We’ll discuss her history of public service, new legislation, and more.

Click here to join at 2 pm!

See you soon,

-End Citizens United

NextGen is a national youth organization that organizes 18- to 29-year-olds and has registered more than 1.6 million young voters. They’ve been running a deep listening campaign that aims to hear from young people across the country about what matters most to them by asking them open-ended questions in one-on-one text exchanges.

I spoke with NextGen’s Senior Digital Organizing Director Sofia Garduno Araujo, who led the deep listening project, called the Pulse Check campaign, about the results of their recent report on what they learned from contacting over 1 million young people in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. From our conversation, I learned that young people see through cheap gimmicks, they’re deeply engaged in the toughest political questions, and they consider corruption a defining political problem that personally affects them.

Meaghan: I like to start by asking people how they got involved in politics.

Sofia: My identity was politicized long before I was ever called to do political work. I grew up undocumented most of my life. I was a DACA student for a while, and, you know, in 2017 Trump tried to get rid of DACA.

Through organizing around DACA, I started realizing I was able to connect with people, I could get them to join the cause. I started organizing around college campuses. Of course, I wasn’t able to vote, but I realized that I was good at connecting with people and organizing. That helped me quell the feelings of powerlessness and unease that I was dealing with, because through organizing I could find a way to find a voice I otherwise didn’t have, that others didn’t have.

Meaghan: Why is it important to think of young people as a demographic or collective group?

Sofia: A big part of it is just how large the demographic is. At NextGen, we focus on the 18 to 29 age range, which makes up such a large chunk of the voter base. Young voters are a unique demographic because there’s always new people joining every single year. So, that makes it really important to make sure we’re listening to them and keeping up with what’s affecting them.

There’s also the fact that young people have always had collective power. Throughout history, young people tend to be leaders in movements. So, that’s part of why I’ve focused so much on youth organizing within my work, because of how much potential there is engaging young people.

Meaghan: What misconceptions do people have about young people’s engagement in politics?

Sofia: A big misconception is that young people are apathetic. It’s very, very clear to me that the truth is quite literally the opposite. It’s more that young people are overwhelmed and not feeling like they are heard. They see a system that is clearly not set up in their favor, and they don’t know how to get involved.

With our texting team, we give them resources, we give them information and education, and they’re very excited to get involved. What we’re trying to do is lower the barrier to entry to getting involved. It just doesn’t feel to them that people are listening to them, that their government is representing them. So, they’re not apathetic, there’s just so much coming at them that it’s easy to shut down. It’s really about listening and talking with them in a way that resonates with them.

When talking with young people, it really comes down to just trying to talk to them again in the authentic way, more as a friend, like, “I’m here as a resource, whatever you need, whatever questions you have, I can help, but I’m not any better than you.”

Meaghan: NextGen just released a report on what you heard from young people. What stands out to you about the survey results?

Sofia: Since February, we’ve now sent 1.1 million texts to young people trying to ask them open-ended questions, like, “Hey, what issues are affecting your life the most right now?” or “This year has been a lot. How are you feeling?”

We’ve sent texts to Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. We’ve had a really high response rate, which goes back to the idea that young people aren’t apathetic, they’re actually very tuned in.

The overall top issue is the economy. I mean, that’s not really a surprise to anyone. We actually separated our economy-related replies into a few different sections, so one is housing, one is the job market and wages, one is just cost of living, groceries, things like that, and then there’s just general economic concerns. Taken together, economic concerns rank highest.

The second most common response is anti-fascism and democracy. When we’re looking at single issue tags, anti-fascism is definitely the top one. Young people are very worried about rising fascism. They’re seeing the rise of fascism in terms of billionaire influence and corruption in politics on both sides.

Young people are very, very clear on that. Halfway through the campaign, we actually had to add a response about Democratic Party inaction, because across the board, they’re seeing it. What they’re responding to isn’t the party division anymore, it’s the corruption aspect. We saw that in both the economy and democracy responses. For young people, there’s a very clear link between the billionaire oligarchy that we’re seeing, and they’re able to connect it all very clearly.

The third response is foreign policy, and, again, that’s very clear. We actually started this campaign before the war in Iran started. As soon as the war started, we heard about how they’re scared of World War III, they’re scared of being drafted. They also understood how the war was affecting their economic struggles. They were saying things like, “I can’t get to school because I have to drive, and gas prices are astronomical right now.”

It’s also fascinating to see how much young people understand that all these things are linked. We asked them to pick one thing, but in many of our responses, they make a clear connection between all of them. We try to ask people to pick just one tag, but a lot of them are like, “No, it’s everything, it’s all connected. It’s not just one problem, it’s an amalgamation of problems.”

Meaghan: Do you have advice for reaching young voters?

Sofia: We’ve seen that young people can be engaged with texts. We think we’re getting those results because we’re listening, we’re not being transactional. Listening is a huge first step.

I’ll give an example about connecting with people. In 2018, I was a field organizer in a primarily Latino community. The amount of times that I went up to a door and I was talking to someone in Spanish, and someone would tell me, “This is the first time a campaign has ever spoken to me, come to my door, and been able to speak my language, and like have a real conversation with me. I’m going to vote for your candidate just for that alone.” I think we really underestimate how much listening can actually make a difference.

In this texting campaign, we don’t ask people to vote for any candidate after we text with them. We tell them about things they can do related to the issues that they said they cared about, we show them how to contact their representatives, we give them information, but we don’t make it transactional in terms of asking them to do something for a campaign. We’re validating what they’re saying, we’re giving them stats about how many other Americans agree with them, and we’re trying to give them an outlet to do something with the frustration they might be feeling. We say, “We’re here to help you, and you know what’s best for your community.”

Meaghan: I’ve been asking everyone, how are you coping?

Sofia: I mean, it’s tough. One thing that I found a lot of solace in is that I feel like I have a really strong community here. I moved to Chicago about a year ago, and pretty much my whole friend group moved here at the same time. We’ll be able to just come together and talk about how it is affecting us. That’s helped me a lot.

The other thing is I like to go to the park and see the birds. I love birds. And, I actually recently started flying kites, because now I’m in the Windy City, this is the perfect place for kites. I love it, it feels like the best thing in the world. So, if the weather’s nice, I’ll go to the park and fly a kite.

End Citizens United recently published an analysis of members of Congress and their records of blatant conflicts of interest, financial dealings, and self-enrichment schemes. Multiple current and former Republican Senate candidates share a history of leveraging their public office and insider connections for personal gain, often at the expense of American taxpayers.

“A disturbing number of Republican Senate candidates have spent their political careers leveraging their influence, cashing in on their connections, and abusing the public trust for personal gain instead of fighting for their constituents,” said End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller. “Voters expect elected officials to fight for hardworking families, not to cozy up to special interests and then walk through the revolving door to cash in. We’re committed to holding these Revolving Door Republicans accountable for putting themselves and their donors ahead of the people they’re supposed to serve.”

