by Stu Cvrk
Good intentions gone bad—by design!
Money is the mother’s milk of politics.
—Jesse Unruh, the 26th California treasurer
The debate over money in politics is defined by a core tension
between the ideals of transparency, privacy, and mandated disclosure.
Proponents of robust transparency and disclosure requirements
(especially America Firsters) argue that voters have a fundamental right
to know who is funding candidates, parties, and issue advocacy since
undisclosed “dark money” from wealthy individuals, corporations, unions,
or foreign-linked entities can distort democratic outcomes, enable
corruption or undue influence and facilitate implementation of left-wing
policies funded by U.S. taxpayers without authorization or scrutiny.
They push for lower reporting thresholds, real-time disclosures, and the
closing of loopholes like super PACs and 501(c) organizations to let
sunlight act as a disinfectant.
Opponents (the Democratic Party and their deep-state allies) counter
that stringent disclosure rules infringe on First Amendment rights and
donors’ privacy, exposing individuals and businesses to harassment,
boycotts, job loss, or political retaliation—especially in an era of
polarized social media and doxxing. They contend that anonymity protects
legitimate expression and participation, warning that overly aggressive
mandates could chill political speech and drive money further
underground.
The system has been rigged to support the opponents of transparency over the years by design. Let us examine that premise.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (aka McCain-Feingold)
The explosions of “soft money” during the Clinton years brought about
the first major campaign finance reform effort in decades. The term
“soft money” refers to unregulated, unlimited contributions made to
political parties (not directly to candidates) for activities that are
supposedly not tied to federal elections—such as party-building efforts,
voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and issue
advocacy advertising. The reform effort resulted in the infamous
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002.
Origins and Passage
Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold began championing campaign
finance reform in the mid-1990s as a reaction to what was seen as a
toxic political landscape in which large donations tipped the scales for
certain candidates and parties. The immediate trigger was the 1996
election cycle, when Bill Clinton pioneered the use of soft money
funneled through the Democratic National Committee to supercharge
campaign spending. A second catalyst
came later: the final catalyst for House passage was the Enron
scandal—and the lavish style with which the bankrupt Texas energy
company had bankrolled legislators in both parties.
McCain-Feingold was created to prohibit soft money contributions to
national political parties and limit campaign financing to hard money.
Hard money is regulated, limited, and fully disclosed contributions made
directly to federal candidates, their campaign committees, or political
parties.
The bill passed the House 240-189, passed the Senate 60-40, and was
signed into law by President George W. Bush on March 26, 2002. Bush was
so unenthusiastic about the legislation that he dispensed with the traditional White House Rose Garden signing ceremony as he instead set off on a two-day fundraising trip for congressional Republicans.
What It Accomplished
One of the most significant campaign finance regulations introduced
by the BCRA was that national political party committees could no longer
receive “soft money”—that is, unlimited donations to political parties
from individuals, unions, or organizations—for federal elections. It
also prohibited corporate and union broadcast communications within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election.
The Unintended (or Intended?) Loophole
President Bush was perhaps prescient in his lack of enthusiasm for
McCain-Feingold, as moneyed interests always seem to find ways around or
through regulations, often through weak enforcement.
Money Migrates Downstream
The law’s central flaw—whether by design or negligence—was that it drove money out of transparent party channels and into opaque nonprofit structures where disclosure requirements were far weaker. The bill banned soft money but left in place a weak enforcement system
that has resulted in little regulation of contributions to independent
committees, including so-called 501(c)(4) and 527 groups.
Instead of resulting in more transparency and accountability, the law
resulted in less. Prior to McCain-Feingold, the public knew the
identity of soft money donors, which gave the two national parties a
record $458 million in 2002 before the practice was outlawed. Many of
these same donors are still making contributions to outside groups. But
now the public is often left in the dark.
The numbers tell the story
starkly. 501(c)(4) social welfare groups spent just $2.6 million in
2002. By the 2012 election, the amount had reached $257 million—nearly
100 times more than a decade earlier.
The 501(c)(4) Dark Money Architecture
501(c)(4) organizations can run attack ads, promote candidates and
mobilize voters, all without ever disclosing a single one of their
donors—as long as up to 49.9 percent of their activities are political.
Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code allows organizations to make
independent expenditures on politics while concealing their donors’
names—as long as politics isn’t the organization’s “primary activity.”
This is the essence of “dark money.” The IRS has the daunting task of trying to determine when nonprofits in that category violate that vague standard.
Critically, since 2015, thousands of complaints
have streamed in—from citizens, public interest groups, IRS agents, and
government officials—that C4s are abusing the rules, but the agency has
not stripped a single organization of its tax-exempt status for
breaking spending rules during that period.
Citizens United Compounds the Problem
A short eight years after McCain-Feingold, a series of Supreme Court rulings struck down spending limits on corporations and unions,
radically altering the campaign finance landscape and ushering in the
era of the super PAC and, with it, a proliferation of other nonprofit
organizations not required to disclose their donations under U.S. tax
law.
USAID and the NGO Network
Unrestricted spending limits for corporations and unions and weak
enforcement of campaign finance laws by the IRS and the political actors
of the deep state make for a witch’s brew of the U.S. Agency for
International Development and the tens of thousands of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) that help distribute U.S. taxpayer funds in the
U.S. and around the world.
The Structural Relationship
USAID was created by President Kennedy in 1961, and it was structured
to receive foreign policy guidance from the State Department while
operating as a nominally independent agency. Over decades, it built an
extensive network of NGO implementing partners—contractors and grantees
that carry out programs on the ground. In many cases, interagency partners are used as conduits
for partnering with other NGOs—such as State Department management of
various activities—rather than implementers themselves. Such cases blur
the lines between a “managing agency” and an “implementing partner,”
since an NGO in such cases effectively operates as the implementing
partner.
USAID contractor and grantee indirect costs sometimes equal 30
percent of direct project costs, and of U.S. assistance contracted to
firms and nonprofits worldwide in 2020, four-fifths still went to U.S.
firms as prime contractors. This created a permanent, D.C.-centric
ecosystem of organizations financially dependent on continued government grants.
Advancing Policies Without Congressional Direction
A serious and well-documented criticism—raised by conservatives,
foreign governments, and some bipartisan congressional voices—is that
USAID under certain administrations was used to advance ideological and
political agendas that Congress never specifically authorized. There is
credible evidence that during the Obama and Biden years, USAID was used
to promote policies abroad that remain controversial within American society itself and that serve no clear national security interests.
The Heritage Foundation published a report exposing what it described as a nexus between USAID and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations,
claiming that the Obama administration had “at times turned USAID into
an instrument for promoting agendas that have failed to gain consensus
acceptance within American society itself,” including transgender rights
and same-sex marriage.
Open Borders and Immigration Policy
A specific subset of criticism concerns USAID-funded NGOs that
facilitated migration into the United States. The U.S. Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants, one of the nonprofits that transported illegal
aliens across the country under the Biden administration, reported
receiving vast sums from federal sources. Congressional testimony has detailed
how some Soros-affiliated groups receiving government grants also took
“extreme stances against the enforcement of immigration law,” declaring
federal immigration agencies a “threat to civil liberties” and working
to establish representation rights for immigrants facing deportation.
Documented Fraud and Kickbacks in the NGO Network
Separate from ideological concerns, the USAID implementing partner network has a documented record of financial fraud.
The International Rescue Committee paid $6.9 million to settle
allegations that its staff received kickbacks and steered procurements
to a Turkish supply ring engaged in bid-rigging, billing USAID for
inflated procurements in violation of the False Claims Act. The Academy
for Educational Development paid more than $5 million to settle
allegations that it submitted false claims to USAID in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, failing to ensure compliance with rules concerning competition
in procurements. In June 2025,
a government contracting officer for USAID and three owners and
presidents of companies pleaded guilty in a decade-long bribery scheme
involving at least 14 prime contracts worth more than $550 million.
The following foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) have received funding from USAID, USAID-connected NGOs, or both:
Examples of ideologically motivated fraud perpetrated by USAID include the following:
- $1.5 million—Advancing DEI in Serbia’s workplaces.
- $70,000—Producing a “DEI musical” in Ireland.
- $47,000—A “transgender opera” in Colombia.
- $32,000—A “transgender comic book” in Peru.
