We have a plan to expose the dark-money tricks upending our elections

Earlier this year, voters in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District started getting blanketed with ads from a mysterious group called Jobs and Democracy PAC supporting incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee in her Democratic primary against her Bernie Sanders-backed challenger, Nida Allam.

But who exactly is Jobs and Democracy PAC? Hint: They don’t create jobs and don’t support democracy. 

It’s actually the front group for the AI giant Anthropic, and their spending worked. The $1.3 million spent by AI interests almost surely decided the race, as Allam was defeated by just over 1,000 votes. 

But it’s not just Anthropic pulling these kinds of shenanigans. Since Citizens United, dark-money spending has exploded, with deep-pocketed special interests like the crypto industry and the pro-Israel lobby flooding the airwaves with phony ads that say nothing about who actually paid or what they stand for. 

Enough is enough. It’s time to unmask these shady super PACs. 

That’s where we come in. The Intercept is launching a major initiative during this year’s all-important midterms aiming to track and reveal the donors behind the dark money pouring into our elections. 

This year’s political reporting is some of the most ambitious and challenging we’ve ever done — and we simply won’t be able to do it unless readers like you step up to support it. 

So we’re asking all our readers to chip in whatever you can today to help expose the dark-money front groups trying to buy our elections. 

During the 2008 election cycle, the last presidential campaign before the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, outside spending in elections totaled $574 million. 

By 2024, with the caps on spending limits erased, outside spending — mostly super PACs — exploded to nearly $4.5 billion. 

That’s an eightfold increase. 

The reason wealthy billionaires and corporations are spending so much money is because they’re getting a great return on their investment in the form of corporate welfare, lax regulatory oversight, and other goodies. 

In the absence of new legislation closing campaign disclosure loopholes, the only way we can find out who is funding the ads flooding our televisions and social media feeds is through the kind of deep-dive investigative journalism that few, if any, news outlets have the resources and independence to pursue. 

But we cannot take on ambitious investigations like this without the financial support of readers like you. 

That’s not just some fundraising pitch. It’s the literal truth.

Please donate to The Intercept today and help expose the dark-money front groups trying to buy our elections. 

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