Here are some lowlights from the Top 5 “Revolving Door” Republican Senate Candidates:

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine): During her nearly 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate, Collins has accepted nearly half a million dollars from Big Pharma and she also has taken pivotal votes that have directly benefited Big Pharma – one of the most powerful, and well-funded corporate lobbies in America.”

In 2025, the private equity billionaire Steve Schwarzman funneled $2 million to reelect Collins and the very next day, she cast a determining vote to greenlight extending tax breaks to owners of private equity firms.

Meanwhile, Collins has protected her own ability to profit. She has opposed bipartisan legislation to ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks, even after reporting surfaced that showed her portfolio ranked “eighth among members of Congress for growth” in 2024.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska): Multi-millionaire Sullivan has gotten even richer while serving in the U.S. Senate. Reporting shows that he has owned $5 million worth of stock in a chemical company, RPM International, that makes products known to cause cancer while sitting on a Senate committee tasked with overseeing that industry; he has repeatedly backed the financial interests of the company. In turn, the chemical company poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into backing his re-election campaign.

Sullivan’s net worth increased significantly as a result of his holdings in the chemical industry. He’s also reportedly made an estimated $2 million trading stocks while a member of Congress – while Alaskans increasingly have trouble making ends meet.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (Michigan): Rogers is running to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate after leaving Congress, moving to Florida, and declaring that he was going to pursue “something more lucrative.” Since then, Rogers has engaged in classic revolving door politics and worked for the same companies that he used to regulate in Congress. If elected to the Senate, he’ll then be in a position where he’s supposed to oversee the companies and industries that just lined his pockets.

Former Sen. John Sununu (New Hampshire): Immediately after Sununu lost his 2008 reelection campaign, he went to work for a lobbying firm that represents corporate giants like Pfizer, Gilead, and Merck. While a senator, he sat on a committee that was supposed to be looking into the Wall Street bailout after the Great Financial Crisis. Sununu later joined the board of a financial firm that received $3 billion in the bailout fund – as well as the corporate boards of other businesses that he was tasked with overseeing in the Senate.

Now, Sununu is launching another Senate campaign and his top donors are from Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Oil, and the financial sector. He also owns a stock portfolio with as much as $2 million in those and affiliated industries.

Michael Whatley (North Carolina): Whatley is a longtime career lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry and its affiliated industries. He’s lobbied on the behalf of oil and gas companies and their allies for over a decade. He even launched and helped lead a pro-oil advocacy group that represented utility companies. Then, the lobbyists opposed regulations on fracking, water and air pollution while lobbying for offshore drilling. If he wins his election, Whatley would be in a position to give even more handouts to his utility and fossil fuel connections during a time when everyday Americans’ utility costs are skyrocketing.

Like many other members of Congress who made End Citizens United’s list of politicians who most abuse the revolving door, Whatley has personally enriched himself from the Trump administration’s actions. He has celebrated the U.S. government’s invasion of Venezuela and his Big Oil stock value rose as much as $630,000 in a single weekend.

We’ll discuss his history of public service, updates on his Senate race, and more.

Click here to join live at 11 am!

See you soon,

-End Citizens United

“We’re not treated like people,” a man imprisoned at Delaney Hall told a local journalist recently. “We’re treated like animals.”

Earlier this year, prisoners at Delaney Hall had sent immigration activists an open letter, “Our Cry,” in which they wrote, “We feel vulnerable, in a way, kidnapped or detained without justification. We see with profound helplessness and frustration that the right to due process and legal counsel was violated.” Since then, prisoners have released two more open letters, which recount horrible conditions, including finding worms in their food, being forced into solitary confinement, and being denied medical care.

There are so many things to say about the violence ICE has inflicted on people across the United States–and both inside and outside Delaney Hall. Events are unfolding quickly. For the purpose of this newsletter, I’m going to focus just on the political and financial ties between ICE and GEO Group. The ties between them is a case study in how unchecked political corruption is enabling the worst manifestations of state violence.

In the simplest possible terms, GEO Group helped President Trump and Republicans in Congress get elected. In turn, Trump and Republicans in Congress have helped GEO Group profit from ICE rounding up and imprisoning immigrants. And now GEO Group and Trump are helping each other maintain their positions of power by fulfilling their symbiotic roles to inflict authoritarian violence on communities across the country.

Before returning to Delaney Hall, I want to lay out several important pieces of information to keep in mind as we watch footage of ICE being violent toward people protesting outside that facility or any other one operated in collaboration by the Department of Homeland Security and GEO Group.

Major ways GEO Group helped the GOP gain power:

1. Ahead of the 2024 election, GEO Group was the first corporation whose PAC maxed out its donations to President Trump’s campaign. Then, the company made another $500,000 donation via a subsidiary to Make America Great Again PAC.

2. GEO Group’s CEO, George Zoley, has also made significant contributions to President Trump’s campaign and other Republican causes.

Major ways the GOP is helping GEO Group profit:

3. In 2025, Congressional Republicans passed their megabill that allotted more than $70 billion for ICE.

4. Also in 2025, the Trump administration signed a $1 billion contract with GEO Group to convert Delaney Hall into an ICE prison.

5. The Trump administration has taken numerous actions– including setting deportation quotas, effectively curtailing the right to asylum for many, firing en masse immigration judges considered sympathetic to immigrant rights, arresting immigrants for political speech, and so forth– that help GEO Group keep its prisons stocked full of people.

6. This year, President Trump chose as the new acting Director of ICE former GEO Group executive, David Venurella, who worked for the company for over a decade.

7. GEO Group could make even more money this year. In just the first quarter of 2026, the company brought in $2.6 billion in revenue, a significant increase from last year.

8. CEO Zoley has said that he supports GEO Group facilities being federally owned because that helps the company avoid legal liability in potential lawsuits related to “oversight of medical services, food services, general cleanliness.”

The fact that the GEO Group and the Trump Administration are so financially tied gives a whole new dimension to the substandard conditions have been reported at multiple ICE detention centers, including GEO Group’s center in Dilley, Texas, where people being held don’t have access to clean water, and bright lights are kept on twenty-four hours a day, among other horrible conditions. According to a CNN investigation, almost fifty people have died in ICE detention so far during Trump’s second term.

Last month, 300 people being imprisoned in Delaney Hall went on a work and hunger strike to protest what they described as unsafe conditions and inhumane treatment. On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, roughly five months after Martin was first detained, Gabriela Soto, Martin’s wife, held a small press conference outside the facility calling attention to the strike.

