Dossier mode
Big Money Fighting for Control of the US Government
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Return on Investment hub.
Big Money Fighting for Control of the US Government
The post-Citizens United PAC landscape, lane by lane — conservative, centrist, single-issue, crypto, liberal — with the biggest super PACs and their largest known funders named from public filings. A companion to Normalizing Corruption. Funding = FACT; the 'illusion of sides' is an attributed thesis; labor/small-dollar money is marked as the exception.
Follow the money behind the biggest super PAC in each lane and you keep arriving at the same short list of billionaires and industries.
The dollar figures are public record. The stronger reading — that the 'sides' are a managed illusion — is Public Citizen's argument, and we attribute it, not assert it.
Dark money in 2024 federal races — a record, per the Brennan Center. Money whose original source is hidden, mostly routed through 501(c)(4) nonprofits. And it wasn't a one-party story: Democratic-aligned groups held the largest dark-money share.
Brennan Center for Justice, 2024
The 2026 update: the top 50 donors have already put $1.6B+ into federal politics — tilted ~2.5-to-1 toward Republican-aligned money.
Washington Post analysis of FEC data (as of Aug. 21, 2026): disclosed contributions to federal committees since Jan. 2025, mostly to super PACs. R-aligned ~$1.05B (62%) vs D-aligned ~$409M (24%) vs special-interest ~$228M (14%). Top ten individuals: Soros ($102M, the only Democrat), Yass ($93.8M), Horowitz & Andreessen ($91.3M), Musk ($90.6M), the Uihleins ($70M), Adelson ($67.6M), the Brockmans ($50M), Singer ($37.1M), the Winklevosses ($33.2M), Griffin ($32.5M). Attributed to the Post's FEC analysis, not the Sanders post that popularized it.
'Conservative': the individual checks got largest here — Musk at least $250M, Timothy Mellon ~$165M, Miriam Adelson ~$100M, Jeff Yass on the order of $100M.
MAGA Inc. raised ~$305M since the election (five times the prior record for a president's post-win super PAC). Party-leadership vehicles (Congressional Leadership Fund ~$243M) run on corporate/Wall Street money and 501(c)(4) dark-money arms (One Nation) that hide the original donors.
'Centrist / moderate': the self-styled middle runs on corporate, pharma, finance, and tech money — and its leaders have grown candid about it.
Third Way (a 501(c)(4) that need not disclose) conceded most support comes from its Wall Street/business board; documented donors include Amgen, CVS Health, Baxter. WelcomePAC drew ~three-quarters of its individual funds from the ultra-wealthy — Reid Hoffman, the Murdochs ($2.5M), a Bain co-chair, the Waltons. We report the sourced funders, not the unverified 'pro-Israel-billionaire' framing.
Single-issue: AIPAC's United Democracy Project spent ~$68M in 2024, overwhelmingly in Democratic primaries — ~$18.3M of it to beat two progressive incumbents, both of whom lost.
~$12.3M against Rep. Jamaal Bowman, ~$6M against Rep. Cori Bush. Nearly half of AIPAC's spending was negative, and a growing share moves through 'shell' PACs that obscure the path — ~$8M of $30.66M in the 2026 cycle ran through nine such vehicles. Held to the same standard as every other lane, not singled out.
Crypto: one industry, one super PAC, $200 million. Fairshake is nominally bipartisan — which is the point. It isn't a 'side' at all; it's a sector buying a policy outcome.
Fairshake (with Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress) spent $200M+ in 2024, largely from three firms — Coinbase (~$75M), a16z (~$60M), Ripple (~$50M) — and carried ~$193M into the 2026 midterms. It backs pro-crypto candidates of either party.
'Liberal': the left is not exempt — its largest super PAC outspent everyone. Future Forward USA raised ~$559M in 2023–2024, the top outside spender of the election.
Its money came heavily from a few tech billionaires — Dustin Moskovitz (~$38M), Michael Bloomberg (~$50M+), Reid Hoffman (~$10M) — and liberal donors increasingly route money through 501(c)(4)s, which is how Democratic-aligned groups ended up with the largest dark-money share in 2024.
Where we draw the line — the exception the pattern doesn't erase.
- Musk ~$250M, Adelson ~$100M, Mellon ~$165M — single donors writing nine-figure checks.
- A closed, concentrated donor class at the top of every lane.
- SEIU and AFSCME run large PACs too — but on aggregated member dues, not one check.
- A materially different model. We count it as the exception to this page's pattern, not an example of it.
Why it matters now.
The reason one industry can drop $200M, or one person can write a $100M check, is the legal machine traced in Normalizing Corruption — Buckley, Citizens United, SpeechNow. This page is the receipt: whatever you think of the 'sides,' the concentration at the top is documented, and it is the engine beneath the Return on Investment file.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenAre the ideological 'sides' funded by this concentrated donor class effectively a managed illusion, as watchdogs like Public Citizen argue, or genuine competition — a reading the funding figures alone cannot settle?
- OpenWho are the ultimate donors behind the money routed through 501(c)(4) dark-money arms and the nine shell PACs that carried roughly $8 million of pro-Israel spending in the 2026 cycle — paths built to obscure the original source?