Thermostatic Opinion on Labor Unions

Many posts have discussed labor unions.

 Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Nearly half of Americans (47%) want labor unions in the U.S. to have more influence than they do today, a record high in the past quarter century and roughly double the 23% who want unions to have less influence. Another 26% want unions’ influence to remain the same.

The share wanting greater union influence is up four percentage points from 2023 after rising almost continuously from a record-low 25% in 2009. Over the same period, the percentage wanting unions to have less influence has fallen from 42% to a record-low 23%.

"An Outsourced Staff" --Cicero Institute and Homelessness Policy

A number of posts have discussed the conservative movement.

Ellen Barry and Jason DeParle at NYT:

A team from the Cicero Institute, an upstart think tank, flew to Indiana this year to help make it a crime for homeless people to sleep on the street.

It was their third attempt. Even in the conservative state, previous efforts to ban street camping had failed. Catholic leaders said the measure would hurt the poor, and sheriffs had warned that arrests would crowd the jails. “We’re Hoosiers — we’re better than that,” a Republican state senator, Ron Alting, said last year, urging a more caring approach.

But much had changed since the group, founded by Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire ally of President Trump’s, had made its initial efforts. Mr. Trump had issued an executive order on homelessness that so fully reflected Cicero’s agenda it was hard to tell 
where the group stopped and White House policy began. The sponsor of the Indiana law was fresh from a Cicero conference, Cicero lobbyists worked the bill, and three Cicero analysts testified that the threat of arrests would push homeless people into treatment for mental illness or addiction.

The ban passed just before the legislature adjourned.

...

With few rival groups working on homelessness, the institute had its lane. After Texas passed a statewide camping ban in 2021, Cicero made it into a model bill to take to other states.

Cicero was too small to matter in Washington, but about two dozen states had Republican control of the legislature and governorship. For harried legislators frustrated by encampments, Cicero’s bill offered a stance. And with no housing or services included, it required no spending.

“In most states, state legislators don’t even have policy staff,” explained Jared Meyer, an early Cicero recruit, on Mr. Lonsdale’s podcast. “The best thing you can do is be an outsourced staff.”

Solar Power

 Many posts have discussed campaign finance.

TIMOTHY CAMA and JACOB WENDLER at POLITICO:

An aggressive new PAC backed by renewable energy supporters notched a major win last night by helping unseat Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) despite President Donald Trump’s vocal support, our colleague Timothy Cama reports.

— The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC is now poised to be a force in future contests after spending $2 million opposing Ogles and boosting Republican primary opponent Charlie Hatcher. Ogles was the third Republican this year to lose a race after being targeted by the super PAC, which was launched by solar executives wanting to get back at Republicans who actively work against renewables.

— The group’s ads did not mention clean energy, instead targeting conservative voters with advertisements that boosted Hatcher’s right-wing credentials and chided Ogles for missing votes. The PAC deployed a similar playbook against Texas Rep. Chip Roy in his unsuccessful attorney general bid and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost his campaign for governor.

— “The clean energy industry’s political muscle is only getting stronger and more intimidating,” said Invest in Tomorrow Coalition co-founder Michael Brune, who previously led the advocacy group the Sierra Club. “Our hope here is that clean energy will go back to being a bipartisan issue, and maybe one of the few issues that all Americans can agree on. But before we get there, we’ve got to continue our retribution tour and take out a few more members who have voted the wrong way.”

— Lawmakers like Ogles, Roy and Norman drew the ire of industry last year when they pushed Republican leaders in Congress for a quick phaseout of renewable energy incentives in what became the One Big Beautiful Bill act. Chris Larsen — the PAC’s top backer, who has contributed $6 million of its $6.8 million — has called its advocacy “political warfare.”

— The group has taken lessons learned from the crypto industry, where Larsen was the co-founder of Ripple Labs. Ripple helped fund Fairshake, a super PAC that has spent more than $200 million to unseat politicians it sees as unfriendly to the industry. Larsen also leads the environmental philanthropy Clean Break Fund with Brune.

Israel Lobbying

Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy.  And many posts have discussed relations between the US and Israel

Jacob Wendler at POLITICO:

Israel is shifting away from its traditional strategy of relying on American-led groups like AIPAC to advance its interests in the U.S., and is instead increasingly hiring foreign agents to ramp up its influence efforts, per a new paper from foreign policy think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

— Israel has spent over $1 billion on public diplomacy efforts since 2023 — including more than $100 million on efforts to influence the U.S. disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, per the new report from Nick Cleveland-Stout, a research associate in the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy program. The country is now on track to be the biggest FARA spender this year.