Last week, ICE agents shoved, beat, and pepper-sprayed people protesting outside the building. ICE pepper-sprayed, journalists, volunteers, U.S. Senator Andy Kim (NJ), and many others. The scenes we’ve all witnessed over the last couple weeks are an escalation, but not anything new. Last year, before Delaney Hall reopened as an ICE detention center, Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka while he took part in a demonstration against its conversion into an ICE facility.

Despite ICE agents and then New Jersey state police beating protesters, people kept showing up to protest in solidarity with the striking immigrants inside Delaney. This week, the state of New Jersey filed a new lawsuit against GEO Group that could force the closure of Delaney Hall. It’s tough to consider something like this a victory, because the entire situation is horrible in many ways, and the legal push is just a start, but at least New Jersey is using its power to push back. As we watch GEO Group respond and try to keep Delaney Hall open, we have to remember that although, yes, when it comes to denying people like Martin Soto their freedom, the cruelty is the point, but the goal is also to make prison companies like GEO Group a lot of money.

The Justices handed down the decision via the Court’s so-called “shadow docket,” an emergency order issued without the opportunity for arguments in court. Legal experts called the situation “a constitutional crisis.”

At the time, Rhiannon Hamam wrote for the legal outlet Balls and Strikes: “Unless and until Senate Democrats get serious about reforming both the Trump-packed Supreme Court and also the Trump-packed lower courts, SB8 is just a preview of the many dangerous, fascistic attacks on constitutional rights to come.” In retrospect, yes, that was true.

Since overturning Roe, the Supreme Court has thrown out other major precedents to dismantle many other rights and protections. Among other dangerous decisions, the Court’s supermajority has limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and ruled that President Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution. In several decisions, including those related to gerrymandering, the justices have enabled the Republican Party – which, no coincidence, installed the super-majority of conservative justices – to consolidate and retain structural political power.

Given that the judiciary is increasingly just a gear in the Republican political machine, calling for Supreme Court reform is no longer considered fringe. Especially since the Court’s devastating decision in Callais, which will radically diminish Black Americans’ voting rights and collective power, more Democrats have issued full-throated calls for changing the system. “We need Supreme Court reform,” Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) recently said. “Everything should be on the table.”

Subscribe now

So, what are some options on the table? Here are a few reform ideas under consideration:

Increase the number of Justices. Congress could change the number of Supreme Court justices without changing the Constitution. Many reform advocates propose expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court to dilute the influence of the current conservative supermajority that has shown almost unwavering loyalty to President Trump and the rightwing thinktanks and billionaires that enabled their lifetime tenures.

Proponents of expanding the Court argue that unless more justices are added soon, there is effectively no check on MAGA donors and politicians who have seized levers of power across the government and are pushing openly authoritarian ideas and policies at an alarming rate. The thinking is simple: Our country is in a desperate situation, so we need major, immediate changes to correct the system to preserve our basic rights, including the rights to vote, protest, and speak freely.

One argument against expanding the Supreme Court is that such reforms would make the High Court an openly partisan body – and that’s not what it’s supposed to be. The problem, of course, is that the Supreme Court is already deeply corrupted by partisan forces and huge amounts of political spending (including the tens of millions Leonard Leo’s network spent to remake the federal judiciary) and pretending that’s not true won’t change reality.

Some argue that this reform isn’t a long-term solution on its own, because if Congress adds more justices when Democrats are in power, Republicans will just do the same when they have their chance. So, expanding the Supreme Court would also need to be accompanied by other reforms.

Enact Term Limits. Congress could enact term limits for justices. Term limits would reduce the vast power that just nine individuals hold over the roughly 342 million people who live in the United States. Many reform advocates propose 18-year terms.

Lifetime appointments are a major reason that the Court is so imbalanced and authoritarianism friendly. At the risk of stating the obvious, under the current system of lifetime Supreme Court appointments, our constitutional rights rely on the health of a few individuals and the mostly random chance of whether they will pass away while a Democrat or Republican is president – if they don’t voluntarily retire.

“No other major democracy in the world provides life tenure for high court judges who hear constitutional cases,” Miriam Rosenbaum and Emily Whitehead of the Brennan Center for Justice write in a recently published paper on fixing the Supreme Court. “Nobody should hold that much power for so long. This reflects a core element of democratic accountability, a lesson taught by George Washington when he established the two-term tradition for presidents.”

Critics of this idea say that changes to the structure could diminish the Court’s credibility. But what credibility? A majority of Americans are skeptical of the Court, and with good reason.

The only argument against Court term limits that makes sense to me is that creating a system wherein Justices will likely take other jobs after leaving the Supreme Court could make them even more corruptible. Like many members of Congress, justices could hand out favorable outcomes to say a financial institution or pharmaceutical company, hoping to receive a cushy job in exchange. The possibility of a revolving door between the courts and industry – or think tanks, etc. – just provides more reason to pass meaningful ethics reform alongside any structural changes to the Court.

Establish Ethics Reforms. Justice Clarence Thomas – the longest-serving current Supreme Court justice – has received millions of dollars-worth of gifts from political donors, according to incredible reporting from ProPublica. One of Thomas’s main benefactors, Harlon Crow, is also a major donor to Republican causes. If you need a refresher, I recommend reading the whole report, which on its own makes a strong case for the urgent need for Supreme Court ethics reform.

Despite having lifetime appointments and extraordinary power to shape every facet of American life, Supreme Court Justices are held to very few ethics requirements. They aren’t even held to the same ethics requirements as federal judges. The Supreme Court only adopted its first ethics requirement in 2023, and that is only a series of stated rules and principles, and none of them are enforceable. There’s no mechanism to enforce the rules if a Justice is accused of breaking them. “This code is more loophole than law,” write The Brennan Center’s Rosenbaum and Whitehead.

There are lots of ways ethics reform could happen. Congress could force Supreme Court Justices to be accountable to the public by being more transparent, including by requiring more financial disclosure and television cameras in the courtroom. Congress could also reform its own role by requiring a Supreme Court vacancy to be filled within a specified span of time, eliminating the possibility of a repeat of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking the confirmation of Merrick Garland. And justices could have tighter requirements dictating when they need to recuse themselves from cases.

So, what do you think? Expand the court, enact term limits, pass ethics reform, or all three?

Collins pretty much always ends up in the same place: aligning herself, yet again, with her Republican colleagues and their billionaire, corporate, and extremist white nationalist donors to vote the way those donors want. This includes: Brett Kavanaugh confirmed despite assault allegations and the Republican mega-bill moved through committees despite its massive cuts to healthcare and tax breaks for billionaires. That’s why it’s been so energizing to watch Graham Platner make his case against her.

