More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed

“State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.

Aug. 31, 2026Updated 8:48 a.m. ET

Nearly twice as many mail ballots were rejected for arriving late in Michigan’s primaries this year when compared to 2024.Rebecca Cook/Reuters

The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.

The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.

The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.

The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.

Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply. The moves have especially alarmed Democrats, who fear the president could use the Postal Service to tip the scales of a midterm election that polls show currently favors their party. Mr. Trump has stated publicly that curtailing mail voting is good for Republicans.

A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday blocking the Postal Service from proceeding after concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election. The administration is appealing.

Meanwhile, the uptick in rejection rates for mail ballots this year could fuel the partisan battle. The ballots that were tossed because they arrived too late represent a fraction of the overall mail ballot total — the Postal Service typically delivers more than 95 percent of mail ballots on time. But the agency has curtailed its services in the face of budget shortfalls in recent years, leading to slower mail delivery across the country.

Election officials say the rise in rejections, along with the general sentiment out of Washington, has prompted them to scramble to put safeguards in place to ensure that voters’ ballots are counted.

In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, has rapidly increased the number of drop boxes across the state — by 78 percent since 2018 — so voters can return their ballots without concerns of postal delays or interference.

Election officials are scrambling to put safeguards in place to make sure votes aren’t rejected because of postal delays. In Colorado, officials have dramatically increased the number of ballot drop boxes.Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

“We did change the law last legislative session,” Ms. Griswold said in an interview. “Mail ballots are going out sooner, and drop boxes are going out sooner. That is in direct response to the uncertainty coming from D.C. and Trump’s attacks on our democracy.”

In a statement, The Postal Service countered claims that the agency has become unreliable by noting that over 95 percent of mail ballots have arrived on time in recent elections.

“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a returned ballot,” the statement said. “As such, our consistent message to voters who choose to vote by mail is to mail early.”

Following the 2020 election, when a deluge of voters opted to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, the agency developed new procedures to prioritize on-time delivery for mail ballots. After a court case in 2021, the Postal Service agreed to maintain the new measures for all even-year federal elections through 2028.

William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish the new procedures, said the fact that mail ballot delays were more prevalent in odd-year and primary elections suggested that the measures were effective. But he conceded that structural changes within the agency slowing service across the board were also affecting ballots.

As part of a 10-year-plan established in 2021 to shore up the Postal Service’s finances through structural changes, the agency set up regional distribution centers to process mail and increased the delivery standards for first-class mail, from three days to five.

The Postal Service further slowed down mail in 2024 when it implemented a centralized system that postmarks mail when it reaches regional centers, not when it first enters the mail stream. The delay has particularly affected mail voting, especially in states that rely on postmarks to determine if a ballot is valid.

These cost-cutting changes have so far struggled to make a substantial dent in the agency’s multibillion dollar deficit, but they have slowed the delivery of mail votes. Election officials are starting to notice.

In Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election in April, several hundred ballots arrived a day late in Dane County, home to Madison, the state capital, according to Scott McDonell, the county clerk.

“That was highly unusual,” he said. “In the past, we would only see a handful.”

In a survey by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, two-thirds of clerks reported observing problems with mail delivery times in that election.

“The worst mail delivery day of the week is Tuesday (unfortunately for elections!) and our office jokingly but sadly refers to it as ‘no mail Tuesday,’” read one submission from a clerk in Waukesha County.

Mr. McDonell, who is a Democrat, says he now tells voters to use drop boxes, vote early in person or mail their ballots at least two weeks before Election Day.

In Washington, a universal mail-voting state, more voters are using drop boxes than trusting the Postal Service with their ballots, said Stuart Holmes, the state’s elections director.

“The Postal Service, these are great people, hard-working people,” Mr. Holmes said about the state’s local postal employees. “But their operation has become unreliable.”

In Washington’s primary earlier this year, 75 percent of rejected mail ballots were tossed because they arrived too late.

Ricky Hatch, a Republican election official in Utah, a state that relies almost exclusively on mail voting, said he had noticed a nationwide increase of election officials encouraging voters to mail their ballots early because of Postal Service slowdowns.

“We’ve definitely morphed over time from going from ‘Hey, get your ballot in before the deadline’ to ‘Mail your ballot at least a week early, if you want to have it counted,’” Mr. Hatch said.

Now, he added, the advice is even more cautious: “Better yet, use a drop box.”

Adam Sella covers breaking news for The Times in Washington.

Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.“

 

Millions of Dollars in Secret Spending Could Upend the 2026 Midterms

“At least $1 billion from anonymous donors is flowing into the midterm elections. Dark money is not new, but it now permeates nearly every major contest.

Aug. 31, 2026Updated 8:55 a.m. ET

Nonprofits or super PACs have aired dozens of ads this year in House and Senate races using dark money, which is political spending by groups that hide the names of their donors.

By Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer

Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer have both spent years covering the role of money in politics and the efforts of billionaires and special interests to stay hidden.

In Michigan and Minnesota, tens of millions of untraceable dollars poured into recent Senate primaries trying to topple progressive Democratic candidates.

In Kansas, the torrent of secret money that boosted an obscure Democratic Senate candidate amounted to 100 times as much as what he had on hand in the final stretch of the primary.

And in Texas, Republicans exploited lax federal disclosure rules to spend secretly and try to nominate a weak Democratic candidate whose own party had denounced her as antisemitic.

All across America, the midterm elections are drowning in dark money.

A New York Times review of advertising data, campaign-finance filings and tax records revealed that about $1 billion in anonymous money is sloshing through the political landscape in 2026, a staggering sum and yet almost certainly a low-end estimate, given how difficult this money is to trace.

Dark money is the term used by the campaign industry to describe political spending by groups that hide the names of their donors. The deluge is upending races from coast to coast, with billionaires, corporations and special interests hiding their agendas and involvement with relative ease.

It is impossible to know the full scale of this spending. The Times’s tally of the $1 billion includes only what is publicly available, primarily television and digital ad purchases and donations to super PACs from nonprofit groups. These groups also fund political activity that is more difficult to track, such as direct mail, hiring influencers to boost favorable content or deploying door-knockers for causes that are not technically campaigns.

Yet the sum is more than “enough money to manipulate a lot of politicians and to put a lot of poison in the blood of the American political system,” said Nick Penniman, the chief executive of Issue One, a group that has sought to reduce the role of money in politics.

Just this month, one Wyoming group with a thin paper trail dating only to this spring, Choose Freedom Inc., sprang into action to reserve about $22 million in ads to boost Republicans in two dozen battleground House and Senate races. The next day, another Republican-linked nonprofit rolled out a $22 million campaign in 41 House districts. On Thursday, a nonprofit called Per Aspera Policy Inc. emerged from obscurity to place a $3.7 million ad buy praising the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio.

All of it involved untraceable cash.

Secret money is not new. But the pervasiveness has reached industrial scale in 2026 — and serves as a preview of its coming prevalence in 2028. Nearly every major primary and battleground race this fall has been or will be shaped by secret funds. The anonymously sourced expenditures are so big that, in some instances, they are outstripping the spending of campaigns themselves, making candidates seem like bystanders of their own elections. The trend is especially true in primaries.

Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times

In Texas, Senator John Cornyn was one of the cycle’s biggest beneficiaries of secret money. About $43 million in such funds was spent for his failed primary run, including expenditures by a group led by former Gov. Rick Perry.

Big money doesn’t always win elections, and in some races, the spending invites significant backlash.

“The power of our many is greater than the power of their money,” Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, declared after his victory. His opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, had benefited from about $62 million in ads from groups funded either entirely or heavily with secret money.

Supporters of undisclosed money argue that allowing anonymity is crucial to free speech.

Each cycle, lawyers look for new loopholes to exploit and old rules to stretch. Democrats and Republicans are locked in something of a partisan arms race, competing for new ways to conceal contributors.

Both are funding more and more types of political activities, such as research and polling, through nonprofit arms. Some are passing tens of millions of dollars through an interwoven network of nonprofits, making the funds even more difficult to track. Others are directly paying for what are called “policy” ads that can be funded with secret donors, even though, for the average voter, they can be virtually indistinguishable from campaign commercials.

“It’s almost like the people inside the Beltway live in a drug den, and this is just the newest drug that’s circulating,” said Mr. Penniman, whose organization formed in the aftermath of the landmark Citizens United decision in 2010, which lifted restrictions on political spending.

The biggest dealers in dark money this cycle are four nonprofit organizations allied with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. Together, they account for more than $460 million from hidden sources being spent shaping this year’s elections, the Times analysis found.

The groups are registered under the federal tax code as social welfare organizations, allowing them to operate as nonprofits. In reality, they each share office space with a sibling super PAC. In all four cases, the nonprofit and PAC are run by the same political strategists, essentially offering donors a one-stop shop to avoid disclosure while spending millions on politics.

