Some news about No Labels from my state; what’s happening with parties in your state? And great news regarding suicide prevention efforts aimed at LGBTQ+. I bet my state isn’t the only one!
No Labels Kansas is no more as a political party, despite bizarre bid to hijack the organization
Party didn’t fulfill plan to nominate candidates for president, vice president
TOPEKA — Demise of the No Labels Kansas political party was inevitable after it neglected to fulfill the organization’s central objective when formed in January 2024 to nominate candidates for U.S. president and vice president.
The failure of No Labels Kansas to field candidates for any type of statewide office or to win at least 1% of the total votes cast for that office in a general election meant the organization would eventually lose its standing in Kansas among the state’s five political parties. Instead of leaving Kansans to speculate when that might occur in 2026, No Labels Kansas secretary and treasurer Shane Mathis requested May 15 the termination of state recognition of the political party.
“Because No Labels Kansas declined to nominate candidates for those offices in 2024 and has no intention of doing so in the future, its central organizational purpose no longer exists,” Mathis said.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab complied Monday with the request and notified county election clerks and commissioners of state law requiring voter registration records be amended so 5,955 people registered with No Labels Kansas would be reclassified as unaffiliated.
In Kansas, the Republican Party dominates with 897,000 registered voters compared with the 575,000 unaffiliated and 495,000 Democratic Party registrants.
While founders of No Labels Kansas didn’t make a dent in Kansas elections, the existence of its organizational shell led a pair of longtime Republican operatives to attempt a hijacking of No Labels Kansas so it might be transformed into an organization with a broader mission that included nomination of candidates for state offices. (snip-MORE)
TOPEKA — A Wichita organization created an online training program for suicide prevention and mental health education to improve the care that LGBTQ+ Kansans receive when reaching out to crisis resources, including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
The organization, Center of Daring, focuses on inclusivity and leadership training. Its 10-part training program takes nine hours to complete and is available for free on the center’s website, according to an April 28 press release announcing the program.
“We believe this training series will fill a deep need here at a time when many LGBTQ+ Kansans don’t feel safe in our state,” said Liz Hamor, the Center of Daring founder, in the release.
Through learning activities, videos and surveys, the training covers trauma-informed intervention, intersectionality and promoting equity within a crisis response organization. The training was designed with input from LGBTQ+ residents and Kansas crisis care providers, according to the press release.
The 988 helpline is a mental health crisis resource available 24/7. It went nationwide in 2022. Kansas’ line received more than 34,000 calls, 12,000 texts and 9,000 chats in 2025, according to a state-mandated annual report.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a free, confidential hotline available 24/7 for individuals in crisis or those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.
Every day, hair salons sweep countless hair clippings off their floors and toss them into the trash without much thought. But in parts of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, those discarded strands are finding an entirely different purpose: helping forests grow.
French recycling company Capillum has developed a surprisingly effective way to reuse human hair by turning it into biodegradable mulch that protects young trees from hungry deer. The company collects hair from participating salons and transforms it into flattened fiber sheets that can be wrapped around vulnerable saplings.
What sounds unusual at first actually solves several environmental problems at once.
A second life for salon clippings
Hair salons generate an enormous amount of waste each year. Most clippings are simply thrown away, even though human hair is remarkably durable because it is made largely from keratin, a fibrous protein that breaks down slowly over time.
Capillum saw potential in a material most people never think twice about. The company accepts hair regardless of texture, length, color, or whether it has been dyed. Once gathered, the hair is fed into a machine that minces everything together into dense fiber sheets that can be laid around the base of trees. The process transforms something typically viewed as garbage into a practical tool for conservation efforts.
Why young trees need protection
Many forests depend on saplings surviving long enough to mature and replenish the ecosystem. However, young trees often struggle in areas with large deer populations. Deer are known to chew on bark, especially during seasons when food is scarce. Because saplings have thin bark and delicate trunks, even small amounts of damage can stunt their growth or kill them entirely.
Foresters have historically relied on plastic fencing and tree guards to keep deer away. While those barriers can work well, they also create waste and require maintenance over time.
Capillum’s recycled hair mats offer another approach. The scent of human hair naturally discourages deer from getting too close to the trees, steering them toward other vegetation instead. The method protects saplings without harming wildlife.
A biodegradable alternative to plastic
Unlike plastic guards, the hair fibers gradually decompose and return nutrients to the soil. As the keratin breaks down, it releases nitrogen and amino acids that can support plant growth. That nutrient-rich quality is one reason some gardeners have long experimented with placing hair into compost piles or using it directly in garden beds. Knowing this, Capillum sells its eco-friendly hair mulch to home gardeners interested in more sustainable growing methods.
Human hair is more useful than most people realize(snip-MORE)
Surely there are people here in the US, in our profit-driven society, who could do this recycling, as well.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barney Frank, the longtime Democratic congressman and leading liberal who brought new visibility to gay rights and crafted the most significant reforms to the financial system in a generation, has died. He was 86.
Frank died late Tuesday, according to Jim Segel, Frank’s former campaign manager and close friend.
After representing broad swaths of Boston’s suburbs in Congress for 32 years, Frank and his husband moved to Ogunquit, Maine. He entered hospice there in April with congestive heart failure and is survived by his husband, Jim Ready, and sisters, the longtime Democratic strategist Ann Lewis and Doris Breay, along with brother David Frank.
A self-described “left-handed gay Jew,” Frank was known for his acerbic wit, combative style and focus on marginalized communities. He represented the party’s left wing while keeping close with Democratic leaders who sometimes frustrated progressives.
He is best known as a pioneer for LGBT rights. After decades of grappling with his sexuality, he publicly came out as gay in 1987, the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. With his 2012 marriage to Ready, he became the first incumbent lawmaker on Capitol Hill to marry someone of the same sex.