Platner, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Collins and represent Maine in the U.S. Senate, is a former U.S. Marine who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also an oyster farmer and an incredibly talented speaker. Since he launched his Senate campaign, packed crowds have flocked to his public appearances up and down the state to hear him open his speeches with evocations like, “We have a political system that is entirely inaccessible to the average American… It is a politics that has turned into a theater for elites… And because of that, we have a political system that has ceased [to represent] us.”

“Many of us understand that we are looking at a political system that does not care about our input. That does not care about what we want to see in our society. Many of us have understood for quite some time that what’s happening in Washington, D.C., is almost entirely separate from us and our world. And that the only people who have access are people with wealth and power.”

Platner’s success represents more than a shift toward the progressive wing of the Democratic party. As his former high school classmate, Josh Keefe, wrote: “He’s trying to start a movement to build a world without the despair and resentment that he believes allows Trump’s brand of politics to flourish.”

He calls for banning billionaires from buying elections, rebuilding the failing healthcare system, and breaking up monopolies. Platner is one of over 200 Democratic candidates across the country who’ve signed onto End Citizens United’s Unrig Washington program that includes not accepting corporate PAC money.

Platner’s vision is in many ways a repudiation of Collins’s way of doing politics. Regardless of how she tries to spin her record, Collins’s career has exemplified old-fashioned political corruption wherein the rich just buy votes from a politician that they’ve identified as a hack or an easy mark. She’s helped usher in the largest transfer of wealth from working people to the ultra-wealthy in our nation’s history. She’s also personally profited – numerous times – from helping the rich get richer. And she cast the decisive vote to prevent campaign finance reform that would’ve made politicians more accountable to voters.

End Citizens United has named Senator Collins as one of the most corrupt members of Congress. A few reasons why:

• Collins has accepted over $8.3 million from corporate PACs during her career.

• She’s received significant sums from Wall Street, and she’s repaid her donors by voting for legislation that favors private equity, corporations, and the wealthy.

• She opposes a wide variety of campaign finance reforms – and has for years. She opposes campaign finance transparency and banning congressional stock trading, while she owns the eighth most lucrative stock portfolio in Congress.

• She was the decisive vote to enact the SAVE Act, a major voter suppression bill that Trump and other Republican extremists.

The relationship between Collins’s donors and her votes is openly transactional. She votes along with what her big donors want, sometimes as soon as they cut their checks:

• A pro-Collins super PAC received $2 million from Blackstone’s CEO Steve Schwarzman, whose net worth is an estimated roughly $50 billion, and the very next day she gave initial support and voted to advance the Republican 2025 mega-bill that massive tax breaks to billionaires.

• Collins supplied the deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, even after Professor Christine Blasey Ford gave damning, credible testimony of Kavanaugh assaulting her when they were teenagers. The dark money group the Lexington Fund (run by Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society executive and the architect of the right’s takeover of the federal judiciary) has given at least $1 million to support Collins this campaign cycle.

For me personally, Collin’s vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is the hardest one to stomach. At the time, Collins told journalists that she believed that Kavanaugh would uphold Roe and therefore uphold national access to safe, legal abortion – which is a precondition for women’s access to health, freedom, and participation in civic life. Of course, not long after, Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe. It was always obvious that he would.

Anyone as familiar as a sitting U.S. senator is with American politics knows that the Federalist Society recommends conservative Supreme Court nominees based on their anti-abortion positions and likely willingness to overturn precedent. So, it follows that Collins was either stunningly ill-formed about a basic political reality, or she was willing to mislead the American public and forfeit millions of American women’s access to what was then a constitutional right.

With that in mind, the only thing that could arguably be considered middle of the road about Collins’s tenure in the U.S. Senate is that she fits in with other members of Congress who’ve all run their own grifts by trading stocks while having access to insider information, handing out contracts to companies that donate to their campaigns, and generally cozying up to political mega-donors, even if they’re open white supremacists and Christian nationalists. Collins isn’t moderate by any sane measure, but she and other Republican members of Congress are definitely peas in a pod.

The fact that open political corruption has become so normalized that it’s widely accepted by most members of Congress is why it’s so reassuring to watch Graham Platner’s campaign. I’ll confess that when I’m feeling cynical, hopeless, or just plain low, I’ll watch a couple minutes of his speeches. Even though they’re about unjust wars, diminished healthcare, the rigged system, I’ll still feel better after hearing his voice, because he’s telling a truth that’s plain for anyone to see, and he’s also calling for us to use this moment of crisis to organize and fight for what we need.

As we take in primary results from across the country, it’s important to remember that Platner is far from the only candidate running on the dire need to get money out of our political system. Consider those over 200 Democratic candidates running in all kinds of districts all across the country that are part of Unrig Washington. You may not have heard of all 200-plus candidates, but they’re out there, centering their campaigns on fighting corruption, refusing to take corporate PAC money, supporting congressional stock trading bans, and vowing to work to get dark money out of politics.

As Platner recently told a crowd in Augusta: “In this society, power derives from two places: Organized money or organized people. And the money organized. It always has been. And it always will be. Until we organize enough people to take it back.”

Voters are deeply frustrated with corruption in Washington and remain skeptical that either party will fix it. Large numbers say they trust neither side to clean up the system, providing Democrats an opportunity to take the anti-corruption mantle at a moment when demand for accountability is high.

What stands out in the data is how voters think about corruption. They do not see it as an abstract ethics issue or something separate from their lives. They see it as a root cause of why costs are high, why government feels unresponsive, and why the system seems to only benefit insiders. This puts corruption at the center of the 2026 elections in an important way. It is a framework voters use to evaluate the economy, their ability to afford everyday essentials, and whether candidates are on their side.

The result is a rare moment where corruption is both salient and politically unsettled. The candidates who can credibly claim it and connect it to voters’ lived experiences and frustrations will have the advantage in November.

CORRUPTION IS A TOP-TIER CONCERN FOR BATTLEGROUND VOTERS

More than 4 in 10 likely voters rank corruption in Washington as one of their top concerns, just ahead of the cost of groceries and gas (40%) and closely behind threats to democracy and the voting system (43%).

Corruption also cuts across the electorate in a way that few issues do. It’s not confined to one party or one demographic group. Democrats, independents, and Republicans all rank it among their top concerns, and it is particularly strong among persuadable voters who will play a pivotal role in deciding battleground races. Among independents, 45% rank corruption as a top issue, while 46% of Republicans say it’s their top concern, underscoring that this is not a partisan issue but a shared frustration.

VOTERS POINT TO CORRUPTION AS THE DRIVER OF HIGH COSTS

Voters are not separating corruption from the economic pressures they face. They see corruption in Washington as a direct cause of those pressures.

Nearly 75% of voters say corruption has a major impact on how much they pay for health care and 65% say it affects the cost of groceries and everyday goods. Majorities also say corruption affects housing costs, whether government works for the people, and whether elections are fair.

