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KEY FINDINGS

• Just 100 billionaire families poured a record-breaking $2.6 billion into federal elections in 2024, one of every six dollars spent altogether by all candidates, parties and committees.
• That’s two-and-a-half times the roughly $1 billion spent by individual billionaire donors in 2020.
• Billionaire political spending is up 160-fold since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allowed for unlimited campaign donations.
• The vast bulk of billionaire-family donations went to so-called independent expenditure groups–which thanks to Citizens United can raise unlimited amounts from each donor–rather than directly to candidates or parties, which still work under campaign-contribution limits.
• Billionaire spending heavily favored Republicans. Over two-thirds (70%) of billionaire-family contributions went in support of GOP candidates and conservative causes. Less than a quarter (23%) backed Democratic hopefuls and progressive causes. (The remainder went to committees without a clear partisan or ideological identity.)
• In the three Senate races that gave Republicans control of the Senate, billionaire giving constituted a huge amount of Republican outside spending: Montana 58.1%, Pennsylvania 56.8%, and Ohio 44.5%.
• Almost three-quarters (71%) of the total amount used by outside spending groups to attack the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, came from billionaires. Billionaires supplied over three-fifths (61%) of all the outside dollars spent praising Donald Trump.
• While the potential undue influence on government policy of billionaire donors has always been a concern, the second Trump administration has seen a blatant and unprecedented swapping of campaign contributions for political power, most notoriously in the case of Elon Musk.
• Musk’s 2024 campaign contributions were four times more than what he paid in annual federal income taxes between 2013 and 2018.
• The Trump-Musk attempt to dismantle the federal government and the Republican tax-cutting agenda could potentially save billionaire-family donors trillions of dollars in taxes, turning a huge profit on their 2024 political investment.

With Washington's loyalties in flux and Europe feeling abandoned, the unthinkable is being discussed: will the continent's nuclear arsenal expand beyond its current custodians?

With Washington's loyalties in flux and Europe feeling abandoned, the unthinkable is being discussed: will the continent's nuclear arsenal expand beyond its current custodians?

It’s no secret that electrifying B.C.’s economy, from homes to heavy industry, will require significantly boosting the amount of power the province produces. Now, documents obtained by The Narwhal under freedom of information legislation reveal just how much electricity emissions-heavy industries like liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mines estimate they need to meet B.C.’s carbon emissions targets.

The documents outline the potential for an unprecedented increase in industrial electricity demand, raising questions about where the power will come from, who will pay for it and how it will impact both taxpayers and electricity rates for consumers.

Ten mining, oil and gas and hydrogen projects were seeking almost 33,000 gigawatt hours of electricity from BC Hydro, according to a briefing note prepared for Premier David Eby in March 2024. That’s more than twice the amount of power BC Hydro sold to all large industrial customers in 2024.

In an interview, Energy Minister Adrian Dix acknowledged B.C. is facing a “massive increase” in demand for electricity from non-industrial sources as well. He framed electrification as both a challenge and an opportunity B.C. is well-poised to seize due to its baseload of hydro power.

“This is a huge opportunity for us, we can’t miss it,” Dix said. “This is one of our economic advantages over other jurisdictions and we have to drive.”

The future of the public service is one of the key policy issues of our time in both Canada and the United States.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have launched a large-scale, misguided attack on the U.S. federal public service, indiscriminately firing thousands of workers before rehiring some of them because they are essential to nuclear weapons security and other key issues.

There has been pushback from the courts, unions, Democrats and even some Republicans but overall Trumpism has turned bureaucrats into political targets, branding them as part of a “deep state” working against Republican interests.

In a similar vein, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s rhetoric about the public service has been generally negative. For example, his approach mirrors right-wing populist movements in the U.S., framing public servants not just as inefficient but as an entrenched elite wasting taxpayer dollars and actively working against the agenda of right-of-centre elected leaders.

On March 18, 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation aimed at protecting children from assemblies that promote homosexuality. Although the amendment imposes general limitations on freedom of assembly, it is commonly understood as a ban on the LGBTQ+ Pride march, just ahead of the 30th anniversary in 2025. The new law amends the act of freedom of assembly (Act LX of 15), the act on misdemeanours (Act II of 2012), and the act on the use of facial recognition (Act CLXXXVIII of 2015). The new law also criminalizes attempts to circumvent this ban, making it a misdemeanour to organize, lead, or participate in such assemblies. Facial recognition may be used to prevent, thwart, investigate, interrupt, or sanction gatherings that fall within the scope of the prohibition.

The new law purposefully violates European human rights standards on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as fundamental values of the European Union, such as the rule of law and democracy (Article 2 TEU). From the outset, the Hungarian government made it clear that the measures mean to defy European standards (labelled as Brussels’ demands) in order to protect children from “aggressive LGBTQ propaganda.” In doing so, the Hungarian government presented an open invitation to European constitutional actors (including the European Commission) to address these new restrictions on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights in terms of a violation of democracy and the key commitment to the basic terms of Union membership as set out in Article 2 TEU.

The subject of these restrictions on political participation, the manner in which they were enacted, and their regressive impact call for a robust legal response grounded in the defense of democracy as a European value. The legal and institutional foundations for such a response already exist. It is now incumbent upon European constitutional actors to activate the mechanisms that protect democracy as a founding value of the Union in the face of a clear, frontal attack by a recalcitrant member state.

On March 18, 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation aimed at protecting children from assemblies that promote homosexuality. Although the amendment imposes general limitations on freedom of assembly, it is commonly understood as a ban on the LGBTQ+ Pride march, just ahead of the 30th anniversary in 2025. The new law amends the act of freedom of assembly (Act LX of 15), the act on misdemeanours (Act II of 2012), and the act on the use of facial recognition (Act CLXXXVIII of 2015). The new law also criminalizes attempts to circumvent this ban, making it a misdemeanour to organize, lead, or participate in such assemblies. Facial recognition may be used to prevent, thwart, investigate, interrupt, or sanction gatherings that fall within the scope of the prohibition.

The new law purposefully violates European human rights standards on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as fundamental values of the European Union, such as the rule of law and democracy (Article 2 TEU). From the outset, the Hungarian government made it clear that the measures mean to defy European standards (labelled as Brussels’ demands) in order to protect children from “aggressive LGBTQ propaganda.” In doing so, the Hungarian government presented an open invitation to European constitutional actors (including the European Commission) to address these new restrictions on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights in terms of a violation of democracy and the key commitment to the basic terms of Union membership as set out in Article 2 TEU.

The subject of these restrictions on political participation, the manner in which they were enacted, and their regressive impact call for a robust legal response grounded in the defense of democracy as a European value. The legal and institutional foundations for such a response already exist. It is now incumbent upon European constitutional actors to activate the mechanisms that protect democracy as a founding value of the Union in the face of a clear, frontal attack by a recalcitrant member state.

The decision to strip chapters from books that had already won the approval of the state’s Republican-controlled board of education represents an escalation in how local school boards run by ideological conservatives influence what children learn.