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New "Power Map" Preserves Record Of Bundlers and Donors In 2020 Primary
New “Power Map” Preserves Record Of Bundlers And Donors In 2020 Primary
WASHINGTON
The Revolving Door Project launched its new "Presidential Power Map" tool today, which shows holistically how powerful sectors of the U.S. economy funded each of the major 2020 Democratic candidates. By breaking down high-dollar support by sector, this tool encourages users to draw direct lines between big money fundraising and a president's choices regarding personnel and executive power.
As Joe Biden consolidates support and embarks on the transition-planning process, the Power Map provides clues as to which people and sectors might have a seat at the table now and in the future. To further clarify these connections, members of the Revolving Door Project's team have authored a series of pieces that shed light on Joe Biden's ties to important sectors, including Tech, Private Equity, and Real Estate.
The Presidential Power Map also adds new and important context to the contest for the vice presidency, by illustrating which major sectors propelled their campaigns. Several candidates, including some with vice-presidential ambitions and some who likely have aspirations for Cabinet-level appointments, have now removed their lists of disclosed bundlers from campaign websites, making the Power Map an important archive of political influence over prominent Democratic figures.
Each candidate's Power Map displays the names and job titles of major donors and bundlers from significant companies across 25 business sectors. Color-coded data visualizations allow viewers to quickly assess which industries fund which politician. Moreover, a search function and database provide more detail on individual donors and bundlers. The full methodology can be found here, and the RDP team would be happy to walk reporters through the database at their leisure.
Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser said "Corruption and the influence of wealthy donors was a major issue throughout the 2020 primary. It's arguably the defining issue in our politics today. This Power Map tool, for the first time, lets anyone see clearly how the most important sectors of our economy have cultivated financial relationships with prominent members of the Democratic party, including the presumptive presidential nominee. Figures like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar won't disappear from our politics anytime soon, so the public deserves to know who is signing and collecting the checks that have sustained their careers."
In the coming weeks, the Power Map tool will be updated with new features for easier cross-referencing of donors and bundlers who contributed to multiple campaigns.
The Revolving Door Project (RDP) scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.
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Backed by Billions in New Funds, Trump's ICE Works to Deputize Local Police Nationwide
"Federal incentives to target and profile will harm immigrant communities and have spillover effects on other communities already targeted by local law enforcement impacting immigrants and citizens alike."
Feb 16, 2026
The US Department of Homeland Security is partially shut down due to a congressional funding fight, but armed with an extra $75 billion from last year's Republican budget package, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not only expanding its concentration camp network but also working to deputize thousands of police officers across the country.
Two decades ago, Congress authorized the US attorney general to enter into agreements allowing local and state law enforcement officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement actions under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. A brief published Monday by the policy group FWD.us details how ICE is pumping money into "an old, and once rejected, idea—the 287(g) Task Force Model."
As NBC News—which first reported on the brief—noted Monday, the model "was discontinued by the Obama administration in 2012 in part over accusations of racial profiling by local officers in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Alamance County, North Carolina."
Pointing to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as an example, FWD.us president Todd Schulte said in a statement that "over a decade ago, we saw how deputizing local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement could result in disaster."
"Federal incentives to target and profile will harm immigrant communities and have spillover effects on other communities already targeted by local law enforcement impacting immigrants and citizens alike," Schulte warned.
Despite such warnings, the model has been embraced by both of President Donald Trump's administrations. During the Republican's first term—partly defined by his widely denounced forced separation of immigrant families at the southern border—there were approximately 150 total 287(g) agreements across the United States, according to FWD.us.
Trump lost reelection in 2020, and as he returned to power early last year, there were only about 135 agreements still in effect. The president had campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and he's since tried to deliver on it by dispatching thousands of DHS agents to various US communities. Some recently targeted cities, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, officially prohibit local police from collaborating with ICE on civil enforcement, but FWD.us found 1,372 agreements across 1,169 agencies as of late January.