And why judges should never be elected, but should be nominated by those who practice law, then confirmed by elected legislators and governors. All should be public so we the people know what and when it’s happening. When judges have to run for the bench, politics overtakes and minimizes law, tainting decisions.
This weekend, a Kansas judge issued a scathing 117-page rebuke of the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth—and in doing so, methodically dismantled the case against that care. In his ruling, Judge Carl Folsom III worked through the testimony of the state’s witnesses one by one, finding that its anti-transgender “experts”—routinely paraded by groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, SEGM, and Genspect—offered opinions built on “cherry-picked information, conjecture, and research taken out of context,” and granting their testimony little to no weight. He then laid out 349 individual findings of fact, drawn from scientific evidence and the testimony of credible medical experts, documenting the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care. He ultimately found that the ban likely violates the Kansas Constitution—which guarantees broader protections than its federal counterpart. That distinction matters enormously: because the ruling rests on state constitutional grounds, it is largely insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court and its decision in Skrmetti, which closed the federal courthouse door to these challenges but left the state one wide open.
“Allowing a transgender adolescent with gender dysphoria to experience their endogenous puberty when puberty blockers are medically indicated according to the Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline is highly likely to result in irreversible physical changes that create enormous short- and long-term distress and gender dysphoria,” Folsom wrote. “Thus, there was substantial evidence that S.B. 63 not only fails to protect minors, but also endangers them, by prohibiting the use of GnRH agonists when medically indicated.”
Before weighing the evidence, the judge first had to determine who could credibly be considered an expert. Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach brought forward a litany of anti-trans witnesses familiar from litigation defending these bans. Among them was James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who has built a career testifying for states defending care bans despite no clinical experience treating transgender minors—and who was once quietly dropped from a Florida Board of Medicine hearing after it emerged he had served on the advisory council of the Prostasia Foundation, a group that has worked to destigmatize pedophilia. Folsom wrote that Cantor “has not conducted any original scientific research on the efficacy or safety of gender dysphoria treatments,” and noted he is not licensed to treat anyone under 16 and has never diagnosed a minor with gender dysphoria. The judge then catalogued a record of self-contradiction: Cantor “stated that ‘peer-review is the line between acceptable and not’ but himself relied on non-peer reviewed sources,” cited systematic reviews while ignoring that “the authors of those reviews stated that their work should not be used to prevent the provision of gender-affirming medical care,” and “makes several statements which have no scientific support,” including that gender dysphoria might be a misdiagnosis of borderline personality disorder. “The Court gives Dr. Cantor’s testimony little weight,” Folsom concluded.
The judge turned next to Farr Curlin, a Duke University doctor and theologian who was an author of the Trump administration’s HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria—a document authored anonymously by a roster of hate-group affiliates and career anti-trans activists, and which deadnames Christine Jorgensen, one of the first Americans to get gender affirming surgery. Curlin, Folsom noted, “is not a pediatrician, nor is he a psychiatrist or endocrinologist,” and “has never treated anyone for gender dysphoria.” Curlin testified that gender-affirming care is “ethically problematic”—but under questioning, the breadth of what Curlin considers unethical became clear. He believes that prescribing birth control for contraception is also “ethically problematic,” because “blocking the capacity for reproduction seems contrary to the purposes of health.” He believes in vitro fertilization is “ethically problematic” as well. He testified that when gender-affirming care reduces fertility, it “prevents the realization of the basic good of marriage, since sexual capacities make possible the one flesh union of marriage.” By his own admission, Folsom noted, Curlin’s views are “radically counter to current medical orthodoxy.” The judge found his opinions “appear motivated by his personal views as opposed to a methodology applicable in the field of medical ethics,” and gave his testimony “little-to-no weight.”
The judge also had pointed words for the state’s roster of prominent anti-trans activists. Chloe Cole, the country’s most prominent anti-trans detransitioner, testified about receiving care as a minor in California—but Folsom noted that Cole “admittedly did not receive care in Kansas,” and that the plaintiffs’ expert Dr. Angela Turpin testified the care Cole described “would not have occurred in Kansas” and would have been inconsistent with the clinical guidelines Kansas providers actually follow. Her testimony was given “less weight.” Corinna Cohn, another anti-trans detransitioner who has testified for care bans across the country and who has publicly denied that transgender people existed before 1939 or were victims of the Holocaust, did not appear at the hearing at all. The judge noted that Cohn’s affidavit described “care accessed as an adult” and treatment “in Wisconsin”—nothing to do with minors, or with Kansas—and gave it “little weight.” And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled “whistleblower” who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit “little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise:
“The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.
Folsom then turned to set the record straight on the care banned by Kansas. Working through the testimony of the credible medical experts, he set out 349 separate numbered findings of fact, each documenting some component of what the science actually shows about gender-affirming care. Among them: that “the currently available body of medical research, as a whole, shows that gender-affirming medical care is effective at improving mental-health outcomes for adolescents with gender dysphoria,” supported by “over 20 scientific studies” finding the treatments “effective at alleviating gender dysphoria and improving a variety of mental-health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and suicidality.” Folsom found that “for many adolescents, gender-affirming medical care provides significant relief from gender dysphoria and decreases depression, anxiety, suicidality, and thoughts of self-harm.” On the question of regret, the talking point most relied upon by the law’s defenders, the court found, based on the Kansas clinic’s own long-term follow-up data, that 99.2% of patients who received gender-affirming care “continue to identify as transgender into adulthood,” and that of the remaining 0.8%, “most did not regret the medical treatment they received.”