This is one of the clearest findings in the poll. Across every major cost category, voters consistently see corruption as part of the reason prices are high and why they are struggling in this economy.

Healthcare is where voters most clearly see the link between corruption and cost, and it is also where Democrats hold their largest trust advantage. Voters explicitly link high drug prices and lack of accountability to politicians’ financial ties to Big Pharma. As one voter from New Mexico explained: “Our government hasn’t done anything to bring down the ridiculously high cost of medications because many of our Reps make money off drug companies.”

VOTERS TRUST NEITHER PARTY ON CORRUPTION

Despite the salience of the issue, voters do not know which party to trust. While Democrats and Republicans each have clear trust advantages on some issues, 46% trust neither party on corruption, and 45% trust neither on bringing needed change to Washington. Among movable voters (those who do not have strong views of either Donald Trump or either party), only 11% trust Republicans, offering anti-corruption Democrats a huge opportunity to show voters that they will fight corruption in a way that other politicians have failed to do.

Voters are hungry for accountability and change, but they have not decided who can deliver it. This creates a wide-open lane for candidates.

VOTERS REWARD CANDIDATES WHO RUN AGAINST CORRUPTION

When voters are given a clear choice, candidates who focus on anti-corruption consistently outperform those who do not, especially when it’s tied to affordability.

When given a description of an anti-corruption Democratic candidate and a description of an affordability-focused Democrat, voters prefer the anti-corruption candidate by a 55-29 margin – and 56-21 among movable voters. Even among Democratic voters, only 62% say they would be likely to vote for a Democrat who believes that corruption is a problem but is focusing on kitchen table issues instead.

The most effective message does not treat corruption and affordability as separate. It explicitly links the two, arguing that cleaning up corruption is one of the best ways to lower costs and make the economy work for everyday Americans. That framing is highly persuasive, particularly among moveable voters.

The takeaway is unmistakable: Candidates who lead with anti-corruption are not just aligning with voter concerns, they are gaining a measurable electoral advantage, especially when they connect corruption to affordability.

THE MOST POPULAR ANTI-CORRUPTION REFORMS

Voters are aligned on what should be done to address the corruption problem in Washington. Across a wide range of reforms, support is overwhelming and bipartisan.

When voters are asked to prioritize, several measures consistently rise to the top. Banning members of Congress from trading stocks (90% strongly support), banning corporate PAC contributions (74% strongly support), and Supreme Court reform (63% strongly support) all rank among the most popular anti-corruption proposals.

This level of agreement is unusual in a polarized environment. Voters are not divided on the need for reform, and candidates do not need to guess what anti-corruption means to voters.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The data in this poll points to a clear strategic path for candidates in battleground districts.

First, make corruption central to the campaign. With 42% of voters ranking it as a top issue and nearly half trusting neither party to address it, this is the central driver of how voters are evaluating candidates.

Second, tie corruption directly to the cost of living, especially healthcare. Voters already make this connection, with 74% saying corruption has a major impact on healthcare costs and large majorities saying it affects what they pay for groceries and house. This is the most effective way to make the issue concrete and relevant.

Third, lead with specific, popular reforms. Policies like banning congressional stock trading and ending corporate PAC contributions are overwhelmingly popular, giving candidates a clear and credible agenda to run on.

Corruption is not competing with affordability. It is one of the clearest ways to talk about why costs are high, why families are getting economically squeezed, and why so many believe the system isn’t working for them.

At a time when voters are deeply cynical about Washington and increasingly convinced that wealthy donors, corporate interests, and insiders are rigging the system for themselves, candidates who center corruption, connect it to costs, and back it up with concrete reforms are best positioned to win in November.

In the 1980s, SPLC litigated against the Ku Klux Klan and won. In recent years, SPLC is probably best-known for its research into what it categorizes as hate groups – the Klan and other white supremacy organizations, as well as a wider list that includes extremist conservatives. The SPLC has, for example, described communications sent by the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as “open white nationalism.”

One of the methods that SPLC has used in its research on extremist groups is hiring informants. The organization no longer uses this practice. The Trump Administration’s fraud allegations are based on the notion that SPLC defrauded its donors by paying some of those informants. The logic of the government’s argument goes like this: The donors offering the SPLC financial support were not explicitly told that some of their donations would be paid to the participants of neo-Nazi groups, therefore SPLC is committing fraud.

During the press conference announcing the indictment, Blanche said that the SPLC is trying to “profit off klansmen.” Blanche has also said that the SPLC has been “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” So, in short, the Trump Administration is inexplicably alleging that a civil rights organization is a hotbed of racism.

“The Justice Department is attacking a leading adversary of violent hate groups by accusing it of secretly supporting the very groups the organization has opposed for decades,” Christopher Hardee wrote for Lawfare. “Prosecuting a group that the far right opposes by accusing the group of supporting the far right makes this one of the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice.”

Poking holes in the FBI’s pretext for charging the SPLC is pretty easy. For starters, the FBI has a decades-long, infamous history of infiltrating groups it has deemed a threat. “There are, I would have to imagine, every day those kinds of operations,” Javed Ali, associate professor at University of Michigan and former FBI official, told USA Today. The FBI often pays its informants who participate in groups under investigation. You don’t have to approve of the FBI’s long history of using undercovers to spy on Americans to understand that its leadership can’t possibly take issue with paid informants gathering information, because they have benefited from similar practices.

Perhaps most importantly: The Trump Administration has launched this attack against SPLC while attacking Americans’ civil rights and liberties in so many ways that it’s not possible to provide a comprehensive summary here. One lowlight: Last summer, Trump told Texas lawmakers to gerrymander to deliver Republicans more Congressional seats – which they did by cutting Black and Latino representatives out of their districts. Just last week, the Court effectively decided that Black Americans aren’t entitled to political representation. And the same conservative majority ruled that law enforcement can legally racially profile people when deciding who to arrest and detain. President Trump celebrated all of this.

Then there’s the violent crusade against immigrants, supported by white nationalist groups. Trump’s top staffer Stephen Miller designed the policy that separated thousands of children from their parents during his first term, and he’s also collaborated with anti-immigrant hate groups. According to Common Cause, “Miller elevated their ideas into national policy, blurring the line between governance and extremist ideology, resulting in sweeping deportations and a normalization of xenophobia at the highest levels of government.”

It all fits a pattern. JD Vance has promoted vile lies about immigrants, and Trump has said that immigrants “poison the blood of America.” It’s also worth noting that donors with extreme white nationalist views, like Elon Musk, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to get Trump and other Republicans into office.

This indictment also fits the pattern of the Trump Administration launching investigations into its opponents. Last spring, President Trump signed an executive memorandum instructing then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democrats. The Trump Administration has also repeatedly tried to prosecute New York Attorney General Leticia James and former FBI Director James Comey, both vocal critics of President Trump.

