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Politics
‘Super PACs Should Be Outlawed,’ Says Platner, as Pro-Collins Corporate Dark Money Pours Into Maine to Attack Him
"It's fascinating that the more money that goes into our political system, the less we talk about actual politics."
Jun 02, 2026
The super PACs pouring money into the US Senate race in Maine are doing a great job of proving Graham Platner's point.
As new reporting on Monday detailed the flood of dark money targeting his campaign, the Democratic hopeful in recent days has put a spotlight on the super PACs, which he says have created a political system dominated by corporations and wealthy donors who want to distract from the serious issues and struggles faced by everyday voters and working families.
"I think it's very telling that a political system that has become controlled by money, controlled by the power of organized money, is also a political system that is trying to convince all of us down here that policy and discussions around what government can or cannot do is not what they want to talk about," Platner said during a conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of super PACs, posted to social media.
"It's fascinating that the more money that goes into our political system," he continued, "the less we talk about actual politics."
"I agree with Senator Sanders: Super PACs should be outlawed," said Platner.
On Monday, Sludge reported that a pair of shadowy nonprofits "with no public presence and no disclosed staff" have dumped at least $750,000 into a super PAC supporting Platner's opponent, the five-term incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Condorcet Initiative Corp. has given $500,000 to Pine Tree Results PAC across two separate donations, including $250,000 on May 1 that was disclosed in a filing reported to the Federal Election Commission last week. Ardleigh Impact Corporation contributed an additional $250,000 in April.
The PAC has spent nearly $4 million on attack ads against Sen. Susan Collins’ Democratic challenger Graham Platner, according to FEC data.
The two nonprofits are both described as shell-like entities linked to the same address in Springfield, Virginia, belonging to Republican political consultant Staci Goede.
The groups are part of a much larger network and have poured a combined $9 million into GOP-aligned PACs since 2024, including in four competitive Senate races in this coming cycle.
Goede, meanwhile, is the treasurer or officer for at least nine different nonprofits "that span Republican Senate campaigns, pro-Israel donor pass-throughs, and issue advocacy groups," according to the report.
The Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint against Ardleigh, arguing that the nonprofit, which contributed an astonishing $2.575 million across six federal committees in its first three months of existence, was being used as a straw donor to conceal the identities of one or more rich benefactors.
The source of the $750,000 aimed at Platner remains unknown. But the Pine Tree Results PAC is already known to have a slate of wealthy backers from the commanding heights of finance and tech, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, hedge fund founder Paul Singer, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. The fund has also taken in contributions from an affiliate of the tobacco giant Altria and from the far-right news company Newsmax.
According to a FEC data, it has raised more than $16 million to help Collins ward off a challenger in 2026, which will almost certainly be Platner.
While the potential use of straw donors may present legal issues, the use of super PACs by wealthy backers to dump unlimited sums behind their preferred candidates is unquestionably legal under federal campaign finance law.
As of March, super PACs funded by crypto, artificial intelligence, pro-Israel donors, and outside groups had already spent more than $225 million trying to influence the 2026 election cycle, according to the Washington Post.
Platner has argued on the campaign trail that the unchecked ability of the wealthy to influence elections is a genesis point for the growing wealth gap between the rich and poor.
"The inequality we’re experiencing, it didn’t happen organically," he said at a recent campaign event. "We live in the outcome of policy written by establishment politicians who for 40 years have been doing the bidding of those who donate the most money to them."
The Pine Tree Results PAC had already spent nearly $4 million on ads attacking Platner as of May 20, according to FEC data. As Sludge's reporting notes, "Rather than engaging with policy, the ads are exclusively focused on personal attacks against Platner, digging up comments the candidate made online going back as far as 2013."
So far, attempts to mire Platner in personal scandal have done little to blunt the momentum of his populist campaign. A poll from the University of New Hampshire in late May showed him leading the incumbent by a nine-point margin among likely voters and other polls show similar advantages.
It can be expected that the PACs attacking Platner will make a meal out of recent reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that probe into the private details of his marriage.
But noting the failure of past attempts to drown Platner in controversy, Lever News founder David Sirota questioned in a piece on Monday if these sorts of "character" attacks even work in an age of politics defined by rapacious corporate greed and corruption.
He noted how Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) responded to recent questions from news outlets about whether Platner’s controversies mean he’s failed to “pass the character test.” Murphy responded that “character involves standing up to people who are bankrupting and corrupting this country,” while Khanna lauded Platner for “having the character to stand up against the war in Iran, against genocide, and against an unfair and lopsided economy.”
This response, Sirota said, hinted that the country could be entering a new political paradigm—"a reality in which many voters are so economically pulverized and politically disillusioned that they now define 'character' in a politician solely as whether or not they are single-mindedly focused on destroying oligarchy and ending corruption."
