THE DEMOCRACY KILLERS

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the Weak Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. I don't have to tell you what you already know. You know our political system is broken. You know it's for sale to the highest bidder. You know that big money and billionaire money has corrupted it. But what we'll learn in this hour is it's worse than even you or I thought. So please stick around. You won't enjoy it, but you might, you will learn something. We'll be right back. Hello, this is Yo-Yo Ma, and you're listening to The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow.

And we are back on the zero hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. One of my go-to news sources that I check on a regular basis is the website known as sludge, which can be found at reedsludge.com. The website presents itself as, quote, your guide to the hidden forces shaping... Politics. Joining me now is co-founder of Sludge with Donald Shaw, his partner, my guest today, David Moore, and Donald founded the website, and they've been doing great work on the topic of forces in moving politics. So first of all, David, David Moore, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. So glad to be here. Happy to have you and happy to introduce the audience to sludge. You guys have been covering a lot of stories about what I would call legalized corruption or influence forces of influence in politics, the hidden forces, as you say. But so we could go at it from any number of angles. But why don't we start with this? You recently published a piece. on i think you did it or beginning of february on crypto a i and apak and how they're setting up to smash super pack spending records so let's start with that i you're referring i assume to the uh records for spending in a midterm election right That's right. And then also the trends show that super PAC increasing in the presidential election cycles is also increasing over time. But that's right. We're focused on how the individual super PACs are spending and races on both sides of the aisle. Okay. So, and one of the things that's timely right now is the role of super PACs, we haven't moved into the general election season, but where we'll see a lot of action there. But I think we're seeing it a lot right now in. Democratic primaries in particular around several key issues. You mentioned crypto. You mentioned AI. So before we get to APEC, let's talk about the tech side of things a little bit. I think crypto is one of those things that a lot of people don't fully understand what it is or the implications of it. One of the things it does is spend big on our politics, I believe. Is that correct? That's right. So the way that Super PACs typically operate is that they will target digital ads or TV ads in races, including both primary and general election races. And oftentimes, these groups will have very innocuous or generic sounding names. You know, think big is an example of one that's active currently.

In addition, super PACs that are typically funded by an industry like AI or crypto often won't discuss those issues in their TV ads. Instead, they'll focus on other sorts of other campaign ads, other campaign topics, or sort of hot button issues like immigration as well. So oftentimes super PACs sort of do disclose the... big depocketed corporations, like for example, Open AI or Coinbase that are funding their operations. But sometimes a significant chunk of their money is not disclosed to the public. And so that's why SuperPax are sort of known as a gray money organizations. They're sort of in between fully dark money and more transparent spenders as well. In the 2024 election cycle, we saw an absolute deluge of money coming in from a couple of different special interests. Crypto spent a record amount of money backing candidates that they deemed sort of unsupportive of regulation of cryptocurrency assets. And those, the sort of network around that was primarily called the Fair Shake Super PAC Network. In addition, you also saw the pro-Israel lobbying group, APAC, or American Israel Public Affairs Committee. come in with its super PAC, which is called the United Democracy Project, and an allied super PAC. And they spent usually to knock out candidates that they deemed unsupportive of their agenda, of promoting greater security cooperation with Israel. And in turn, this model now is being supercharged here in the 2026 elections. But interestingly, here we're speaking now on April 8th, the initial bouts of primary runs that have happened in the last month have been showing a mixed record. So what we're seeing is a combination of a lot of these special interest groups having a ton of cash. I can get into how much, but we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, ready to drop on ads and unsuspecting voters. But at the same time, so far, the same playbook isn't necessarily delivering them the same results, so literally. We're seeing, for example, record amounts being spent in primaries across the country. So tell me. Give me an example, if you can. We're familiar with PAC spending getting results. We know about, for example, Representative Cori Bush, incumbent member of Congress was outspent by, I believe it was APAC and her last primary, was defeated. Jamal Bowman defeated for the same reason, incumbent representative. So we've seen and heard. success stories for these PACs, which are not necessarily success stories for democracy, shall we say, but we've seen these PACs win. Now you're saying this time around, despite the huge amounts of money they have, it's a mixed record. And that's interesting. If you can, give us a few examples.

