Tangle - Dark money in politics

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

On today's Tangle episode we sit down Anna Massoglia, an investigative researcher with OpenSecrets. Her work exposes how money is being spent in politics, tracks the sources of "dark money" and helps illuminate the underworld of campaign spending. OpenSecrets is a non-partisan organization used by journalists across the world that tracks money in politics.You can find Anna on Twitter @annalecta and you can visit OpenSecrets at https://www.opensecrets.org/For daily issues like this, don't forget to subscribe to the Tangle newsletter: https://www.readtangle.com/about--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to my Tangle listeners and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some reasonable debate and conversation and independent thinking without some of that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, the founder of the Tangle newsletter, which you can find at readtangle.com. And today, my friends, I'm very thrilled to introduce our guest. I have gotten so many questions over the last year and a half of running Tangle about money in politics, about dark money, about foreign money in politics. And our guest is an expert in that field.

Anna Masolia is an investigative researcher at Open Secrets. Anna, thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you for having me. Before we jump in, I think, you know, probably the best thing to do, I have been following Open Secrets for a long time. I know a lot of reporters use the research that you do in their reporting, but maybe you could just tell us a little bit about Open Secrets and exactly what it is your organization does. Sure. Open Secrets is a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics. We do this under the umbrella of the Center for Responsive Politics through the website

opensecrets.org. Our organization was originally founded in 1983 by a Democrat and a Republican senator who came together to try to track the money going into politics. Over the years, the center has evolved from releasing books with all of the key figures on congressional members to tracking money through our website and expanding to lobbying, to foreign lobbying, online advertising, political advertising, dark money, and all of the other ways that we're seeing influence exerted into the U.S. political system. So I'm so curious. I mean, you go into work, you sit down. What's an average day like at work for you? I mean, where are you going to find this information? It seems like so much of this stuff is impossible to get your hands on. It's hard to say there really is no average day for me. Most mornings I look through filings to see what's new, to process those

filings. A lot of our work at Open Secrets is just maintaining what we have on the website to make sure new disclosures and filings are processed and reflected on the website. We exist not just to release our own reporting, but as a resource for outside journalists, for academics, and for students to go so they can find the numbers and information that they need for their own projects. So processing that information every day, as well as looking to see if there's anything particularly interesting in those new filings as I go. Throughout the day, we'll usually get inquiries from various people. And as for where to look for that information, a lot of it is through either our website or through our internal databases. Open Secrets maintains

databases on pretty much everything related to the Federal Election Commission, which is the primary agency tasked with campaign finance oversight at the federal level. This includes everything from campaign spending to outside group spending by committees like super PACs or PACs, as well as donations to those groups that have been disclosed. You also see to some extent spending by dark money groups that do not disclose their donors. We also have tracked some dark money through other types of disclosures, like tax returns or through online advertising data. We also have a breadth of different lobbying and influence data, foreign influence data through Foreign Agents Registration Act documents. So there's just a wide range of data

just through our site and our databases, hopefully to become as much of a one-stop shop as you can get for money in politics. So you mentioned dark money in that response, which is something I'm really interested to speak with you about. I guess maybe to start, could you just tell me what is dark money? Can you define it for me? I mean, is that something that's possible to define? Dark money is evolving, but the basic definition is that it is spending to influence political outcomes from untraceable or opaque sources. It can take a variety of different vehicles, but that's really the gist is that it's money from sources that are undisclosed going to influence the U.S. political system. That could be elections or policy outcomes. The most common vehicle for dark money, or at

least the most well-known, is 501c4 nonprofits, which are supposed to exist for social welfare purposes, but because of vague rules and loose regulations, they have been able to exploit loopholes and spend millions of dollars to influence the outcomes of elections, many times without disclosing any of their donors whatsoever. And that is something that's been going on for a number of years. More recently, we're also seeing a lot of online ad spenders that have little or even no paper trail, limited liability companies pouring money into other political groups that then spend on politics. In many cases, it's not just looking at the group directly spending, but many different layers of opaque donors that are funneling money through a network

