tough, working people are always asked to do more with less,” Brian says. He’s running to represent workers, not corporations. He’s signed on to End Citizen United’s Unrig Washington program and is refusing corporate PAC money. That’s a winning message. According to a recent poll by End Citizens United, 96% of Ohio voters say that corruption in government is a serious problem.

This race has gotten a lot of media attention over the last week, as the Republican candidate, Rep. Max Miller, a former Trump Administration aide, is doubling down on his candidacy after his ex-wife has made credible allegations that he abused her and their young daughter. “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them,” Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, Miller’s former father-in-law, wrote on X.

End Citizens United has always considered Republican Rep. Max Miller unfit to represent Ohio’s 7^th District: He’s received roughly $334,350 in corporate PAC donations from Big Pharma, Big Tech, Wall Street, private prison companies, and other moneyed interests. There couldn’t be a starker contrast between these two candidates and whose interests they represent.

ECU: Why are you running for Congress?

Brian: I’m running to win, but I also want to inspire other people who are regular working people to stand up and say, “Hey, if he can run, I can too.”

I’ve worked various jobs throughout my life. I became a union iron worker at 27 years old. Every step of the way, people have said we need somebody like us, who knows what we’re going through, in Washington. And I looked around and nobody else was standing up and heeding the call, so I wanted to be somebody who said, “Hey, I’m going to stand up. I’m going to run and try to make things better for people who work for a living.”

ECU: Why are campaign finance issues important to you?

Brian: The Citizens United decision was one of the most harmful decisions in history. That ruling basically says that money is speech. So, in other words, a lack of money is silence. I believe that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in. Because people like me, workers, have been silenced because of our lack of resources. That’s by design, and that’s why wages haven’t gone up, and that’s why prices continue to rise.

That decision silenced the majority of people in this country who know what the problems are but don’t have the voice to fix them. In this campaign, I’ve been learning that the hard way. We’re scrounging for every dollar that comes to our campaign. We’ve done pretty well, because of the work we’re putting in. But you know, the Big Money candidates, the ones connected to wealthy interests, all they have to do is pick up the phone, and they’re funded completely.

I’d like to see a system that’s fairer. A system where super PACs have to disclose their donors, and they have limits on the contribution they can receive and limits on what they can spend in these races. I think that it’s a travesty that that the wealthiest among us can silence everybody else simply because they have more money.

ECU: What are you hearing from people in your district about how corruption affects them?

Brian: Right now, the politics of today are affecting everybody. Whether you’re white collar, blue collar, whether you work in a factory or on a farm, everybody is feeling the pinch of an economy that’s way out of balance.

The number one thing I hear at the doors is that people are feeling the pressure in their wallets, and when that happens, they start looking for reasons why they don’t have enough to make ends meet. So, they look at things like taxes. They look at their neighbor down the street, and they’re looking for somebody to blame for the fact that they’re not making ends meet. Really, it can be attributed to Washington. We’re seeing corporate tax giveaways, record high gas prices, record high grocery prices, and it’s all because of policies that have been favoring the wealthy at the expense of the working person.

ECU: What’s it like trying to flip a Republican House seat in a district Trump won?

Brian: Most people know that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Politics wasn’t always this toxic. I remember when Democrats and Republicans were cordial. They stood up for the rule of law. They worked together on certain things. We don’t see any of that right now. This chaos has driven neighbors to hate neighbors, friend to hate friend, family members to disown family members.

You know, my whole life I’ve had to deal with different perspectives. My dad supports Trump. I don’t understand it, but I still love him. On a construction site, some people might be Democrats, or they might be MAGA, and we’ve still got to put our differences aside to get the job done. So, in my world and in my circles, politics isn’t our defining characteristic. I don’t agree with my dad about politics, but he’s probably one of the most helpful people in our community. He’s always fixing people’s cars.

On the campaign trail, I talk to people like they’re human beings, because that’s what they are. When I was coming up, if somebody’s car was broken down on the side of the street, you pulled over and helped them out. Now people will either fly by and not help, or they’ll look at the bumper sticker and see if you’re worth helping. That’s terrible for our society. We need to get back to community. I want to bring that perspective to Washington.

ECU: What policies would you advocate for when as a member of Congress?

Brian: Right off the bat, first thing we should do is raise the minimum wage. It’s supposed to be a minimum standard of living, and right now too many people are comfortable with the minimum standard being below poverty.