Sure. So I'll sort of set the stage real quick by looking at three categories of super PACs that we've already sort of done into. I'll briefly sort of summarize where things stand with AI super PACs, crypto super PACs, and APAC line super PACs. So in the former, the AI industry has really replicated the crypto industry's playbook. They're doing the same setup of having a super PAC along with a nonprofit organization and a scorecard as well with arms that spend in Democratic and Republican primaries with specific sort of... targets and messaging for each of those parties voters. One of the main super PAC groups that was for the AI industry, that first out was called Leading the Future, and it's funded a lot in large part by the venture firm Andresen Horowitz, as well as the president of the Open AI company. And there's others in the mix as well. You mean Sam Altman. Well, he's actually, he's the founder. And certainly he's still active in Open AI. It's the president, Greg Brockman, who actually funneled, he and his spouse. bundled the months of the $25 million from their part of it. And together, in just the first half of last year, Fair Shake reported nearly $75 million. I'm sorry, that's the crypto industry group. The AI industry group was... was bankrolled with over 191. Oh, sorry, that was the last cycle. 50 million, perhaps, and more in pledges? That's what I'm seeing. That's right. Last year, your article says, leading the future AI super PAC had 50 million cash on hand and much more in pledges. That's right. So thank you for filling that in. the more than $50 million pledged and then there's several other AI industry groups that I won't you know mention them all but there's ones funded by the company meta and there's also ones that are more aligned with the Republican side of the AI deregulation agenda as well in turn The crypto industry group, Fairshake, which had spent over, you know, over $133 million in the last cycle is now geared up to be unpacked, on pace to meet or exceed that. They had raised already over half of that to deploy in this cycle. Fairshake as well has a couple of, the crypto industry as well has a couple of other super PACs ready to jump in. And APAC super PAC. It was also on a track for a record on money. It had raised more than $61 million in the first half of last year alone. So together, these groups are equipped with hundreds of millions of dollars to drop in elections. They had their first task go-around in Illinois primaries last month in March. They were held on March 18th. And the track record was mixed. It's not that, you know, It's not always the case that, you know, you would assure that, you know, spending a couple million dollars in the house primary would win the race, but it had proved largely successful for them in the previous selection title. This time around in each of their cases, the results were more mixed, and I can go sort of around which primaries.

taken for granted before has become somewhat political politically toxic for Democrats to the extent that you even have mainstream I would call him vanilla Democrats like Gavin Newsom saying, I won't take APAC money. You have other congressional and other leaders saying they won't take APAC money. But to me, one of the valuable things that Sledge does is some of the APAC money, a lot of the APAC money doesn't come with the APAC label on it, right? So there are ways to get around that. Am I understanding that correctly? There's a number of ways that APEC spends in to support the elections of the candidates. It chooses to back. We had sort of briefly discussed the example. You mentioned last cycle, the example where APEC super PAC targeted progressives that are deemed out of line with its agenda. And those include, you know, Bush and Bowman and other representatives as well. What a lot of people don't understand and that Sledge's reporting has looked to focus on is that APAC's PAC also delivers campaign contributions into sitting lawmakers and candidates accounts through its pact. The process by which it does that is earmarked PAC donations, where let's say that if you were an APAC donor, you could donate through their portal and it facilitates the donation going into the campaign account of sitting lawmakers. We calculated how much. And as of earlier this year, it had Apex Packet earmarked and bundled more than $28 million for the campaigns of current members of Congress this election cycle alone. Oftentimes, this turns into huge falls for, for example, Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries in the House, raised the million dollars for his campaign committees last year, bundled in this way from AAPAC. Oftentimes the trail of the pass-through from an individual donor to APAC PAC to the candidate's disclosure, within that it's oftentimes not disclosed entirely that the member of Congress got these six-figure sums from the APAC PAC in terms that shows up as individual donations. But certainly APAC PAC touts its role in this process. Its website even highlights to its donors that your... the candidates will know how much we are facilitating in donations as APAC lobbies these same lawmakers to do things like issue public statements saying we stand with Israel and sort of lobbies against efforts to restrict aid to Israel and humanitarian grounds in compliance with international law, especially whether it's weapons aid or other kinds of other sorts of, you know, military coordination aid. So the element that you bring up is that Not a lot of people perhaps understand that APEC pack has rapidly become the highest donating pack at the federal level.

