dark money

January 16, 2020 - Since the U.S Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United 10 years ago, corporate campaign cash has poured into supreme court races across the South. With seats up for grabs this year in Arkansas, North Carolina, and West Virginia, that trend is likely to continue.

June 17, 2016 - A watchdog group has filed complaints against 10 "social welfare" nonprofits for allegedly breaking campaign finance laws. Six of the nonprofits are also targets of a criminal complaint submitted to the FBI and Justice Department accusing them of lying to the IRS. Several are part of the Koch brothers' conservative spending machine.

June 10, 2016 - MapLight has compiled a database of all politically active "social welfare" nonprofits, many of which formed after a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling loosening rules for political spending. It documents 650 such groups in the South, with some of the top-grossing ones part of the billionaire Koch brothers' formidable political spending machine.

May 28, 2015 - North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has become a leading national advocate for expanded offshore drilling — a role that builds on almost three decades of his close personal, economic and political ties to the energy industry.

May 6, 2015 - Over 100 corporations will receive shareholder resolutions this year calling on them to voluntarily disclose their political spending and lobbying activities. Some companies have already begun disclosing this information voluntarily, including North Carolina-based tobacco giant Reynolds American.

April 30, 2015 - Five years after the BP disaster, a group of governors led by North Carolina's Pat McCrory is pushing for drilling in the Atlantic. The group has close ties to a secret-money nonprofit and energy lobbyists, a relationship that raises questions about transparency, ethics and the blurring of public and private interests.

March 12, 2015 - Independent political groups unaffiliated with campaigns spent more than $10 million in North Carolina's 2014 state-level elections, nearly tripling the amount spent on legislative races two years earlier. While Republicans enjoyed a slight edge in support, Democrats are catching up.

January 16, 2015 - With the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision lifting political spending restrictions coming up on Jan. 21, the Brennan Center for Justice released a report this week looking at outside spending and dark money in last year's U.S. Senate races -- and it paints a frightening for democracy.

January 6, 2015 - The IRS faces a number of hurdles before its new regulations for social welfare nonprofits can be finalized, including potential opposition from Congress.

December 19, 2014 - 501(c)(3) nonprofits are not supposed to get involved in supporting or opposing political candidates -- yet such groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads criticizing specific candidates during the North Carolina election this year. Are they breaking the law or just pushing it to its limits?