What we’re hearing from people we trust on and around the Hill – please send us more tips!

  • The GOP’s $414,242,254 man: Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) raked in $32,965,037 this cycle which he used to elect Senate Republicans, his campaign announced. Since he was first elected to the Senate in 2002, he has raised a staggering $414,242,254. Cornyn, who has been in the Senate for 22 years, has raised an average of $18,829,193.36 every year since he was sworn in. Read our full story about Cornyn’s fundraising prowess here. 
  • Death of Direct File: Hill staff and Trump allies tell us that the IRS’s controversial “direct file” system is going to be terminated in the new administration. A Republican Senate aide told the Washington Reporter that “this was an unconstitutional power grab by the IRS. It’s dead on day one. And anyone who worked on it should be reassigned to the IRS’s office in Siberia.”
  • Troy Downing, team player: Troy Downing, an incoming “pro-Trump, pro-wall, and pro-America” congressman from Montana, has already donated $235,100 to elect Republicans across the country. Read our full story about Downing’s national campaign swing here. 
  • Arnold Ventures is reeling after election night: Of the many losers on election night, one of the biggest is the left-wing billionaire John Arnold, who has pushed ranked choice voting, anti-Trump policies, and soft-on-crime initiatives. Arnold lost big on all three.  
  • Bono called out: John Ondrasik, the talent behind Five For Fighting, spoke with the Reporter at this weekend’s Stand Together rally in Washington, D.C. about his Yellow Ribbon campaign that draws awareness to the hostages who are still being illegally held in Gaza by Palestinian terrorists. Ondrasik is urging Americans to tie a yellow ribbon on their property — “that means you Bruce Springsteen. That means you Barbara Streissand. That means you Bono,” he said. 
  • Nice tax exempt status you’ve got there: Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) suggested revoking Harvard’s tax exempt status following an op-ed written by the student president of the school’s Institute of Politics, in which he argued that “we can no longer be nonpartisan.”