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what if the truth is more pedestrian: that the I.R.S. is simply not adequately funded to do its job and that Republicans are the ones who have kept the agency underfunded?

Republican zeal for reducing the size of government, particularly its tax collecting apparatus, has left the I.R.S. ill-equipped to perform its functions, one of which is to review applications for tax-exempt status from groups claiming to be “social welfare” organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Was there, Connolly asked, “a triggering event that flooded the I.R.S. with new applications?” Answering his own question, Connolly said “the triggering event is the Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United. The number of applications between 2009 and 2012 for a 501(c)(4) doubled from 1,751 to 3,357.” Citizens United was decided on Jan. 21, 2010.

Bernie Sanders Narrows Fund-Raising Gap With Hillary Clinton

Mrs. Clinton, who has been able to tap into one of the most successful fund-raising networks in American politics, reported raising more than $28 million for her primary campaign since the beginning of July, while Mr. Sanders, who has largely eschewed fund-raising from large donors, reported raising about $26 million.

when she brought in a total of $47.5 million, almost all of it for the primary campaign.

They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign

Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

Upended by the coronavirus outbreak, nonprofits are laying off workers and seeking help from stretched donors.

Nonprofits like No Limits are ubiquitous in the United States: built on a dream, dedicated to good works, thinly capitalized. Like so much in American life, they have been upended — perhaps temporarily, maybe forever.

Crucial spring fund-raisers and conferences have been canceled or moved to less lucrative online venues. Donors are stretched in many directions, preoccupied with their own problems, and much less flush than they were two months ago. Nonprofits that are paid by local governments said new rules against large gatherings were making their services impossible to deliver, placing their existence at risk.

Germany Calls for 10 Billion Euro Permanent U.N. Crisis Fund

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Development Minister Gerd Mueller, citing hunger crises in eastern Africa, said the United Nations should create a permanent 10 billion euro ($11.19 billion) crisis fund, with contributions to be based on a country's financial strength. "The catastrophe is already upon us," Mueller said in an interview with the German newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, published on Saturday. He pointed to dire conditions in countries such as Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Mueller said the United Nations estimated the financial needs in eastern Africa alone amounted to $4 billion to $5 billion. Creating a fund that would be continually restocked would make it easier to respond to recurring humanitarian crises, he said. "We need to accomplish this as a world community," he said.

The former president this week escalated a standoff over the Republican Party’s financial future, blasting party leaders and urging his backers to send donations to his new political action committee — not to the institutional groups that traditionally control the G.O.P.’s coffers.

The aggressive move against his own party is the latest sign that Mr. Trump is trying to wrest control of the low-dollar online fund-raising juggernaut he helped create, diverting it from Republican fund-raising groups toward his own committee, which has virtually no restrictions on how the money can be spent.

What’s more, Mr. Trump’s advisers believe the future of party fund-raising is in low-dollar contributions, not the class of major donors who have mostly signaled that they want distance from him after his monthslong push falsely claiming that the Nov. 3 election had been stolen, which led to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“I have no doubt that the concern stems from what happened in the 2020 election,” said Rick Hasen, a UC-Irvine law professor who runs the election law blog and has written several books about election administration. “Anything that helped that election run smoothly and effectively and cleanly is now the target for attack.”

The grant programs allowed many election administrators put on what one expert at NYU’s Brennan Center described as their “dream” elections. About one in every five local offices accepted the philanthropic funding.

The Republican push to prohibit private election election comes after the charity grants occupied a piece of conspiracy theories floating around the 2020 election — fueled by President Trump and his allies’ ongoing beef with Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder whose charity put up more than $400 million in grants for election administration last year.

President Joe Biden on Thursday criticized Republican lawmakers who have touted parts of the Covid-19 economic relief law that benefit their constituents despite having voted against the law, saying: "Some people have no shame."

No Republican in Congress voted for the American Rescue Plan when it passed earlier this year, but Biden noted several are now touting portions of the $1.9 trillion package that have gone toward their home districts.

Without saying any names out loud, the President said several Republicans have been taking credit for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which was recently established to help struggling restaurants and other businesses keep their doors open during the pandemic, and grants to community health care centers.

It is hard to qualify for Medicaid as an adult in Missouri.

That was all set to change on July 1 because of a constitutional amendment voters approved last summer that made Missouri the 38th state to expand Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

As it crafts the budget for the next fiscal year, the state legislature has moved to strip funding for Medicaid expansion.