Second, I think we can work on the tax code. Right now, corporations and the highest earners are enjoying great tax rates, and I think they should earn their way into those tax rates. The tax rate at the highest levels should be a much higher rate, and then if [companies] are offering all their employees good quality, affordable healthcare, they earn themselves a little lower rate. And if they offer a pension, they get another rate. These aren’t partisan issues. Everybody who works for a living is working for those exact things.

We working people have been underrepresented in Washington for a very long time, and that’s why you get Congress arguing for allowing congressional stock trading. That’s why you get people arguing for tax cuts for huge corporations and pushing for automation and other things that push workers out of the workforce. That’s why nobody is arguing on behalf of that worker who is pushed out of the workforce.

I’ll be looking at Congress through the lens of a working person. I’m a worker. All my friends are workers. The people in my community are workers. That’s what I know. And that’s who I’m fighting for. I want to make sure that they’re represented.

ECU: With everything that’s going on, with everything you’re doing, how are you coping?

Brian: I’m coping the same way a lot of families are. It doesn’t matter how bad the world is getting around you, we still have to continue to work, to put one foot in front of the other. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see something in the news or get a call from somebody that just absolutely breaks my heart. But, you know, the bills keep rolling in. So, I still got to continue to push forward. I’ve been doing that my whole life.

One of the hardest things about this campaign is the long hours. Getting up early, staying up late, the emotional roller coaster any given day brings. But I’m trained for this because I was a young father who was working full-time, drove my kids around to their practices, had to come back, cook dinner. By the time I got them put to bed, it was a 15- or16-hour, day.

That’s what set us up for the success we’ve had so far. We have a strong coalition of folks to help us. And I’m not afraid to put in the work. I’m used to the hours. And that’s how we cope. We just continue to keep our heads down and grind and just keep working.

You can learn more about Brian Poindexter and his campaign here.

The problem with the Stop Insider Trading Act is simple: This bill doesn’t actually solve the problem of members of Congress using their positions to get rich. Worse, Republicans are selling this legislation as anti-corruption reform, but they added voting-related provisions Republicans haven’t been able to pass in their overtly anti-voter bills like the SAVE Act. So, the Stop Insider Trading Act is best understood as a Trojan Horse that looks like they’re taking on corruption but in reality is just another Republican attempt to retain GOP political power.

Campaign Legal Center issued a statement opposing SITA by summarizing its flaws: “SITA does not actually ban congressional stock trading, and it will thus not remove the cloud of distrust that hands over lawmakers’ suspicious stock trades. Moreover, this legislation does nothing to limit members’ ability to use official actions to benefit the stocks they own, even if no trading occurs. Finally, SITA’s limited ban on stock purchases creates exceptions that swallow the rule.”

What would SITA do? It would ban members of Congress from making some new stock purchases, require advance notice for stock sales, and levy penalties for any Congressmembers who break those rules.

Each of those new rules on their own would be a step in the right direction. However, SITA is missing the key rules that would make it a meaningful stock trading ban. The most glaring omission: SITA doesn’t prohibit members of Congress from selling stocks while in office.

Yes, of course, Congressmembers buying stocks is one way they can enrich themselves with insider information. Many Congressmembers have bought stocks related to the industries that they’re supposed to be overseeing as part of their committee assignments. There’s no escaping that there’s an inherent conflict of interest because they have privileged information while making those purchases.

For example, Senator Susan Collins (ME) sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and this spring she bought shares in pharma giant Pfizer. While serving on the Senate Committee for Armed Services, then-Senator and now Department of Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin, purchased stock in the major defense contractor Raytheon and the oil companies Chevron and Conoco Phillips, mere days before the Trump Administration invaded Venezuela. The list goes on. These are just a couple of prominent examples.

But members of Congress have also sold large shares of stocks at opportune times, while having insider information, and they’ve made more (or have lost less) money because of when they sold their stocks. As we’ve written here previously: Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8) dumped stocks in Medicaid providers valued at roughly $130,000 while having access to privileged information about the Republicans’ mega-bill that gutted Medicaid spending. So, Congressmembers selling stock is a central part of the corruption.

Meanwhile, SITA also contains so many other loopholes that anyone in Congress interested in enriching themselves off insider information still has plenty of opportunity to use their position for personal gain. According to Campaign Legal Center, SITA specifically applies exceptions to:

• Crypto currency purchases

• Commodity purchases

• Bond purchases

• Industry-specific mutual fund or exchange-traded fund purchases

• Any purchases made from a non-blind trust

That’s a lot of ways to make money off trading as a Congressmember that aren’t covered by the bill.