This month, the FBI raided the offices of Virginia State Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, who co-led efforts to pass the state’s redistricting referendum that was Democrats’ response to Republicans’ gerrymander of Texas and other states. The raid came just two weeks after Virginia voters passed the referendum Lucas championed.

For the SPLC, these charges already have had real-world consequences. Multiple major financial institutions have removed the organization from their donor advised funds, which are sources of larger scale donations for many nonprofits. That’s a chilling prospect. This is a continuation of the Trump Administration’s barely veiled attacks on civil rights advocates, progressive groups, and anyone else it considers a political opponent.

Thousands of nonprofit organizations, the big and the small, rely on the ability to fundraise to do everything from stocking food pantries to filing lawsuits against Trump’s illegal executive orders, and they’re vulnerable to changes in their non-profit status. Given how these charges have already hit SPLC’s funding, Trump’s DOJ has already scored a victory, even without winning a verdict.

In some ways, this all feels very out of our immediate control. No one I know has the power to stop Trump’s DOJ from prosecuting civil rights advocates and creating a chilling effect that siphons off their funding. But the weaponization of the DOJ against one of the country’s preeminent civil rights nonprofits should stand as a reminder that it is absolutely critical that we each do everything we can to ensure that Democrats flip Congress in November. If that happens, Democratic lawmakers can use their subpoena power to start their own investigations – this time into real acts of corruption.

But that’s not the whole story. There are lawmakers working to wrest our democracy back from this oligarchic madness. In Hawaii, state lawmakers are on the verge of passing legislation that could be the domino that sets off meaningful campaign finance reform in states across the country – and that would be a big deal no matter where you live.

The pioneering Hawaii legislation, Senate Bill 2471, is the first of its kind in the nation and would basically render the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision irrelevant within the state. As of today, the bill has passed in the House and Senate and is in a reconciliation process that in Hawaii is the final step before a bill goes to the governor’s desk. Governor Josh Green has said he’ll sign any bill that passes constitutional muster. That means any day now we could see a major win for the movement to get big money – especially dark money – out of politics.

“The fact is that over the last sixteen years, our system has been corrupted by unlimited spending by corporations that are given tremendous benefits under Hawaii state law for taking corporate form,” Senator Jarrett Keohokalole, one of the bill’s sponsors, told the local station KHON2 News. “I’m really proud that Hawaii is positioned to lead the way on overturning this really bad [Citizens United] decision that has corrupted our democracy for the last sixteen years.”

For years, conservative and corporate interest groups like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity – funded by the same deep-pocketed donors as President Trump and Republicans in Congress – have focused on passing state-level legislation that both advances their strategy goals and also disempowers the opposition. For Republican state lawmakers that has meant taking power from we the people via gerrymandering, restricting unions, etc. This Hawaii legislation changes the rules of the game in a positive way to disempower a source of political strength that far too often leads to corruption.

The power that’s being dismantled is Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, and all the other wealthy interests with a reason to hide their political spending in secretive dark money groups. So, while it might look like a similar strategy Republicans have used, it has the opposite goal: These state lawmakers are working to empower people to make the system more like a functioning democracy.

The approach advocates are taking with SB 2471 is interesting. The legislation doesn’t prohibit corporate political spending in the direct, explicit way you might expect. The Citizens United decision infamously hinged on questions of speech, as the majority of the justices decided that restrictions on political spending restricted corporate speech rights. With that in mind, it’s safe to assume that if Congress or state lawmakers pass meaningful campaign finance reform, corporate or rightwing groups will sue to block the legislation immediately. So, to establish durable solutions, campaign finance reform advocates need to find a way around the Supreme Court conservative majority’s habit of using the First Amendment to justify all manner of detrimental decisions. The authors of the Hawaii legislation did just that when drafting this bill.

Here’s how the Hawaii strategy works: The bill redefines the powers Hawaii grants to corporations that operate within the state by taking away from those corporations the ability to spend in Hawaii political campaigns. Campaign finance reform experts say this legislation will stand up against legal challenges because states have wide leeway to define what they count as a corporation and what powers those corporations have from a business perspective. With that authority, states can legally decide that corporations don’t have the power to spend in elections.

If passed, SB 2471 would take effect in 2027 and immediately diminish the power of big corporations to spend political dollars in Hawaii – even if they’re based elsewhere. Every corporation registered to do business in Hawaii would need to follow the new law. One of the industries that spends the most in Hawaii is real estate developers. No surprise, affordable housing is a major issue in the state. If giant developers’ political spending is reined in, local officials will be less beholden to their interests and can instead consider development with Hawaiians in mind.

The bill would also diminish the role of dark money in Hawaii’s elections. According to the Center for American Progress’s (CAP) legal analysis, the bill wouldn’t completely ban super PACs, which are a major source of political spending that shapes elections in Hawaii (and every state), but the bill would do a lot to diminish super PACs’ power: SB 2471 would limit their ability to spend money in Hawaii that they’ve received from dark money groups.

“Super PACs would still be able to spend in Hawaii’s politics, but they could only spend money they’ve received from human beings,” CAP Senior Fellow Tom Moore explained in his analysis of the legislation. That would cut off an especially nefarious form of political spending wherein the public has no good way of knowing who paid for a campaign or lobbying effort.

For the foreseeable future, given how absolutely committed the Trump Administration is to doling out favors to the donor class – whether giving billionaires tax breaks, deregulating oil and gas companies, or pardoning cryptocurrency magnates – we need to find different venues for meaningful campaign finance reform. Hawaii can provide a blueprint for how to prevent super PACs from spending dark money by passing state laws. Montana could be next.

In November, Montana voters could decide on a ballot initiative based on the same premise of limiting corporations’ authority as the strategy for reducing corporate political spending. At least 12 states have introduced bills similar to Hawaii’s SB 2471. So, no matter how dire national politics are right now, this could just be the beginning of a new wave of campaign finance reform that returns power to the people.

The cost-of-living crisis is also a corruption crisis. It’s not a coincidence that the number of billionaires is growing at the same time that working people are being squeezed by higher bills. It’s not a coincidence that the same president who has gotten the United States involved in a dangerous war that’s costing taxpayers billions of dollars and driving up gas prices has also personally enriched himself and his family while in office – including with a reported $1 billion in crypto holdings, while deregulating the crypto industry. It’s not a coincidence that the Congress that is failing to provide any meaningful check on this Administration’s many illogical and harmful actions also gave unprecedented tax breaks to billionaires. This is all by design: These politicians got into office after receiving millions upon millions from billionaires, corporate donors, and special interests.