A federal watchdog concluded that President Trump broke the law when he froze assistance funds for Ukraine last year, according to a report unveiled on Thursday.

The White House has said that it believed Trump was acting within his legal authority.

Trump's decision to freeze military aid appropriated by Congress is at the heart of impeachment proceedings against the president

With the economic recovery faltering and federal aid stalled in Washington, state governments are stepping in to try to help small businesses survive the pandemic winter.

But there is a limit to what states can do. The pandemic has ravaged budgets, driving up costs and eroding tax revenues. And unlike the federal government, most states cannot run budget deficits.

“We have done what we can do to pump money into small businesses so that people can continue to work,” said Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican. “From the jobs point of view and the economy point of view and the workers’ point of view and small businesses, we’ve got to get that help from the federal government. That’s the only place we can get it.”

Xi Jinping’s announcement that China will stop funding overseas coal projects could buy the world about three more months in the race to keep global heating to a relatively safe level of 1.5C, experts say.

Ending Chinese coal financing has long been near the top of climate activists’ wishlists. For more than a decade, China has been the lender of last resort for overseas governments seeking finance for thermal power plants. That role has accelerated since the 2013 start of the country’s belt and road initiative (BRI).

Xi’s declaration is likely to affect at least 54 gigawatts of China-backed coal power projects,

The share of adults who say spending on policing in their area should be increased now stands at 47%, up from 31% in June 2020. That includes 21% who say funding for their local police should be increased a lot, up from 11% who said this last summer.

Support for reducing spending on police has fallen significantly: 15% of adults now say spending should be decreased, down from 25% in 2020. And only 6% now advocate decreasing spending a lot, down from 12% who said this last year.

White (49%) and Hispanic (46%) adults are more likely than Black (38%) or Asian (37%) adults to say spending on police in their area should be increased.

Despite not being able to pay the Russians for complete S-300 Surface to Air Missile systems, Iran still manages to find the money to fund groups committed to Israel's destruction.

Moscow has already transferred three S-300 missile batteries to the Iranians, but have yet to send over the other two

It provides approximately half of the terror group's funding, which amounts to approximately one billion dollars a year.

Governor Charlie Baker is pledging to boost state funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Massachusetts if his fellow Republicans in Washington push ahead with a plan to slash the flow of federal dollars to the organization.

“The administration is prepared to fund these services should the federal government pursue changes that would block care for women and families here in Massachusetts,” she said.

“We certainly object to giving the money to Planned Parenthood when there are hundreds of other facilities that do health care services,” Beckwith said.

let’s think about what it means that these 25 men (yes, they’re all men) made a combined $21 billion in 2013

ignore the rhetoric about “job creators” and all that. Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to innovators and entrepreneurs, people who build businesses and push technology forward. But that’s not what those hedge fund managers do for a living; they’re in the business of financial speculation, which John Maynard Keynes characterized as “anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.” Or since they make much of their income from fees, they’re actually in the business of convincing other people that they can anticipate average opinion about average opinion.

at this point, the evidence suggests that hedge funds are a bad deal for everyone except their managers; they don’t deliver high enough returns to justify those huge fees, and they’re a major source of economic instability

In 2010, with Greece crippled by debt and threatening the survival of the euro, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank began imposing German-inspired austerity on the country. The aim was to slash the budget deficit and address fundamental problems like corruption and a failure to collect taxes. Such policies, they promised, would get Greece back on its feet, able to borrow again on financial markets.

Greeks grudgingly went along, assured that painful reform would return the country to growth by 2012. Instead, Greece lost 400,000 jobs that year and continued on a decline that would see a drop in the gross domestic product since 2008 not much different from the one experienced during the first five years of the United States’ Great Depression.

Greece’s unemployment rate was supposed to top out at 15 percent in 2012, according to International Monetary Fund calculations. But it roared to 25 percent that year, reached 27 percent in 2013 and has ticked downward only slightly since.

President Barack Obama will ask the U.S. Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funds to fight Zika at home and abroad and pursue a vaccine, the White House said on Monday, but he added there is no reason to panic over the mosquito-borne virus.

Zika, spreading rapidly in South and Central America and the Caribbean, has been linked to severe birth defects in Brazil, and public health officials' concern is focused on pregnant women and women who may become pregnant.

Obama's request to Congress includes $200 million for research, development and commercialization of new vaccines and diagnostic tests for the virus.