that then ultimately spends, which makes it even less transparent. So I guess there's the cynic in me that's like, who cares? Politicians are spending money. We know there's money in politics. We know that every campaign is going to do the best it can to skirt certain laws. In your reporting and in doing this research, as an American, you know, as a citizen here, why should I care about these dark money groups? I mean, what's the meaning behind the way this money is moving around and why it's important? One of the main things that a lot of dark money groups spending to influence elections do is spending on political advertising or issue

advertising that presents a favorable or disfavorable image of candidates. This could be TV advertising or online advertising. And many individuals who are watching these ads on TV or seeing them in their newsfeed might not be aware of the group that's running them. And I think it's really important for individuals and voters who are relying on messages as they go to the polls, relying on this information that they have about candidates that they're about to vote on, to know about the source of that information, to be able to assess the credibility of those messages, especially if these undisclosed donors may have stake in the outcome of that election. And without additional disclosure, we don't know that. So an example of this, I guess, hypothetically speaking, would be like a party or a political group or a politician is promoting something like a green energy plan and there's a big oil company that doesn't want this green energy plan to be put in place.

So they try and find ways to get money to political PACs in order to spend on advertisements that criticize the green energy plan. Is that like a simple hypothetical explanation of how this might work? Right. And an even simpler one would be, for example, if those oil interests wanted to create a 501c4, they directly could just fund the 501c4, which is not required to disclose its donors. So it would be very hard to trace it back to them if they incorporated somewhere through their entire firms that exist so that they can be listed on the corporation records. There are a lot of ways that entities can be created but not traced back to the individual who created them.

They could create a 501c4 that could be called anything like happy American voters or good job America. And they could spend on ads that even subtle messaging trying to push against that type of power plant, people might not know that that messaging was ultimately funded by business interests that would profit from the outcome of that. So what are the, what's the legal ramifications or boundaries that this is happening in? I mean, is it that doing this is illegal, but political groups have gotten so good at covering it up that we can't really prosecute them or hold anybody accountable? Or is it that we have loopholes in the system that allow this dark money to move around in a legal way so that a lot of what's happening is actually totally

allowed by law? It's a little bit of both. 501c4 nonprofits are allowed to spend on politics. They are allowed to spend millions of dollars without ever disclosing their donors, but it cannot be their primary purpose in order for them to keep their tax exempt status as a 501c4 under the IRS rules. But in many cases, groups do skirt that rule by either giving grants to other like-minded organizations or classifying spending on ads as educational. These could be ads that either boost or attack a candidate, but because they don't use language like vote for or vote against, they may consider them educational ads that are not political. And so there are a variety of different ways they could skirt that. But as long as their primary purpose is not

political, they're not getting in trouble with the IRS generally. But they're also subject to various requirements under federal election rules. And that's where it gets a little bit trickier about what is allowed and what isn't allowed and what's just lacks enforcement over the years. Technically, if a 501c4 is engaging in enough political activity, they may be acting as a political committee and may be required to disclose their donors. There was an example a little over a year ago where a group was required to disclose its donors, but that was about 10 years after the election took place. So in many cases, even enforcement actions that do result in the donors being required to be

disclosed, it's often so far after the fact, it's not really that meaningful, at least to the individuals who were voting in that election. And so there are a lot of ways that, I guess, in that election. And so there are a lot of ways that, I guess the gist of that is that it's more so the loopholes and people finding new ways to skirt the law as new laws are made trying to combat this. The vast majority of it is at least on paper legal. And those that are questionable in their legality are often not pursued for enforcement action. We just saw the Federal Election Commission get a quorum, which means they now have enough commissioners to vote on enforcement actions in a meaningful way. So it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out in the coming months if we see more aggressive enforcement action against 501c4s that

see more aggressive enforcement action against 501c4s that engage in primary political activity that in some cases we've seen groups spend the entirety of their budget on political activity, which is technically not allowed. And that's where you do start triggering those issues. And so it'll be interesting to see if they start at least trying to address those issues. see if they start at least trying to address those issues. Got it. So I'm curious maybe to hear about some real world examples. You know, in our pre-production chats and emails back and forth, you mentioned some of the reporting you've done on Senator Chuck Schumer, on Senator Mitch McConnell, on the January 6th riots. I'd love to talk specifically about a couple of those things. I'm curious. I mean, the Chuck Schumer and McConnell part of this interests me a lot because the Senate obviously has so much power over determining the legislation that gets brought