- $2 million—Sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala.
ActBlue and the Foreign Money Problem
The McCain-Feingold architecture—which pushed donations toward
less-regulated nonprofit and online channels—created conditions that
were eventually exploited through online bundling platforms. ActBlue,
the dominant Democratic online fundraising processor, came under serious
scrutiny.
ActBlue’s own law firm, Covington & Burling, sent “startling”
memos in early 2025 warning that ActBlue’s CEO may have misled Congress
about how the platform ensures donations come from U.S. sources, concluding there was “a substantial risk that some of the funds received” were “impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.”
A joint House committee report alleged that ActBlue “allowed bad
actors, including foreign actors, to exploit its online platform to make
fraudulent political donations” and cited mass resignations from
ActBlue’s own legal and compliance team as a consequence of the scandal.
The Republican-led House Administration Committee found evidence that illegal donations from China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela
may have been laundered to Democratic campaigns through the platform,
with foreign actors allegedly exploiting existing U.S. donors by making straw donations without their knowledge.
President Trump signed a presidential memorandum
directing the attorney general to investigate allegations of “straw
donor” and foreign contributions through online fundraising platforms,
with congressional investigators finding, over a 30-day period during
the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP
addresses using prepaid cards.
The full extent of foreign money in ActBlue is still under criminal and civil investigation.
Concluding Thoughts
Connecting these threads, a coherent structural critique can be summarized as follows:
McCain-Feingold killed transparent soft-money donations to
parties, but the same money migrated into 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and
online bundlers with far less disclosure—creating a shadow funding
infrastructure for political activism, including the election of favored
candidates and implementation of favored policies.
USAID and the State Department built a global NGO network
that, under certain administrations, became a vehicle for implementing
progressive policy objectives—on immigration, gender ideology, media
influence, and electoral politics in foreign countries—that were never
specifically authorized by Republican-controlled Congresses or
Republican presidents, funded by taxpayer dollars, and operating largely
beyond normal oversight mechanisms.
The NGO network domestically connected that infrastructure
back to U.S. politics: organizations receiving federal grants also
lobbied for open-border policies, ran voter mobilization programs, and
fed into the broader progressive fundraising ecosystem.
ActBlue sits at the end of that chain—a nominally
independent nonprofit that aggregated small-dollar donations in ways
that allegedly allowed foreign money and straw donations to enter the
U.S. campaign finance system at scale, with its own lawyers ultimately
acknowledging the risk of serious federal violations. The fact that
ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones pleaded the Fifth multiple times under
questioning by the House Administration Committee on June 10 explains
everything (she knows they committed criminal acts and doesn’t want to
incriminate herself).
As a result, the tensions between the ideals of transparency,
privacy, and mandated disclosure throughout the chain continue unabated
in 2026. This friction plays out in court battles and in the political
arena, where the challenge remains of striking a balance that deters
corruption without sacrificing the associational privacy essential to a
free society. Not to mention catching crooks who violate campaign
finance and other U.S. laws with impunity.
The Trump administration is trying to restore the balance in favor of
transparency and the enforcement of existing laws. The Democrats who
have learned to rig the system for their political benefit are fighting
tooth and nail to restore the status quo ante Trump and keep the money flowing. That is a big part of what the midterm elections are all about.
Photo: Senator John McCain (L), R-AZ, with
Campaign Finance Bill co-sponsor Russell Feingold (R), D-WI, talk to the
press after the US Senate passed the bill 02 April 2001 in Washington,
DC. The Senate voted 59-41 for the bill to ban unlimited contributions
to political parties, also known as "soft money." McCain and Feingold
say the measure will break the power of large donors over lawmakers.
Opponents of the bill argue it violates the First Amendment's guarantee
of free speech. The bill would raise the amount of direct contributions
for candidates from 1,000 to 2,000 USD, and increase disclosure
requirements and restrict advertising by independent groups. AFP
PHOTO/Manny CENETA (Photo by MANNY CENETA / AFP) (Photo by MANNY
CENETA/AFP via Getty Images)
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a
variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational
experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. He is a graduate
of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal
education that serves as the key foundation for his geopolitical
commentary.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/20/mccain-feingold-usaid-and-the-ngo-network/
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