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Promotors of Trump judges rebuff call to reveal 'dark money,' accusing Democrats of hypocrisy

A leading promoter of President Trump's effort to make the judiciary more conservative is pushing back hard on allegations of hypocrisy leveled by Democratic senators. Transparency in campaign financing, one of the central causes for those who want to limit money's sway over policymaking, is the issue.

Fourteen senators — including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker — wrote the Judicial Crisis Network this week demanding it reveal who has financed more than $20 million worth of television advertising to press the confirmation of Trump's court picks.

"The American public deserves to know who is funding these attacks, and whether the same individuals are financing litigation before the court that will ultimately be decided by the justices and judges they helped to confirm," the senators wrote.

The demand came after the advocacy group launched a $1 million TV campaign accusing the Democrats of a different sort of improper secrecy: keeping quiet the names of people they'd consider nominating to the federal bench if one of them becomes president.


Trump unveiled a list of 25 potential Supreme Court nominees in the summer of 2016, a move widely credited with shoring up his support among cultural conservatives. Groups on the right sound confident that a similar short list from the 2020 Democratic nominee would backfire on that candidate, driving more conservatives to the polls (out of anxiety) than liberals to the polls (with enthusiasm).

"We want to thank these liberal senators for promoting our ad and placing their hypocrisy on 'dark money' directly before the public," JCN's chief counsel, Carrie Severino, said in a statement Thursday. "We assume their intention, however, is actually to try and distract the public from the continued deception on the part of their liberal 'dark money' allies and their secret list of potential judicial nominees."

Dark money is the shorthand for political spending by nonprofit organizations, which are not required to make public the identities of their corporate, individual or union benefactors.

The senators asked JCN to deliver a roster of anyone who has donated more than $10,000 since Trump took office, with special interest in the identity of one person known to have contributed $17.9 million in 2017. The senators also asked for the number of individual donations under $100 and the names of all businesses that have given to the JCN, plus the share of total revenue that came from corporations.

Everyone in the group — which includes all 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, the panel tasked with considering judicial nominations — is sponsoring legislation to require the disclosure of anonymous donors to organizations.

A large share of the TV advertising produced to oppose the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court at the end of the Obama administration, and to promote the elevations of Trump's picks Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the high court, has been paid for by the JCN.

The group's TV spot, which ran in late June, references New York Times reporting on efforts by liberal advocacy groups including the Alliance for Justice to prepare, but keep under wraps, a list of potential judicial nominees in a Democratic administration. The spot specifically asked former Vice President Joe Biden to enunciate his potential court picks.

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Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

"On Las Vegas Boulevard" sign.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash. Unplash+ license obtained by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths.

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

CARSON CITY, NEV. - A surprise last-minute bill to open primary elections to Nevada’s largest voting bloc, registered unaffiliated voters, moved quickly through the state legislature and was approved by a majority of lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session Monday.

The bill, AB597, allows voters not registered with a political party to pick between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot in future election cycles. It does not apply to the state’s presidential preference elections, which would remain closed to registered party members.

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In April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape.

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The SAVE Act: Addressing a Non-Existent Problem at the Cost of Voter Access?

In July 2024, I wrote about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act when it was first introduced in Congress. And Sarah and I discussed it in an episode of Beyond the Bill Number which you can still listen to. Now, in April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape. It's time to revisit this legislation and examine its implications for American voters.

Read the IssueVoter analysis of the bill here for further insight and commentary.

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Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
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Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

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"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

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