Folsom reserved some of his sharpest fact-finding for the Cass Review and claims over European care. The state’s experts pointed to systematic reviews from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Norway as “proof” the science had turned. Folsom found otherwise. “None of these systematic reviews recommend categorically banning gender-affirming medical care for adolescents,” he wrote, and “the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Norway have not categorically prohibited gender-affirming medical care for minors”—as Kansas had. On the Cass Review specifically, Folsom found that its authors “changed their methodology from the methodology they said they would use in their preregistration, which is a deviation from standard academic publishing practices designed to minimize bias,” and “used idiosyncratic standards in scoring and thus excluded studies that had made important contributions to the field.” Far from recommending a ban, the court found, the Cass Report “reaches conclusions that are similar to those in the Endocrine Society Guideline and WPATH Standards of Care” and “concludes that there are young people who absolutely benefit from gender-affirming care.” On Germany, the state had the facts backwards: Folsom found that “Germany’s recent guideline endorses the provision of gender-affirming medical care”—a reference to the 2025 guidelines from 26 medical organizations across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the largest European medical consensus on transgender youth care ever produced.
The judge’s ruling rested on the Kansas constitution. Folsom found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the claim that SB 63 violates the fundamental right of parents, guaranteed by Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights, to make medical decisions for their children. Section 1, he wrote, quoting the Kansas Supreme Court, “protects the core right of personal autonomy—which includes the ability to control one’s own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination” and “allows Kansans to make their own decisions regarding their bodies, their health, their family formation, and their family life.” Because SB 63 strips parents of that right, Folsom applied strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard in constitutional law, and found the state had failed to meet it. That reasoning was used recently before in Kansas politics for another issue. The same Section is what protects abortion rights in the state. In previous abortion-related decisions, the Kansas Supreme Court held that Section 1 secures “an inalienable natural right of personal autonomy”—language the court used to strike down abortion restrictions, and that Kansas voters chose to keep in 2022 when they rejected a constitutional amendment that would have stripped it away.
For now, gender-affirming care is legal again in Kansas. The injunction is temporary, blocking SB 63 while the case is litigated, and Attorney General Kris Kobach has said he will appeal, calling the ruling “a stark example of judicial activism.” But the appeal faces a structural problem. Because the decision rests entirely on the Kansas Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court and its ruling in Skrmetti have no power to disturb it—a state’s highest court is the final word on its own constitution. And the Kansas Supreme Court, where the case is ultimately likely to land, has five of seven justices appointed by Democratic governors and has repeatedly upheld the same Section 1 personal-autonomy right that Folsom relied on here.
Donald Trump went to China, and all he got were some seeds.
Donald Trump did not receive any help from China on ending the war in Iran or reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but Chinese President Xi Jinping did give him some rose seeds. The Chinese leader gave Trump a tour of the Zhongnanhai Garden, where he admired the roses. I guess he admired them so much that Xi decided to give him seeds so that he could grow his own roses. He didn’t even give him roses, just the seeds. You know that Donald Trump does not care about growing some damn flowers.
Trump’s trip to China was a total and abject failure and failed to secure any agreements or promises. Trump came home empty-handed. (snip-MORE)
In 2023, a government contractor pleaded guilty to stealing the tax information of Donald Trump and other wealthy Americans and leaking it to media outlets in 2019 and 2020. After he was restored to the presidency in 2025, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for “allowing” this leak, along with a $230 million lawsuit against the Department of Justice for the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term in office and the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago.
Since he is the president of the United States and head of the executive branch, and the DOJ and the IRS are agencies under the executive branch, Donald Trump was the plaintiff and defendant. Basically, he was trying to hand himself $10 billion of our money. Even Richard Nixon didn’t try to get away with this kind of corruption. The only kink to Donald Trump’s plan of grifting us out of $10 billion is that it had to be approved by a judge. (snip-MORE)
Last week I flagged that oral argument was set in the D.C. Circuit for this past Thursday in the combined challenges filed by four law firms against Trump’s executive orders seeking to keep them from conducting much of their business. All four firms won in the lower courts. Based on the panel’s reception, they seem on track to do it again.
These cases are highly significant because they go to the heart of a major abuse of executive power: Trump’s insistence that he has the ability to put entities that oppose him out of business. Former Solicitor General for George W. Bush, Paul Clement, representing the firms, argued that Trump’s executive orders “run afoul of the better part of the Bill of Rights.” Not just one or two provisions, mind you, but “the better part.” He argued that they threaten the right to counsel, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.
Clement explained, “The executive orders here strike at the heart of the First Amendment and the ability of lawyers to zealously represent their clients. Lawyers cannot zealously represent their clients while walking on eggshells for fear of reprisals; thus, the executive orders strike at the heart of the rule of law and the zealous representation on which the judiciary and the adversary process depend.” That seems entirely clear. It could even be possible that firms might avoid representing certain clients—one of Trump’s early attacks was on Covington and Burling, a D.C. firm that gave advice to Jack Smith, the special counsel during the Biden administration who oversaw the two prosecutions of Donald Trump.
Clement also explained the headlock Trump had put firms in: “I either keep my security clearance, or I can sue the Trump administration, not both.” For many defense firms, the ability to obtain a security clearance is essential to doing certain types of work. Trump’s orders purported to remove those clearances for lawyers at firms that ran afoul of him. He also tried to suspend active government contracts and prevent attorneys who worked at the interdicted firms from entering government buildings, including federal courthouses. As we discussed here, it was always going to be a nonstarter because the orders, if permitted to go into effect, would allow a president to pick and choose which attorneys could continue to make a living and put ones he didn’t like out of business.
During argument, the panel seemed unpersuaded that the executive orders were discretionary national security decisions made by a president that aren’t subject to review by the courts. If the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, Trump will undoubtedly argue that the district judges who first considered the case were biased. Assuming Trump loses at the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court could take the case on appeal, but is not obligated to. For instance, Judge Richard Leon, one of first district judges to consider a law firm executive order case, is also the judge who issued a preliminary injunction halting construction of Trump’s ballroom, finding that the president is the “steward” of the White House and not the “owner,” and that Trump had no statutory authority to proceed, absent authorization from Congress. So prepare yourself for meritless arguments about judicial bias if Trump suffers a loss here. There is no way of predicting how long it will take the court to rule, and the administration is enjoined from putting the orders into effect while the cases are being litigated.