up for a vote. Say, what do we know about the kinds of money that is influencing their respective political decisions or campaigns or the legislation they're taking on? So both major parties in the Senate and in the House have dark money groups and affiliated super PACs that are largely created to influence the outcomes of elections. With Senate Republicans, there is the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, and it's Dark Money 501c4, Arm One Nation. These groups kind of work in collaboration with each other where the super PAC spends to get Republicans elected to the Senate or reelected. And One Nation is a bit of a unique example where it spends directly on issue ads to support or to boost Republican candidates without explicitly calling for their election or defeat. pack. But One Nation, which has poured around $100 million into federal elections in 2020 election cycle, has disclosed no spending to the FEC. And that it spent millions of dollars on

issue ads, mostly mentioning Senate candidates. It spent money on online ads. It poured money into the super pack. But because it played these deadlines with disclosure, it stopped spending on TV ads right when the disclosure window kicked in, where it would have had to start disclosing its spending to the FEC, and then just started giving money to its super PAC. It has yet to disclose any spending. And so there are ways that these groups have really strategically avoided not just disclosing their donors, but disclosing any spending to the FEC at all. On the left, you have Majority Forward is the Democratic dark money equivalent of One Nation. They have disclosed some spending to the FEC during the 2020 election cycle, but only a very small amount during that disclosure window prior to Election Day.

They also funded a number of other groups across the country that were kind of pop-up groups that were kind of state-branded that gave the appearance of being more grassroots, when in actuality they were tied to national party groups. The Democratic Super PAC in the Senate is a Senate majority PAC. They also have House Majority PAC and House Majority Forward, kind of all of these interlocking names staying consistent to the branding. And at the House level, they operate very similarly to what we're seeing in the Senate. On the right with the House level, you've got American Action Network and Congressional Leadership Fund. So the Congressional Leadership Fund being the super PAC, American Action Network as

the 501c4. And they have a kind of similar relationship where the 501c4 gives money to the super PAC, which then spends in elections. And all of this is perfectly legal because they are respecting the deadlines that the FEC has put in place. And because they are able to very carefully manipulate in time their spending, they can avoid disclosure of the vast majority of their spending and of their donors altogether, at least for those nonprofits. What's really interesting, though, is the super PAC arms, such as Senate Leadership Fund

for Republicans in the Senate and Senate Majority PAC for Democrats in the Senate, are technically required to disclose their donors. But because they are receiving money from their affiliated dark money groups, some of their donors are unknown because they are only reporting that dark money group, not the ultimate source of funds. And that is becoming increasingly common with groups across the board where super PACs are reporting money from either closely tied dark money groups or dark money groups with closely aligned ideological views. And because of that, we have less disclosure. And it really defeats the purpose of super PACs being required to disclose their donors when you don't actually know who the ultimate donor actually was.

Yeah, I mean, my personal view is that everybody should have an understanding of where political donations and this kind of political money is coming from. I mean, that strikes me as something that's really important for us as voters to understand. I mean, who is funding these campaigns? So I'm wondering, are there people trying to close these loopholes that give and grant anonymity to the donors? I mean, is that something that's possible? Can we do that? How could it happen?

I mean, I want your job to be easier. And I also, as a voter, want it to be easier for me to understand who's backing and who's funding the politicians. who's backing and who's funding the politicians. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

There have been a lot of proposals over the years. A couple of years ago, the FEC did issue some guidance, at least clarifying the requirements for nonpolitical committees to report their donors. Though groups found ways to skirt that rule as well by simply saying that their donations were not for political purposes. well by simply saying that their donations were not for political purposes. There's still a lot of proposals in Congress. H.R. 1, as well as a lot of independent bills, would address some of these issues. We haven't really endorsed any of that. Open Secrets is very limited in the area that we advocate for just promoting transparency, but there are a lot of proposals floating around Congress that have components that are transparency related, and it would at least address some of these issues as well. And to some extent, the FEC addressing these issues

is another component of that. So there are different arms of government that all really need to act in order for dark money to be completely addressed. So one of the things about your work that really struck me and stood out when I was doing some background on you and Open Secrets is that you don't just look at the money that's being passed around in dark monies and super PACs here in the United States, but you're also looking at foreign influence, which is obviously something in the last 10 or 15, 20 years that's become increasingly an issue voters are caring about and paying attention to. So, I mean, what can you tell us about foreign money and U.S. politics?

