Let’s just take a moment to appreciate Jalen Hurts.

Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles was asked by a reporter last week if he planned to attend the White House celebration with his team. His answer was classic. More classic? What he actually did on the actual day of the White House visit.

I’ll just leave this here:

Star running back Saquon Barkley did attend the ceremony and spent the Sunday before the celebration playing golf with Trump. Barkley drew criticism for the golf outing, to which he responded Monday on social media, citing his "respect" for the office as his reason to do so.

Barkley stood near the presidential podium during Monday's ceremony and shared a handshake with Trump as Trump spoke glowingly about the Eagles running back and his 2024 season that earned NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors.

The Culture has chosen. Best wishes on your journey, Saquon.

Hobbling the opposition

Remember ACORN? Back in the day they were a key organizer of low income Americans, offering them resources and assistance for everything from finances to voting access. So of course, the right had to defenestrate them. A little history:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was the nation's largest and most successful community organization of low and moderate income families with more than 500,000 members in over 1,000 neighborhood chapters in 75 cities across the country. Founded in 1970, ACORN was a powerful association of community organizations committed to social and economic justice that had won thousands of victories for its poor and working class members.

ACORN provided decent and affordable housing for tenants and first-time homebuyers, secured a living wage for low wage workers, sought to end predatory lending practices, supported the public school system, and provided a path to citizenship for new immigrants. In addition, ACORN helped over 2 million people register to vote after 2003, raised the minimum wage to a living wage in dozens of communities across the country and assisted over 150,000 people file their tax returns.

The Right-Wing Vendetta Against ACORN

In September 2009, right-wing activists released heavily edited videos showing ACORN employees providing misinformation on housing opportunities and tax preparation to who appeared to be potential clients. ACORN promptly terminated the employees involved, and the former Attorney General of Massachusetts, Scott Harshbarger, was hired to conduct an internal investigation and found that there was no illegal conduct. It was later revealed that the potential clients were actually conservative activists pretending to be community members and that the video was fraudulent. However, pressure against ACORN and the subsequent attack to defund the community organization continued to mount.

ACORN was targeted as part of an extreme right-wing agenda against progressive organizations working for open social change and justice for poor and working class Americans (individuals who have been consistently disenfranchised and excluded from the political and economic system). The media campaign to destroy ACORN – orchestrated by political forces that have persistently defamed ACORN and similar community groups and social justice organizations – led several members of Congress to accuse ACORN of being a criminal enterprise. Shortly thereafter, Congress de-funded ACORN by passing a law to bar the organization and all its affiliated organizations and allies from receiving federal funding.

Congressional Republicans jumped into the fray, pushing to permanently defenestrate ACORN, by essentially declaring it to be an illegal entity and depriving it of federal funds:

Though no ACORN corporation has ever been convicted of any state or federal criminal charges, members of Congress have repeatedly made bogus allegations that ACORN engaged in fraud, criminal conspiracy and money laundering. Congress has never held a hearing on ACORN, nor has it ever authorized any investigation into the community organization. After calls for an impartial investigation into federal funding awarded from 2005 to 2009 to ACORN, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in June 2010 finding no misuse of federal funds by ACORN. The report also found that ACORN provided “a wide range of public services.”

Congress acted as judge, jury and executioner by barring federal government funds without a fair investigation or trial. Congress violated the U.S. Constitution, the right to due process, the freedom of association and federal regulations that govern how it should address federal contractors or grantees accused of fraud or misconduct.

Destroying ACORN made it significantly harder for progressives to organize low income voters, who already vote at lower rates than other Americans (for a lot of reasons…) That’s great news for Republicans, who historically, at least before the 2024 elections, have tended to fare better in lower turnout off-year elections. Well, despite that reality being flipped in the most recent presidential election, the anti-voter party is at it again; this time, targeting a group that brings not voters to the table, but rather, money. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic Party’s top fundraising platform, the latest example of Trump using the tools of the government to go after his political opponents.

Trump, in an executive order signed Thursday, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations that Republicans have raised that ActBlue allows illegal campaign donations.

Democrats, who had anticipated they would be targeted, condemned the move Thursday and ActBlue called it an “oppressive use of power” by the White House.

“The Trump Administration’s and GOP’s targeting of ActBlue is part of their brazen attack on democracy in America. Today’s escalation by the White House is blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition,” ActBlue said in a statement.

ActBlue said it would pursue “all legal avenues to protect and defend itself.

Trump’s order directs Bondi, in consultation with the Treasury Department, to investigate allegations that online fundraising platforms, and specifically ActBlue, have been used by some to “make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees.”

The findings of the investigation will be reported back with 180 days, according to the order.

There are so many issues with this directive, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s let Democracy Docket explain:

The target of the order aside, the reality of a U.S. president openly issuing orders to the Department of Justice (DOJ) represents a deeply troubling reversal of the department’s longstanding tradition of independence and apolitical law enforcement — though it goes largely unremarked upon in today’s Washington.

