Ence Morse

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data & politics @washingtonpost.com texan in dc 🕯️

about this story: The Washington Post analyzed contributions to federal political committees since Jan. 1, 2025, covering donations reported to the Federal Election Commission as of July 20, 2026. Direct independent expenditures, loans, refunds, bank payments such as interest and dividends, and contributions from a candidate to their own campaign are not included. Donations made by federal political action committees are not part of the list of top donors. Giving from some individuals includes donations from organizations controlled by them. Groups that gave to support candidates from both parties, or gave largely to nonpartisan PACs, are marked as “special interest.” If individuals endorsed President Donald Trump, they are marked as Republican. This tally will be updated periodically.
Ranked table of the top 20 individual political megadonors by total donations, where George Soros leads at $102M as the only Democrat in the top eight, and Republican-aligned donors dominate the rest of the list, trailing off to about $32M by 20th place.
Profile card ranking Ken Griffin, Republican hedge fund manager, as the #10 individual political donor with $32.4M total — top gifts: $10M to Senate Leadership Fund, $5M to Congressional Leadership Fund, $3M to Conservatives for American Excellence.
Treemap of the largest individual political megadonors, each rectangle sized by total giving and grouped by party, where Republican donors together account for about $1.05B versus $362M for Democrats.
The Post included all candidates whose principal campaign committees reported at least $100,000 in cash on hand and who are running for Congress this November. This includes candidates awaiting primaries and runoffs, but excludes those who lost their primaries or withdrew, incumbents who did not run for reelection, and dead candidates, according to the Ballotpedia database. The Post also included all PACs that raised or spent at least $1 million since the start of 2025. To categorize their partisan lean, The Post analyzed their independent expenditures since 2023, transfers, their websites and their description in OpenSecrets. If at least 90 percent of their independent expenditures or contributions went to support candidates of one party, they were classified as that party. Bipartisan special interest groups were not classified as either party.
Ranked table of the top 15 individual midterm campaign war chests by cash on hand as of June, where all top 10 belong to Democrats — led by Jon Ossoff's $43M — and Republicans don't appear until 11th place with about $11M.
Bar chart of 2026 campaign cash on hand by committee type, split by party, showing Democrats lead in House, Senate, and PAC funds but Republicans hold a large super PAC advantage ($1.1B vs. $724M) that drives their overall edge.
Bar chart showing Republican national committees - RNC, NRCC, NRSC - with an edge of over $100 million over Democrats.
Bar chart of election results, where the DSA candidate Avila Chevalier wins by 20 points in plurality White precincts, 10 points in plurality Black precincts, and loses by 4 points in plurality Hispanic precincts. White and Black totals represent non-Hispanic residents.
Bar chart of DSA candidate Claire Valdez's performance by the percentage of young adults in a district. Valdez lost by 30 points in districts with under 20% young adults, and won by 40 points in those with over 40% young adults.
Tree chart of the 50 biggest midterm donors: Republicans represent $880 million in giving, Democrats represent $290 million, and special interests $200 million. Big donors include George Soros, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Elon Musk, and Jeff Yass.
Bar chart showing Lahn (MAHA candidate) and feenstra's vote ratio in agricultural counties in the Iowa GOP governor's primary, where Lahn beat Feenstra by about 9 points in counties with median income under 65k, but lost by 5 points in counties with median income over 71k.
Six doors in a churchyard in front of a Luther statue. The doors, in rainbow colors, read: “God’s doors are open to all.” They are closed.
AI experiment The next three paragraphs were rewritten by AI so that the text is in chaucerian english Crossed out: Chatbots like ChatGPT are powerful because of their simplicity: Ask just about anything and you’ll get an answer. But the answer you get depends on a lot more than what you type Added: Lo, how chatbots—such as ChatGPT—do show their might in this: they be wondrous plain of guise. Ask thou nearly aught, and straightway shalt thou have an answer. Yet take heed: the answer that thou findest cometh not only of thy words, but of much else besides.
Arrow chart showing demographic populations of Florida's CD9 before and after redistricting, where the white population goes from 28% to 44% and the Hispanic population shrinks from 54% to 41%, including 26% to 17% drop in Puerto Rican population.
Line chart showing the number of donors giving $100k+ over time to the DNC and RNC, by year, where the RNC maintains a slight advantage until 2025 and 2026, when they record far more than the DNC.
Bar chart of spending by AI-backed PACs on US House primaries, where Alex Bores saw $1.9 million in spending against him, and almost $500k in spending for him. Four other candidates are also pictured
Bar chart showing Talarico's performance in the Democratic Texas Senate primary by the racial composition of counties, where he wins just 38% of the vote in counties with over 20% Black residents, but 65% of the vote in counties with over 75% Hispanic residents
Bar chart showing that dozens of right-wing influencers and Republicans, including 21 members of congress, discussed investigating Alex Pretti's shooting since Saturday, and that the numbers increased in the days after his shooting.
Line chart showing that right-wing and conservative influencers were initially more likely to talk about "domestic terrorism" in connection with Pretti's shooting, but after the first day more began describing it as a "tragedy".
Tom Petek, 54, conceded in an interview that he was a little nervous about coming to Washington from his hometown of Medina, Ohio, which has a population just shy of 26,000 people. It’s his first trip to D.C. in more than four years, when he joined protests outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He remains a Trump supporter and has seen news reports about a rise in crime and a slew of homicides, he said. He joked that he and his wife would have to wear bulletproof vests when visiting historic sites. But on Monday, their first full day in the city, Petek and his wife went to the National Archives, Arlington National Cemetery, the Smithsonian and the Washington Monument without incident. They planned to go on tours of the White House, the FBI building and the Capitol on Tuesday and remained unwary. “You hear the news, and the stuff about the murder rates and things, and you think, ‘Man, you’ve got to dodge bullets when you’re at the sites,’ but it’s safe,” Petek said. “You feel safe. You feel welcome.”
Bar graph displaying contents of Elon Musk's X posts in 2025, where the proportion of posts about US politics peaks in early February and has declined since then, and the proportion of posts about his companies increases.
Global Health. The United States is the world’s largest funder of global health initiatives. For more than 60 years, the American people have offered health assistance to the world and saved millions of lives. The USAID Bureau for Global Health (GH), the second largest within USAID, oversees a multibillion-dollar operation to support maternal and child health; voluntary family planning; PEPFAR and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) (both started under President George W. Bush); and other initiatives against other infectious and neglected tropical diseases. Effective use of funds is essential to maximize care for the world’s neediest people.
The next conservative Administration should restore and build on the Trump Administration’s counter-China infrastructure at USAID, end the climate policy fanaticism that advantages Beijing, and assess bilateral aid through the lens of U.S. national security interests, rewarding those countries that resist China’s debt diplomacy. It should finance programs designed to counter specific Chinese efforts in strategically important countries and eliminate funding to any partner that engages with Chinese entities directly or indirectly. USAID’s Bangkok-based Regional Development Mission for Asia should focus its strategic attention on supporting cross-border initiatives designed to counter Chinese influence.
Map of U.S. states, colored by the grades their congressional maps received from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Twelve states are colored deep purple, indicating that they received a grade of F for extreme gerrymandering, including many states in the South.
An Instagram amtrak ad for night owl fares in travel from DC, viewed at 6:38 AM