We all know what’s happened over recent decades, especially since the Citizens United decision: Behemoth political donors – including private equity, fossil fuel and tech titans – have rigged the political system so they can profit more and pay their workers less. They’ve also made sure they can operate with fewer rules and contribute less in taxes. And in addition to funding candidates who will do their bidding, they’ve also funded groups that write anti-worker and anti-consumer legislation, sue when they don’t get their way, and prop up media organizations that sell their spin. And as a result, the economy is structured for the powerful, and it’s harder and harder for everyone else to make ends meet.

In response to the cost-of-living crisis, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers, just rolled out a series of policy proposals designed to make life more affordable in this country. Progressives in Congress support a whole range of ambitious policy goals like Medicare for All, a universal living wage, and bold climate action, but because so many Americans need relief from rising costs right now, the Progressive Caucus is introducing a raft of legislation with ideas that are extremely popular with voters across the political spectrum and will make life more affordable right away. For anyone interested in addressing the cost-of-living crisis – and for winning upcoming elections – embracing these policies offer a clear path for standing with working people.

The New Affordability Agenda:

1. Getting Big Money Out of Politics: The Abolish Super PACs Act (sponsored by Rep. Summer Lee) caps contributions to super PACs at $5,000 per calendar year, which would effectively end the role of super PACs as a vehicle for unlimited contributions. That in turn would break the cycle of powerful entities buying elections to buy policies that work for them, not working people.

2. Making prescription drugs affordable: The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act (sponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky) dramatically lowers the price of pharmaceuticals by establishing a federal program to directly manufacture generic drugs and offering them to Americans at a discounted rate.

3. Making groceries affordable: The Fair Competition for Small Businesses Act (sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern and Rep. Maxine Waters) allows state attorneys general to seek financial compensation from large grocery store chains that engage in anti-competitive behaviors.

4. Making housing affordable: Legislation (sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters) will provide assistance to first-time homeowners and set aside funds for creating and preserving affordable and accessible housing.

5. Making utility bills affordable: Legislation (sponsored by Rep. Greg Casar) will establish a federal standard for just and reasonable increases in electricity bills issued by for-profit utility companies and stop allowing these companies to pass along costs like political lobbying on to their customers.

6. Making childcare affordable: The Child Care for Every Community Act (sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) provides federal investment in locally administered child care so that families nationwide have access to affordable childcare.

7. Making gas affordable: The Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act (sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna) curbs profiteering by oil companies by imposing a tax on large oil companies, which will return a rebate to customers.

8. Ending AI Price Gouging: The STOP AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act (sponsored by Rep. Greg Casar) bans companies from using AI to set prices or fix wages based on Americans’ personal data. It would prohibit companies from doing things like increasing an airline ticket price after seeing someone read an obituary.

9. Putting more money in people’s pockets: This legislation (sponsored by Rep. Greg Casar) would increase federal overtime pay for the first time in almost 90 years.

10. Vacation time that people can afford: America is the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation to all workers. The PTO Act (sponsored by Rep. Seth Magaziner) provides every full-time worker with no less than two weeks of annual leave in addition to any paid sick, family, or medical leave guaranteed by law.

Each one of these bills provides a solution to a very real and important problem. The Abolish Super PACs Act might seem the most abstract, but it’s also the one that addresses the underlying issue impacting the rest: Rampant political corruption is driving the cost-of-living crisis.

As we consider the concerns that matter most to us, whether it’s housing, energy policy, union rights, etc., we have to keep in mind that the reason we need solutions to so many problems is that rich political spenders and their preferred politicians have rigged the system against working people. Only when we decrease the power of corporate and billionaire political spenders will we have elected officials who adequately respond to our needs – including by passing legislation that benefits patients instead of Big Pharma, workers and kids instead of tech giants like Meta and Amazon, consumers instead of oil companies, and so forth.

As Rep. Summer Lee, the bill’s sponsor, recently explained on the I’ve Had It podcast: “The reason that my Abolish Super PACs bill is the most important bill to me is because it is the gateway to getting all of the other things that we need in our society.” So, fighting corruption is an essential part of fighting for a pro-active, sustained progressive agenda.

I spoke with one candidate running this year, current Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.

Aguilar knows something about standing up to threats to our election system. He is the namesake of Department of Justice v. Aguilar, the case wherein the Trump Administration sued the Nevada secretary of state office for defying federal orders to turn over voters’ personal information. I spoke with Aguilar about why electing secretaries of state with a strategy and a backbone really matters.

Democracy News: There are numerous threats to our elections right now, more than I can even summarize in a question. How should we be prioritizing those threats?

Cisco Aguilar: The biggest threat to our election is Donald Trump, and the fact that he’s trying to create chaos. He has this delusional obsession with the 2020 election, which I think the American public has moved past, right? In the 2022 election, every secretary of state who ran against an election denier won. That’s the public saying, “Hey, move on. We have better, bigger issues to worry about as Americans. We need to be focused on solutions. We want leadership.”

This is a federalism issue. The Constitution says that states run elections. It’s up to the states to really provide the plan, to provide the strategy, and to provide the confidence that our elections are safe, secure, and accessible. Nevada has some of the most safe, secure and accessible elections in the country because we have a strategy.

All the secretary of state elections around the country this year are really about the 2028 election. If we don’t elect strong secretaries now, 2028 is going to be chaos. That’s going to be a unique election year because neither party will have an incumbent running for president. Instead of candidates talking about their vision, their plan, and the issues that Americans want to hear, they’re going to continue to talk about the election system. There is going to be substantial litigation. That’s why we need to elect strong secretaries of state now.

Democracy News: What are some of your priorities as secretary of state?

Aguilar: Nevada is one of the most diverse states in the country, from a geographical perspective, but also a demographics perspective. We have a 30% Latino voter base. We’re a 24/7 economy. If somebody in Las Vegas took the time on Election Day to go vote, that’s money that they don’t have in their pocket because they work in the service industry. So, those are the challenges we look at when thinking about how to make elections accessible. We’re making sure that we are meeting the needs of the working people.

For me, it’s a bit more personal. I’m the first elected Latino secretary of the state. I have a duty and a commitment to my community to protect them.

One of my priorities is making sure that the voter experience is strong. We want people to feel confident going to the polling locations. We want them to feel confident that their mail-in ballot is going to get counted. We want them to know that Nevada is one of the most critical states in the country when it comes to our elections, and I have to build that faith, trust, confidence. And so, when I see the president make these attacks on certain communities, especially in Nevada, again, where a large percentage of the voter base is Latino, I know it’s intentional, just as it’s intentional in Georgia, where there’s a strong Black voter base.

We also have to make sure our poll workers feel safe. After Trump’s intimidation, people really understand what it means for a poll worker to be there.

Trump wants to create fear. What they say about non-citizens voting is a bunch of bullshit. It’s not happening. It’s intimidation. But you know, the more they try to intimidate us, the more emboldened election officials become to protect our voters and protect our states. Nevada led the legal challenge to Trump’s executive order exerting federal control over elections.