far, far outpacing anyone like the realtors or other PACs that practice this same sort of earmarking. A PAC is delivering millions of dollars to House Democratic leadership as they dragged their feet on passing things like the Iran War Powers Resolution. And see, I think this is really important, David, for a variety of reasons, but one of which there are, I think probably a lot of viewers or listeners who struggle with is, it's not clear how this typically gets reported. In other words, you don't see a lot of mainstream news organizations reporting that Hakeem Jeffries, who balked endorsing the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, for example, even though they were in the same district. until two days before the election or other elected Democrats that took positions that seemed at odds with party solidarity, whatever it might be, or at odds with the views of the majority of their own voters, one doesn't often see stories that talk about millions of dollars from APEC to a Hakeem Jeffries, for example. Is that because They just don't report it, or is it because the process that you just described obscures the fact that it's APAC bundling this money, so a lot of campaign finance reports just don't show it as millions from APAC. Do you understand the question? I do. And what I can say is that APAC didn't begin operating in this way until just a couple of cycles ago. Though APAC and its allies wielded a lot of influence through their super PAC spending for many past cycles. It was only really, they only began sort of spinning this up in the 2021, 2022 cycle, and then really started dropping millions of dollars in the 2023, 2024 cycle. So now it's campaign finance reporters are the kind that, you know, is featured on the front page of the Times Post or CNN, weren't accustomed to tracing back. the millions in earmarked donations through the FEC records. So Sledge has been compiling those records and putting them in searchable, easily findable lists so that anyone nationwide can see how much their senator representative has received from APAC in bundled donations. And oftentimes it makes them the largest donor. The largest donor is the one lobbying these groups on efforts like the Block, the Bombs Act. from Bernie Sanders and Chris Van Hollen and Tina Smith and others as well. We'll be right back after this was more of my conversation with David Moore of Sludge. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash WeactRadio, D.C. And we're back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host Richard R.J. Eskow. We now continue our conversation with David Moore of Sludge. So when you look at. The question of what, you know, initiatives and human rights law as it's applied to military aid to Israel, what's being moved, what's being supported by Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate. It's important for people to keep in mind that their campaign coffers, their direct campaign coffers, are being padded with six figures from APAC PAC in bundling, the same people who are lobbying them to, you know, issue statements of support. The, uh, yeah, please go ahead. No, go ahead. The, uh, Also, it's, you know, it's worth also emphasizing that what, what, there's an instructive example where, um, where we covered in our, in our, in our site where, uh, on a talking show, uh, like a, uh, on a call in show here in New York City, the Kim Jeffrey said, well, I accept $10,000 from Apex pack. You know, that's how much they can, they can give me. And that's the limit for these sorts of certain sort of packs in that. way of describing it. Their campaign limit is only $10,000, but they can facilitate millions of dollars in individual donations coming through them. So although the individual donor is a U.S. citizen in these cases who's choosing to give to the candidate that APAC is endorsing or highlighting. or the sitting lawmaker or the House Democratic leaders, APAC's website makes absolutely clear that they are taking credit for this with lawmakers and so that when their lobbyists are pressing officials on weapons aid to Israel or legislation to investigate human rights cases abroad, that the lawmakers know how much they've received from APAC. But the public does not. And that to me is why the work you guys are doing. is so important. And particularly now, we're Apparently, as you and I speak in some sort of two weeks ceasefire, but the war in Iran has caused massive damage, thousands of deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars, probably when everything is counted to the global economy. And this was an initiative that reporting tells us was

