dark money

[dahrk muhn-ee]

noun

1. money donated to politically active nonprofit organizations or anonymous corporate entities, which spend this money to influence political campaigns or other special interests but are not required to reveal their donors.

Word History and Origins

Origin of dark money¹

First recorded in 2010–15

Example Sentences

Their tactics include voter nullification, suppression, gerrymandering, lawsuits, dark money and even threats of violence.

Read more on Salon

Those concerns were raised by yet another junk study, published by a Leonard Leo–funded dark money group, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which also helped develop Project 2025.

Read more on Slate

It reflects a much larger autocratic trend by the American right, whose anti-majoritarian strategy and ideology includes voter suppression and nullification, gerrymandering and the repeal of birthright citizenship, as well as using the courts and “dark money” to ignore the public will on a range of issues such as women’s reproductive rights, separation of church and state, health, education, science and gun violence.

Read more on Salon

When considered alongside the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision, which removed limits on campaign contributions and so-called dark money, it’s no wonder Gilens and Page found that America’s “democracy” is actually an oligarchy.

Read more on Salon

And the message that I wanted to communicate through the 300th speech is just Here’s how they did it: It’s essentially the same crew that captured the Supreme Court and turned it into their captured tool and polluted our political process with foul dark money and has run a climate-denial op that has prevented us from solving a very solvable problem—because it would’ve inconvenienced the fossil fuel industry to have to clean up its act—and that those three things are actually kind of the same creature.

Read more on Slate