See our media citations from outlets around the nation this week:
How Polarization Sent Washington to the Brink of a Shutdown (Wall Street Journal)
Lawmakers are less reliant on political parties for money. Greene, for example, was the ninth-largest fundraiser in the 2022 election cycle among current House members, and 98% of her money came from individual donors rather than party, corporate or political-action committee sources, data from the nonpartisan group OpenSecrets shows. Ocasio-Cortez ranked 10th, and essentially all of her money came from individual donors.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud ran through Washington, prosecutors say (The Washington Post)
Two of Bankman-Fried’s top lieutenants have already pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance law by making donations that Bankman-Fried reimbursed, among other charges. Nishad Singh, FTX’s former director of engineering — who is set to testify as a witness for the prosecution — directed more than $14 million to Democratic candidates and causes, according to a tally by OpenSecrets. He has acknowledged he did not select the beneficiaries and was paid back partly with FTX customer money.
Asymmetric pay policy keeps US prone to shutdown (Reuters)
The $174,000 annual salaries paid to each of the 535 U.S. legislators, meantime, will be unaffected. Their median net worth is just over $1 million, according to the nonprofit research outfit OpenSecrets, so the paychecks are important to most of them. Making the debate more financially meaningful on a personal level would help cut through the political nonsense