primarily Benjamin Netanyahu is supported by a lot of the same interests that align with APAC. And you and your partner, Donald Shaw, wrote back in June of 2025 that the APAC funded Democratic leaders avoided pushing for a war power's resolution on Trump and Iran. They have... given lip service to it this time around, but it seems to me that the real world implications of, if we're talking about an APAC, of this money include genocide, war. So these are not abstract concepts we're talking about. We're talking about millions of dollars going to candidates that affect the trajectory of... history and millions of people's lives. Am I overstating the case, you think? I don't think so because the House resolution and the war powers was introduced in 2025 when there was a campaign with Israel's attack on Iran in 2025. And when the U.S., you know, when Trump was beginning to launch missile strikes against Iran, the Khanamasi bipartisan war powers resolution was introduced around mid-year, around June. House Democratic leaders declined to get behind it. And at first, it was backed by just a handful of progressives on the Democratic side in the House. But then, of course, this year, as Trump's saber rattling against Iran increased in February, House Democratic leaders had the opportunity to bring up the war powers resolution through sort of privileged measures can receive in the House, even though, even if they're in the minority. And Republicans began making noise that they would. you know, have to probably consider seriously voting for it. But the Democrats didn't put the pedal to the medal. And the House, Jeffrey's House Democratic leadership didn't get it introduced in February before the strikes came at the end of the month. In March, there was still an opportunity for the U.S. House to exert its constitutional authority to declare war and to lay down the marker that, you know, this, that. the Trump's strikes around were unlawful and that these tens of billions of dollars that were going into causing these thousands of death needed to stop. And that in turn, a couple of House Republicans signaled they were on board and might have squeaked across the finish line with a bare majority. And in turn, House Democrats also didn't bring it to the floor. They didn't push the initiative then. Now, as we speak on April 8th, House Democratic leaders are going to. They're going to say they're going to reintroduce it when recess ends shortly. It might get over the finish line now, but they had the opportunities for the past several months. And much of that comes from their significant lobbying efforts to make sure that the war effort is unconstrained. Right. And you mentioned a couple cases where this pack spending has backfired. The one that came to mind when you mentioned it, David, was Annalia.

in New Jersey's 11th district, where APAC, you mentioned these bland, meaningless names they choose, they put together a super PAC, I believe it was called the United DeMocracy Project. And they went after Tom Malinowski, a candidate who was basically pretty much pro-Israel in order to. they say, but correct me if I'm wrong, to kind of slap his wrist, make an example of him for not being sufficiently enthusiastic in his support for Israel. But the net result in this primary is backfired and someone who was further to Malinowski's left, who was stronger on Palestinian rights, for example, and Alalia Mejia got the nomination instead. Now that's I don't know if that that's a rejection of the pact so much as it was a tactical error on their part. But when you have that much money, I think they spent more than $2 million in that race. That's a hell of a lot of money for a primary. You're distorting the outcome. I mean, I guess. One question I would have for you, you're not in a position to answer, but why wouldn't the Democratic Party keep this money out of their primaries? It doesn't help them win. It just helps Republican and other billionaires choose their candidates. And secondly, is this a sign that maybe for all their money, these folks aren't as shrewd as they might think they are? To address the first question, there's another example in the Illinois primaries that I mentioned last cycle in the House and Senate primaries where they played, they more or less split sort of outcomes. APAC spent $5 million for one of the candidates who ended up losing to LaShawn Ford in the 7th district as well. And they also spent more than or close to $6 million. for the candidate Laura Fine, who ended up losing to the mayor of Evanston, Daniel Biss, in the 9th district. That's a lot of money. And Apex was spending through Super PACs that were named Elected Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago now, as well as the United Democracy Super PAC that you talked about. And for some of these super PACs, the exact spenders were dark at the time when they were running the TV ads. the exact donors were not disclosed. So Illinois voters were in the dark as who was funding the campaign ads, but it was widely known because of the habits of sort of the pattern of who they were backing. It was widely known that it was that these were APAC funded super PACs and APAC did not deny it. And then also then, you know, subsequent campaign, you know, like finance reports have sort of made that clear. So. To your question, how are, how is the public and how are Democratic voters being served by attack ads and primaries being funded by dark money? Well, that's a question for state parties to be able to pick up. And if more candidates and state parties were to check out the people's pledge and to take note of how candidates can opt to voluntarily reject this money. Now, legally, the outside groups can still do it thanks to a series of Supreme Court decisions.

