What Is the United Democracy Project?
The United Democracy Project (UDP) is AIPAC’s independent expenditure arm. Its ads and mailers have focused on issues like immigration and portray Malinowski as out of step with local voters. They also regurgitate a debunked stock trading “scandal” from his prior time in office.
While these ads claim to highlight policy concerns, many are designed less to inform and more to influence voter perception and create doubt.
Outside groups like UDP often use emotionally charged issues to sway low-turnout elections, aiming to weaken candidates they oppose, even if the topics have little direct connection to the candidate’s record or priorities.
Why this matters: AIPAC’s involvement is unusual for a Democratic primary and signals national issue actors trying to shape future policy, not just Election Day outcomes.
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PACs also often “bundle” messaging to maximize impact. Groups may coordinate or fund ads that touch on multiple, apparently unconnected, topics because:
- They can fund attacks on several issues simultaneously without full disclosure of strategy.
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They know emotional or cultural issues (like immigration) move voters more than foreign policy in a local race.
- The ultimate goal is to elect someone supportive of their broader agenda, so the path to that goal can be indirect.
UDP’s Claims Are Not Backed Up By the Facts
The first of UDP’s two lines of attack is an intentionally misleading distortion of a 2019 vote, implying that Malinowski supports abusive immigration enforcement.
The vote it references was for H.R. 3401, an emergency humanitarian aid bill responding to a crisis at the southern border seven years ago. It provided $4.6 billion in total funding, overwhelmingly for food, medical care, shelter, and assistance for migrant children and families.
The funding came with oversight and was meant to address urgent humanitarian challenges at the border, not to expand detention, deportations, or any of the unacceptable practices we are seeing with ICE today.
The vast majority of democrats, including Mikie Sherrill, Andy Kim, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, voted in favor of this bill.
In reality, Malinowski has a consistent record of supporting the human rights of migrants and refugees, and of opposing ICE abuses. He was outspoken in defense of immigrants, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, during the first Trump term, even though he represented a Republican leaning district.
Malinowski has called for reining in ICE, including by defunding its mass deportation operations, requiring warrants for every arrest, prohibiting the use of masked agents, and ending private, for-profit detention.
The second claims Malinowski “cashed in on Covid” and implies he made millions from insider stock trading during his time in Congress. This is a lie.
In actuality, Malinowski has been a leader in pushing to ban stock trading by members of Congress and strengthen ethics rules. He was one of the only members in Congress to establish a blind trust so he would have no knowledge of where or how his money was being invested. He didn’t hide anything, he followed the law, and he supported reforms to make Congress more accountable. Additionally, the Office of Congressional Ethics found no unethical behavior in the case UDP is misrepresenting.
So What Can YOU Do?
The most effective way we can push back against outside money in our district is simple: show up and vote for the candidate of your choice. Outside groups flood races like ours because they’re betting on low turnout, where a small electorate can be swayed by heavy ad spending. High participation changes that math. When more people in the district vote, each outside dollar has less influence, attack ads matter less, and the outcome reflects the community, not national interests trying to claim the seat.
We don’t have to match outside money to defeat it; we just have to outvote it.
