On Tuesday, a federal district judge blocked a Maine law recently passed by ballot initiative that would strictly limit the amount of money anyone could contribute to a super PAC — a political committee that by definition may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

The fight over the law’s implementation centers on whether putting a cap on a single donation to super PACs is, as U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Frink Wolf wrote in her ruling, “a constitutional means of preventing quid pro quo corruption or whether it runs afoul of the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence.” 

And Wolf’s ruling is clear: Maine’s law is “unconstitutional on its face,” arguing that “it risks chilling contributors’ rights to speak and associate” in violation of the First Amendment.

But the legal fight is hardly over, Dave Levinthal reports.

Proponents of the Maine super PAC law are vowing to appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals and perhaps beyond, to the Supreme Court. Their goal: to kill super PACs. (Disclosure: OpenSecrets, while not a party to the lawsuit, provided data and other information via a report and deposition for the case analysis.)

Mike Huckabee, a two-time presidential candidate and former Republican governor of Arkansas, was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Israel in April, putting him at the center of the conflict between Israel and Hamas as well as Israel’s conflict with Iran, reports Natalie Jonas. 

Huckabee’s political career began in 1993, when he won a special election to become lieutenant governor of Arkansas. He became governor in 1996, when the incumbent resigned, and was later elected to full, four-year terms in 1998 and 2002. 

In 2008, Huckabee ran an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination while hosting the program “Huckabee” on Fox News. He ran another campaign in 2016 but dropped out of the primary competition after winning just 1.8 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus. 

Huckabee, who has opposed Palestinian autonomy and self-determination throughout his long political career, said President Donald Trump’s administration is not pursuing the two-state solution dictated by the Oslo Accords as a way to resolve conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As an evangelical Christian and Christian Zionist, his support of Israel is rooted in the belief that Palestinians leaving the land will incite a biblical rapture, leading to the return of Christ. 

With Israel and the United States recently taking military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, Huckabee has been in the middle of a tense situation.

Political advertisers spent at least $1.9 billion on online ads for the 2024 election on the four largest digital platforms (Meta, Google, Snap, and X) that publish analyzable spending data, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center, OpenSecrets, and Wesleyan Media Project. 

Our new examination of political ad content in the general election period expands on our summer 2024 and postelection analyses of online ad spending, identifying significant differences in the strategies used by spenders. Parties and outside groups were much more likely than candidates to use negative ads, and their ads focused largely on persuading voters. Candidates’ advertising goals, by contrast, tended to be evenly split between persuading voters and fundraising.

There were partisan differences, too: While both sides of the aisle spent on efforts to persuade voters, spending in favor of Democrats was more likely to have fundraising as a goal, and spending in favor of Republicans was more likely to include get-out-the-vote efforts. Additionally, pro-Democratic spenders put a somewhat greater portion of ad money toward contrasting their party’s candidates with their opponents compared with pro-Republican spenders, who spent more on simply promoting their own candidates.

Crypto industry amasses colossal war chest for elections (Politico)

Second-Quarter Hauls Show Republicans Keeping Up Their Fundraising Numbers (NOTUS)

Dark money turns Alabama attorney general race into a million-dollar mystery (AL.com)

Mayor Adams Loses Another Round in Bid to Receive Public Matching Funds (The New York Times)

Vested interests. Influence muscle. At RFK Jr.’s HHS, it’s not pharma. It’s wellness. (CNN)

Its lobbying influence is markedly smaller than the lobbying reach of pharmaceutical companies, according to OpenSecrets, a research organization that tracks money in U.S. politics. The nutritional and dietary supplements industry spent about $3.7 million on lobbying in 2024, for example, compared with the $387 million the pharmaceutical industry spent the same year.

Jane Fonda Warns Climate and Democracy Are Both in Crisis (Bloomberg)

When protesting wasn’t bringing about change fast enough, Fonda got more directly involved in politics. In 2022, she launched the Jane Fonda Climate Political Action Committee, or PAC, to support political candidates and other groups. The PAC raised nearly $2 million in the 2022 election cycle and more than $5.7 million for 2024, according to data compiled by nonprofit OpenSecrets. 

As Georgia politicians rush to raise money for 2026, some bulk up their campaign accounts with personal loans (WABE/PBS/NPR)

Brendan Glavin, director of insights at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics, says Georgia campaign finance law allows unlimited personal loans or contributions. “Limiting the amount an individual can spend on themselves, you’re going to run into constitutional issues,” Glavin says.

Natural Gas Gets A Political Jolt—But Pipeline Gaps Risk The Payoff (Forbes)

But Trump’s rollback of clean energy incentives comes amid strong backing from the fossil fuel industry, which contributed more than $74 million to his 2024 campaign, according to OpenSecrets. The new law phases out wind and solar tax credits for projects starting after June 2026 and rescinds billions in climate-related investments authorized under President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Princeton University’s REPEAT Project estimates that the rollback alone could reduce future clean power capacity by over 70,000 megawatts—roughly enough to power 50 million homes.

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