Closing the loop on mifepristone
With only two justices, predictably, Thomas and Alito, writing in dissent, the Supreme Court has prevented Louisiana’s law, which would make mifepristone unavailable via telehealth, from going into effect while the litigation moves forward.
It’s not skeptical to question whether this happened because the Court is well aware of the risk of agitating voters in advance of the midterm elections.
Trump is hyperfocused on trying to salvage the November election despite his sinking performance in the polls.
We always knew that, backed into a corner, Trump would become ever more willing to damage democracy to save himself. It’s on.
NOTUS is reporting that meetings are being held, out of the public eye, between the White House, DOJ, DHS, and the Postal Service to try and interfere with the election. The goal seems to be building a national voter database that can then be used to determine who can and can’t vote—which is up to the individual states—and implement Trump’s order that the Post Office should interfere with mailing ballots.
The report in NOTUS included comments from an unidentified White House staffer speaking on background, who declined to acknowledge that the conversations were taking place, but did say that “it is standard process for administration officials to coordinate on implementing President Trump’s executive orders. We do not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened.” That’s as good as a yes.
Trump’s executive order directing USPS to interfere in state-run elections is under challenge in court. At a hearing last week, DOJ argued that the court can’t act because the issue being raised is an “abstract legal question unless and until the Postal Service actually issues a rule that injures the plaintiffs and it does so only because it was directed to by the president — rather than, for example, as an exercise of the agency’s own independent judgment.” Judge Carl Nichols seemed inclined to buy that argument at one point in the hearing, asking how there could be irreparable injury, which he must find before he can enjoin the executive order, when no action has been taken as of yet. But at other points in the hearing, he pushed the government on the constitutionality of the president’s executive order.
We’ll watch carefully for a forthcoming ruling in this case, which will tell us a lot about whether the courts will entertain presidential interference in each state’s administration of its own election. But the White House is making its position clear.
Stephen Miller, who it’s always worth noting is not a lawyer and doesn’t seem to appreciate what the Constitution says, seems to be continuing to look for a new way to militarize the country for reasons that don’t hold water in advance of the election. We’ll take up the issue of the illegality of sending federal troops or federal agents to the polls first breather we get.
Also …
On Wednesday, the state of Tennessee has a court date to defend itself against the NAACP’s allegations that it cannot, without violating state law, redraw its voting maps this late in the decade.
On Thursday, SCOTUS will be issuing more opinions.
By Friday, the Government has to produce discovery to the defendants in the Minnesota church protest case against Don Lemon and individual protestors who were indicted for violating the FACE Act. A judge ruled that heavily redacted discovery that prevents the defendants from identifying witnesses, including members of law enforcement, so they can prepare their cases violates the law. He has given the government until Friday to rectify its errors and “produce discovery consistent with its Rule 16(a) obligations, unredacted as to all victim and witness names, addresses, and telephone numbers; as well as fully unredacted as to law enforcement PII [personally identifiable information]” to every defendant who has agreed to abide by a protective order preventing its public dissemination. The government’s case has been widely viewed as likely violating the First Amendment from the outset.
Next up on the list of bad cabinet secretaries
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is being sued for violating employees’ right to be free from establishment of religion by the government. She’s been proselytizing in emails to the captive audience that is her workforce.
I recall once handling a case where a public employee was being subject to far less overt religious commentary, and the government agency immediately conceded error and fired the offender. This case is even more clear. Government employees are not disciples of Christ.
In new federal lawsuit, employees accuse Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins of "sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees"
But don’t hold your breath for the president to fire her. This was a weekend characterized by a full-scale display of support for Christianity being promoted by the White House. The administration held a “Rededicate 250,” which many observers, both approvingly and disapprovingly, referred to as a Christian religious service featuring high-ranking government officials on the National Mall.
Rededicate 250 was “a White House-backed prayer festival dedicated to America’s Christian roots.” Trump gave a video speech. Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were present, standing with evangelical leaders on the stage. Johnson told the crowd, “Our founders boldly proclaim that our rights do not derive from the government. They come from you, our Creator and Heavenly Father.”
Podcaster Brian Allen posted this snippet from MAGA radio host Eric Metaxas’ speech at the federally funded prayer event on the National Mall today: “It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait two hundred years.”
As Allen put it, Metazas “told a crowd of thousands of Christians that God spent two centuries waiting to raise up Donald Trump — to build a ballroom.” The crowd responded by cheering.
The only way to overcome this sort of thing, a clear violation of the Constitution, is with a relentless commitment to telling the truth and sharing it widely. We know from Trump’s poll numbers that some of it is breaking through. The utter lunacy of the Christian God wanting a ballroom is something to ask people to stop, and instead of just following like sheep, spend a moment thinking about.
More Kleptocracy
Bloomberg is reporting that Trump’s disclosure forms for the first quarter of 2026 show that he made 3,600 Stock trades, and that they are worth as much as $750 Million (the reporting is done in bands, so it’s impossible to determine the exact amount from the forms). Former Undersecretary of State Rick Stengel pointed out that Bush and Clinton kept their assets in a blind trust and neither Obama nor Biden traded stocks or bonds while in office.
“3,700 trades,” Stengel tweeted, “is probably more than all the trades of all the presidents until now. And he is trading stocks that are affected by his decisions. A walking conflict of interest, at the least, and perhaps insider trading. Just as members of Congress should not be able to trade stocks, so too the president.” Stock trades aren’t official acts; they’re clearly personal ones. Stengel has certainly identified reasons that merit a closer look at these trades.
So, lots happening this week. We’ll be here through everything as we head into the Memorial Day weekend, trying to make it make sense. I’m grateful to all of you who spend part of your week here with me, thinking carefully about the law, democracy, and where we go from here. Thank you for being a part of Civil Discourse.
