Spam Texts, Scam PACs, and the Burn-and-Churn Fundraising Machine (news)

Political spam texts are flooding phones at scale—and the data shows it's overwhelmingly a Democratic problem, running 3-4X Republican spending on SMS fundraising since 2008. This week breaks down the loopholes that make it legal (peer-to-peer "technology," snowshoeing across thousands of numbers, political speech exemptions) and the burn-and-churn vendor model that profits 7-15% off every dollar raised, no matter how much trust it burns. Plus a look at PACSpam.org, a new tool that lets you paste in a spam text, trace the UTM parameters and ActBlue links back to the vendor and PAC behind it, and log it to a public database.

Plus: Giving USA 2025 numbers are in. Total US charitable giving hit a record $617B (a 3% inflation-adjusted bump), bequests jumped 17% signaling the great wealth transfer, and a handful of mega-donors accounted for nearly $18B of $19.2B in mega-gifts.