Geologist

How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.

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As The New York Times reported in 2021, the all-caps writing and manufactured panic of political fundraising spam function as a filter, repelling savvy donors and taking advantage of the same cognitive vulnerabilities that make seniors targets for online fraud. A 2024 CNN investigation quoted a complaint from one person who discovered that their 93-year-old father was being inundated with Democratic donation appeals. “These fraudsters need to stop defrauding older people,” it read, “especially ones with mental impairments.”

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Republicans went all-in on these tactics first and offer a cautionary tale. After flooding supporters’ phones with fundraising spam in recent election cycles, their grassroots donor base — the party supporters who occasionally give when something moves them, until the spam drives them off — has been hollowed out. Republicans raised less from small- and mid-sized donors in 2024, a presidential year, than in the 2022 midterms.

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Whether or not those who operate this fundraising model recognize or intend it, fundraising spam runs on similar psychological levers to those that federal law enforcement and consumer-protection groups identify as hallmarks of elder financial exploitation: manufactured urgency, emotional appeals engineered to trigger guilt or fear, false exclusivity, fabricated account or profile statuses that look like official notices, and relentless pressure to give before there’s time to think. Why stamp “FINAL ATTEMPT” on a message and warn that “the deadline is just hours away” if not to manufacture urgency? Why claim that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hakeem Jeffries have emailed you, then demand an answer to their “desperate pleas” if not to trigger guilt? Why warn that Social Security checks will be “SLASHED by $500/month?!” — up from the $460 in the email sent two days earlier — if not to stoke fear? Why tell someone they are “the only Democrat in your city who hasn’t responded” if not to single them out? Why announce a recipient’s “appointment to the Social Security Advisory Board” above a picture of a Social Security card if not to dress a solicitation as official business? Why the midnight deadlines, the countdown timers, the “400% MATCH” that applies only if you give right now, if not to force a decision before reflection can intervene?

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Defenders justify the model with one claim: It works. Federal records show this is a half-truth, and a troubling one at that. In the fall of 2025, when Paul Rivera — tasked with writing the DNC’s 2024 post-election autopsy report — asked me to estimate how much Democrats now spend to raise a single dollar, my analysis of the data revealed a profound collapse in fundraising efficiency. The share of campaign dollars consumed by fundraising costs had ballooned from 8 cents per dollar in 2008 to more than 50 cents by 2024. Spam operations make up a growing share of that spending, and are especially inefficient. In 2025, they consumed between 70 and 75 cents of every dollar they raised.

This is not true for IGM (intersex genital mutilation) victims. When i say intersex infants and children are being mutilated, i am not disparaging bottom surgery- i mean that the intersex ""corrective"" surgeries performed against our will do not meet the same standards. They aren't something we choose, they're forced on us. Victims of IGM are often left with chronic pain, issues with genital function and sensation, poor aesthetic outcomes, and scarring (which affects both the visual appearance AND can cause functional issues). These surgeries are completely unnecessary and done largely at the doctor's discretion, often without the knowledge of parents (either because they were not told or they were fooled), and the victim is almost always deeply unhappy (and often dysphoric) as a result. Doctors get to decide to mutilate us, lie to our families, and then also mistreat and abuse us for the rest of our lives. Further, outside of the surgical procedures, growing up intersex means routinely going through violating and invasive "inspections" of your genitals by doctors. I can recall having doctors, nurses, and volunteers demand to see my genitals as a young child, touching and examining them without my consent- same for my breasts once i hit puberty. Just about every intersex person i know can say the same. It's routine and constant medical and sexual abuse from medical professionals.