More Muckraking From 2025

Over on Bluesky, we’ve assembled our year-end thread of most-viewed Sludge stories.

But in the last hours of the year, I wanted to link to a few more stories that hopefully shed light on the well-capitalized forces moving behind political issues.

In July, I spoke with Amanda Fischer, policy director at the group Better Markets and former chief of staff to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, about the ramifications of deregulating crypto markets, as the CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) seeks to do. Fischer warned that investor protections such as dispute resolution, legal recourse, and insurance coverage—rules that are required in the stock market—would be absent on many crypto exchanges. More companies would be incentivized to raise capital via the “Wild West” of crypto securities—and more FDIC-insured banks would be exposed to companies playing with self-dealing and collapse.

Billionaire conservative megadonors saw their net worth soar under the Trump-GOP tax law signed in 2017, based on figures from the coalition Americans for Tax Fairness: Ken Griffin (400%), Stephen Schwarzman (241%), Paul Singer (122%), etc. Of course, the tax cuts benefiting the wealthy were permanently enshrined in this summer’s reconciliation bill. Think back on endless TV commercials on crime and border security: the top 100 donors in federal elections gave more than three times as much to Republican candidates and groups as they did to Democrats, we found via OpenSecrets data.

As DOGE infiltrated federal agencies like the Department of Labor, we pinned down what information Elon Musk might be getting on labor investigations into his companies Tesla and SpaceX—as well as records from the CFPB on digital payment services, like his planned X Money.

More than 10 Biden administration officials decided to resign their positions in protest of U.S. policies providing unconditional military aid and offensive weapons to Israel. Two U.S. government bodies—USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration—concluded that Israel was intentionally blocking food and medicine deliveries to Gaza. But Tony Blinken overrode those findings, enabling weapons to flow, and last year was quietly added to the board of the Center for American Progress.

Remember this the next time conservative Democrats worry about the “cost” of a social spending program: the infeasible “Golden Dome” shield, supported by many Blue Dog Democrats and HASC Dems, would have a “price tag” of $6.2 trillion, if it were ever to function. No outcry detected from self-described fiscal conservatives.

In the Sludge story this year that had the biggest impact, my co-founder Donald Shaw scoured a FARA filing to identify plans from Democratic firm SKDK to “flood the zone” with pro-Israel narratives on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms. SKDK soon announced it was dropping the contract.

What’s ahead next year? Well, the last midterm elections were the most expensive in history by far. Federal lobbying spending is hitting record highs. Billionaire-funded super PACs are slobbering to spend a fortune in 2026 races. We'll see a flood of TV commercials and digital ads paid for by the AI industry, like the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, executives at OpenAI, and Meta—replicating the crypto industry playbook from last cycle.

Follow along on Bluesky, Mastodon, and get our newsletter. If you know anyone who can help us continue this investigative reporting in the 2026 election year, helping arrange a tax-deductible gift or charitable grant, drop me a line: david@readsludge.com or Signal: davidrussellmoore.52