— Seventeen new firms registered under FARA to work for Israeli interests in 2024 and 2025, including former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s firm Clock Tower X, which holds the largest contract at $46.5 million, per the report. Clock Tower X has disclosed attempts to seed pro-Israel framing into LLM training data via a network of websites designed to influence AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

— Israel has also spent millions to court social media influencers and fund mass texting campaigns aimed at swaying public opinion, per FARA filings reviewed by the Quincy Institute. The country paid $161,000 to influencer Yoav Davis, who oversees the Instagram account @jews_of_ny with nearly 200,000 followers. It also paid firm Bridges Partners $900,000 to pay more than a dozen influencers — none of whom have registered as foreign agents.

— Israel’s U.S. influence efforts are largely funneled through French company Havas Media, which has subcontracted seven different firms under FARA since 2024, including Democratic PR shop SKDK and Bridges Partners. Many of the subcontractors specialize in reaching critical groups whose support for the country is waning, including young Americans, Evangelicals and conservatives. In September 2025, Havas inked a $3.2 million contract with Christian marketing firm Show Faith by Works to undertake a controversial “geofencing” campaign aimed at targeting American churchgoers with pro-Israel ads.

— Israel and its backers in the U.S. have escalated their efforts to repair the country’s reputation in the U.S. amid intensifying criticism from members of Congress and Vice President JD Vance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also expected to visit Washington next week to meet with President Donald Trump, Netanyahu’s office announced today.

— “Israel’s new tactics are transforming America’s influence landscape, but they have so far proved insufficient to counter the erosion in public support that is being driven by Israel’s deeply unpopular policies,” Cleveland-Stout writes in the paper.

"Victim" Group Is a Front for Utility Companies

A number of posts have discussed Astroturf, i.e., artificial grassroots lobbying.  Interest groups create front groups to disguise their true aims.

Melody Petersen at LAT:

A group claiming to represent California fire survivors began sending mailers and paying for social media ads this spring, calling on lawmakers to take action to reduce the rising cost of wildfires.

“Contact your legislator and tell them we need to fix our wildfire problem to make California more affordable,” said a mailer sent this month by the group called Wildfire Victims First.

“Stand with wildfire victims,” the group’s website states, urging people to join its cause.

The group was created with money from California’s three biggest for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — which government investigators found ignited at least six of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires.

The corporate campaign has angered wildfire survivors, including some of the thousands of families in Altadena who lost their homes in last year’s Eaton fire. The blaze, which killed 19 people, remains under investigation. Edison has said its century-old transmission line is the likely cause.

The utility-funded group is lobbying in Sacramento for proposals in a study that Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered to guide lawmakers in writing wildfire-related bills. The study largely ignored utilities’ responsibility for igniting fires.

Among its dozens of proposals is limiting amounts victims can get for pain and suffering, capping fees for attorneys representing survivors and requiring property insurers to bear more of the cost of utility-sparked fires.

”Each proposal would shift more of the cost of catastrophic fires away from the corporations responsible and onto survivors, policyholders, taxpayers, and the public,” wrote Joy Chen of Every Fire Survivor’s Network in a letter to Newsom this week.

Chen wrote that the industry-funded Wildfire Victims First campaign “created the appearance that wildfire survivors supported” the findings of the study. “We do not.”

Lobbying on Iran and Venezuela

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Daniel Barnes at POLITICO:

LOBBYING ON THE FRONT LINES: The Trump administration’s military actions in Iran and Venezuela sparked lobbying activity from 54 companies and organizations in the first quarter of 2026, collectively spending $13.3 million, an analysis of lobbying disclosure data by our colleagues Paroma Soni and Catherine Allen found. Most of these came from political advocacy-focused groups or the energy industry.

— The biggest private sector represented was, unsurprisingly, oil and gas. Chevron spent $1.6 million on all lobbying activity in Q1 and listed sanctions on Venezuela and energy access as specific lobbying issues. Shell, which spent $1.4 million, lobbied to advance its role in the commercial development of natural gas in one of Venezuela’s largest offshore gas fields. BP lobbied on the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which handles sanctions for Venezuelan energy activity and Iran-linked projects such as the Shah Deniz gas corridor.
...

