Creators of a new nonpartisan political fundraising app want to change the way candidates raise money and voters engage in elections.
Royal Kastens, John Polis and Chris Tavlarides – three friends of varying political ideologies – launched Prytany on Wednesday, just before the first Democratic presidential primary debates. Not only will the app allow people to donate to campaigns, but it will also serve as a social media platform, connecting users to issues they care about.
The trio was inspired by their own experiences donating to campaigns, and the frustrations they faced doing so. In the past, they found the donation process to be tedious because there wasn't a central place to give money to candidates across party lines.
Named after the ancient Greek system of democracy, Prytany aims to change that. Its founders want the platform to be the Amazon of political donating and voter engagement.
"People actually do vote across party lines. People that are red believe in blue issues. And people that are blue believe in red issues. That's just a fact. We don't believe the whole country is so polarized," Polis said.
If someone agrees with a candidate, regardless of party, Prytanty allows the user to demonstrate support with just a couple clicks, Polis explained.
The app started out simple, as a donation processor. But as it was built, Prytany quickly evolved into its own social media network in which users could connect with candidates who support their top issues.
Through the app, users can see candidate profiles, which show what issues they support as well as recent news about them. This creates a feed of candidates and information that users can follow and use to inform their donations. If an issue is particularly important to a user, that person can also create a campaign around the topic to garner support from others who use the app. Public campaigns allow anyone to join and donate, while private campaigns are by invitation only.
The Federal Election Commission gave its stamp of approval on Prytany back in April, allowing the app's creators to move forward with the launch. Included in the FEC's approval is the app's donor verification feature. Prytany uses FEC information to automatically link registered candidates to the app's database. Then, each candidate is manually screened through phone calls by the Prytany staff to ensure they are who they say they are.
Prytany isn't the only fundraising tool to launch recently. The Republican Party introduced WinRed, its long-awaited response to the Democrats' ActBlue, at the end of June. WinRed hopes to become the hub for conservative small-dollar donations that the GOP has lacked for years. Through WinRed, donors can give to multiple candidates at once, so campaigns, big and small, can benefit from this pooled support.
Much of WinRed's platform has been modeled off ActBlue, which was started by the Democratic Party in 2004. Over the past 15 years, ActBlue has been the leading example for small individual fundraising, securing billions for Democratic campaigns and causes.
While ActBlue and WinRed are openly partisan, Prytany isn't beholden to any political party. Besides ideological independence, what sets Prytany apart from other fundraising platforms is its efficiency, Kastens said.
Unlike Prytany, ActBlue and WinRed are political action committees, so fundraising money has to go through an extra step before the candidate receives it, Kastens said. Prytany is also the only one of the three to have a smartphone app.
"Whereas, in our system, we have removed ourselves. When a contribution is given, it goes just between a contributor and the candidate receiving. We are not a part of the equation, we never touch the money," Kastens said.
This difference in functionality also allows Prytany to keep the transaction fees lower than those of ActBlue or WinRed. Each contribution made through Prytany has a 3 percent transaction fee — compared to ActBlue's 3.95 percent and WinRed's 3.8 percent plus 30 cents. The money collected through these fees goes toward the upkeep of the fundraising platforms.
To put that in perspective, a $50 donation will actually cost $51.30 on Prytany, $51.98 on ActBlue and $52.20 on WinRed. A maxed-out contribution of $2,800 would run the donor $2,884 on Prytany, $2,910.60 on ActBlue and $2,906.80 on WinRed.
At its core, Prytany hopes to close the gap between voters' ideals and candidates' campaigns, Kastens said.
"That's the idea behind it: to maximize that connectivity, to allow (voters) to communicate about issues that matter to them — and to have it all in one spot," Kastens said.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.