The direct spending on ads from these four nonprofits is growing: from $166 million in the 2022 midterms to more than $242 million this cycle so far, according to data from AdImpact, the ad-monitoring service.

”We are on track to have the least transparent midterm at least since Citizens United,” said Dan Weiner, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, which advocates for greater transparency rules. “We’re almost at the point where anyone who doesn’t want to be disclosed doesn’t have to be disclosed.”

Maine: A case study

Two elections in Maine illustrate the phenomenon.

In one, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, is running for re-election in a race that could determine control of the Senate. Voters there are besieged by nearly $75 million in advertising funded by dark money on both sides, according to a Times analysis of donations and data from AdImpact.

That amounts to more than $80 in secret money per registered voter in a state with fewer than 900,000 of them.

Dark money in the Maine Senate race

$27.1 million Democratic ad spending

Anti-Collins

Pro-Collins

Unknown

Pro-Platner

$47.4 million Republican ad spending

Five nonprofits

Five groups

$74.5 million in dark money

It’s not just television ads. Ms. Collins has benefited from at least 10 different mailers from One Nation, a Republican-aligned nonprofit, among them mailers thanking her for working for veterans, firefighters and cancer research, according to Mintt, a mail-tracking firm.

Who secretly gives money matters. Ms. Collins, as an example, serves as the chairwoman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which helps direct federal spending. That puts her in an elite group of lawmakers with whom special interest groups have a particularly keen interest in currying favor. Ms. Collins also attracts plenty of dark money that works against her.

And while the public remains in the dark, the politicians themselves are often told who their benefactors are. One nonprofit group, Stronger America Inc., has spent more than $11 million on ads helping Ms. Collins — the only candidate it has supported. In July, Ms. Collins attended a dinner hosted by that nonprofit, which was held at the townhouse in Washington owned by the tech company Oracle, according to three people briefed on the event.

A spokesperson for Oracle, whose building regularly hosts fund-raising dinners for politicians, did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Collins’s campaign also did not respond.

Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Senator Susan Collins has seen more than $74 million spent anonymously in her race. The money has come from both Democrats seeking to defeat her and Republicans trying to re-elect her.

In another race in Maine, the retirement of Representative Jared Golden from the most Republican-leaning House seat held by a Democrat has created a rare opportunity for the G.O.P.

So Republican operatives set out to meddle in the Democratic primary. They spent nearly $500,000 to defeat the Democrat they saw as the strongest candidate, a state senator named Joe Baldacci. Using a new super PAC that did not disclose any donors until after the election and a limited liability company that masked its Republican vendors, the group flooded the airwaves with an ad that labeled Mr. Baldacci “dark money’s choice.”

“It’s the ultimate in deception,” lamented Mr. Baldacci in an interview. His loss by several hundred votes has intensified Democratic concerns about ceding the seat.

In other words, the Republican meddling worked.

Layers upon layers of secrecy

Sixteen years have passed since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission helped open the floodgates for super PACs, the independent political committees that, unlike candidates, can raise unlimited money and spend unlimited sums on federal elections. At the time, the Supreme Court reasoned that transparency would prove to be a powerful accountability check on such activities.

“Citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

Today, the opposite has proved true. Secrecy has become so widespread it is essentially systematized.

Three distinct strategies help political groups hide their donors.

The first is simply using nonprofit organizations that do not have to disclose their contributors to run ads. Technically, the commercials are supposed to be about issues, but they often attack or praise sitting House members and senators in caustic terms.

The second is for these nonprofit groups to donate to allied super PACs. The super PACs can run explicitly election-focused ads and are required to disclose their donors — but not their donors’ donors — keeping the true origin of the money hidden. There are virtually no limits to the size of these transfers: Some high-profile super PACs are entirely funded by nonprofits.

The third strategy is an increasingly popular option in the midterms: “pop-up” super PACs, which exploit a gap in federal disclosure laws. The final pre-election deadline to reveal donors is three weeks before a federal election, allowing any last-minute group to pop up and spend freely — and secretly — in the final days of a race. The pop-up super PACs must ultimately disclose their donors, but not until the election has passed — too late for voters to weigh that information.

Tom Baker/Getty Images

The biggest spender in the Democratic Senate primary in Minnesota was a super PAC behind Representative Angie Craig. That group was almost entirely funded by a nonprofit started just in December. She lost.

“If you are trying to hide who your donors are, you are probably trying to hide some nasty stuff,” said Representative Chris Deluzio, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who has sponsored legislation to close this loophole.