— Several advocacy groups also lobbied on pending legislation related to Iran and Venezuela, particularly on the congressional war powers resolutions to disapprove of military action. They ranged from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Quaker-aligned Friends Committee on National Legislation to the American Federation of Teachers. The pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied on increased sanctions against Iran and U.S. military assistance to Israel, as did the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street group.

Pardon Lobbying

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

A pardon industry has arisen during the Trump years.

Kenneth Vogel at NYT:

It is based in part on the proposition that paying the right person to deliver a message tailored to Mr. Trump’s politics or grievances is more important than demonstrating remorse or a low likelihood of recidivism.

A growing number of practitioners promise access in this murky enterprise, but some also may exaggerate their effectiveness to elicit payments from clients desperate to avoid incarceration. Pardon seekers routinely offer to pay as much as $1 million or more, often with bonus payments triggered by a successful outcome, according to lobbying filings and people familiar with the fees.

This transactional approach to clemency has been welcomed by white-collar offenders like those serving time at the Otisville camp, a minimum-security facility about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan.

Many of its inmates cheered Mr. Trump’s election, seeing him as a kindred spirit who shares their grievances about the unfairness of financial crime prosecutions like the one that led to his own conviction, according to four people familiar with conversations at Otisville.

Over the course of his first term and the first year of his second, Mr. Trump has granted pardons or commutations to at least nine inmates who served at Otisville’s camp or the adjacent medium-security prison. That includes two inmates who were freed after Mr. Schwartz from the minimum-security camp, which typically houses about 100 inmates.

Nursing Homes and Pay-to-Play Politics

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett at NYT:

The nursing home industry was on a roll last summer.

It had just won a 10-year moratorium on a rule initiated during President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration to require increased staffing levels in an effort to reduce neglect among residents, which had led to injuries and deadly infections.

Nonetheless, some in the industry, warning that the rule would have substantially increased costs, wanted to make it go away permanently.

So nursing home executives turned to a tool that has proved successful in getting President Trump’s attention: money.

Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.

Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.

Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.

Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the repeal in a statement that echoed industry talking points, which have emphasized the industry’s difficulty in hiring enough staff, especially in rural areas

Social Media Influencers and Lobbying

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Maggie Severns, Natalie Andrews, Josh Dawsey, and Eliza Collins at WSJ:

Last summer, Donald Trump’s 28-year-old former campaign aide Alex Bruesewitz had some new advice for the president: reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. “Nearly 70% of Republican voters support Trump on this. No brainer!,” he said to more than 640,000 followers on X.

What Bruesewitz left out of the post: A political-action committee funded by legal marijuana’s biggest players had just paid him $300,000.

Trump’s return to the White House has transformed the federal government and upended the business of lobbying, creating a new class of Washington operatives that blur the lines between consulting, advocacy and journalism.

Corporate and foreign interests that used to rely primarily on paid lobbyists to pitch their case to lawmakers and administration officials are instead pouring money into trying to get their cause promoted by a group of young, conservative influencers known to be close to Trump’s staff.

A camera-ready pack of Gen-Z social-media natives—many of whom were too young to vote when Trump announced his first run for office—are reaping the rewards. They don’t work for traditional news outlets and are thus unshackled from newsroom ethics rules, such as the typical ban on accepting gifts worth more than $25. They don’t have to follow the disclosure laws that apply to big-money super PACs or lobbyists. And they have large followings eager to hear pro-Trump views, a gold mine for those looking to sway both Washington and the public.

Israel made plans over the past year to spend $900,000 on an influencer campaign with a U.S. audience, according to disclosure documents, as Israel fights negative sentiment on the right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with conservative social-media stars on at least two of his visits.

The solar energy and health industries have paid thousands of dollars to influencers to support their interests, according to people who have been offered or participated in such deals. Qatar, beverage interests and others have courted those with online political followings.

MAGA influencers are turning access to the White House into lucrative new businesses. Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has pivoted from campaigning to running a prominent firm that specializes in connecting influencers to companies and others willing to pay for their posts.

The Decline of Heritage

A number of posts have discussed the conservative movement.

 Jessica Riedl at X:

So for anyone interested, I was a Heritage fellow from 2001-2011 and saw the seeds of the mess starting in 2008. 

