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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 movie is currently a huge meme in china. It came out of nowhere and inexplicably got a theatrical release, looks like ass, was animated completely by the director and his mother, and took several years to make. "Niu Lai" translates roughly to "The bull is coming" and apparently the film has several other allusions to stock market puns. The Chinese stock market coincidentally had an uptick the day of its release which added further fuel to the meme fire. After going viral Niu Lai began to actually turn profit at the box office, theatres unprepared for Niu Lai mania (the creators did not distribute any promotional material) had to improvise DIY posters:

workers don't let workers go to union meetings alone

The many trees have been CONQUERED!!!

Panel 14 is done! I actually fell into a pretty comfortable rhythm with the trees and am SO HAPPY with how all of it turned out! That’s the hardest panel done and only two more to go!

A rare piece of Texas prairie has been saved from future development

The preserve is one step closer to its 30,000-acre goal. 

A protected piece of the Katy Prairie is now off-limits to future development as conservationists continue expanding one of the Houston area's most important natural landscapes. The Coastal Prairie Conservancy announced this week that it has permanently protected another 60 acres in northwest Harris County, moving the nonprofit closer to its long-term goal of conserving 30,000 acres on the historic Katy Prairie. The preserve encompasses about 20,000 acres across western Harris and Waller counties just west of Houston. Located in the Upper Cypress Creek watershed, the newly-protected tract includes native prairie, seasonal wetlands and working agricultural land. According to the conservancy, preserving the property will help support wildlife habitat, provide natural flood storage and maintain the area’s natural landscape as development continues to spread across northwest Harris County...

light goes green and your dog goes sprinting off