I mean, is there a lot of it? Is it going around frequently? Are there a lot of politicians who are backed by money that's coming from outside the U.S.? And how do we track it or regulate it or keep an eye on it? Well, that's one of the big issues with the lack of disclosure requirements around dark money groups like 501c4s and limited liability companies that are pouring money into U.S. elections is that we really don't know who is behind them, whether it be a billionaire in the United States, a domestic corporation, or a foreign power. And there's really no way to distinguish those without additional information

about who is behind those donations. And that's really the problem is that we cannot really track unless they're outside of investigations or leaks or criminal cases. We really don't know necessarily who is behind these companies. One way that we have found information about foreign spending to influence U.S. political systems is through Foreign Agents Registration Act filings. These are filings where foreign agents or foreign lobbyists report influence in lobbying campaigns. This can be anything from PR operations to more traditional lobbying of legislators, lawmakers, and others in federal government. And they're generally on behalf of either foreign governments or other foreign organizations, sometimes foreign individuals.

And these filings provide additional information about how much is being spent, who these foreign agents and lobbyists are meeting with, additional details about who the foreign agents and lobbyists are donating to. details about who the foreign agents and lobbyists are donating to. Because although foreign nationals are legally not allowed to give political contributions to U.S. elections, there's very little stopping a foreign agent or a lobbyist who is representing a foreign national in other contexts to continue giving to U.S. candidates. They cannot do so on behalf of the foreign national. U.S. candidates. They cannot do so on behalf of the foreign national. But in many cases, the timing is questionable at best where they're working closely with these foreign clients and giving considerably to lawmakers who are in a position that they could influence the outcome

of what they're lobbying on. So is that to say then that we just really have kind of no clue how much money is coming into our elections from outside the U.S.? That's exactly right. We don't know how much of it's going into elections. Just with the foreign influence and lobbying operations, we've tracked about $2.4 billion in spending since 2016 alone. And that's a huge number if you really think about it. And that's a billion with a B. And we really don't know how much else is going through these other groups because we don't know who is ultimately behind them. And that's just a scary thought, whether it's a foreign power or anyone in the United States who has

stake in the outcome of the election. It can be, it's dangerous to democracy that voters don't know who is trying to impact what they know about a candidate and how they vote. So when you go digging and trying to track the sort of source of some of this money, I mean, have there been instances where you have followed the paper trail, gone from dot to dot to dot and actually come upon the initial source of a funding or bankroll that sort of has been passed through a bunch of dark money entities? I mean, does that happen? Is it possible to actually follow it all the way back to the original source if mistakes are made or there's enough public filing or information or tips? Is that something we can actually get to the bottom of sometimes? which has happened once with our organization where I believe a treasurer accidentally sent us the document with unredacted donors. But in many cases, you can trace back to some extent,

but where you really hit a wall is the ultimate source of funding. But that's not to say tracing back is entirely a futile effort, because you can start to see these networks of dark money groups and players and political operatives, other groups that are involved, limited liability companies that are involved, and really see the full extent of individuals that are not just keeping the network operating, but profiting from it. Got it. So one of the stories that you published recently, which I think was actually how you first popped into my Twitter feed. I mean, again, I've been following Open Secrets for a while, but you made a bit of a splash by reporting recently that Donald Trump's political action committees have actually sent money to some of the people who showed up at the January 6th demonstrations, which ended up turning into the riots in the Capitol building. Can you tell me a little bit about that reporting? I mean, for a story like that, how did you stumble into this information? How did you guys track it? And

what does it tell us about what happened that day or what the president's ties to that day were. Sure. So we had been following some of AP's reporting on the permits that were granted for the rally and the protests that took place before the riots at the Capitol. And I had looked at a copy of the permit and realized just how many of the names were individuals that were paid by either Trump's campaign or Trump's joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee. So that's basically just Trump's campaign sharing money with the National Republican Party. And both of those committees had been paying just significant sums to all of these individuals over the course of the 2020 election cycle, and not just early in the 2020 election cycle, but into November. And we started tallying that up, looking at the full