The mid-decade fight to redraw congressional lines ahead of the November midterm elections has surged beyond statehouses and into ballot boxes and courtrooms – with millions of dollars pouring in to shape those outcomes, much of it from nonprofits that never have to say who is funding their activities.
Voters in California and, most recently, Virginia have weighed in on new House maps. A Colorado group wants to put its own proposal before voters. Missouri petitioners are trying to stop a new map from taking effect. And lawsuits are stacking up from Florida to Utah.
One through-line: dark money from 501(c)(4) nonprofits. Free from donor-disclosure rules, these groups move large sums with little transparency and have helped turn state-by-state redistricting battles into nationalized, big-dollar fights bankrolled by tight networks of high spenders.
“It’s a perfect example of where money is trying to influence policy outcomes, and redistricting is so high-stakes that now it’s just part of the process,” said Alex Keena, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University who has co-authored two books about redistricting.
What began last year with President Donald Trump urging Texas to redraw its map has now gone national, fueled by a surge in dark money that “perfectly encapsulates what’s happening here,” said Doug Spencer, a law professor at the University of Colorado.
“Every single story really feels like a domino in a long chain of events that goes back to President Trump’s cajoling of Texas to start this,” Spencer told OpenSecrets.
‘A tsunami of money’
The latest epicenter of the redistricting fight was Virginia, where voters in April approved a mid-decade redistricting plan that could have helped Democrats win four additional House seats in November. The measure would have bypassed a bipartisan redistricting commission and allowed the state to use new districts drawn by the Democratic-led General Assembly. The state Supreme Courtblocked it on May 8, declaring it unconstitutional because of a procedural timing dispute. Democrats filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on May 11.
Virginia, which has no limit on campaign donations, is “basically the wild, wild west in terms of campaign finance,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter run out of the University of Virginia. The three key players in this ballot measure fight combined to raise nearly $100 million since February in large cash contributions alone. The Virginia Public Access Project found it to be the most expensive referendum in state history.
“This was the confluence of all of these variables that resulted in just a tsunami of money in a state with lax regulation, high stakes, a single vote involving redistricting that could lead to four or even five new members of Congress,” Keena told OpenSecrets. “And we just had a ton of money flow into the state in a relatively short amount of time, and the result of all that money was just a blitz coming from every medium.”
And on both sides of the debate, the vast majority of that money came from a handful of dark money groups. window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}});
Virginians for Fair Elections, the main organization backing the redistricting effort, reported $63.2 million in large cash contributions, defined as any single contribution or loan of at least $10,000, between Feb. 6 and April 24. Nearly 97% of that total came from five 501(c)(4)s:
House Majority Forward, which is aligned with Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives, contributed $39.3 million across 10 installments from Feb. 6 to April 10, the largest of which was $9.3 million on March 30.
The Fairness Project, founded by a California-based healthcare workers union, contributed $11.7 million across five payments from Feb. 18 to April 9, including a $5 million contribution Feb. 18, in addition to $22,950 in in-kind contributions.
The Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, the 501(c)(4) arm of philanthropic organization Global Impact Ventures, donated $1.5 million across two contributions.
The same structure appeared on the opposition side. window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}});
The Virginians for Fair Maps Referendum Committee, which formed Feb. 9, reported $24.1 million in large contributions between March 2 and May 1. One organization – Virginians for Fair Maps, which shares a post office box in Alexandria with the committee – accounted for 98% of it. State records identify the group as a tax-exempt organization, but there is no corresponding listing for it or its classification in the IRS online database. Co-chaired by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), it donated $23.5 million across nine contributions from March 6 to May 1, a sum that includes $5 million contributions on both March 31 and April 7 along with $4 million on April 6.
“There’s a real question. … Who’s actually trying to influence our election, and to what end?” Keena said. “What are they hoping to get out of it and whose interests are hanging in the balance?”
Donor networks in multiple states
Some of those groups also spent big on similar efforts in other states.
Coloradans For a Level Playing Field wants a new House map for the 2028 and 2030 elections before allowing the state’s independent congressional redistricting commission to draw another one for 2032 based on the 2030 census. Under the plan, Democrats would be favored to win seven of the state’s eight House seats.
According to its May 4 report, the organization raised $246,747 between Feb. 18 and April 29. Two of the key donors in Virginia also supplied more than 97% of the Colorado group’s total: House Majority Forward contributed $150,000 on Feb. 25, and the Fairness Project provided $90,000 on April 29. Of the 149 other cash donations made during that time, 148 averaged just $32.
That breakdown reflects the uneven appetite for redistricting in the state, Spencer said. Sometimes, it draws attention; other times, he said, “it really feels like it’s gone by the wayside – or, at least when you dig underneath, you don’t see a big push or a lot of local money.”
And in Missouri, the Democratic-supported group People Not Politicians, which opposes the state’s new GOP-drawn map, in December submitted more than 300,000 signatures for a petition seeking to block the map from being used. In its April 14 campaign finance report, it reported raising $6.1 million during the cycle. Of that total, $1.7 million came from American Opportunity Action, a Democratic-aligned dark money group supporting ballot measures. Additionally, the Fairness Project donated $250,000 on Nov. 17, 2025, along with four $1,000 payments in late 2025 and early 2026 for “strategic guidance.”
“I think, to the layperson, this all just looks like gerrymandering,” Spencer said. “But up close, every state’s doing this slightly differently.”
Massive spending around California’s Prop 50 fight
The biggest spending took place in California – where more than a quarter of a billion dollars was poured into its redistricting measure.
Voters in a November 2025 special election passed Proposition 50, which responded to the Texas redistricting push by redrawing the map used in the 2026 midterms and in 2028 and 2030. It generated more than $256 million in fundraising from both sides combined. Roughly two-thirds came from groups supporting the measure, and 87% of that $171 million came from two organizations, both of which have received noteworthy contributions from dark money groups:
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Ballot Measure Committee raised more than $102 million through Nov. 3, 2025. The Fund For Policy Reform provided its largest single contribution, $10 million on Sept. 18, 2025..
