|
 |
This November’s midterm elections are high stakes, and Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has an unprecedented amount of money on hand to influence the results.
Yet, there is almost no coverage of how MAGA Inc. is spending its money.
The journalism you are about to read required subscribing to a specialized service that tracks political ads across the country, monitoring new political ads daily to identify newsworthy spots, and then comprehensively fact-checking each ad. Since this story involves stock trading by federal officeholders, it also required reviewing dozens of transaction reports — reports that are often hundreds of pages long and contain thousands of entries.
The point is that this kind of reporting is time-consuming and expensive. And it’s not being produced anywhere else.
If you value this work, we need your support. Popular Information is funded exclusively by readers.
We do not paywall our content. Instead, we operate on the honor system. We believe that people who can afford it will chip in. You can make a real difference for $50 per year or $6 per month.
President Trump has amassed an unprecedented war chest of $400 million that can be spent to influence the 2026 midterms through the MAGA Inc. super PAC.
Legally speaking, Trump cannot directly control how it is spent. Super PACs must be technically independent, which means they cannot be controlled by an officeholder or candidate. Generally, this is accomplished by giving strategic and spending authority to a close ally.
At a press conference earlier this month, Trump made it clear that he does not intend to pay attention to this legal requirement:
I’m going to spend whatever amount of money necessary to try and help us. This is money from MAGA Inc. This is my money that I control. Now, this is separate from the RNC… I can spend it for what I want to spend it for. But I’m going to help a lot of the Congressmen and Senators that need help.
In an August interview, a reporter described MAGA Inc. as a super PAC “your allies control.” Trump quickly corrected the reporter. “Not my allies. I control it,” he said. Trump’s comments are now the subject of a Federal Election Commission complaint, although the agency does not have enough commissioners to function.
Last week, Popular Information covered MAGA Inc.’s initial ad spending, which is mostly being routed through a spinoff PAC called No Going Back. The report revealed that many of these ads contained false or hypocritical claims.
Since then, MAGA Inc. has released several new ads through No Going Back, targeting new races. This new batch of ads, which has received almost no media scrutiny, is even more brazen.
For example, in Florida’s 25th District, a new No Going Back ad attacks Congressman Jared Moskowitz (D) for “repeatedly violat[ing] federal law designed to stop Congress from insider trading” and failing “to properly disclose nearly 100 stock trades worth up to $1.7 million.” It notes that the New York Times has “noticed suspicious trades around Moskowitz.”
MAGA Inc., through No Going Back, has spent over $1.2 million in just five days airing this ad in Moskowitz’s district, blanketing the district with millions of impressions.
Stock trading by federal elected officials is a bipartisan problem. Members of Congress have influence on a range of issues that impact stock prices and should not be able to profit from that information by trading stocks. Many members of Congress, however, like to trade stocks, so the law has not changed. It only requires members to disclose their stock transactions within 45 days.
It is true that Moskowitz has made 580 stock trades from 2023 to the present, with a total transaction value of $1.18 million to $10.1 million. On two occasions in August 2024, Moskowitz filed his disclosures late. These late filings involved 94 trades, resulting in a $200 fine. In 2023, The New York Times reported that Moskowitz “sold shares of Seacoast Banking Corporation worth $65,000 to $150,000” belonging to his children around the time “he had attended a bipartisan congressional briefing” on the banking crisis.
But what the MAGA Inc. ad attacking Moskowitz fails to disclose is that the same laws “designed to stop Congress from insider trading” also apply to Trump. Since 2025, Trump has made almost 28,700 trades of securities with a total value of $898 million to $2.87 billion. Almost all of Trump’s trades were disclosed late (some by more than a year) and Trump paid multiple $200 fines. This is the same conduct — at a much larger scale — that Trump is spending millions to convince Florida voters is disqualifying for Moskowitz.
 |
A Bloomberg analysis found that, since returning to office, Trump has traded more securities than all members of Congress combined.
As president, of course, Trump has far more influence over policy and stock prices than an individual Congressman. Popular Information has documented numerous instances where Trump bought stock in a company and then praised the same company days (or even hours) later.
The MAGA Inc. attacks on stock trades are not limited to Moskowitz. Through No Going Back, MAGA Inc. is running an ad attacking Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat representing the 34th District. The ad accuses Gonzalez of “hiding his secret stock trades.”
Since 2018, however, Gonzalez has made just 13 stock transactions with a total value of $646,000 to $1.57 million. In 2022, Gonzalez failed to timely report a single stock sale worth between $1,000 and $15,000. The ad cites a Business Insider report about that singular late filing. No Going Back has spent about $130,000 so far on the Gonzalez ad, with most of the spending on digital platforms.
A third No Going Back ad on stock trading targets Congressman Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat representing New York’s 3rd District. Suozzi’s record of stock disclosure is poor, particularly during his first stint from 2017 to 2023. Suozzi failed to file any periodic transaction reports until September 2021, w