It's been long enough...I feel comfy telling the story:

In 2008, with the economy and markets collapsing, my colleagues in the econ dept felt necessary to endorse TARP. They were free marketers, but also Ph.D economists and accomplished lawyers trying to avert the threat of a potential depression. Anyway, TARP passed, markets recovered, and nearly all of the money was repaid. Agree or disagree with TARP, the scholar’s research at the time were wholly defensible and well-accepted by economists. (FWIW, I was not involved in the TARP debate).

Yet, after Obama took office, and many people linked up TARP with the Obama stimulus, a grassroots backlash developed claiming that Heritage had endorsed “Obamanomics and socialism” - and this spread to the board.

The key is that - ultimately - instead of defending their scholars, the fear of angering the small dollar donors, Fox News, and the Board won out. Within a few years, much of the economic team - including nearly anyone with a Ph.D. - was gone. They were often replaced with younger scholars who lacked the academic credentials but could be counted on to produce predictably partisan analysis without all the complicated nuance you get from more accomplished Ph.Ds and JDs.

This is also the time that Heritage Action was created, much of the Foundation leadership was replaced, and even Ed Feulner left by 2013. Nuance was out, brass-knuckles partisan politics were in.

I left during this time in 2011, following an incident when a reporter called me to fact check Rep. Michelle Bachmann's claim that we could balance the budget with a few waste tweaks (I endorsed the tweaks while gently noting they would not balance the budget).  

When the newspaper fact check column included my information, I learned that under the new rules, “friends of Heritage” were not to be publicly disagreed with, no matter how incorrect they may be.

As punishment, I was banned from talking to the media – or even answering my own office phone (a gallingly infantilizing punishment for a scholar with 300 publications and thousands of successful media appearances). Essentially, I was being told to put partisanship above truth and intellectual integrity. The Heritage I knew was gone, and as soon as I found the right job with Sen. Portman, so was I.

I hadn't told this story because I didn't want to spill beans on a former employer. But 1) its been 15 years, and 2) my ex-employee status didn't stop their leaders from trolling and mocking me when I came out last year.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Weakening Nonprofits

Many posts have discussed the politics of philanthropy. 

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

In a detailed email, Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton, described the administration’s evisceration of the nonprofit sector:

The entire nongovernment community (or — as we might say in tax parlance — the 501(c)(3) sector) has been threatened with a combination of loss of tax exemptions, cuts to federal funding and potential investigations.

Some statistics indicate that fully one-third of NGOS incorporated in the U.S. lost funding in the first half of 2025.

In this atmosphere, Scheppele continued,

NGOs are nervous — and some are pulling back from some of the causes that they know this administration does not support. Some NGOs have created “sister organizations” in other countries to shield resources from U.S. coercive measures (vindictive lawsuits, sudden tax-status changes) and provide an escape route if necessary.

Tracking the financial condition of nonprofit groups is difficult at best. They are only required to disclose receipts and expenditures annually in 990 reports to the I.R.S. A tax-exempt group reporting receipts and expenditures for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2025, does not have to file until this coming May 15. In addition, charitable organizations with 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) designations do not have to disclose donors.

 In this murky world of political dark money, Trump and Republican allies appear to have inflicted damage on the most powerful collection of pro-Democratic nonprofits, an interlocking network operating under the umbrella of Arabella Advisors that for two decades has channeled billions to liberal advocacy and get-out-the-vote groups. (I say “appear” because no documentation of current fund-raising and spending is available.)

In 2024 alone, according to I.R.S. reports, four groups aligned with Arabella — the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, Hopewell Fund and New Venture Fund — raised a total of $1.46 billion and spent $1.48 billion, largely in grants to liberal and Democratic-leaning groups.

The first clear signal that the Trump attacks were having considerable effect was a Gates Foundation announcement in June that it was halting grants to the nonprofits administered by Arabella Advisors.

The Right Rot

A number of posts have discussed the conservative movement.

Kim Holmes at The Dispatch:

Which leads me to my first and most important definition of what a think tank should be. Above all, it should be about ideas. As soon as the purpose becomes advocacy alone, or some other purpose related to gaining money or power, the “think” part is lost. The organization becomes a mere propaganda machine. There is nothing inherently wrong with policy advocacy for its own sake. But an organization that does only that should not be described as a think tank. Nor should its word on policy be trusted. Any policy research organization worth its salt will respect the rules of evidence and argumentation and avoid sensationalist rhetoric and ad hominem attacks. And it should certainly avoid besmirching the think tank’s reputation by flirting with toxic and vile media personalities.