Defenders of secret political spending offer a different take. Some Democratic donors privately say such funding can offer shelter at a moment when the Trump administration has explicitly targeted Democratic financiers.

Sean Cooksey, a Republican who is the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and the former counsel to Vice President JD Vance, said that America was built on anonymous speech, dating back to the Federalist Papers.

“There is important political value in allowing people to associate and speak anonymously,” Mr. Cooksey said. “Especially when they have unpopular opinions.”

The Internal Revenue Service, which oversees nonprofits but has rarely policed political spending, is even less equipped to do so after cuts by the Trump administration. The Federal Election Commission, with only two of six seats currently filled, does not even have enough commissioners for a quorum to hold a formal meeting, let alone enforce campaign finance laws.

“The F.E.C. has never been a cop on the beat,” said Mr. Weiner of the Brennan Center. “But at the moment they can’t even enforce routine traffic violations.”

The commission declined to comment, and the I.R.S. did not return a request for comment.

A growing universe of dark money

Some of the $1 billion in secret money can be traced to ideological interest groups, who disclose their agendas but not their core donors. On the right, the anti-tax Koch family network accounts for over $50 million in spending from undisclosed sources, and on the left, a group of three environmental nonprofits have injected close to $50 million in dark money as well, according to the analysis of AdImpact and donation records. And $30 million has come from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent heavily against Dr. El-Sayed in Michigan.

Nic Antaya for The New York Times

Haley Stevens, the defeated U.S. Senate candidate, received $62 million in support from six major groups, all of which were either dark-money nonprofits, super PACs heavily funded by dark-money groups or “pop-up” super PACs.

One of the biggest new forces in this world is an outfit called the American Prosperity Alliance, which has almost perfected the modern dark-money playbook.

Four years ago, Republican operatives and donors grew frustrated watching Democrats intervene in G.O.P. primaries in 2022 to help elect weaker nominees.

And so this cycle, the American Prosperity Alliance has done the same. The group funneled $37 million to a partner super PAC called Conservative Americans PAC that spawned a network of at least five different “pop-up” committees that used limited liability corporations and postal service boxes to further mask its activities.

Some of these pop-ups adopted Democratic-sounding names like Lead Left PAC or Progressive Champions PAC and intervened in a half-dozen Democratic primaries. This was the network that tried and failed to elevate the Texas Democrat who had been denounced as antisemitic. The network also financed the anti-Baldacci ads.

The American Prosperity Alliance has leveraged all three ways that organizations keep their funders secret. The nonprofit group donates to super PACs. It uses the pop-up loophole. And its three projects also have directly aired tens of millions in policy ads this cycle.

The group does not reveal its contributors. But two people briefed on the group’s finances who spoke anonymously to describe confidential strategy said the nonprofit was funded heavily by corporate interests, including the pharmaceutical industry. The nonprofit declined to comment.

Then there’s Mr. Trump’s own allied nonprofit, Securing American Greatness, which is led by his advisers and also does not disclose its donors. The group so far has spent at least $44 million since early last year, sending nearly $25 million to super PACs and airing about $19 million of ads boosting Mr. Trump and Republicans.

Operatives in both parties privately acknowledge that the system allows them to act nearly with impunity until votes are cast. Lawyers tend to advise nonprofit clients not to file comprehensive disclosures of this cycle’s activity with the Internal Revenue Service until mid-November 2027 — more than a year after the midterm elections.

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

About the Data

The Times analyzed thousands of Federal Election Commission filings to identify large donations made to super PACs by nonprofit groups that do not disclose their contributors. The list includes three dozen nonprofit groups that transferred more than $525 million to federal accounts in the 2026 election cycle.

The Times also searched for super PACs that formed on the cusp of an election, allowing them to avoid disclosing their donors until after Election Day, and reviewed spending data from AdImpact, an advertising-tracking service, to assess the total amount of political spending by nonprofits on television and digital ads. That included reviewing many of the ads themselves.

The Times also consulted tax records to search for links between organizations and their activities, and to identify leaders of these groups.“

Therapist Reacts to Bill Maher's Different Take on White Privilege (Bill Maher is a dumb rscist, plain and simple!)

 

 

  Therapist Reacts to Bill Maher's Different Take on White Privilege

The Quiet Disappearance of Black History in Higher Ed

African American Studies Department are Dwindling Across U.S. Colleges

"More than 12 private colleges and public universities have either reduced or eliminated Black programs studies departments and majors.