Democracy News: Trump’s Department of Justice sued your office because you refused to give the federal government Nevadans’ voter data. The case is ongoing. Why aren’t you giving the federal government the information?

Aguilar: More than anything, it’s a data privacy issue. Nevadans are very sensitive about data privacy, because we recently suffered a significant cyber-attack at the state government. I think Nevada citizens saw the impact of cyber-attacks and became more aware of the information the government has.

When we got the letter from the DOJ asking for voters’ information, our response wasn’t an immediate, “No.” It was, “Hey, why do you want this information? What are you going to do with it?”

They never answered those questions. They just wanted to intimidate us to get the information. Well, we’re starting to see why they want that information: to build a national voter roll. There are so many potentials for false positives in the SAVE system (a federal voter roll administered by the Department of Homeland Security) that we have to assume that there are voters being inappropriately flagged as ineligible when they’re eligible. That’s a violation of a fundamental Constitutional right.

The data privacy issue is nonpartisan for voters. I spoke about this at an event in Carson City, mostly to an audience of Republicans, and I thought, “Here it comes.” After I was done speaking, the audience stood up and clapped. I realized that this is not a partisan issue. This comes down to the very fact that people want their private information protected. When they registered to vote, they agreed to give that information to the state of Nevada. Voters didn’t agree to give their data to third parties. So, we have to respect citizens’ expectations, and we have to keep them safe.

At End Citizens United, we’re endorsing candidates that are fighting to win back House districts across the map by vowing to fight political corruption. These candidates are part of ECU’s Unrig Washington campaign, which means they won’t take corporate PAC money, support congressional stock trading bans, and will work to crack down on dark money.

As we’ve said before: Supporting anti-corruption candidates isn’t just a means to better policy. It’s also good politics. American voters are angry with politics-as-usual, and in elections across the country they’re voting for candidates who reject the status quo and promise to do right by working people.

We want to introduce you to ECU’s most recently endorsed candidates running to flip House seats from Red to Blue. These are some of the candidates we’re proud to support.

Brian Poindexter is running to represent Ohio 7. When Ohio Republicans gerrymandered the state last year, they changed this district, but the right Democratic candidate can definitely flip this seat. Poindexter is running to replace Republican Max Miller, who takes thousands in corporate PAC money. Poindexter is an ironworker promising to bring “pro-worker mentality to the halls of Congress.” He’s backed by both Senator Bernie Sanders and is running to represent workers, not corporations – and that’s why End Citizens United is proud to endorse him.

“When times get tough, working people are always asked to do more with less,” Poindexter says. “I’m running for Congress because working people deserve real representation – not empty promises, not talking points, and not leaders who only remember us when its time to sacrifice.” As a member of the Brook Park City Council, Poindexter has opposed anti-union “Right to Work” laws and supported public schools. He’s a member of ECU’s Unrig Washington program and exactly the kind of candidate we need to reach voters who are angry about how years of out-of-control political corruption has harmed Ohioans.

“People are working harder and harder. We’re getting less and less and we’re getting more and more of the burden,” Poindexter told The Guardian, in a profile about his candidacy. “I’d like to see an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy.”

Kristina Knickerbocker is running to flip Ohio 10. Republican incumbent Mike Turner currently represents the district. Turner has accepted at least $3 million in corporate donations and in Congress has voted right in line with Trump over and over again. This year, that could bring him down. According to polling, a majority of voters in the district have an unfavorable view of Trump and disapprove of his job performance. More than half of Ohio 10 voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, and half disapprove of his handling of the war with Iran. A Democratic candidate campaigning against this broken political system has a real shot of winning back this district.

Knickerbocker is a U.S. Air Force veteran and oncology nurse. She’s never held public office, and as a nurse, she’s seen firsthand how our broken political system has led to a broken healthcare system, with devastating consequences for patients.

“I’m honored to have the endorsement of End Citizens United,” Knickerbocker said. “I’ve seen how the medical system fails people, and it’s because big health care companies are too powerful in Washington, DC. Nobody should have to decide between getting life-changing care and putting groceries on the table for their family. I’m running to take on the special interests that are making our daily lives unaffordable, and I’m grateful for End Citizens United’s partnership in this mission.”

Randy Villegas is running in California 22. Villegas is challenging Republican David Valadao, who has voted to support the Republican Congressional agenda, including last year’s mega-bill that made $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. As the director of Protect Our Care California described at the time: “Representative David Valadao just voted for the largest healthcare cuts in history in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, and we’re going to make sure every single one of his constituents knows it.” Meanwhile, the editorial board at the local paper the Fresno Bee wrote, “Unfortunately, [Valadao] doesn’t measure up when it comes to looking out for the best interests of his community.” This Republican incumbent is vulnerable, and Villegas is a fantastic person to unseat him.

Villegas is the son of immigrants who was raised in a working-class family in Kern County, CA. He earned his Ph.D. and is now a college professor and community organizer. Unlike Valadao, who is funded by corporate donations, Villegas has signed onto End Citizen United’s Unrig Washington campaign and does not take corporate PAC money. He has a strong anti-corruption platform that includes banning congressional stock trading, undoing the harm caused by Citizens United, and introducing Congressional term limits. “We need real fighters and leadership in D.C. Our communities are suffering at home while corporations and billionaires keep getting richer. It’s time for that to end.”

Villegas has been endorsed by the imminent civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, members of Congress including Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Pramila Jayapal, and Representative Ro Khanna, and many progressive and labor organizations like the California Teachers Association and the UAW. End Citizens United is proud to endorse Villegas because he has vowed to represent his constituents, not the corporate donors.

Tom Perriello is running to flip Virginia 6. This district is one of those affected by Virginia’s redistricting that could pave the way for Democrats to take back more House seats. It’s competitive but winnable for Democrats, especially with the right candidate. You may know the name Perriello, as he served in the House representing Virginia from 2009 to 2011. After his time in Congress, he served as the United States Special Envoy for the African Great Lakes and Sudan.

ECU is proud to endorse former Rep. Perriello, who is a part of Unrig Washington and made fighting corruption a centerpiece of his campaign. Governor Abigail Spanberger said, “Tom shows up, listens, and fights for what matters most… We need more leaders like Tom in Congress who will hold Washington accountable to the Constitution, common sense, and the people of the Commonwealth.” He’s also earned the endorsement of many other local leaders.

“I’m thrilled to be endorsed by End Citizens United, because corruption is killing us,” said former Rep. Tom Perriello. “Congress is kicking families off healthcare and jacking up costs so they can give kickbacks to dark money donors. I don’t take a dime from lobbyists or corporate PACs, so I appreciate the support from End Citizens United and their commitment to ending legalized corruption in Washington.”