Nathan Stanford desk / OSINT notes

The biggest House and Senate super PACs are not just raising disclosed megadonor cash — they are being refueled by affiliated nonprofits that do not have to name their donors. An Issue One analysis of FEC reports covering January 2025 through June 2026 puts that dark-money pipeline at $197.7 million into the four main party-aligned congressional super PACs.

The four pipelines

According to Issue One (July 22, 2026), the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) and Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), plus Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC (SMP) and House Majority PAC (HMP), raised $714.6 million combined in the period studied. Their affiliated dark-money groups — One Nation, American Action Network, Majority Forward, and House Majority Forward — supplied more than $1 of every $4 those super PACs raised.

Issue One’s partisan split of that dark-money haul: Republican-aligned super PACs accounted for about 58% of both total receipts and dark-money receipts in the sample; Democratic-aligned groups about 42%.

June accelerant

  • SLF ← One Nation: $24.29 million in June (more than double the prior quarter’s $11.18 million). Cycle-to-date: $70.74 million — about 28% of SLF receipts.
  • CLF ← American Action Network: $20 million in June (vs. $7.5 million prior quarter). Cycle-to-date: $44.2 million — about 27% of CLF receipts.
  • SMP ← Majority Forward: $28 million in June (up from $25 million). Cycle-to-date: $61 million — about 35% of SMP receipts.
  • HMP ← House Majority Forward: $6.5 million in June (up from $4 million). Cycle-to-date: $21.7 million — about 18% of HMP receipts.

Why “disclosure” still fails voters

Super PACs disclose their immediate donors. When that donor is a 501(c) dark-money group, the public trail often ends at a bland nonprofit name. Issue One’s point — and the OSINT problem — is structural: after Citizens United and SpeechNow, unlimited independent spending can be routed through entities that legally withhold the true source.

State experiments Issue One flags (Alaska and Arizona disclosure/disclaimer rules; a Montana ballot fight) are separate from federal FEC rules. Federally, the watchers still start at Schedule A transfers from the nonprofit to the super PAC — then hunt whatever state filings, tax returns, or leak trails exist upstream.

Sourcing note: All dollar figures and percentages in this post are taken from Issue One’s published analysis of FEC reports linked above. We did not re-sum the underlying filings for this briefing.