The ideas themselves must have integrity. There is no such thing as pure political science when it comes to policy analysis. All public policies are grounded in one way or another in principles of governance over which much disagreement will occur. But there is a difference between analyzing a policy problem from a particular point of view and simply tailoring your analysis to partisan talking points. The former requires evidence and reasoning, while the latter appeals solely to emotion and prejudice for the purpose of gaining influence and power.

For many years, the Heritage approach was to apply the principles of economic freedom, limited constitutional government, and strong national defense to the task of formulating policies. Today that is no longer the case. The doctrines driving Heritage’s output, as determined by the foundation’s president and the board of trustees, are a combination of Pat Buchanan-esque populism, nationalism, Trumpism, and various strains of what is called postliberalism. There are still some Reaganite conservatives left on the staff, and they write papers and make public appearances. But they are no longer the dominant voice, and their numbers are dropping ever lower amid a recent wave of resignations.

At Reason, Stephanie Slade writes of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute:

Former ISI President Christopher Long and former ISI Chairman Thomas Lynch resigned as trustees after the other board members voted against removing Burtka at a meeting on November 7. The pair explained their decision in an open letter posted to X, in which they object to "ISI's celebration of the odious and un-American ideas espoused by" figures such as Carlson and Curtis Yarvin and warn about the rise of "white supremacy, antisemitism, eugenics, and bigotry" on the right.

Carlson was the headliner at ISI's 70th anniversary gala in 2023. ISI also placed one of its three media fellows with Tucker Carlson Tonight this year—that is to say, after his Russia trip and Cooper interview—at a cost of $75,000, according to a document prepared for the board of trustees ahead of the November 7 meeting and reviewed by Reason.

Meanwhile, Yarvin, a blogger and leading "neoreactionary" thinker, was featured in the inaugural episode of ISI's Project Cosmos, a YouTube series hosted by Burtka that launched in August. Like Fuentes (who has claimed, among other things, that "a lot of women want to be raped"), Yarvin has a history of making highly controversial statements, including that he is "not exactly allergic" to white nationalism, that Americans need to "get over their dictatorphobia," and that an ideal society would find a way to accomplish "the removal of undesirable elements" while avoiding the "moral stigma" associated with genocide.

Yarvin, Fuentes, and Carlson are also among those who question or reject the notion that anyone who accepts this country's founding creed should be welcome here. Instead, they suggest—sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly—that a certain ethno-religious or cultural background is a requirement to be truly an American, such that newcomers have less of a claim to belonging than do "legacy" or "heritage" Americans who can trace their bloodlines to the land for many generations.

Such thinking was until recently considered idea non grata on the mainstream right, and to see it making inroads into respected intellectual institutions has been a cause for alarm among many more traditional conservatives. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute's annual gala on Monday night, the historian of the American Revolution Gordon S. Wood pointedly warned against a view of American nationhood as rooted in blood, soil, religion, or race. Though he didn't mention Carlson by name, the impetus for his remarks wasn't hard to guess.

Foreign Trolls

 Many posts have analyzed how foreign governments try to influence American politics and policy. Russia and China are prominent influencers.

Jack Revell at The Daily Beast:

Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors.

The new “About This Account” feature, which became available to X users on Friday, allows others to see where an account is based, when they joined the platform, how often they have changed their username, and how they downloaded the X app.

Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas.

“This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote Democratic influencer Harry Sisson.

“Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this”.

Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.

In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe.

...

The use of fake accounts to bolster the MAGA movement is something The Centre for Information Resilience, an independent, nonprofit research organization, flagged during the 2024 election.

With many of the MAGA influencer accounts revealed to originate in Eastern Europe or Russia, users are questioning the ongoing interference in American politics by foreign adversaries.

 

AT&T's California Astroturf

A number of posts have discussed Astroturf, i.e., artificial grassroots lobbying.  Sometimes they write the letters that their "supporters" send on their  behalf.

 AT&T is pushing California legislation to end its obligation to provide landline service.   Yue Stella Yu and Malena Carollo report at CalMatters:

On its face, AB 470 had widespread support this year from Californians for a Connected Future, a recently formed coalition of more than 150 disability advocates, chambers of commerce, tribes, community service organizations, local officials and small businesses, including a construction company and a tennis shop. For months, dozens of those groups testified in public hearings and signed identical letters urging lawmakers to pass the bill, arguing it would incentivize modern technologies and ensure more reliable coverage.