Congressional Republicans months ago alleged that the platform didn’t have adequate protections against foreign donations and began investigating it. ActBlue officials have complied with the GOP’s investigations and have denied any wrongdoing.

In his memo, Trump said ActBlue detected at least 22 “significant fraud campaigns” in recent years, around half of which originated abroad. He also noted that in a 30-day period in the 2020 election the platform detected 237 donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards.

The president left out the fact that ActBlue took actions in response to those detections. It caught and rejected fraudulent donations made through the fraud campaigns and banned contributions made from foreign IP addresses using domestic prepaid cards, according to House Republicans.

The GOP has its own online fundraising platform called WinRed, which faces many of the same fraud vulnerabilities as ActBlue, according to Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard Law School.

Trump in his memo directed Bondi to investigate “other online fundraising platforms” as well, but only ActBlue was mentioned by name.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, ActBlue has seen a major influx in donations. In an email to Democrats earlier this week ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones said the platform helped raise $400 million in the first three months of 2025, according to Punchbowl News.

And therein lies the problem, from the Republicans’ point of view. ActBlue is successful — really successful — at helping Democratic candidates benefit from online fundraising. The group has consistently given Democratic candidates a fundraising advantage. So much so that in 2019, the right created its own version called WinRed (which you may have heard of due to the scandal in recent years over elderly Republicans, including some with dementia, being sucked into repeater donations without meaning to.) But if you think Republicans are going to be satisfied with just leveling the playing field, you don’t know Republicans.

A party that until 2018 had to be in a consent decree with the DOJ to stop them from trying to intimidate Black and Latino voters isn’t about to let a little thing like the traditional independence of the Justice Department keep them from knocking Democrats off the playing field altogether.

The war on ActBlue

Republicans’ war on ActBlue has unfolded in much the same way as their attack on ACORN.

In 2023, James O’Keefe, who formerly led the professional trolling operation behind those “heavily edited videos” used against ACORN — a group called Project Veritas (he was forced out of the group by its board of directors for allegedly mistreating staff) — showed up at an ActBlue staff retreat, camera in hand, to try to score some video to edit in nefarious ways to make the organization look criminal. With no evidence, but lots of pushy videography, he accused the group of “money laundering,” and posted his “receipts” on X-Twitter.

The following August, O’Keefe turned up again, this time at the Democratic National Convention, where he and his team followed Act Blue staffers around with cameras in hand, again calling them money launderers. That stunt prompted the Republican attorney general of Virginia to call for a federal investigation of ActBlue, as part of what sure looked like a Republican campaign to claim in advance that Democrats were “stealing the election” from Donald Trump.

In the fall of 2024, with just months to go, before the 2024 elections, Republican members of congress began actualizing the O’Keefe narrative, with House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin sending a letter to ActBlue, “demanding documents and information related to the platform's donor verification policies and potential vulnerabilities that foreign actors may exploit to illegally participate in the U.S. political process.” Steil’s letter claimed the information request followed “an extensive Committee investigation into possible financial channels foreign actors may be utilizing to launder illicit money through U.S. political campaigns.sending an official letter Rp Style letter chair house admin committee inquiring about funds collection and gift cards.”

Steil is also the Congressman behind a proposed SHIELD Act, which he claimed was designed to prevent foreign and other illegal donations to flood into U.S. political campaigns:

The Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations Act, or SHIELD Act, would prohibit political campaigns from accepting contributions from gift cards or other prepaid credit cards, and require them to obtain and verify the CVV of all online credit and debit donations. It would also require political campaigns to get the affirmative consent of donors before they make a recurring contribution.

“American elections should always be free from foreign interference,” Steil said Monday. “The SHIELD Act will take a crucial next step in blocking foreign funding in our elections and certifying that every political contribution received is actually coming from the individual whose name is on the contribution. By passing the SHIELD Act, we will increase integrity and American trust in our elections.”

Steil launched a probe into ActBlue’s donor verification policies last year amid his concerns the organization was allowing foreign and fraudulent contributions.

Accusations of ActBlue violating or skirting federal campaign finance laws included laundering foreign contributions through prepaid gift cards, and accepting hundreds of donations for $2.50 from the same individual. Unlike many other online fundraising platforms, ActBlue does not require a CVV number for all donor transactions.

In its response to a November letter from Steil, ActBlue revealed it manually reviews contributions that indicate a foreign country in the address information, uses an external fraud prevention tool on its website, and requires CVVs for some transactions.

When the election ended with Kamala Harris somehow not stealing it, the leaders of ActBlue thought the whole mess would die down. Instead, during the lame duck session at the end of 2024, Steil kept coming, although by December and the lame duck sessoin, he ultimately had to admit that the organization’s anti-fraud practices passed scrutiny. And his bill, despite passing the House, ultimately failed, in no small part because the folks at WinRed objected — given that a bill gutting online donation practices would hobble them, too. Besides, in December 2024, the Senate was still in Democratic hands, and Chuck Schumer declined to bring the SHIELD Act to the floor.