BREAKING: "Agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement that allow officers to make federal immigration arrests have increased by 950% in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new analysis of ICE data."
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— Attorney Kathleen Martinez (@attorneymartinez.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 11:06 AM
The publication explains that "Task Force Model sign-ups began to climb sharply" after the second Trump administration announced a new funding model for such agreements last September. ICE previously paid for training and information technology infrastructure, but now, it will "pay for the full salary and benefits of any trained and certified officer, one-time start-up costs to the agency, overtime, and bonuses based on 'performance,' i.e. how many immigration arrests officers make."
"This comes despite the Immigration and Nationality Act that lays out 287(g) powers stating that any designated officer 'may carry out such function at the expense of the state or political subdivision,'" the document points out.
According to the brief:
When announcing the new funding model in September 2025, ICE reported that 8,501 local law enforcement officers had already been trained under the Task Force Model—or approximately 18 per agency—and that 2,000 more were being trained. Since then, an additional 296 agencies have signed up for the Task Force Model. If they send similar numbers of officers for training, this would mean that between 13,800 and 15,800 police officers and deputies across the country are now deputized by ICE and trained to target immigrants, or anyone who they think looks like an immigrant. This is an even larger increase in force than the 12,000 new officers and agents hired directly by ICE since Trump's second inauguration.
"Based on current participation," the document warns, "we estimate ICE could distribute between $1.4 billion and $2 billion to local and state law enforcement agencies in 2026, adding thousands of additional law enforcement officers with immigration enforcement powers and putting communities throughout the country at increased risk of criminalization and incarceration."
It adds that "if the current pace of sign-ups continues for an additional year, 2027 funding could grow to a total of $3.6 billion in 2027, funding 31,000 law enforcement officers deputized by ICE across the country."
Felicity Rose, vice president of criminal justice research and policy at FWD.us, said that "this would be by far the largest infusion of federal funding into local law enforcement since the 1990s COPS grants, which increased low-level arrests while having no significant impact on crime."
"Research on the 287(g) Task Force Model showed it too caused massive harm to communities while failing to reduce crime," she stressed. "This program is a confluence of two bad ideas that should be left in the past where they belong."
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'We Are Coming for Power for Working People': Ocasio-Cortez Talks US Politics in Germany
"You are being screwed, and that story is not a cultural one but a class one."
Feb 16, 2026
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday fleshed out her vision for progressive politics in the US during a town hall-style event at
Technical University Berlin in Germany.
While discussing the domestic political situation in the US, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) argued that enormous disparities in wealth inequality were leaving voters open to appeals from far-right movements that scapegoat immigrants and minorities for problems being caused by unchecked corporate power.
"When you have economic stagnation for the working class, especially in an environment where GDP is growing, that is the stuff of populist movements," said Ocasio-Cortez. "The choice is what direction those populist movements can go... One direction is, 'We are going to blame this on the vulnerable, on immigrants, on people of different gender identities."
The Rosetta Stone for AOC’s foreign policy right here: “...economic elites are taking the lion's share of growth for themselves and leaving crumbs for the working class...this is an injustice, you are being screwed, and that story is not a cultural one but a class one” pic.twitter.com/gK7kyVbONb
— Van Jackson (@RealVanJackson) February 15, 2026
The New York Democrat then argued that right-wing populism "is all done as a distraction from the truth, which is that economic elites have taken the lion's share of growth for themselves" while "leaving crumbs for the working class."
"The alternative is a populist movement that tells the truth," she continued. "That says, 'This is an injustice, you are being screwed over, and that story is not a cultural one, but a class one.'"
Elsewhere in the talk, Ocasio-Cortez downplayed speculation about potentially running for higher office in 2028, instead outlining her goals for reshaping the political environment.
"My ambition has always been about conditions," she said. "I remain ambitious, but my ambitions are in changing our political environment. That's why, when I was first elected, my ambition was to change the Democratic Party, and to make it more economically populist and responsive to working-class Americans... Frankly, I think the ambitions of a progressive movement go so far beyond an elected office. We are coming for power for working people."
Ocasio-Cortez also gave a shoutout to the resistance to federal immigration enforcement operations as an example of building community solidarity in the face of an external threat.
"Every one of us can be sand in the gears of an injustice," she said. "I think about how all the people in Minneapolis refused to let [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers use the bathroom in their establishments. I mean, it’s a small thing, but it matters! It matters... We create a culture of protection of one another, a culture of solidarity with one another, and it's rebellious."
AOC: “There are more of us than them. Every one of us can be sand in the gears of injustice. All the people in Minneapolis refused to let ICE officers use the bathroom in their establishments. It’s a small thing, but it matters! We create a culture of protection of one another” pic.twitter.com/3y9IpRiS8m
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) February 15, 2026
Ocasio-Cortez's remarks on Sunday came after she participated in a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference on Friday where she argued that "a working-class-centered politics" was the key to defeat "the scourges of authoritarianism, which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally."
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Marco Rubio's Imperialist Munich Speech Seen as 'Cause for Worry, Not Applause'
One analyst called the US secretary of state's address "one of the most revisionist and imperialist speeches I've ever seen a senior American official make, and that's saying something."
Feb 16, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's defense of Western colonialism and imperial power at the Munich Security Conference and the applause his remarks received from attendees were seen as deeply unsettling in the context of the Trump administration's brazen trampling of international law, including the recent kidnapping of the president of a sovereign nation.
While Rubio gave lip service in his remarks to multilateral cooperation with Europe in what he called the global "task of renewal and restoration," he made clear the US would carry out its agenda alone if needed and accused European allies of succumbing to a "climate cult," embracing "free and unfettered trade," and opening their doors to "unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies," echoing the rhetoric of his boss, US President Donald Trump.
Rubio lamented the decline of the "great Western empires" in the face of "godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come"—and made clear that the Trump administration envisions a return to "the West's age of dominance."
"We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline," said Rubio. "We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history."
Attendees at the Munich conference—which notably did not include representatives of Latin America at a time when the Trump administration is embracing and expanding the Monroe Doctrine—gave Rubio a standing ovation:
standing ovation for marco rubio at munich security council, set against context of dramatically lower european expectations from their relationship with the united states. pic.twitter.com/oavfBmaIs2
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) February 14, 2026
"Standing ovation for Rubio in Munich. Standing ovation for Netanyahu in Washington," wrote Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler, referring to the Israeli prime minister's visit to the US capital last week. "We are ruled by a transatlantic clique of criminals and midwit minions who clap like seals when their white supremacy is laundered by the language of 'Western values.' Sick stuff."
Critics viewed the US secretary of state's speech—both the explicit words and its undertones—as a self-serving interpretation of the past and a dangerous vision of the future, and expressed alarm at the celebratory response from the Munich crowd.
Geopolitical analyst Arnaud Bertrand called Rubio's address "one of the most revisionist and imperialist speeches I've ever seen a senior American official make, and that's saying something."
"Basically the man is openly saying that the whole post-colonial order was a mistake and he's calling on Europe to share the spoils of building a new one," Bertrand wrote on social media. "When an imperial power is speaking to you of sentiments, of how much they like you and how they want to partner with you—the much weaker party—that's cause for worry, not applause."
Nathalie Tocci, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, compared Rubio's address to US Vice President JD Vance's openly hostile attack on European nations during his Munich speech last year.
"Rubio’s message was more sophisticated and strategic than Vance’s. But it was just as dangerous, if not more so, precisely because it lowered the transatlantic temperature and may have lulled Europe into a false sense of calm," Tocci wrote in a Guardian op-ed on Monday. "As Benjamin Haddad, France’s Europe minister, said in Munich, the European temptation may be to press the snooze button once again."
"If Europeans were comforted by a false sense of reassurance as they walked away from the packed Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich," Tocci added, "they risk walking straight into the trap that MAGA America has laid for them."
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