The candidates have a strong role to play in state parties as well, have significant ability to shape the rules of the primary contests in their state. For the reform efforts that are underway for democratic contests, whether the presidential level someday in the next few years, right, and then maybe after that in congressional races, that's an open question where, you know, perhaps we're going to see more voters and Democratic Republicans that reject dark money spending in primaries. We are. seeing inklings of more candidates coming out against it, like you said. And even when you had mentioned Gavin Newsom, but as well, Senator Cory Booker in New Jersey, a staunch APAC ally recently said that he was going to begin to, he's claimed, begin to cease taking APACPAC donations. That's got to be tested against reality because he's been one of their top, Cory Booker had been one of their top recipients as well. But that's... another example of what you're discussing. And as far as the tactics and the, as far as the tactics, the New Jersey race that you mentioned, it was, there's a lot of consensus that that was a tactical misstep by APAC that maybe they're playing in a different playing field now and that dumping millions of dollars into outside spending is that Democratic voters are going to take a closer look now. You know, and one of my reactions, and again, one of the reasons why I think this kind of reporting is so important is that, you know, Cory Booker says he's going to cut back on taking APAC money. Well, he's not saying he'll cut back on taking money from the quote unquote United Democracy Project or whatever name they pick now. So that strikes me as a good reason why this reporting has to continue. And before we go, just kind of a last check-in on the tech side of it. Crypto, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't fully understand what it is or what it does, but it's basically unregulated electronic currency that they want to keep or under-regulated, that they want to keep unregulated, that they want to keep unregulated, that could and has at times pose. major risk to the global financial system. And people remember the, and of course, I say people remember I'm going to blank, Sam Bankman Fried. And that fiasco, there are many others that could be following him. But you have crypto. People understand AI now, including the massive use of energy. and the data centers that are polluting their regions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But do we have a sense yet? Do you have a sense from your reporting how well these PACs are doing, or are they too new to be able to, you know, get a read on them? Right. So here I'll jump into what the lay of the land is for crypto. And briefly, I'll mention that with candidates like Cory Booker and the APAC support, when support comes in through an outside spending group like United Democracy Project, it's an outside ads, you know, digital ads you might see on your phone and ads you'll catch on TV when you're out in public places or in the waiting room. Those, it's an open question to what degree.

that the candidates who say we're going to cut off A-PAC Pact donations, to what degree they go further and say, stop those as well. So the goal of something like the People's Pledge is to cut off that spending in elections and Bookers up this year for a vote. So it's expected that he would receive outside spending back in that way. And so, yeah, that's a step, like just like you said, to cut off these innocuously named opaque spending groups that are trying to influence voters on pop-button issues like immigration. With regards to crypto, The crypto industry has several items on its wish list. Got one of them. That was called the Genius Act, a bill that passed stable coins that President Trump signed into law. A huge regulatory win for them in the sense of it gave stable coins a sort of like a playing field as well. There's a greater deregulation bill that's been stalled and back and forth between the House and the Senate. It's often referred to as the Clarity Act for folks to be able to search for more information on it. And the crypto industry was furiously trying to get the Clarity Act. over the finish line in this Congress, this year, while they still have Republican control of the House and Senate and support of the deregulation-driven Trump administration, certainly also with huge investments in crypto themselves. in the administration and decision makers to try to get the market structure clarity bill over the finish line that would deregulate the industry in lines with what they've wanted. And it's not clear that it's going to be passed this year before the election. And we'll see what happens after the midterms as well. The crypto industry, though, is certainly unashamed of its political strategy. It was on pace to outraise what it raised last year, and it's been fully out there again. It said we are unafraid to spend. Tremendous amounts of, you know, in Ohio in the 2024 election, tens of millions of dollars backing the Republican Bernie Moreno, who defeated Sherrod Brown on the vacant committee, who had dared to criticize crypto regulation as sort of being on, you know, not doing enough to protect consumers. The crypto industry is back with fair shake, super PACs, and others. And it's sort of Democrat and Republican arms. And they're really unashamed to be running back the same playbook. They're going to be spending more on ads. And you'll see them certainly active in some of the upcoming primaries. Early voting begins next month in May in California primary races. And soon after that, in June, in New York House primary races. There's a lot of voters are going to see ads. And after that, you'll see ads in Michigan, Maine, and other sort of battleground states as well in primary contests, where crypto is looking to sort of solidify.

