House and Senate candidates recently filed their fundraising reports covering the first six months of 2025. OpenSecrets' Brendan Glavin analyzed the data to determine which candidates have raised the most money and which ones are sitting on the biggest piles of cash.

Democrats snagged most of the top spots on both the fundraising and war chest lists, with Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) showing the biggest haul during the first six months of 2025 and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) reporting the most money on hand.

Click through for more data, including a look at the most competitive Senate races.

President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has become the frontman in negotiations in three global conflicts: in Iran, Gaza and — extending beyond his nominal jurisdiction — Ukraine. 

Witkoff, who never worked in government prior to his selection in January, is a longtime friend of the president and has decades of experience facilitating business deals in the Middle East, where he strengthened connections between a number of sovereign wealth fund leaders. Now, as he negotiates with Middle East officials, his son is running parallel cryptocurrency ventures with some of the same people and the Trump family. Democrats have questioned whether the Witkoff and Trump families are profiting off those connections and threatening national security with their deals.

The Trump-Witkoff relationship runs deep: Witkoff’s son, Zach, got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in 2022; Witkoff testified during Trump’s civil fraud trial in 2023; and he provided significant support for Trump’s presidential campaigns and affiliated PACs. Witkoff was also with Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club in September 2024 when a man allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump. Witkoff went on to serve as co-chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee for Trump’s second term.

Witkoff has also been at the center of multiple failed ceasefire deals in Gaza and Ukraine, and has been criticized by Iran, whose leaders called Witkoff’s messaging on their nuclear facilities “contradictory and conflicting.”

Despite the selection of Keith Kellogg to the role of special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Trump has leaned heavily on Witkoff to communicate about the war — potentially because Kellogg is not as critical of Ukraine as many others in the Trump administration. A private plane carrying Witkoff even flew to Abu Dhabi and Qatar, then traveled to Azerbaijan and Russia before returning to Florida in March. Two months later, Trump was gifted a $400 million Boeing 747 from a Qatar — a deal brokered by Witkoff. 

Natalie Jonas breaks down the numbers.

Speaker Mike Johnson is celebrating massive cuts to foreign aid programs and public media that he successfully navigated through the House of Representatives.

But Johnson’s own political campaign budget just took a modest hit, too — thanks to a thief, according to new federal records reviewed by Dave Levinthal. 

The Mike Johnson for Louisiana congressional committee lost $9,995.50 on April 28 when an unidentified person swiped one of the committee’s paper checks, which was “reissued to a fraudulent payee, and processed,” Johnson’s campaign wrote to the Federal Election Commission this week. 

“This was not due to misuse of funds internally,” the campaign committee told federal regulators. “The Committee is currently working with the bank to retrieve the lost funds if possible.”

Greg Steele, spokesman for Johnson’s campaign, told OpenSecrets on Friday that they do not know who stole the check and are “exploring” whether to involve law enforcement.

“We just caught it during our normal reconciliation process at the end of the financial quarter, and the account is locked down,” Steele said.

He added that Johnson’s campaign has had no other theft-related issues since.

While losing $10,000 will barely dent Johnson’s overall political finances — his committee reported more than $6.7 million in cash on hand as of June 30 — the theft is the latest in a series of incidents involving fraudsters hitting high-profile politicians and party committees.

Taken together, federal political committees have lost millions of dollars this decade, an OpenSecrets analysis of federal records and media reports indicates.

Crypto Industry Is Spending More on Lobbying Than Ever (Sludge)

A health care lobbying boom (Politico)

I'll show you the money — and reveal why it's nearly impossible to say where it came from (AL.com)

Trump's Second Favorite Island (With Another List) (Zach’s Substack)

'One big beautiful' lobbying effort propels law firms, K Street revenues (Reuters)

Companies, trade groups and other entities have continuously spent more money on lobbying since 2016, according to non-profit group OpenSecrets, which compiles lobbying records. In 2024, companies spent more than $4.44 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies. Companies have spent more than $1.26 billion on lobbying in 2025 as of May 14, with about 10% of that money coming from the pharmaceutical and health products industry, according to OpenSecrets. Internet and electronics manufacturing industries accounted for about 8% of lobbying spending in the same period. 

The big winner from Coca-Cola's Trump-inspired sugar push (BBC)

Trump-backed groups are among the ones in recent years to have received significant donations from the Fanjul family, Florida-based sugar titans, according to OpenSecrets.

New tax policy may bring political campaigns to the pulpit, critics say (Iowa Capital Dispatch)

“If you have the ability to influence the election, then people who have money who also want to influence elections are going to find a way to get you involved,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights for OpenSecrets, a research group tracking money in U.S. politics. 

The Maine Idea Behind Campaign Finance Reform (National Journal)

The law and the legal fallout could have a significant ripple effect across the campaign finance world, said Hilary Braseth, president of OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan money-tracking organization. “Somebody might not feel the need to be clandestine if they’re giving five grand versus five million,” Braseth told Hotline. “I think that could actually be really interesting to see if that has any impact, if at all, on the influence of dark money in politics.”

Top British firms donated to Republicans who denied 2020 US election result (Daily Mail)

The amounts that PACs can give to a candidate are limited to no more than $5000 for the primary and another $5000 for the election itself. Some British-listed companies have donated huge sums to Republican causes. British American Tobacco gave more than $25m to conservative causes in 2024, including $10m to Make America Great Again PAC, OpenSecrets has previously revealed. 

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