HMP for Prop 50, the House Majority PAC, raised $46 million. That group’s largest single contribution in 2024 ($34 million) came from House Majority Forward, which also contributed $11.2 million in late 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
On the opposition side, two organizations combined for an even higher share of the spending – 92% of the $84 million that flowed into the race.
The No on Prop 50 Congressional Leadership Fund raised $44.3 million. That group received four separate $10 million donations in 2024, from hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, Aon founder Patrick Ryan, Mellon banking heir Timothy Mellon and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman. Billionaire megadonor Miriam Adelson donated $10 million on March 11, according to the FEC.
Protect Voters First reported $32.8 million, with Charles Munger Jr. – a physicist and the son of a late billionaire – loaning the organization nearly the full amount.
“It does not seem like the states themselves have been going out of their way to clamor for this,” Spencer said. “California responded to Texas. Texas was responding to Trump.”
How dark money fuels the legal fights
While some states decided redistricting questions in the voting booth, others are fighting the same battles in courthouses – and some groups funding those fights are just as nationalized, donor-driven and opaque.
The National Redistricting Foundation has partnered with the left-leaning Elias Law Group in suing to challenge Florida’s new map. It filed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to reject Alabama’s request to fast-track its redistricting case and filed a motion to intervene in Utah’s.
The foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. As a 527 organization, it is tax‑exempt and may spend unlimited amounts on issue advocacy. It is chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder, and in 2018 it received $2.6 million from Soros. Its largest contribution in the 2024 election cycle, the most recent available to OpenSecrets, was $500,000 from PAC to the Future, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership PAC. The committee also provided nearly $20,000 in in-kind contributions to the pro-redistricting group in Virginia.
The foundation makes up one part of an apparatus that also includes the National Democratic Redistricting PAC and a 501(c)(4), the National Redistricting Action Fund. The PAC raised $423,000 in the first quarter of 2026, has raised $2 million during the current election cycle and had $250,000 in cash on hand, according to FEC documents. The 501(c)(3) foundation reported $9.7 million in contributions and grants in 2023, according to its most recent IRS filings, but does not identify those donors. Neither does the action fund, whose latest IRS filing shows $5.2 million in total revenue in 2023 – and the same Washington address as the foundation.
A similar structure is in place at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that on May 4 joined the UCLA Voting Rights Project in suing Florida over its redistricting plan. It has also moved to intervene in the Utah case. It shares a Washington address with Campaign Legal Center Action, a 501(c)(4) dark money nonprofit.
Campaign Legal Center’s most recent IRS documents show $13.9 million in total revenue in 2024, with most coming from contributions and grants, and $36.7 million in net assets. But its donors are not identified. Campaign Legal Center Action also does not disclose donor names on its IRS filings.
On the Republican side, the American Redistricting Project – a 501(c)(3) also known as Fair Lines America Foundation Inc. – has been active in redistricting debates in recent years. Its most recent IRS filing shows roughly $1.9 million in both revenue and expenses in 2024. It maintains an online repository tracking redistricting legislation, but it is unclear whether the organization is providing financial support or filing motions in the current legal fights. OpenSecrets reached out to the group but did not immediately receive a response.
This article was originally published by OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. View the original article.
Last summer, journalist turned comedian Charlie Berens started getting social media messages from concerned Wisconsin residents about plans for a massive datacenter campus in their state.
The developer, Vantage Data Centers, claimed the $8 bn project would largely run on zero-emission energy resources like solar, wind and battery storage. The company said the campus would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and potentially more than 1,000 permanent jobs to Port Washington, a city of 13,000 people about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. Residents opposed the project for what they said was lack of transparency and criticized the lucrative tax incentives offered to Vantage. They worried about the strain on local water and energy sources from an enormous 1.3-gigawatt project that could ultimately span 1,900 acres.
Berens, who shot to internet fame with his “Manitowoc Minute” videos that play on midwestern quirks and stereotypes, had his own reservations about the artificial intelligence datacenter boom. A Milwaukee-area native who still lives in the city, he’d heard about the potential environmental hazards, the steep rise in energy costs for neighbors and noise pollution, among other risks.
When he Googled, he found that lawmakers in his state had paved the way to make the Port Washington project a reality. The deal between Port Washington and Vantage gave an estimated $458m in tax breaks to the developer over 20 years to fund infrastructure for the project,with the city not seeing any of that tax revenue during that period.
“It was shocking,” Berens said.
That’s when he decided to do something he had rarely done before: discuss politics in his videos. He used his platform to address one of the more polarizing issues in contemporary life: what AI portends for Americans.
In August 2025,Berens published his first “Manitowoc Minute” video on AI datacenters.The two-minute skit matched the typical style of Berens’s videos, where he intersperses facts with humor in the style of a TV news report. But he was remarkably direct in his critique of big tech. Sporting a Green Bay Packers tie, he lambasted Silicon Valley CEOs, accusing them of using Wisconsin as a “dumping ground” for datacenters at the expense of the state’s cherished natural resources while evading any type of public scrutiny.
“It is our civic duty to make sure the billionaires become trillionaires,” said Berens in a satiric bit.
He channelled his outrage at lawmakers in Port Washington, a historic city on the banks of Lake Michigan and once home to thriving fishing and shipping industries. In a contentious vote last August, officials there approved the initial $8bn datacenter campus despite strong resistance from residents. (The project later expanded to a $15bn joint venture with OpenAI and Oracle, one of the Trump administration’s showcase “Stargate” megaprojects.)
“I was shocked at how many people I saw speak against this [at public meetings he watched online] and then to see a unanimous vote for it,” Berens said. “It just felt like an imbalance of democracy.”
