We broke these Big Money stories this year

There have been a lot of important money-in-politics stories this year that Sludge was the first, or only, newsroom to cover. We were…

• The first to list all of AIPAC’s contributions to members of Congress and candidates
• The first and only to tally all the dark money backing both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaigns
• The first and only to create a detailed analysis of the 50+ members of Congress who own stock in defense contractors
• The first and only to chart the skyrocketing fossil fuel industry donations to two giant Republican super PACs
• ... and we created one of the most-current, most-comprehensive lists of Donald Trump's top 20 donors before Election Day, who have given $635 million.

While plenty of reporters focus on what politicians are saying at rallies, Sludge follows the money to give you the real story behind what’s happening in politics. That’s why we were the first to report these stories. 

But doing this work does not make us popular with wealthy funders, so we’re counting on our readers for support. We’ve set a goal of getting 100 free newsletter readers like you to join as subscribers by Election Day. All new subscribers will have the monthly cost of their subscription matched 12x by the NewsMatch drive from the Institute for Nonprofit News, and get full access to our stories.

By tracking disclosures every day, Sludge was also early in providing our readers with coverage of enormous cryptocurrency industry super PAC spending in 2024 elections, who funded the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and record-high donations from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer—a benefactor of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito—for Republicans to take back control of the Senate, and potentially block ethics reform on the high court. (In the weeks ahead, you’ll read mainstream media postmortems of industry spending in 2024 elections that we covered in April!)

Unfortunately, we don’t have foundation grants or major philanthropists to report and publish this investigative work, though we’ve pursued such supporters vigorously. Money in politics is a funny topic: everyone knows it’s a major force behind elections and public policy, and our scoops do impressive traffic numbers for a two-person site, but few institutional funders want to directly fund muckraking. 

We rely on $5-a-month donations banded together from readers like you, who think that corruption is an important news topic. In the past few months, millions of people have seen the information that we compiled above flung out on social media by groups that didn’t cite it as coming from Sludge. But we can continue this original reporting if more of our readers subscribe for just $5 a month, and help secure a $60 match from the Institute for Nonprofit News. Five-dollars-a-month really keeps us going—this NewsMatch drive is the biggest source of support for our investigative journalism.

Thanks!

-David Moore and Donald Shaw, Sludge

Featured image composite from photographs by Gage Skidmore on Flickr