By

Angela Wilson

Published

August 27, 2026

Thoughtful young bald female student looking away while sitting with friends in classroom at college (Photo: Getty Images)

A Washington Post report found that over a dozen U.S. colleges and universities have scaled back or downright eliminated Black, African, and African American studies departments and majors over the past two years. So much so, nationwide completions for African American studies degrees dropped to the lowest levels in two decades — a number administrators now cite as justification for the next round of cuts."

The Quiet Disappearance of Black History in Higher Ed

 

Fact-Checking Senate Races in Georgia, Alaska and Texas

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Candidates’ attacks are focused on illegal immigration, faith and stock trading.

Aug. 29, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

U.S. Immigration Crackdown

"A polling station in Cypress, Texas, in May.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Control of the Senate will hinge on a handful of competitive races this November, with nominees of both parties honing talking points to hammer their opponents.

In Georgia, a Republican congressman has sought to attack the incumbent Democratic senator on his immigration record. In Alaska, the Democratic challenger has emphasized the stock trades and ballooning personal wealth of the sitting Republican senator. And in Texas, the Republican nominee has highlighted statements his opponent has made about Christianity.

Here is a look at those claims.

What Was Said

“He voted against the Laken Riley Act when he had the chance to save lives.”
— Representative Mike Collins, Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, in a July social media post

“I worked across the aisles to get that done — with the exception of Jon Ossoff, who is the U.S. sitting senator here in Georgia who never lifted a finger to help get the Laken Riley Act across the finish line.”
— Mr. Collins in an August interview on Newsmax

False. Mr. Ossoff was one of 12 Democrats who, in January 2025, voted yes on the Laken Riley Act, the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Trump upon his return to the White House. The law directs law enforcement to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants accused of specific crimes.

The legislation was inspired by the 2024 murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia, by an immigrant who illegally entered the United States.

In 2024, right after Ms. Riley’s death, Mr. Collins introduced an earlier version that passed the House. But the Senate, controlled by Democrats at the time, never considered the legislation.

In 2025, Republicans had more success and the measure passed both chambers with bipartisan support. Some Democrats argued that the measure undermined due process and wasted resources, but Mr. Ossoff and other vulnerable Democrats backed the bill.

A spokesman for Mr. Collins’s campaign asserted that Mr. Ossoff did not help advance or build support for the legislation for nearly a year, and only voted for it after Republicans regained the majority in Congress.

Still, Mr. Ossoff ultimately did vote for the bill, breaking with most members of his party. Moreover, as the Senate debated the measure in 2025, Mr. Ossoff signaled his support and called for bipartisan backing in an interview with CNN, saying that “we have a prospect here of working across the aisle” and that “the whole country recognizes that we’ve had a crisis at our southern border.”

Asked why he voted for the law, Mr. Ossoff said in a local radio interview at the time that Ms. Riley and her family were his constituents and her death was preventable.

“I think that Georgians and the American public are rightly fed up and frustrated with the nonenforcement of immigration law,” he said. “Now, there were some changes I would have liked to have seen made. We’re going to have to be vigilant as we move forward, that we defend our borders and enforce our immigration laws, and also be mindful of the human and civil rights of all human beings in our country.”

Representative Mike Collins and Senator Jon OssoffNicole Craine for The New York Times; Alex Kent/The New York Times

Mr. Collins’s spokesman also cited an earlier procedural vote Mr. Ossoff cast.

In 2024, a Republican senator introduced a procedural motion to offer an amendment to an appropriations bill. The amendment proposed that no funding provided by the bill could be used “to grant any immigration status or other benefit” to unauthorized immigrants accused of certain crimes. That is not the same thing as the enacted version of the Laken Riley Act or Mr. Collins’s own version. Mr. Ossoff, along with all other Democratic senators, voted against the motion.

What Was Said

“Twelve years in the Senate, if you can’t get it done in that amount of time, go home. We don’t want people in there making a career out of quadrupling their personal wealth.”
— Mary Peltola, Democratic nominee for Senate in Alaska, in a campaign video in August

“He’s ballooned his net worth, reporting nearly 100 stock trades while serving in office. He’s quadrupled his personal wealth.”
— Ms. Peltola, during a convention in July

This needs context. Ms. Peltola was referring to Senator Dan S. Sullivan, her Republican opponent. The value of Mr. Sullivan’s assets have increased since he joined the Senate in 2015, and he is among the more prolific stock traders in the Senate. But the exact increase is unknown as the amounts are reported in a wide range. Moreover, it appears that a significant portion of his trading and net worth can be attributed to stocks he owns in his family’s company.