The video went viral, garnering more than 2.5m views on YouTube alone. Berens’s inbox was soon flooded with messages of support from Wisconsinites of all political stripes – self-declared Maga supporters, avowed socialists and everyone in between – sounding the alarm on datacenters.
“It was 99% positive comments, which doesn’t happen on anything these days,” said Berens. “From that point, I decided that I should do more because nobody’s negotiating for the people here.”
Berens has since thrown himself into the cause, routinely publishing videos and headlining well-attended events with field experts and anti-datacenter activists. He has quickly become the most famous face of a burgeoning movement in Wisconsin, where resistance to these projects – Port Washington is just one of seven hyperscale datacenter projects across the state– has risen dramatically in the last year. A March survey from Marquette University Law School found that nearly 70% of registered voters in Wisconsin say the costs of large datacenters outweigh the benefits they provide, a remarkable shift from last October when that figure stood at 55%.
The attention has placed the comedian in the crosshairs of most of the state’s labor unions, pro-business groups and much of its political establishment, who argue the badger state cannot afford to be left behind in the AI arms race.
In a series of interviews, Berens laid out why he decided to jump head-first into the movement; his case for how big tech destroyed public trust through hard-armed, often secretive tactics to push forward datacenters; and what he has learned as he has crisscrossed the state and toured the country.
“Every step of the way, the more people look, they’re seeing that this is not really a fair fight here,” said Berens.
‘Protecting the people’
On a late winter evening in March, hundreds of people packed a community center in Juneau, a tiny rural town about 45 miles north-east of the state capital, Madison.
The crowd had assembled for a “people’s town hall” to address a $1bn Meta datacenter that has pitted residents of nearby Beaver Dam against their elected officials. The featured speakers ranged from community activists to a former Meta employee. The main act was Berens, who squeezed in the appearance between stops in Iowa and Vermont on his standup comedy tour.
“This is the most bipartisan issue since beer,” he said in opening remarks.
Construction is ongoing at the Beaver Dam Commerce Park where a new Meta datacenter is being built on 2 February 2026 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Photograph: Wisconsin Watch/Getty Images
In his roughly 15-minute speech, he called for more regulation of AI, pointing out that a beloved Wisconsin staple, bratwurst, was more heavily regulated than the trillion-dollar industry. Berens warned the audience of the risks of AI technology, running through a slideshow of news headlines that highlighted the potential, and very real, harm to children. He also addressed his critics.
“I will stick to comedy when our politicians stick to policy and stop protecting big tech and start protecting the people that put them into office,” said Berens, to applause.
As he turned his attention to the project in Beaver Dam, he attacked Meta’s use of a shell company and nondisclosure disagreements (NDAs) that required secrecy from some public officials in the process of getting to an approval. In April 2025, a report found Meta was the mystery tech company behind Degas LLC, the listed corporation on the development. By November, the company acknowledged they were behind the project.
Meta’s practices in Beaver Dam are part of a larger pattern across the state, where datacenter projects have often been developed in secrecy despite their huge price tags and massive footprint on communities. A recent investigation from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit news site, found that NDAs have been signed in at least five cities in Wisconsin where AI datacenters are proposed or under construction.
Another panel speaker that night was Maily Kocinski, a lifelong Beaver Dam resident whose farm lies less than 2 miles from the 700,000 sq ft datacenter campus construction site. Last June, she posted a TikTok video after a creek that runs on her property had gone dry one morning. The water came back, but occasionally appeared milky white and gave off a toxic smell. Kocinski said she contacted the state’s department of natural resources on several occasions and was told the agency collected water samples but were not always able to reach her property in time before the water cleared up again.
She personally commissioned a water analysisin February from a lab at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which found metal levels in her well water above what was considered safe to drink, per recommendations from the Wisconsin department of health services. She questions whether the daily controlled blasts on the construction site led to disruptions in her water supply. Meta commissioned its own study in response, denying any link.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin department of natural resources confirmed that the department collected a water sample at Kocinski’s creek last November. The results, shared with the Guardian, show elevated metal levels but the department did not speculate as to the potential cause.
“Without a site specific review, the DNR cannot speculate on the role of the blasting on the aquifer and Ms. Kocinski’s private water supply,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Protesters gather for a statewide datacenter day of action at the Wisconsin state capitol on 12 February 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin. Photograph: Wisconsin Watch/Getty Images
Kocinski, an elementary school teacher, saidsince last fall, she has spent up to 15 hours a week researching the large-scale construction of datacenters and the potential environmental harms they can wreak in a community. In March, she testified in the Wisconsin senate in favor of a datacenter oversight bill that ultimately failed to reach a vote.
She said she had never met Berens before the event in Juneau but the two had been in regular contact for months after she cold-emailed him her story.
“Charlie has really put in the work to understand this issue,” said Kocinski. “Most people came to Juneau probably because he was there, but they stayed and maybe learned a bit about these things [datacenters] … That kind of education leads to action.”
The risks of speaking out
As Berens’s critiques of datacenter projects in Wisconsin have gained traction with the public, he has faced pushback from the state’s trade unions, who welcome the thousands of temporary construction jobs that typically come with a project.
A major Wisconsin labor leader called out Berens in a December op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “For us in the building trades, data centers aren’t some big, scary mystery,” wrote Emily Pritzkow, head of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council that represents nearly 50,000 workers in the state. “They’re high-skill, long-term work. The kind of work that feeds families, pays mortgages, and sends kids to college.”
Local governments have weighed in too. In Port Washington, city officials posted a “fact sheet” online to “clarify some lingering misconceptions” after Berens posted a second video urging residents to question officials about the datacenter project at an October council meeting.
Ted Neitzke, Port Washington’s mayor, expressed frustration with the attention that Berens’s videos had brought his city. He noted that more than 100 people began showing up at council meetings after the comedian published his first video last August, forcing the city to move them to a hotel conference center with an added police presence.
“After Charlie Berens’s video, things escalated very rapidly, very contentiously, and our city was besieged with people from outside of our town,” said Neitzke. “Charlie Berens created chaos for us.”