What does SITA restrict? Access to the ballot box. “Republicans have corrupted their so-called stock trading bill with a decaying piece of the SAVE America Act corpse,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) said on the House floor. SITA would impose a nationwide requirement that voters show ID when voting in a federal election – one of President Trump’s demands ahead of the midterms.

We can also understand SITA better when we understand that its sponsor is Rep. Bryan Steil (WI). Steil also sponsored the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act that would’ve enshrined national extreme voter ID requirements, made DHS the clearinghouse for deciding which Americans can vote, and many more actions that are incompatible with Americans’ Constitutional right to vote. Steil led the politically motivated investigations into ActBlue, the online platform that Democratic candidates use to raise money from grassroots donors. And his biggest political contributors include members of the financial services industry.

Hiding voting restrictions in a bill that looks from a distance like a government reform is a politically shrewd way for Republicans to try pass voter restrictions. Democrats running for reelection in swing districts could have a very hard time voting no on a bill that ostensibly stops insider trading – because a majority of Americans consider Congress corrupt and support anti-corruption reforms, and because Democratic incumbents need to prove their anti-corruption stance to win back those voters. So, by putting this bill up for a vote, Republicans have put those Democratic members in a tough position.

The deceptive nature of this bill is also why we’re glad you’re here and reading this. Chatting about SITA’s flaws might not be the fastest way to make friends at a barbecue this weekend, but we have to keep each other educated about the enormous gap between what Republican lawmakers say they’re doing for the American people and what they’re actually doing. Steil and his Republican allies may be stumping on ending corruption, but they’re perpetuating it – while also trying to make it harder for the American people to kick them out of office in November.

You can find out more about her and support her race here.

You can learn more about how Gov. Healey has focused on lowering costs and making life better for every family in Massachusetts, and her re-election campaign, at maurahealey.com.

Get more from End Citizens United in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Congressional Republicans have helped President Trump and his administration get away with so many acts of brazen corruption— including flagrant nepotism, self-dealing, and handouts to themselves and their biggest donors. But confirming the president’s former defense lawyer as Attorney General would be a new low point. This should shock everyone.

Americans can’t get numb to this level of corruption. That Republicans in Congress are even considering this nomination is a reminder that they and President Trump are working in tandem to dismantle what’s left of our democratic norms and establish a straight up authoritarian government.

It may be obvious, but let’s take a step back and remember that the Attorney General heads the Department of Justice (DOJ) and is considered the nation’s top law enforcement officer. The Attorney General directs prosecutions, supervises the FBI and other agencies, and gives legal advice not just to the president but the head of other government agencies.

Blanche has already served as Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General. During his tenure, he led prosecutions into Trump’s critics like New York Attorney General Leticia James and former FBI Director James Comey; spearheaded investigations into nonprofits like the Southern Poverty Law Center; supported a potential slush fund for people, including January 6th rioters, who claimed that the federal government had been “weaponized” against them; and oversaw the disastrous release of the Epstein files. The DOJ has also helped execute the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

More than 1,200 former DOJ employees spanning 14 administrations signed a letter opposing Blanche’s nomination. “Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution,” wrote Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, which provides direct support to current and recent DOJ employees facing attacks by the Trump Administration. The letter says that Blanche has “utterly failed to abide by” the “oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the occupant of the White House.” During Blanche’s confirmation hearings, Democratic senators pressed him on his personal connection to Trump.

Blanche served as President Trump’s personal attorney from 2023 to 2025. The conflict of interest here is so glaring that it doesn’t need any explanation. During the confirmation hearings, Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, including Senators Mazie Hirono (HI) and Cory Booker (NJ) brought up the concern that Blanche would be more loyal to President Trump than the country. When asked whether he’s personally aligned with Trump, Blanche responded, “I’m his lawyer – was his lawyer…” He then clarified that he now works for the government. Later, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called him “Trump’s personal henchman.”

Before serving as Trump’s personal lawyer, Blanche had served as an attorney for Paul Manafort and others whose names have made headlines for their high-profile corruption charges.

Here’s the other thing: It’s not as though as Trump’s personal attorney Blanche just drafted some personal documents related to one of his divorces or real estate purchases. He represented the current president in highly charged political cases wherein Trump’s personal interests were pitted against national interests. These cases include:

The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, the “hush money” case. In 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alan Bragg brought criminal charges against Trump, claiming that he’d falsified business records related to payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Trump had allegedly made the payments to buy Daniels’ silence over their affair, to help him win the election. In May 2024, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Blanche was the lead trial attorney defending Trump in that case.

United States v. Donald J. Trump, the case about federal classified documents. In 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith brought charges against Trump over classified federal documents found at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. The documents were found during an investigation about the Jan. 6^th attacks on the U.S. Capitol. That case did not ultimately proceed to trial.

Blanche represented Trump as part of the defense team that had sought to get the charges dismissed.

United States v. Donald J. Trump, the case about election interference. This one is mind-blowing. In 2023, a Grand Jury indicted Trump on charges that he’d conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to stay in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he’d actually won,” reads the indictment.

The defense team argued that the prosecution infringed on presidential immunity. In July 2024, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority accepted the defense team’s rationale and decided that President Trump has wide-ranging immunity from criminal liability for his official acts and absolute immunity for some “core” acts. The ACLU explained, “The court granted absolute immunity to President Trump’s use of the Justice Department for fraudulent purposes.”

Blanche represented Trump in United States v. Donald Trump.

Let’s just pause here and take in again: Congressional Republicans are seriously considering confirming as Attorney General of the United States a man who defended the sitting president against charges that he’d conspired to overturn the results of a federal election.

It may be possible, though still unlikely, that this will be a bridge too far even for this Republican Congress. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair of the Judiciary Committee, has yet to schedule a vote. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), a lame duck, is holding out on confirming Blanche, reportedly because Blanche wouldn’t guarantee in writing that the plan to create a so-called “anti-weaponization fund”-- a taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion slush fund that would pay people who said they were victims of government “weaponization” – wouldn’t happen.

The fact that this is even on the table is beyond comprehension.

End Citizens United is running a petition to call Congress to reject Blanche’s nomination. You can sign it here.

If last week you had money to burn and were feeling clairvoyant, you could’ve placed a trade on Kalshi, the prediction market site, about whether Sam Altman – the co-founder and CEO of the OpenAI, which is valued at over $800 billion – would say the term “data center” during his approaching interview with CNBC: Squawk. If that wasn’t dystopian enough for you, you can put money on whether President of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel will be dispossessed of his office before this August or September; Kalshi users have “invested” over $900,000 on that question, as Cubans are subsiding on an average of a few dollars per day. And that’s nothing compared to the $18 million Kalshi users have on whether and when there’ll be an U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that after the Trump Administration retook the reins of the Department of Justice, the agency dropped its inquiries into whether prediction market sites like Kalshi and Polymarket are facilitating illegal gambling. These markets are largely unregulated. And, they’re growing rapidly. So, before our eyes, prediction markets are emerging as yet another force that enables political corruption – with, forgive the pun, too many potential threats to democracy to predict.

For those of you, like me, who haven’t waded a toe into the proliferating prediction markets, here are the basics: In 2019, the website Polymarket launched as a platform where users could place money on the outcome of future events, including political events. For better or worse, many political observers now consider the platform’s wagers a benchmark for whether a campaign is viable. Polymarket’s valuation has been estimated to be $15 billion. Kalshi, launched in 2021, is a similar platform, where you can buy “yes” or “no” positions on future events ranging from whether the movie Moana will be reviewed favorably on Rotten Tomatoes to whether members of Congress will be reelected. This May, Kalshi’s valuation was $22 billion.

So, what’s the problem? If someone wants to put $5,000 on whether Sam Altman will say “data center” during an upcoming TV interview, what’s it to the rest of us? Isn’t this just like other forms of risk-taking like legalized gambling, sports betting, the lottery, or, hey, the stock market?

No, these prediction markets are different. Sure, sports rely on referees’ subjective calls, and FIFA has once again disillusioned us all, but it’s pretty hard for someone to know with near certainty which team is going to win and still turn a hefty profit on an unlikely bet.

In contrast, many prediction markets are highly controllable events. Altman, for example, can decide how to phrase a response to an interviewer’s question. If a public figure knows that a close friend has wagered thousands of dollars on him saying, “data center,” he can throw the term “data center” into his response, even if it takes some word salad. The same principle applies to lots of future events and therefore lots of prediction markets trades.

So, these markets are ripe for insider trading. Elected officials can easily profit from having insider information about all manner of government decisions. They’re already profiting from trading stocks while having inside information. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8) dumped stocks in Medicaid providers valued at roughly $130,000 while having access to privileged information about the Republicans’ mega-bill that slashed Medicaid spending. But prediction markets create another venue for that kind of blatant corruption.

If that seems far-fetched, consider that campaign staffers told NPR that they’d placed thousands of dollars on bets on their own candidates with insider information. In one instance, a staffer working on a statewide campaign had access to polling data before it was made publicly available. “Myself and others started placing bets before that poll came out,” the staffer explained to NPR. “And then, sure enough as soon as that poll came out, the stock went up and everybody made money.” The staffer said that this was commonplace.

Another wrinkle: Because prediction markets are considered indicators of how a campaign will fare, a sudden surge of money can also distort public opinion about the campaigns’ viability, which can set in motion different types of media attention, donations, and so forth, potentially changing the outcome. Prediction markets can easily end up influencing future events in other ways, too. Potential windfalls can encourage public figures to take specific actions to enrich themselves or people close to them.

Saying “data center” during an interview is one thing. What if Kalshi users have wagered millions of dollars on whether, say, the governor of Ohio will sign off on increased tax breaks for data centers? And what if the governor is being lobbied by their biggest donor, or their son, or their next-door neighbor, who wants to win a million bucks on their latest bet? The prediction market is then a factor in a government official’s decision, with implications for public welfare.

In a different reality, we could dismiss as ridiculous the notion of the president of the United States setting the terms of a nuclear deal with a foreign adversary to help his kids or golfing buddies win millions of dollars. But now, we’ve seen a lot, and honestly it doesn’t seem out of character.

This spring, U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (OR) and Amy Klobuchar (MN) introduced legislation that would ban the President, Vice President, members of Congress and other public officials from trading event contracts on prediction markets. The goal of the bill is to limit the possibility of insider trading by federal officials. Merkley has previously sponsored legislation to crack down on election gambling, Congressional stock trading, and crypto-currency corruption.

“There shouldn’t be any bets placed on acts of government,” Merkley said. “There are just too many people who know what the strategy is. There should be nothing placed on acts of war, nothing placed on terrorism, and nothing on assassinations, and nothing on elections.”

Prediction markets have the potential to supercharge the problems with Big Money in politics. If watching billionaires and corporations buy off politicians to get their preferred policies enacted was starting to feel a little repetitive, we may soon see billionaires buying off elections so they can win back even larger piles of money from their elections prediction trades. If you’re a billionaire who stands to win tens of millions on a prediction market, spending another few million to flip an election seems like a great return on investment.

Here’s yet another way that the richest people in the country can have outsized influence:

“The most dangerous aspect of the prediction markets is the corruption of our elections,” Merkley said. “We have, under Citizens United, the ability of affluent people or corporations to put unlimited sums in massive smear campaigns at the last minute.” With the advent of prediction markets, the incentives are totally distorted. “The election isn’t about who represents my views or who will take our nation forward. It’s about ‘How do I win this bet?’ That’s a fundamental rot at the core of our democratic republic.” So, if we’re going to address the problems with money in politics, we should address prediction markets, too.

In doing so, the Supreme Court eliminated yet another campaign finance guardrail. The Court’s conservative majority has spent years diminishing campaign finance regulations, most notably in its devastating 2010 Citizens United decision that unleashed the catastrophic levels of spending that has wildly corrupted our political system.

This decision is part of a much broader pattern of the Supreme Court enabling political operatives to do more with fewer rules. The limits on party committees spending and coordinating were important, says Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, because “they helped prevent wealthy donors from using party committees as pass-throughs to buy influence with candidates. Put simply, they prevented corruption.”

“So, if you’re Peter Thiel, this is great,” Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, paraphrased on WNYC this week. “You’ve always had to keep your boy, your sock puppet, J.D. Vance at an arm’s length to at least keep up the appearances of legality. Now you don’t have to do that.”

The Roberts Court has a habit of framing money in politics questions in terms of freedom of speech. It’s clear how disingenuous those arguments are. As Muller says of the NRSC ruling, “They call it free speech. But free speech belongs to every American. The ability to spend enormous sums of money to influence elections belongs only to the wealthy few.”

There couldn’t be a worse time for the Supreme Court to unleash even more wild political corruption. This decision comes while partisan political groups are increasingly manipulating what’s left of the rules to hide their donors and mislead the public. There’s a growing trend of super PACs forming just after a Federal Election Commission deadline before an election, so that the PAC can spend unlimited amounts of money without having to publicly disclose its donors before voters cast their ballots. According to a Politico analysis, as of mid-June, super PACs that did not have to reveal their donors had already spent $48 million on House and Senate primaries this cycle. By Politico’s count, that’s double the total at this time in the 2024 campaign cycle and a staggering 10 times the amount of undisclosed political spending in 2018.

One of the industries that stands to benefit from more coordination and less transparency is AI, as companies and executives are now major political players capable of spending astronomical sums. OpenAI is valued at $852 billion; Anthropic at $965 billion. According to End Citizens United, as of late June, AI industry companies and employees have contributed $199 million in this election cycle. That includes a staggering $50 million in AI PACs to influence federal elections.

We can only expect to see more ads funded by AI donors. AI PACs have an incredible $102.1 million in cash on hand to spend during the rest of the 2026 campaign cycle. That’s alarming for many reasons, including that so far AI donors have spent dramatically more supporting Republicans than Democrats.

As Sacha Haworth, executive of The Tech Oversight Project, put it, “A handful of powerful companies, like OpenAI, Meta, Google, Palantir, and Andreessen Horowitz, are hellbent on making sure the public is locked out of the halls of Congress and all 50 statehouses.”

Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and NRSC that favor megadonors have made the too-cozy relationship between industry donors and potential government officials even more explicit. Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her NRSC v. FEC dissent, that “So the Court ushers back in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the contribution limits were meant to check.”

It’s always dangerous for politicians to feel beholden to titans of industry but given that we’re in a moment of rapid AI expansion and we urgently need tech new regulatory frameworks that protect just about everything, from the climate to labor to child safety, it’s especially dire that industry groups are turning themselves into political megadonors who can buy off would-be regulators.

And, as we know, that’s not the only way that political operatives are exploiting the giant gaps in our campaign finance laws. Republican donors have simultaneously spent huge sums to influence Democratic primaries by funneling money into super PACs that obscure the fact that they’re led by Republicans trying to pick Democrats opponents they assume they’ll have a better chance of defeating in the general election. Stark examples are Lead Left and Real Change, which have received millions from Republican donors and spent heavily on Democratic primaries.

To illustrate the point: American Prosperity Alliance is a self-described pro-free market political organization aligned with former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. American Prosperity Alliance funded Conservative Americans PAC, which PAC funded Lead Left, another super PAC, which has reportedly spent at least $2.4 million “promoting” Democratic primary candidates.

And yet, ahead of the midterms, while Republican political operatives are engaging in these duplicitous scams and more, the Supreme Court decided to chip away at yet another campaign finance regulation.

Democrats still have a good chance of taking back Congress in November. This term, the Court has shown yet again that when Democrats are back in power they need to hit the ground running with ambitious plans to show the American public that they’re fighting to end all of this rampant corruption.

Congresswoman McDonald Rivet recently introduced the No Profiting from Public Service Act that focuses on anti-corruption issues and enforces a stock trading ban. You can find out more about her race here.

I wanted to talk to Gaby because she understands the structural problems at the heart of the myriad problems plaguing our country right now – and because she also understands potential solutions. I recently wrote about court reform as possible way forward. Another anecdote could be building power in the states, which is the focus of Gaby’s current work with State Futures.

Meaghan: What should we know about why state-level work is so important?

Gaby: States are in a moment of ascendancy in terms of their power over the issues that control our daily lives. Certainly, it’s hard to tear our eyes away from what this administration is doing, but the truth is that the state-level is where the rubber really hits the road on the issues on the policies that touch us every day.

Conservatives have known this for generations. They have invested generously in infrastructure to support candidates running for state office to incubate regressive ideas. Those ideas then metastasize across states and eventually move up to the national level.

Why are states ascending in terms of power right now? Two big reasons.

First, the federal government is disintegrating in front of our eyes when it comes to protective civil rights, regulatory standards and programs. Everything from clean drinking water standards to voting rights are being eviscerated. So, that makes states increasingly the venue where our rights are decided.

The other big reason is that the Supreme Court is a group of partisan hacks that makes decisions to further political outcomes that advantage the Republican Party and is completely unaligned with civil rights, with the protection of the environment, bodily autonomy rights for women and trans people, and more. The Supreme Court keeps turning these consequential issues back to the states. For example, the Dobbs decision turned whether you can have an abortion legally and safely back to states. So, the states are increasingly the venue where our rights have to be protected.

So, it’s more important than ever for us be organizing and mobilizing state legislators who share our values, who want to protect the environment, who want to protect bodily autonomy, and who want to expand civil rights, expand voting access, make it easier to vote. That’s what we’re doing at State Futures. We organize, we mobilize, we equip those policymakers, put them in community together, and help them collaborate both on policy and on creating visible solidarity against what is happening nationally.

Subscribe now

Meaghan: Many Democrats are concerned about ICE. The federal government has a lot of discretion over immigration enforcement. What are some ways we can push back against ICE on the state and local level?

Gaby: We can push back. The world has been watching what’s happening at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where folks who’ve been detained by ICE and are being held at a for-profit facility held a hunger strike, a labor strike for weeks, to try to get visibility and improve the conditions at a facility. Last month, while visiting the facility U.S. Senator Andy Kim was pepper-sprayed.

This is an ICE facility operated by Geo Group, which is one of the biggest private prison companies in the United States. Hundreds of detainees participated in the strike, demanding ventilation and medical care.

From my perspective, what’s really important for folks to understand is that states have a lot of authority to regulate businesses and entities and facilities operating within the state. Every state has significant authority to regulate what is happening inside these ICE facilities. The good news is that some states are taking a lot of action.

State Futures recently released an issue brief outlining some of the creative, important bills that state legislatures are introducing and passing to address immigration detention facilities. We’re also tracking about 250 bills across the country in states across the country related to broader immigration and rule of law issues. Everyone can check out our tracker.

At least 12 states have banned 287 (g) agreements, which are formal agreements that delegate federal enforcement authority to state and local cops. Many more states have introduced those bills. States are also working to more closely regulate private detention facilities like Delaney Hall.

One very interesting idea proposed in New Jersey is that legislation could impose a 50% tax on the gross receipts of private immigrant detention facilities like Delaney Hall and redirect those proceeds to an immigrant protection fund for immigration services. Great idea.

States are also establishing rights and protections for people who are held at detention facilities, requiring meaningful language access, access to counsel, phone access. It’s also a really interesting and good strategy for states to think about is applying zoning land use health regulations to these detention facilities.

There are lots of ways to that states have to use their authority to stop these facilities from even being built or being built out, and then when they do exist, force more accountability and higher health and safety standards. They can give more authority to attorneys general and health departments and other state entities to inspect and conduct oversight. There are lots and lots of ways that states can and must use their authority to hold these facilities accountable. In general, there’s a lot of hope and inspiration to be had at the state level.

Share

Meaghan: We all need hope right now. Can you talk more about any hopeful signs you see on the state level?

Gaby: One of the things that we are really excited about at State Futures is what I call collective state action. What if we applied the applied ideas about collective action at the state level? We can have groups of states come together and create a bigger firewall against what’s happening at the federal level than any individual state could have on its own.

I’ll just mention a couple of ways states can collaborate and pool resources that are very exciting. One is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Essentially this is an interstate compact. It’s an agreement among a group of states to all award their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the popular vote. And so, it’s designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationally is elected president, which, as we know, is not how the electoral college has worked out over several past elections, right? Many states have passed it. We’re inching closer to having enough states pass it that it would go into effect, but it’s an example of an interstate compact.

Another that I’m really a huge fan of is Array RX, which is a group purchasing arrangement for states to pool their vast purchasing power to drive down the cost of prescription drugs. It’s an incredibly successful program. It started in Washington State and Oregon. It’s still administered through those states’ health authorities. The state programs are able to negotiate much lower rates, and the savings for individual people in the program are pretty eyepopping. When Connecticut joined the average cost savings for people in Connecticut who enrolled, for free, was $200 a month per person. When states join together, they have more leveraging power.

The right has known for a very long time that state policy can shift national policy. One of the really important ways to do that is by having many states introduce and pass particular types of bills building the case state by state. Now, of course, the right is trying to do that in ways that we find abhorrent, by stripping away our rights and protections, and all the rest, but that’s another form of collective action, right? We can also use state power to move the country in a certain direction, toward equality, fairness, and hope.

You can hear more about Gaby’s work with State Futures here.

Arianna Jones is the Executive Director of NextGen America. You can learn more about their important work here.