the gains that it's won already in the deregulation from the Trump administration. At high risk to the public, I would say, and it was striking to me and you're reporting on. the gearing up the packs are doing that the high water mark current high water mark for super PAC spending on midterms was in 2022 club for growth action spent 69 million fair shake reported total receipts of nearly 73.8 million i'm reading you were reporting that in the second half of 2025 according to the federal election commission's disclosures so Just that one institution alone looks to have hugely record breaking here, and that's for crypto, and then you've got AI, then you've got APEC. So it sounds like, it sounds overwhelming for voters to push back on, but it sounds like the one place where this all comes together and people can really resist it is by insisting the candidates sign the people's pledge and that they, and asking them to sign it and confronting them, why haven't you signed it? and every public appearance. That's my takeaway from what you're telling me. But what's your closing thought on that? I think you're right that the swell of these untraceable and anonymous ads flooding primaries on both sides of the aisles is I think it can only sort of increase distrust in the political process. It's, you know, sort of become a joke of, you know, super PACs like Americans for Americans, something like that, you know, dropping attack ads. And it tires people out. It reduces voter participation as well. It would be a huge step forward for more candidates to adopt the people's pledge and to bring it up in their state parties, whether they're on the left or right side of the aisle, to encourage more candidates like the ones in Maryland who have

the ones in Maryland and other states who have begun to take this pledge and say that we're, you know, we're going to choose to reject this outside spending. We're going to choose instead to try to focus our campaign as much around the people we're going to, you know, we're seeking to represent as possible. Well, David Moore, co-founder of Sludge, your work and your publications work can be found at reedsludge.com. I encourage people to read it and follow it as I do. So thanks for all your great investigation and thanks for coming on the program. Thank you so much for the top. And we'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and you're listening to The Zero Hour. Hello, this is Yo-Yo Ma, and you're listening to The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow.

And we're back on The Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Like everybody else, I get sucked down internet rabbit holes from time to time. And one of the ones I got a vortex into this past week was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps series of Lego animations, propaganda Lego animations. that have been going around the world. A lot of people I know knew about them. I didn't until somebody sent me one. Their purpose, obviously, is to promote Iran the cause of Iran as just and right and the cause of America and the Gulf states as bad. And Donald Trump is bad as wrong. I have to say they're... extremely well done. They're funny. They're smart for people who are outraged by this war. Many of them will find them therapeutic. And the fascinating thing about them is that by doing it in such a modern way, you know, Trump said back to the stone, Obama and back to the Stone Age where they belong, forgetting that the Iranians had a civilization well before Europeans did. is that the regime or government that was being condemned rightfully for killing protesters a month ago is now popular worldwide because it is resisting the United States and Israel, which is a cause that's enormously popular with the oppressed peoples of the world, the so-called Houthi rebels, the Ansar. Allah of Yemen became global heroes by closing the Bab al-Mandab straight. Now the Iranians have done the same and they're widely perceived, I think correctly, as having beaten the U.S. to a draw. As I speak, they still control the Strait of Hormuz. So when you have a clearer... cause, which in their case is protecting their country, it's a lot easier to win propaganda wars than it is when your president can't even articulate what it is you're fighting for. Thanks for listening.