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AOC, a dark money critic, linked to questionable campaign finance tactic

Politicians who challenge the status quo must remember they live in a very large glass house, their critics always poised to throw the first stone. It's one reason why so few members openly challenge the ethical or ideological baselines in Congress, lest they become vulnerable to being pilloried as hypocrites.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an exception that proves the rule on this front, her eagerness to passionately challenge convention topping the reasons why she stands apart as the most prominent and polarizing first-term House member in decades. The self-described democratic socialist has already parried charges of duplicity on several symbolically resonant fronts — making tabloid headlines in recent days, for example, by choosing a car over the subway back home in New York while championing a Green New Deal as her signature issue.

Now comes a charge of hypocrisy that's maybe more serious.


Saikat Chakrabarti, who's now chief of staff after running the Ocasio-Cortez campaign last year, helped create a pair of political action committees that paid his political consultancy, Brand New Congress, more than $1 million in 2016 and 2017, federal campaign finance records show. Chakrabarti's firm also got $18,880 from the campaign in its early stages, after which he worked as a volunteer.

But that arrangement, "first reported by conservative outlets, left hidden who ultimately profited from the payments — a sharp juxtaposition with Ocasio-Cortez's calls for transparency in politics," The Washington Post noted.

A conservative group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday alleging the PACs wrongly shielded the spending from disclosure.

An attorney for the PACs, the consulting firm and the congresswoman's campaign, David Mitrani, said in a statement Tuesday that none of his clients did anything illegal. But watchdog groups suggested the arrangement was unduly evasive, especially for someone aligned with a politician who has labeled dark money "the enemy to democracy."

"In a normal situation, if all you saw was a PAC that disbursed hundreds of thousands of dollars to an affiliated entity to pay the salaries of people who were really working for the PAC, that looks like ... a PAC that takes in money to engage in political activity but is actually enriching its owners," Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer who is now a transparency advocate at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Post.

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MAGA says no to Trump & Kennedy’s junk science

U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions after making an announcement on“ significant medical and scientific findings for America’ s children” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Sept. 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Federal health officials suggested a link between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy as a risk for autism, although many health...

(Getty Images)

MAGA says no to Trump & Kennedy’s junk science

President Trump stood at the White House podium, addressing a room full of reporters.

“First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of…ah-said-a…well…let’s see how we say that.”

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On Live Facial Recognition in the City: We Are Not Guinea Pigs, and We Are Not Disposable

New Orleans fights a facial recognition ordinance as residents warn of privacy risks, mass surveillance, and threats to immigrant communities.

Getty Images, PhanuwatNandee

On Live Facial Recognition in the City: We Are Not Guinea Pigs, and We Are Not Disposable

Every day, I ride my bike down my block in Milan, a tight-knit residential neighborhood in central New Orleans. And every day, a surveillance camera follows me down the block.

Despite the rosy rhetoric of pro-surveillance politicians and facial recognition vendors, that camera doesn’t make me safer. In fact, it puts everyone in New Orleans at risk.

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An illustration of two people holding legal documents.
llustration by Olivia Abeyta for palabra

Proof of Citizenship, No Proof of Safety

Claudia, an immigrant from Chile who lives in suburban Maryland right outside Washington, D.C., watched closely as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign during the spring (Claudia, not her real name, asked to be identified by a pseudonym because she is afraid of federal immigration agents).

She went online and watched countless videos of masked, heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents breaking the car windows of immigrants to wrestle them out of their cars, and detaining people at their workplaces, like restaurants, car washes, and agricultural fields. Many of her friends told her about ICE sweeps in heavily Latino apartment complexes near her home.

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Protest sign, We the people.
Protests have been sparked across the country over the last few weeks.
Gene Gallin on Unsplash

Why Constitution Day Should Spark a Movement for a New Convention in 2037

Sept. 17 marked Constitution Day, grounded in a federal law commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. As explained by the courts of Maryland, “By law, all educational institutions receiving federal funding must observe Constitution Day. It is an opportunity to celebrate and discuss our Constitution and system of government.”

This week also marked the release of an important new book by the historian Jill Lepore: “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” (as reviewed in the New York Times in a public link). Here’s an overview of her conclusions from the publisher:

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