amount, looking at the firms that those individuals were partners at, that those individuals ran. And in some cases, the firms were involved in the rally as well. And once we ended up tallying up that number, looking at year-end filings, once we got those in, since we've still been getting in information about the 2020 election cycle since one of the more recent deadlines was just a couple weeks ago. And after we tallied all that up, we realized it was about a little over $3.5 million that the Trump campaign and his joint fundraising committee had paid to these individuals and firms who were listed in the permit. And that's a significant amount of money. But what was even more striking to me is how much we don't know

about the Trump campaign's payments because so much of the campaign spending was routed through what is effectively a shell company called America Made Media Consultants that was created by Trump campaign aides and allies as an in-house, kind of an in-house way to pay outside vendors so that they could route all of their funding through this one company rather than reporting all of their individual vendors. And because of that, hundreds of millions of dollars of the Trump campaign's payments just show that they're going to American-made media consultants, LLC, rather than the firms that were actually doing the work or the individuals that were actually doing the work. And because of that, we really don't know the full extent of people and firms that the Trump campaign has paid or when he paid them. And so I think that that's something really considerable with this because

we don't know if the Trump campaign paid other individuals involved in the rally. We don't know if he paid these individuals even more going up to the rally or paid for other aspects. And that's a lot to think about and a lot we don't know. So I just want to be clear. I mean, this is such a great example because it gives us something that's sort of like really tangible to explore the anatomy of. So you're saying there's the Trump Make America Great Again Committee. This is like the president's campaign and joint fundraising committee. This is what people donate to is they give the money to this company called America Made Media Consultants,

and the money is kind of passed through that entity. And once it hits America Made Media Consultants, we sort of don't know where it's going. We know that they spent the money to give to them, but we don't know how America Made Media Consultants is giving it out. Do I have that right? That's correct. And so the issue now is we know who's, this is sort of like the reverse where it's like, we know the origin of the money because we know who the donors are that are giving to Trump Make America Great Again Committee. But in this case, you're saying we don't know where the money ends up. That's right. We don't know where the payments went after that. And it's significant since we've we ended up tallying up all the numbers and we found

more than $771 million that went from the Trump campaign and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee to American Mademade media consultants. And I mean, American-made media consultants, they're an LLC. They're receiving this $770 million. Do we just not have any idea what they've done with it? I mean, the money is with them now. We don't know where that, like the paper trail stops at them. Is that how it works?

That's correct. We see limited disclosure in Federal Election Commission filings by the Trump campaign. In some cases, you see descriptions such as media or just very vague descriptions of what the funds were intended for. But they are not listing the actual firm that ended up doing the work. You're not seeing actual individuals. And the only reason we know that other firms and individuals doing the work is because we were looking at other documents. So a lot of my work relies on Federal Communications Commission records, which is how we trace political advertising. All political ads that are run on TV or radio

have Federal Communications Commission records, and they list the firm that's doing the ad buying. So for all the political ads, they list the ad buyer. And for the Trump campaign, not all of the ad buyers were American-made media consultants. They have other ad buyers listed that there are no payments from Trump's campaign to for that time period. And so we know that they were doing work for Trump's campaign, but that they were not paid

directly. So the other big story of yours that popped up recently in the last few months was about the $750 million of dark money that came into the 2020 election. And one of the things that stuck out about the story, which was published at the end of October, was that Democrats were receiving more help from dark money groups than Republicans for the first time ever, it sounded like. And out of all the dark money spending, all of that $750 million spending that it seems like you guys have tracked, only $95 million of it was reported to the FEC, the Federal Election Commission. Can you tell me a little bit about that story and sort of what it tells us about how the

2020 election happened? Sure. The disparity between the total amount of money we were able to unearth and the amount disclosed to the FEC is really significant because it shows that dark money isn't getting smaller. It's hard to think of $95 million as a small amount, but compared to some other years, it is. But only a small fraction of the total amount of dark money is now being disclosed. We also looked at things like TV ad spending on issue ads that paint a favorable or disfavorable image of a candidate without explicitly calling for their election or defeat. Because those ads avoid the magic words, they're not necessarily required to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission unless they're run during a few weeks before the election. We looked at donations to other political committees.