“It is, potentially, a new era in which voters who can’t afford anything and who feel totally ignored by their government have reimagined their entire definition of political 'character' on economic/anti-corruption terms—rather than on old definitions of personal moral rectitude,” he wrote. “In this potential new reality, the personal shortcomings of individual politicians—which often have little effect on voters’ actual lives—are less important and electorally salient than the policies those politicians support and oppose."
"And such a shift," he added, "would make sense in the current moment.”
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'This is Nuts': Critics Aghast as Trump Appoints 'Personal Henchman' as Acting DNI
"The president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution," said US Sen. Mark Warner.
Jun 02, 2026
President Donald Trump shocked many observers on Tuesday when he appointed Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to be his acting director of national intelligence, weeks after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down from the role.
In a Tuesday morning social media post, Trump announced that Pulte would be taking over as DNI while also remaining at his current post at the FHFA, which regulates government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
As noted by a Tuesday CNBC report, Pulte "has no prior experience in an intelligence role. His tenure at FHFA has been marked by his criminal referrals for mortgage fraud against Trump's political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom the president has been trying to fire in an effort to stack the US central bank with political loyalists.
James was targeted for prosecution after she won a $450 million judgment against the president and his business in a civil fraud case.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairperson of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, delivered a scathing response to Trump's announcement.
"This appointment speaks volumes about what this president expects from the nation's top intelligence official," he said. "Rather than selecting a respected national security professional capable of delivering independent judgments, the president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution."
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) also denounced the president's decision.
"Bill Pulte led Donald Trump’s efforts to charge and jail his political enemies, now he’s being rewarded with a job he has no business doing," Cortez Masto said. "Putting Pulte at the helm of the intelligence community risks American lives just so Trump can keep going after his political opponents."
Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, argued that Pulte's appointment was yet another reason for Democrats to oppose further extension of warrantless spying powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"Congress must not sign away unchecked spying powers to the government," said Vitka, "when Donald Trump’s top spy is a man whose primary qualification is his willingness to weaponize sensitive information held by the government against the president’s political enemies."
Vitka specifically urged Warner to change course on his push to renew Section 702, particularly in light of Pulte's appointment.
"By supporting a FISA extension without any independent checks like warrant protections, Sen. Warner is putting the entire country at serious risk and enabling perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy we have seen in modern history," he said.
Journalist James Surowiecki expressed horror at Pulte's elevation to acting DNI.
"Even for Trump, this is nuts," Surowiecki wrote. "Bill Pulte, who's a [private equity] guy/real-estate developer with exactly zero intelligence experience, is going to be the new Director of National Intelligence—while also continuing to run FHFA and Fannie Mae/Fredde Mac!"
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, issued a dire warning about Pulte potentially abusing US intelligence services to target Trump opponents.
"Fuck me, this is Bill Pulte," Moynihan wrote. "The guy who was using mortgage data to launch DOJ investigations against Lisa Cook, Letitia James, and [US Sen.] Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). He is being put in charge of national intelligence because of his track record of being willing to manufacture false allegations to target Trump's enemies."
Political commentator Keith Boykin described Pulte as Trump's "personal henchman" who "abused his position as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to send baseless criminal referrals against Letitia James and Lisa Cook."
National security attorney Bradley Moss, meanwhile, could not hide his disgust at Pulte's appointment in an all-caps social media post.
"WHAT THE... I QUIT," Moss wrote. "I GIVE UP. BILL PULTE??"
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'Major Warning Sign of What's to Come': Number of Young Kids Without Health Insurance Surges
"Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027."
Jun 02, 2026
The number of young children without health insurance in the US rose sharply between 2022 and 2024 and is set to continue surging as the Trump administration implements work reporting requirements and other changes expected to kick millions—adults and kids—off Medicaid.
A report published Monday by the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy found that nearly 220,000 additional children under the age of six were uninsured in 2024, a 23% increase from 2022. During that period, the total share of young children without health insurance rose to 5.3%—the highest rate in almost a decade.
The new report argues the rising uninsured rate among young children is "at least in part" attributable to the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that allowed people to remain on Medicaid without undergoing routine eligibility checks. The analysis found that Texas, Florida, and Georgia accounted for more than half of the increase in young children without insurance between 2022 and 2024.
Elisabeth Wright Burak and Aubrianna Osorio, researchers at CCF, wrote that "these data provide a major warning sign for what’s to come, as states grapple with the onslaught of Medicaid cuts from [the 2025 Republican budget law] and new coverage restrictions."
"One in 4 children in the US have at least one parent who was born abroad," the researchers wrote. "For these children, the vast majority of whom are citizens, harsh anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are already leading to missed doctor appointments, on top of the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and overall stress that can compromise healthy development of young children. Fears of safety and separation have made more parents afraid to enroll their eligible, citizen children in programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], exposing children and families to additional financial risk and food insecurity."
"Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027," they added. "We know as parents lose coverage, their children are also at grave risk of losing access to health care through the 'unwelcome mat' effect."
CCF's report came as the Trump administration rolled out a new rule that will dictate how states implement Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the 2025 Republican budget law, which contains around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
Advocates warned the rule will result in millions of people, including many children, losing coverage by creating onerous bureaucratic barriers to obtaining and keeping Medicaid coverage. CCF estimated last week that, as of April 2026, roughly 2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program compared to January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump's second White House term.
"This is terrible news because when child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP goes down, the child uninsured rate goes up," wrote Joan Alker, CCF's executive director. "And the child uninsured rate was already going up when President Trump took office, yet we have heard nothing about this from them. Federal officials should be scrambling to figure out the root cause of this coverage loss for children as income eligibility levels did not change and the unemployment rate has been inching upward since President Trump took office."
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Trump's New Medicaid Rule 'Designed to Ensure People Lose Healthcare,' Critics Warn
"Today’s announcement marks a grim step in America’s march towards a healthcare system that further restricts access to healthcare and creates barriers rather than delivering affordable healthcare to families."
Jun 02, 2026
The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a rule that is expected to push millions of low-income people off Medicaid by imposing complex bureaucratic barriers in the form of work reporting requirements, which have proven disastrous at the state level.
The rule, released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), marks a key step toward enacting the Republican budget reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. That measure included around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, with new work requirements projected to account for nearly $330 billion of that total.
The new rule will dictate how states must implement the budget law's Medicaid work mandates and who is exempt from the requirements. States are already spending tens of millions of dollars hiring new staff and upgrading technology in preparation for the mandates taking effect next year.
Broadly, the Trump-GOP law requires adults without disabilities between the ages of 19 and 64 to demonstrate at least 80 hours of work, community service, or other "qualifying activities" per month to keep their Medicaid coverage.
Exemptions to the work reporting requirements include people who are pregnant, caregivers to children under the age of 14, or "medically frail." The CMS rule defines the latter category as those with "physical or behavioral health conditions that significantly impair their ability to consistently work or participate in other community engagement activities."
Advocates warned that the rule will force many sick people off coverage. The rule states that people with HIV/AIDS, end-stage renal disease, and cancer would not necessarily be exempt from the work reporting requirements.
According to The New York Times, "states had expected that people with certain serious diagnoses would qualify for the exception, and they had been developing ways to match applications with existing medical records to identify most such people automatically."
"Nebraska’s Medicaid program, which began enforcing a work requirement last month, developed a list of exempted conditions that is nearly 300 pages long," the Times reported. "The state will now need to adjust."
"When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America."
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, said Monday that "far from protecting the vulnerable, this guidance significantly raises the barrier for demonstrating medical frailty, meaning many patients in the middle of treatment will have the new hassle of proving their condition, over and over, with any mistake or gap being penalized by the loss of their healthcare and coverage."
"Through this rule," said Wright, "CMS is requiring duplicative documentation and prohibiting states from taking full advantage of consumer-friendly tools like self-attestation."
During the first year of the work reporting requirements, which are set to take effect nationwide in January 2027, people will be allowed to attest in Medicaid applications that they meet one of the exemptions, according to administration officials.
"Beginning in 2028, states will be expected to verify the exemptions," NBC News reported. "The temporary flexibility, the officials said, is intended to give states time to build systems that can verify exemptions using claims data and other records."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that the new rule "creates a labyrinth of paperwork, reporting mandates, and rigid eligibility rules designed to ensure people lose healthcare, even when they should qualify to keep it."
“Instead of lowering costs or making care more accessible, Republicans are weaponizing government bureaucracy against the American people," said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care. "They are betting that if they make the process confusing and exhausting enough, millions of people will fall through the cracks and lose the care they depend on to survive. Hospitals will suffer, providers will be pushed further to the brink, and families across the country will pay the price while Republicans once again put wealthy donors and corporate greed ahead of the health and well-being of everyday Americans.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that, over the next decade, the Trump-GOP work reporting requirements will push nearly 3 million people off Medicaid.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that the CMS rule "is the dark heart of the Republican plan to kick millions of working Americans and their children off their health insurance by placing a mountain of paperwork in front of them."
"These barriers are designed to prevent Americans from getting affordable healthcare, while providing a profit bonanza for the corporate consultants who get paid millions to build bureaucratic booby traps," Wyden added. "The Republican plan for healthcare is to kick people when they are down, making sick people sicker and hard times even harder. When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America, and not just for the Americans caught in the bureaucratic maze Republicans have created: Every community will be left with worse healthcare."
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