This year, ActBlue has continued to provide documents to congressional Republicans, who have not given up trying to find dirt on their fundraising opponents, though they have yet to find anything they could use to shut ActBlue down.

Grampy dictator to the rescue

With congressional and state Republicans failing to find a way to hobble ActBlue, Donald Trump has apparently come to the rescue. His April 24 directive might as well require his Department of Justice quisling Pam Bondi to declare it illegal for Democratic candidates to raise money or to run against Republicans at all. It reads in part:

INVESTIGATING “STRAW” DONORS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum to crack down on illegal “straw donor” and foreign contributions in American elections, following reports and congressional investigations regarding potentially unlawful activities through ActBlue and other online fundraising platforms.

• The Memorandum directs the Attorney General to investigate and take appropriate action concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make “straw” or “dummy” contributions and to make foreign contributions to U.S. political candidates and committees, all of which break the law.

• Specifically, the Memorandum notes that a congressional investigation revealed significant fraud schemes using ActBlue and, over a 30-day period during the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.

• It instructs the Attorney General to report the results of the investigation to the President, through the Counsel to the President.

PROTECTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process.

First of all, the idea that the guy who fomented an insurrection to try to overturn his losing re-election bid in 2020, is “protecting American democracy” is so funny it should be an SNL skit; maybe even the cold open. And let’s not forget the following findings in the Mueller report about Trump’s 2016 campaign:

The Special Counsel investigation uncovered extensive criminal activity

• The investigation produced 37 indictments; seven guilty pleas or convictions; and compelling evidence that the president obstructed justice on multiple occasions. Mueller also uncovered and referred 14 criminal matters to other components of the Department of Justice.

• Trump associates repeatedly lied to investigators about their contacts with Russians, and President Trump refused to answer questions about his efforts to impede federal proceedings and influence the testimony of witnesses.

• A statement signed by over 1,000 former federal prosecutors concluded that if any other American engaged in the same efforts to impede federal proceedings the way Trump did, they would likely be indicted for multiple charges of obstruction of justice.

Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the U.S. election system in 2016

• Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”[1]

• Major attack avenues included a social media “information warfare” campaign that “favored” candidate Trump[2] and the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks.[3]

• Russia also targeted databases in many states related to administering elections gaining access to information for millions of registered voters.[4]

The investigation “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” and established that the Trump Campaign “showed interest in WikiLeaks's releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton”

But you know … irony is dead.

Trump’s memorandum technically has no teeth, though it directs Bondi — who as attorney general, is not supposed to take orders from the president — to “look into” ActBlue and report back on her “findings” in 180 days. Sources close to ActBlue say that they have not yet heard from Ms. Bondi. They have heard from donors, however, who responded to Trump’s memo with record breaking donations to Democratic PACs.

Meanwhile, the announcement set the Republican echo chamber on fire, with a barrage of online attacks declaring the Dem-leaning fundraising mechanism to be one big crime wave. You won’t be surprised to learn whose dark money is helping to fund the online information warfare campaign…

Republicans quickly touted the order as cracking down on hidden sources of funds in US elections. “The Democrats’ Dark Money scam has gone on long enough,” Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said last week.

ActBlue called Trump’s order part of his “brazen attack on democracy in America,” adding that it is “blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral, and ideological opposition.”

Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, in which one person donates on behalf of another. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions, any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it is a great deal of tedious, high-risk work for a scammer.

On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for money—even, theoretically, foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy-to-obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent WinRed) fairly silly.

And notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk.

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

It probably also doesn’t help that for the first time, ActBlue has a president and CEO, Regina Wallace Jones, who is a Black woman, which in TrumpWorld just screams “illegal, racist, D…E… I!!!” Nor must it be helpful in the maga mindframe that ActBlue has been responsible for moving billions of dollars into Democratic campaigns, including those of Trump’s presidential opponents, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

In fact, since it was founded in 2004, ActBlue has been utilized by some 28 million small donors and more than 40,000 Democratic political entities, according to an organization source. That includes Democratic candidates for governor, mayor, council member and president; as well as organizations like the Black Lives Matter foundation, Color of Change, MoveOn and more.

Bernie Sanders was the first presidential candidate to adopt ActBlue as a fundraising apparatus, and VP Harris’ campaign utilized it to raise gargantuan sums in 2024. ActBlue has moved $4.7 billion in donations in recent election cycles, compared to similar organizations that churned out sums in the tens of millions. ActBlue was reportedly moving $7,000 a minute, once Vice President Harris became the Democratic nominee — a volume no smaller organization could conceivably have handled. It’s also a household name among Democratic-leaning donors. And beyond being a mere payments processor, ActBlue handles the compliance issues associated with campaign giving, including ensuring that donations meet the specific state laws where the donor resides, as well as federal campaign laws. And no, they don’t involve themselves in campaigns or make endorsements. They are literally the engine that drives Democratic and progressive campaigns and causes.

In short: what ActBlue is and does would not be easily replicated. Which is why Republicans so desperately want to shut it down.