I mentioned earlier about how dark money groups give to super PACs. We saw a record amount of money from dark money groups to political committees like super PACs this election cycle, and a record amount of spending by those gray money groups, groups that disclose some of their donors, but also take money from dark sources. We also saw a lot of online ad spending during the 2020 election. We don't really have a good point of comparison because this was the first full election cycle that we were able to track online ads for the full cycle using data from Facebook and Google. But that's something that's an outlet for dark money that we're seeing become really

significant because it's very easy for dark money groups to create an online presence with very little paper trail about who's behind it and still get a lot of eyeballs and potentially significant impact without a lot of disclosure. And so altogether, all those numbers added up to more than 750 million. That's a number that we're still tallying up with the year-end filings for the end of 2020. So that number is likely to continue growing. And it's just a huge amount. You also mentioned the partisan breakdown. That was also really significant. This is the first presidential election cycle where we saw dark money benefiting more Democrats than Republicans, or more dark money benefiting Democrats than Republicans. This is only the second election cycle where overall more dark

money benefited Democrats more than Republicans. And that's a trend that we've really just seen continue through the 2020 election cycle. A lot of that being Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. Joe Biden benefited from multiple times more dark money than Donald Trump. We're still tallying the final numbers, but just a huge difference between the amount of support they received. But that's something that also trickled down to the Senate and the House level, where we just saw a huge present of Democratic dark money, both in terms of direct spending as well as donations to political committees from these dark sources. So to just clarify that, I mean, does that mean that there's more money, the source of

which we don't know where it's coming from, than going to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, then there is money we know the root of. I mean, because $750 million, you know, even if it's split in half is close to $400 million. I mean, that's a lot of money. And I know individual donors across the country can together bring in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But it sounds like in some ways we're kind of shooting blind on who's actually funding Joe Biden's presidential race. Right. So we do know at least who funds his campaign.

Campaigns are legally required to disclose their donors. They can only take from actual individuals or PACs. So we do know that where dark money comes into play is with outside groups that then support his campaign through things like advertising and get out the vote efforts and other forms of outside support. They're not allowed to coordinate with the campaign, which creates kind of that barrier that the campaign can say we're not accepting dark money, even though they may be benefiting from it. Got it. So you, Anna, you're sitting at home, you're watching TV, a political ad comes on. Are your wheels just spinning constantly? Like, how do you live just knowing the way the sausage is made like this? I mean,

does it drive you crazy a little bit? I've definitely identified a few dark money groups because I saw them on TV. Yeah. I imagine having an understanding of how some of this works must be both really interesting and a little bit maddening too, because there are political ads everywhere. I mean, I can't turn on the TV during election season without seeing one. It does really color my outlook on the world sometimes. I can't say it's the worst thing to have, but I mean, that's kind of why I see exploring dark money and money in politics more generally is so important because it does have so many different ramifications. It does impact daily lives and there's so many different ways it expresses that the average person might not even realize. So I know a lot of listeners who have

reached out to me and asked me to give more time and coverage to money in politics. They're going to want to know, okay, so I'm armed with some of this information. I have a general understanding of how some of this works. What can I do as a voter to better understand the candidates who I'm trying to decide who I want to vote for, understanding their advertising or political messaging? What's advice for people who are, you know, political junkies that want to make sure they understand where the money is coming from for the political candidates they're considering. Not to shamelessly self-promote our site, but Open Secrets really is the best source for that type of thing. It's a great starting point. We have profile pages on all of the candidates that are running. You can go to their pages and see all of the industries that they're receiving money from, all of their top donors, how they're spending. You can see differences over multiple election cycles. You can look at lobbying. You

can look at how much of the money they're getting is in-state versus out-of-state. And you can just type in your zip code and figure out who your representative is if you don't even know that far. So for users of various levels of knowledge of this, whoever, it's for people you don't even know that far. So for users of various levels of knowledge of this, whoever, it's for people who don't even know who their rep is to the more advanced user, we should have something for everyone on there. I love it. Anna Masolia, an investigative researcher at OpenSecrets. You can find her work at OpenSecrets.com. I use the website all the time. It's really been helpful to inform some of my reporting. Anna, thank you so much for coming on and hanging out with us today.

Absolutely. My pleasure. So So We'll be right back. Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.