Anthropic directed $20 million through a dark money nonprofit to support candidates who will write the rules governing artificial intelligence. The nonprofit, Public First Action, has set a fundraising target of $75 million. Only Anthropic’s contribution has been publicly identified. The remaining $55 million comes from donors whose names the 501(c)(4) structure is not required to disclose.
Public First Action is run by former Democratic Congressman Brad Carson of Oklahoma and former Republican Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah. It funds two downstream super PACs: Jobs and Democracy PAC for Democratic candidates and Defending Our Values PAC for Republicans. The super PACs disclose their spending to the Federal Election Commission. The nonprofit feeding them money does not disclose who funds it.
On March 3, Jobs and Democracy PAC spent $1.6 million on television ads supporting Rep. Valerie Foushee in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Foushee co-chairs the House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy. She won by 1,202 votes and faces a likely recount.
In New York’s 12th District, the PAC spent $450,000 backing Assemblyman Alex Bores, who wrote New York’s state AI regulatory laws. Two Republican candidates the network supported in Texas — Alex Mealer and Carlos De La Cruz — are headed to May runoffs.
Anthropic simultaneously built a Washington lobbying operation that quadrupled its spending to $3.1 million in 2025. The company hired Biden administration officials Tarun Chhabra and Elizabeth Kelly into senior policy roles. It retained Continental Strategy, headed by former Trump adviser Carlos Trujillo, paying the firm $290,000. Former staffers from the House Judiciary Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee run its in-house lobbying team.
The same week Anthropic put $20 million into a dark money nonprofit, it refused to let the Pentagon use Claude without safety guardrails. President Trump ordered every federal agency to stop using Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a supply-chain risk — a label previously reserved for foreign adversaries.
Anthropic has called for democratic accountability in AI regulation. It is delivering that message through a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — a structure that does not require donor disclosure — while spending millions to support candidates on both sides of the aisle who sit on AI oversight committees.
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