Members of Congress are required to report their assets and liabilities annually in ranges. While the maximum values of assets Mr. Sullivan reported almost tripled from 2014, when he won his first Senate campaign, to 2025, it is possible that his actual wealth increased less than that. (For example, if an asset increased by just $1, that could move the asset from a reporting range of $250,001 and $500,000 to $500,001 and $1 million.)

Mr. Sullivan disclosed in 2014 that he and his wife had assets between $2 million and $4.7 million. In his latest financial statement, filed in August for the 2025 calendar year, Mr. Sullivan reported assets between $4.1 million and $12.3 million.

The largest single asset Mr. Sullivan reported across the years was stock in RPM International, a chemical company founded by his grandfather; his father and brother both served as chief executive for the firm. The value of the company’s stock — the price of which doubled from 2014 to 2025 — accounts for a significant amount of Mr. Sullivan’s increase in wealth. In 2014, he reported owning RPM stock worth between $500,001 and $1 million. That grew to between $1 million and $5 million in 2025.

Nate Adams, a spokesman for the Sullivan campaign, said that several of the senator’s assets were inherited after the deaths of Mr. Sullivan’s mother in March 2019 and his father in November 2020, as well as his wife’s parents.

“That Mary Peltola would twist a family’s loss into a false insider trading smear says everything about the type of candidate she is and the type of campaign she is running,” Mr. Adams said.

Ms. Peltola has a point that Mr. Sullivan is more active than most senators in the stock market, having made at least 120 trades worth between $950,000 and $3.5 million in stock, according to a compilation by the website Quiver Quantitative of financial disclosure forms. But the transactions involving RPM International accounted for about a quarter to a third of that amount, between $329,000 and $810,000.

A spokesman for the Peltola campaign cited recent reporting by The Alaska Current that several of Mr. Sullivan’s trades of RPM stock were “suspiciously timed,” including sales of stock before the coronavirus pandemic roiled the global economy and before the company released weak earnings reports.

What Was Said

James Talarico “recently said about Christianity — he said that ‘I’m a Christian but I hate Christianity.’ I want you to think about that. Does that make any sense at all? ‘I’m a Christian but I hate Christianity.’ He also said that ‘God is nonbinary.’ Does anybody know what that means?”
— Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, Republican nominee for Senate, in a campaign video in July

This needs context. Mr. Talarico, a state representative and Mr. Paxton’s Democratic opponent, did make those statements, but as part of longer discussions about his faith. Mr. Paxton omitted the full context of those quotations, which may give a misleading impression of what Mr. Talarico was trying to convey.

Mr. Talarico made the first statement on a 2021 podcast hosted by Roberto Che Espinoza, a transgender activist and theologian. Both expressed frustration that conservative Christian theology tended to dominate politics, while they both adhered to a more “radical faith tradition,” as Mr. Talarico put it.

State Representative James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton of TexasAntranik Tavitian for The New York Times

Mr. Talarico spoke of the country’s “spiritual crisis” and how the left had “ceded moral language to the right for the past, what, 40, 50 years.” But he argued that “the best movements for radical change in our country, in our world, were all spiritually grounded, right? Whether it was the civil rights movement, which was explicitly Christian, right, or Gandhi’s movement in India.”

As the discussion continued, the host observed that much of politics and policy have a “particular strand of Judeo-Christian theology attached to them,” referring to the theology of conservative Republicans.

Mr. Talarico responded: “Yeah, and you know, I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity. And I always get drawn back into it because nowhere else, in no other political philosophy, in no other economic theory, do I find anything as truly radical or revolutionary as the teachings of that barefoot rabbi, right?”

JT Ennis, Mr. Talarico’s press secretary, said in a statement that Mr. Talarico “obviously doesn’t hate Christianity.”

“James is a devout Christian who fights religious and political corruption when he sees it — because there’s nothing Christ-like about powerful people twisting the teachings of Jesus to justify hate, violence and greed,” he said.

Mr. Talarico made the second comment in a 2021 speech on the Texas House floor while opposing a Republican bill targeting transgender youth in school sports.

He said: “The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines in Genesis use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary. In Genesis 1:26, God speaks of God’s self in the plural, saying, ‘Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.’ That’s the infinite multitude of God, the masculine, the feminine and everything in between. Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing at all.”

Asked about the comment in a May interview on CBS, Mr. Talarico said that he was being “intentionally provocative.”

“What it means is that God can’t be defined by human categories,” he said. He added that he had made statements that “missed the mark” and that he regretted, but he said that Mr. Paxton was “intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”

Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade."