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dark money
Bernie Sanders Leads Senators in Demand to End Super PACs in Democratic Primaries
“We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people."
Apr 27, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a coalition of Democratic senators pushing for the party's leaders to require candidates to swear off billionaire- and corporate-backed super PACs, or political action committees, in this year's primary elections.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined the independent senator from Vermont to send a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Sunday.
Five of the senators are members of a group of Senate Democrats known as the "Fight Club" that has formed to oppose Schumer's preferred candidates in contested Democratic primaries, many of whom are closely aligned with the party's traditional corporate backers.
While the senators applauded the DNC's resolution last month broadly condemning the influence of dark money in party elections, calling it an "important first step," they said Democratic leaders needed to take more "concrete steps to curb the influence of dark money," particularly the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
"Corporate-funded super PACs are shaping the 2026 elections as we speak, and the scale of their resources is unprecedented," the senators said. "Crypto-aligned groups are preparing to spend $200 million, and AIPAC-affiliated groups already control more than $90 million. The AI industry has already spent over $185 million this year alone. These sums are being deployed to influence Democratic primaries and overwhelm candidates who rely on grassroots support."
April's broad anti-dark money resolution was passed by the DNC in lieu of one that directly singled out “the growing influence” of AIPAC, specifically over its more than $100 million spending blitz in 2024 to oust progressive candidates. Despite a dramatic shift toward opposition to Israel among Democratic voters over the past three years, that resolution was voted down by a DNC panel.
AIPAC continues to dump massive amounts of money behind its preferred candidates. The senators' letter notes that "in Illinois alone, outside groups spent over $50 million in recent Democratic primaries." Nearly half of that money was spent by AIPAC, which secretly funneled money to support its candidates using shell groups that appeared to be unaffiliated.
The group has used similar tactics in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ala Stanford, a candidate for Pennsylvania's 3rd District in Philadelphia, was recently revealed to have received $500,000 worth of backing from AIPAC through a super PAC despite claiming to have received no support from the Israel lobby.
Meanwhile, in Maine, a clique of Republican billionaires who back Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Palantir CEO Alex Karp—also recently dropped $2 million to fund an ad campaign seeking to hamper the chances of the Democratic Senate primary front-runner Graham Platner.
"We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people," the senators said in Sunday's letter.
The senators noted Schumer's past statement that overturning the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door for the flood of corporate money into elections by allowing individuals to independently spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, was "probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.”
They said that while reversing the ruling remained a "critical long-term goal," the party "has the authority—and the responsibility—to act now with clear, enforceable rules."
"National and state parties should require all Democratic candidates to sign a pledge opposing billionaire- and corporate-backed super PAC spending on their behalf in Democratic primaries," they said. "The DNC, state parties, and committees working to elect Democrats to the House and Senate have many potential tools at their disposal to enforce that pledge, including withholding endorsements for those who make endorsements in the primary, and they should use whatever tools necessary to do so."
Sanders has said that simply requiring candidates to take a pledge is not enough and that party leaders need to be diligent about holding them to it.
“If the Democrats are going to be honest and consistent in terms of their concerns about money and politics, they’ve got to clean up, in my view, their own house immediately,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “That means getting super PACs out of Democratic primaries, congressional as well as presidential.”
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Dem Candidate for Philly House Seat Caught Hiding Over $500K in Secret AIPAC Funds
Ala Stanford, who's running for Pennsylvania's 3rd district, has repeatedly claimed that using the term genocide to describe Israel's actions in Gaza is "hurtful" to those accused, even tantamount to using the "N-word."
Apr 24, 2026
As the Israel lobby's influence grows overwhelmingly toxic among Democratic voters, the current frontrunner for one of America's bluest congressional districts has been caught trying to hide financial backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The Philadelphia pediatric surgeon, Dr. Ala Stanford, who is running for the open seat in Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district, has denied receiving any funds from AIPAC.
"That's not me... I did not accept money from AIPAC," Stanford said at an event in late March when confronted about previous reporting that the super political action committee (PAC) supporting her, the 314 Action Fund, had acted as a secret pass-through for AIPAC in previous elections.
But following a new report published by Drop Site News on Thursday, co-founder Ryan Grim said, "We now know this is a flat-out lie."
Using federal campaign filings, Grim and Capitol Hill correspondent Julian Andreone reported that AIPAC has been secretly directing money to back Stanford's campaign using the 314 Action Fund, which has spent more than $2.6 million supporting the candidate.
The PAC is billed as a fund to support “pro-science” candidates and recruits doctors to run for federal office. But its most recent monthly report revealed a $500,000 donation from the Kimbark Foundation, whose only other donation was another $500,000 to the EDW Action Fund, which has also been used as an AIPAC shell organization.
In 2024, AIPAC used EDW—which describes itself as an organization to elect pro-choice candidates—to secretly give money to a another pediatrician, Dr. Maxine Dexter, who is now a US representative for Oregon's 3rd district, helping her oust her rival, Susheela Jayapal, the older sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who has a similar record for supporting Palestinian rights amid Israel's genocide in Gaza.
In the first quarter of 2026, Stanford also received more than $27,000 from major AIPAC donors via the group Democracy Engine, which The Guardian has described as "a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations" and which has been used by AIPAC to fundraise against incumbents like former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamal Bowman (D-NY).
That AIPAC would drop big money to back Stanford becomes less surprising given her opponent, Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb (D-200), who has called for an arms embargo against Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
According to a recent poll commissioned by the 314 Action Fund, Stanford leads the race with about 28% support compared with 23% for Rabb.
However, Rabb netted a major endorsement on Thursday from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the nation's most prominent progressive politicians and a potential 2028 presidential contender. He has racked up others from Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America, and other Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Ro Khanna (Calif.).
While Rabb has condemned politicians who refuse to refer to Israel's destruction of Gaza and killing of more than 75,000 Palestinians as a "genocide"—a position shared by the vast majority of Democratic voters—Stanford has suggested that belief is tantamount to hate speech.
“I know when you use the G-word how hurtful it is to a group of people,” she said in a March interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s like someone saying the N-word around me. I don’t want to hear that. And every time you shout that from the rooftops, how many people are you hurting?”
After those comments were met with backlash, she has struggled to respond when asked to clarify her beliefs on the topic. When voters pressed her to use the word "genocide" during a candidate forum earlier this week, her answer appeared to leave many dissatisfied.
A voter asked if Israel's actions in Gaza constituted genocide. Stanford stood in silence for around 30 seconds before deflecting to an anecdote about her work during the Covid-19 pandemic. "I don't owe anybody anything," she said.
She then responded, "I can say genocide if you'd like me to say it," not naming Israel specifically. When the voter asked her if Israel's actions constituted one, he was told to "be quiet" by another attendee. When the voter responded, Stanford asked him, “Can you please be respectful for her?”
“I am someone who took an oath to do no harm, so when I made the statement, I made it because for those who have been a victim of genocide, whose families are still suffering, it’s hurtful to them,” Stanford said, seeming to mean victims other than those in Gaza. “For Israelis who have been accused of committing it, it’s hurtful for them,” she continued.
After the comments prompted angry reactions from the crowd, Stanford shouted, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" before saying, "All I have ever done is to give. It's selfless." She then said she apologized if she "hurt" the voters who confronted her.
Erik Polyak, the executive director of 314 Action, did not answer specific questions about its support from AIPAC when asked by Drop Site, instead generally emphasizing its general mission to "elect doctors and scientists."
Polyak noted that the group had opposed AIPAC's preferred candidate, Laura Fine, in last month's race for Illinois' 9th congressional district in Chicago, instead backing the somewhat more Israel-critical Daniel Biss, who narrowly defeated the Palestinian-American Kat Abughazaleh for the Democratic nomination.
In that race and others in Chicago, AIPAC used nearly identical tactics to those deployed in Philadelphia. It funneled $1.5 million through the group Elect Chicago Women to fund attack ads against Biss, and used another shadow group, the Chicago Progressive Partnership, to fund ads boosting another marginal left-wing candidate, Bushra Amiwala, which helped splinter the progressive bloc supporting Abughazaleh.
Similar tactics were less successful last week in New Jersey, where Analilia Mejía, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), clinched the Democratic nomination despite her primary opponent pulling in $350,000 from an AIPAC donor who had also bankrolled the effort to oust Jayapal.
As both Democratic and Republican candidates increasingly seek to prove their anti-establishment credibility by swearing off donations from AIPAC and other lobbying groups, Grim said that it'll be difficult for voters to take them seriously unless the parties adopt rules requiring greater transparency.
"One thing Democrats and Republicans, through the [Democratic National Committee] and [Republican National Committee], could actually do, if they don't want to ban AIPAC spending in primaries altogether, is say, fine: AIPAC can spend just like anybody else, but like everybody else, they have to do it through their regular super PAC and be transparent about it," he said. "Then let voters decide."
He called on party leaders to “stop making voters play forensic detective and chase money from some dark money foundation to a PAC to another PAC with all of them using names that have nothing to do with AIPAC or Israel, only to learn after the election that it was actually AIPAC money.”
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DNC Half-Measures Condemning Dark Money Won’t Cut It, Says Sanders as He Demands Total Ban
"Billionaire-funded super PACs—AIPAC, AI, crypto, and others—are spending hundreds of millions to defeat any candidate who crosses them. They should be banned from Democratic primaries. Period."
Apr 10, 2026
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday called for a total ban on dark money a day after the Democratic National Committee voted down a resolution that would have condemned the leading US pro-Israel lobby, which has spent nine figures on US elections over the past five years.
The DNC Resolutions Committee rejected the resolution, which condemned “the growing influence” of dark money and corporate-backed outside spending on Democratic races, specifically calling out the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. United Democracy Project, AIPAC's dark money arm, unleashed a $100 million blitz targeting progressives during the 2024 election cycle.
When combined with other pro-Israel lobby groups, like GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson's Preserve America PAC, that figure soars to over $200 million, according to the public interest group AIPAC Tracker.
Instead, the DNC panel opted for a broader resolution decrying the influence of dark money—defined as undisclosed independent campaign contributions—in the 2026 Democratic primaries.
"The DNC just passed a resolution condemning dark money," Sanders (Vt.) said Friday on X. "That’s a start, but not enough."
"Billionaire-funded super PACs—AIPAC, AI, crypto, and others—are spending hundreds of millions to defeat any candidate who crosses them," the senator added. "They should be banned from Democratic primaries. Period."
Sanders campaigned twice for president, centering his opposition to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which effectively ushered in the modern era of secret unlimited political spending.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, dark money spending in federal elections has skyrocketed from negligible amounts before 2010 to over $1.9 billion in the 2024 cycle alone, with over $4 billion in total undisclosed outside financing following the high court's contentious ruling.
Polling has repeatedly affirmed that support for Israel—which stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in Gaza and has already been found by the ICJ to be illegally occupying Palestine under apartheid rule—is detrimental to Democrats.
The DNC's own suppressed postmortem of the 2024 presidential election also showed that former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' unconditional support for Israel cost Harris votes.
As AIPAC has grown more toxic to US voters amid a litany of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—a growing number of Democrats, including some who once welcomed the group's support, are turning their backs on the lobby.
“AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said last month after affiliated groups poured $22 million into House races in his state.
While AIPAC cash was instrumental in unseating congressional progressives including former Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), its largesse failed to oust others, including Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Sanders wasn't the only one to criticize the DNC's rejection of the anti-AIPAC resolution.
“The American people are clear: They want our government to invest in life and stop funding the bombs that are destroying lives in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran," Jewish Voice for Peace political director Beth Miller said Friday.
"The DNC’s failure to pass this simple resolution condemning the outsized spending of an extremist and Republican-funded group like AIPAC in Democratic primaries shows how wildly out of touch the party is with its base," Miller added.
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