The coalition, which describes itself as “grassroots,” also states it is a “project of USTelecom.” Rhonda Johnson, AT&T’s executive vice president of federal regulatory relations, sits on the trade group’s board. USTelecom received $250,000 from AT&T to lobby on its behalf this year, and also spent between $85,200 and $106,000 running ads on Facebook supporting the bill in the coalition’s name, according to a CalMatters tally.

It’s a prevalent practice commonly known as “astroturfing,” when corporations or trade groups enlist seemingly unaffiliated organizations for the appearance of grassroots support, said Jack Pitney, politics professor at Claremont McKenna College.

“If you don’t read the fine print, you’ll assume that … there are a lot of organizations that sincerely support this legislation.”

While the coalition often bragged about the scale and diversity of its membership, more than 80% of member organizations have ties to AT&T, CalMatters found.

Some of those groups have AT&T’s top leaders serving on their board of directors. That includes AT&T president Susan Santana, who sits on the board of the California Chamber of Commerce. Ben Golombek, the chamber’s chief of staff for policy, most recently served as the west region vice president for public affairs for AT&T. Other AT&T executives, mostly directors of external affairs, double as board members of various local chambers, business groups, foundations and voting rights groups.

AT&T also pays to be a member of many local chambers of commerce, many of whom support the bill. Of the 28 chambers in support, AT&T is listed as a corporate member of 26 of them.

Dozens of coalition members list AT&T as a key funder. The California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce calls AT&T an “invaluable” partner. Groups such as the Concerned Black Men of Los Angeles, which provides mentorship to Black local residents, list the company as a sponsor.

Others, including tribes, youth service groups and senior advocates, have partnered with the company in its $5 billion effort to “bridge the digital divide” nationwide, distributing free laptops donated by AT&T, hosting “connected learning centers” the company set up across the state to offer free digital access or receiving grants from AT&T to address digital inequity.

The telecom giant has also sponsored events for some coalition members, from golf tournaments for the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps to the 70th anniversary gala of Society for the Blind.

The financial support can make it hard not to align with AT&T, Pitney said.

“If AT&T has supported you in a material way, you want to make sure that support continues,” he said. “You are likely to look favorably on requests from that organization.”

 

Lobby Spending and Campaign Spending Are Different

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Furnas AC, LaPira TM, Brock C. Conflating Lobbying and PACs: The Surprisingly Low Overlap in Organizational Lobbying and Campaign Expenditures. PS: Political Science & Politics. 2025;58(4):597-605. doi:10.1017/S1049096525100929

Abstract

This article investigates whether campaign contributions and lobbying are complementary, substitutive, or distinct forms of organizational political engagement. Our study reveals minimal overlap between organizations that engage in lobbying and those that make campaign contributions despite the perception that these activities are interchangeable forms of “money in politics.” Using comprehensive contribution and lobbying report data from 1998 to 2018, we find that most politically active organizations focus exclusively on either lobbying or making campaign contributions. Only a small percentage of organizations engage in both activities. This finding challenges the assumption that these forms of political activity are inherently linked. The majority of organizations engaged in political activity do so exclusively through lobbying. However, the top lobbying groups spend the most money and almost always have affiliated political action committees (PACs). Most lobbying money is spent by a small number of big spenders—organizations that also have affiliated PACs. Organizations that both lobby and make campaign contributions tend to be well resourced and rare.

Bruice Mehlman offers a caveat:

Lobbyists are a fraction of influence professionals & the only ones who publicly disclose clients & revenue. Influence campaigns regularly tap the talents of lawyers, PR professionals, grassroots organizers, fundraisers, online influencers and countless others, most of whose activities remain undisclosed. Some estimate the size of the “shadow lobbying” community as equal to the number of registered lobbyists, while others argue it is at least 13x as large. Only those who spend at least 20% of their time on federal lobbying activity need to register as official “lobbyists,” with a great many “19%’ers” carefully monitoring their time allocations to remain unregistered / under the RADAR.

 

Protest 2025

A number of posts have discussed the politics of protest

The Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center has a report titled "The Resistance Reaches into Trump Country."

Protests in 2025 have reached a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record. And the geographic reach of protest activity—the share of U.S. counties hosting at least one event—has remained remarkably high throughout the year.