Neitzke also challenged some claims Berens has made in his videos, including those about the amount of jobs the project would create, its environmental impact and whether residents’ power bills would increase.
“I don’t know where the line gets drawn between factual and embellishment for him,” said Neitzke. “There’s a very gray area between the entertainment and the facts.”
Berens defended his videos and the people who showed up to council meetings in response, noting that a hyperscale datacenter affects not just one city but the surrounding communities and “they deserve a say too”. He maintained that his videos were well-researched and cited news articles to back up his claims.
“I informed people about a massive AI datacenter going up by adding some punchlines,” said Berens. “If the truth brings chaos, that seems like something the mayor would want to take accountability for.”
Neitzke met with Berens last fall in an attempt to find common ground. The mayor described the two-hour meeting as cordial but both left in disagreement. He has been the project’s greatest champion, referring to it as a “transformative” development for the Rust Belt city, one that has the potential to once again make Port Washington a hub in the midwest.
That stance has drawn some fierce public opposition, even leading to an attempted recall effort over the $458m tax incremental finance, or TIF, district with Vantage. Under the deal, Vantage will pay upfront costs for the development and the city will reimburse the company with new property tax revenues over a period up to 20 years. Neitzke said he was no fan of TIFs but called them a “necessary evil” in negotiations to win the contract over other cities chasing major developments to boost revenue.
“This is a save our city strategy,” said Neitzke. “[Berens is] doing what he does, and we’re going to do what we’re doing.”
Berens has also faced criticism online from those who say the comedianhas built his career on tech platforms, while looking to close the door to their projects in Wisconsin. He said he “understands the irony” but wants to use his sizable platform to educate his audience on these types of developments that could remake their communities.
Berens engaging with his audience on stage. Photograph: Todd Rosenberg
Advertisers, too, have noticed his shift to politics. Berens acknowledged that he lost a major brand deal with a company that did not want to appear alongside his anti-datacenter content, though he declined to name the business.
“I’m asking for transparency. I’m asking for honesty. I’m asking for people to get informed,” said Berens. “I’m trying to facilitate that and if that at the end of the day means I lose everything, then so be it.”
A personal evolution on AI
Berens was not always an AI pessimist.
A few years ago, he believed the utopian vision laid out by AI luminaries like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who spoke of how the technology could be used to cure social ills, even to treat intractable diseases. Berens thought maybe it could also help Wisconsin deal with its Pfas contamination issue. “My interest in AI started with a lot of hope and optimism actually,” he said.
That sentiment eventually turned to cynicism as, he claims, the industry’s billionaire CEOs dispelled any virtuous use of the technology for the social good in favor of enriching themselves and their investors. He cited Altman’s recent efforts to create an Erotica feature in OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, despite concerns even from the company’s advisers that such a tool could create a “sexy suicide coach”, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“I thought this thing was supposed to cure cancer,” Berens said, referencing Altman’s past statements. “Is this what we’re giving our land for? Is that what we’re giving our water for? Is this what you’re asking to change our communities for?”
For him, the “tip of the iceberg” was the gold rush to build hyperscale datacenters in his state through secretive tactics and potentially exploitative agreements in post-industrial cities longing for an economic revival.
“Wisconsin created an environment that would please the billionaire tech companies,” said Berens of the tax incentives. “Billionaire tech companies took full advantage of that.”
Prescott Balch knows a bit about those types of corporate tactics. A former technology executive at US Bank turned anti-datacenter activist in retirement, Balch was on the frontlines of the successful effort to stop a major Microsoft AI datacenter project last fall in the picturesque eastern Wisconsin village of Caledonia, where he lives. In April, he won a seat on the town’s village board, beating an incumbent who supported the datacenter. He views the AI datacenter boom as akin to the dot-com bubble crash of the early 2000s, another chapter in the boom-and-bust cycles of the volatile tech industry.
“We got irrationally exuberant and built too much stuff,” Balch said of the dot-com period. “Maybe the company running your datacenter will go bankrupt. This big dollar amount that you’re chasing comes with significant risk.”
Balch’s insider expertise in the wonky world of municipal subsidies has been fundamental for Berens. Balch factchecked many of Berens’ videos on the issue, even appearing in one where he methodically crunched the numbers on thesedevelopments, referring to the Port Washington project as “up and down a horrible deal”.
The 62-year-old is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Berens. He is professorial in demeanor and careful to point out that he is not an AI alarmist. Where the two agree is a belief that there’s been an information vacuum around these projects, leaving the public largely uninformed abouttheir size and scope. That’s part of the message they have taken on the road, appearing together at events in Wisconsin and Illinois. Berens’s celebrity has been the draw for people to turn out.
“[He] gets people interested in the topic and warms them up,” Balch said. “And I get to do the dry delivery of the financial perspective.”
Port Washington vote
On 7 April, Port Washington residents passed the nation’s first anti-datacenter referendum. By a roughly 2-1 margin, voters approved a measure that would require city officials to get approval from voters before approving tax incremental districts of more than $10m.
An aerial view of Port Washington, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lena Platonova/Shutterstock
The effort came together after a group of residents called Great Lakes Neighbors United gathered more than 1,000 signatures in less than two weeks to get it on the ballot. The referendum does not stop the $15bn datacenter campus under construction, but would apply to all future projects above that $10m threshold. Industry advocates have warned the vote could set a dangerous precedent for municipalities across the country, potentially paralyzing AI datacenter developments.
Mayor Neitzke said the referendum makes the city less competitive and puts it at a disadvantage to vie for future projects. For Berens, the vote reflected the energy he has seen on the ground in Port Washington and in every corner of the state.
“The people who are the heartbeat of this movement are like people in Great Lakes Neighbors United,” said Berens. “These are people from all different walks and all different political stripes, but they all care about the same thing: [that] their community should have a voice.”