Figure 1 displays the proportion of US counties that hosted at least one protest in each month of Trump’s first and second terms (depicted by the green x and blue triangle marks, respectively). The green trend line shows the moving average during Trump’s first term, and the blue line shows the moving average so far during Trump’s second term.

Figure 1: Proportion of US Counties with at Least One Protest, by Month

The largest monthly jumps of protest counties occurred in spring 2018, with the Enough Walkouts and the March for Our Lives in the month of March and the Walkout for Gun Control in April, and then again in June 2020, during the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests near the end of Trump’s first term. During the summer of 2020, demonstrations took place in just under 40 percent of all counties, during what was probably the broadest mobilization in US history up to that point.

But June 2025 came close to matching those historic levels, largely due to the No Kings mobilizations on June 14, with protests in nearly 38 percent of counties nationwide. Moreover, in 2025 protests have also expanded the movement’s footprint into new areas, even after the No Kings events of June. The cumulative number of counties that have ever hosted a protest has been climbing steadily since 2017, with noticeable surges in 2018 and 2020. A similar surge appears to be underway in 2025, pushing the cumulative share of protest-hosting counties well above 60 percent by June.

What’s most striking and novel, however, is the persistence of activity in 2025. The first eight months of the year have seen more sustained and geographically widespread protest than any comparable stretch in Trump’s first term—including the early waves of resistance in 2017 and the mass mobilizations of 2020. Protests occurred in at least 20% of US counties for four consecutive months in 2025–something we never observed during Trump’s first term. In short, the movement is not just continuing to spread into previously unrepresented parts of the country, but also maintaining its geographic reach.

Sierra Club Woes

Many posts have discussed interest groups.  They must often grapple with internal factions.

Robin Bravender at Politico:

The Sierra Club would very much like to be in the news for its efforts to fight the Trump administration on climate change, save endangered species and close coal plants.

But lately, the iconic environmental group’s internal conflict is what’s been making headlines.

It’s a green-on-green food fight that couldn’t come at a worse time for the Sierra Club as the group and its environmental allies struggle to raise cash, worry they’ll be targeted by the Trump administration and scramble to combat environmental policy rollbacks.

The green group fired its boss, Ben Jealous, in August in what quickly devolved into a bitter public breakup. Sierra Club’s board said it fired Jealous “for cause following extensive evaluation of his conduct.” Jealous had been the subject of a sexual harassment complaint although the group hasn’t specified its reasons for the ouster.

Jealous and his allies are fighting back. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton got involved, warning of “serious racial implications” of firing. Jealous says he raised concerns about racial discrimination and retaliation during his tenure. He retained attorneys at a civil rights and employment law firm and said he was fighting the decision to fire him.

This was just the Sierra Club’s latest crisis in recent years.

There was the scorching public revelation that the organization had quietly accepted donations from the natural gas industry. The club grappled with its early leaders’ troubling views on race. Managers quarreled with the staff union. Sierra Club’s leader for a decade, Michael Brune, left in 2021 amid calls for increased diversity and staff complaints about workplace problems.

Influencing, Lobbying, and Shadow Lobbying

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Bruce Mehlman:

Federal lobbying expenditures are tracking to exceed $5 billion in 2025, the highest amount ever (both nominally and inflation-adjusted, though not as a share of GDP). Registered lobbying activities are transparent and highly-disclosed, while broader influence spending is not.

...

While $5 billion is a lot of money, spending on registered lobbying activity is less than half as much as what we spend on Halloween, ~1/3 of what Americans spend at car washes each year and less than 10% of what we annually drop on power boating.

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Effective influence campaigns aim for information “surround sound.” Lobbying (i.e. person-to-person discussions with policy makers & staff) is one of many activities needed for an impactful influence campaign that shapes the information environment in which policymakers understand and consider issues and determine what is in the best interests of their constituents, values and political ambitions.

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Influence campaigns regularly tap the talents of lawyers, PR professionals, grassroots organizers, fundraisers, online influencers and countless others, most of whose activities remain undisclosed. Some estimate the size of the “shadow lobbying” community as equal to the number of registered lobbyists, while others argue it is at least 13x as large. Only those who spend at least 20% of their time on federal lobbying activity need to register as official “lobbyists,” with a great many “19%’ers” carefully monitoring their time allocations to remain unregistered / under the RADAR.