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Fueled by dark money, cash-flush liberal groups with ties to the Democratic Party are mobilizing to unleash millions of dollars worth of ads attacking President Donald Trumps response to coronavirus ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Many political groups avoided attacking Trump as the coronavirus outbreak first began to spread throughout the U.S. But as social distancing and quarantines become the new normal, a number of multi-million dollar ad buys from Democratic groups mark a departure from that strategy.

Democratic super PAC Priorities USA Action has spent more than $6 million on a series of negative ads attacking Trump on his response to the coronavirus pandemic. The group plans to spend $150 million contesting swing states before the Democratic National Convention.

One of the ads attacking Trumps response to the coronavirus pandemic shows various audio clips of Trump downplaying coronavirus while a graphic shows the increasing cases overtime. The ads are airing in key presidential battleground states such as Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The ad starts off with a clip of Trump referencing coronavirus as Democrats new hoax.

Trumps campaign argued that the hoax claim in the ad is false and issued a cease and desist ordering television stations that run the ad to stop if they want to avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.

In response, the super PAC announced Thursday it would spend another $600,000 to air ads in Arizona. The group plans to pour even more money in ads over the coming weeks.

Priorities USA spent more than $81,000 on Facebook ads this week alone on a newly created page called FactsFirst, primarily attacking Trumps response to the coronavirus pandemic. Another page created in November 2019 has spent more than $132,000 on ads primarily targeting Spanish-speaking users with similar messages paid for by Priorities USA.

Priorities USAs nonprofit arm plays a key role in the operation, funneling just under $3.4 million to its super PAC in the 2020 election cycle alone. That nonprofit has given six-figure contributions to other big-name Democratic dark money groups such as Majority Forward and VoteVets.

While Priorities USA may be the target of Trumps lawsuit threats, another mysterious new 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Fellow Americans is also running ads almost identical to the controversial ad campaign paid for by Priorities USA.

Many Google and Facebook ads paid for by Fellow Americans feature disaffected Republicans planning to vote against Trump in the 2020 election. The ads could easily be mistaken for a solely conservative effort at first glance. But Washington, D.C., incorporation records show it formed in November 2019 by Graham Wilson, a partner at Perkins Coie, the political law firm of choice for many Democratic dark money groups including American Bridge, Priorities USA and Acronym.

Even though the coronavirus outbreak is making it more difficult for some groups to run effective political ads, the message communicated in these ads could still be effective in hurting Trump closer to November and drum up donor support for the super PACs themselves for the general election, according to Kevin Banda, associate professor of political science at Texas Tech University.

If people think that an incumbent responded poorly to a natural disaster, that incumbent and the incumbent party gets punished electorally, Banda said.

Democratic super PAC American Bridge has shelled out almost $6.3 million on ads attacking Trumps handling of coronavirus since the start of 2020. That makes up the bulk of the groups $8.5 million in spending against Trump since the start of 2019. In an $850,000 digital ad campaign, American Bridge is airing ads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan attacking Trump for his past comments downplaying coronavirus, according to the New York Times.

The super PAC has received millions of dollars from the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that does not disclose its donors and is not supposed to have politics as its primary purpose. Like many super PACs with affiliated dark money groups, American Bridges affiliated groups share employees, officers, office space and other expenses.

A financial audit analyzed by OpenSecrets shows just under half of the American Bridge nonprofit arms spending went to a $3.3 million payment to its super PAC affiliate in 2018 for shared space and other expenses. On top of that, the nonprofit arm owed the super PAC over $1.45 million at the end of the year and it has given the super PAC more than $1.3 million in contributions. IRS rules prohibit the nonprofit from having politics as its primary purpose, which is generally interpreted to mean that less than half of its spending can go to political activities.

The majority of money comes from 29 anonymous six-figure donors giving up to $800,000 each. American Bridges noncash gifts include 450 shares of Baidu, a Chinese technology companywithreportedties to Chinas Communist Party, valued at more than $100,000.

Liberal super PAC Pacronym launched a $2.5 million digital ad campaign attacking Trumps handling of the global pandemic in mid-March. The ads will air on digital platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Hulu, according to the New York Times. The super PAC has raised nearly $8 million in the 2020 election cycle and plans to spend $5 million of that on digital ads by July.

Pacronym is the super PAC arm of Acronym, a dark money group that brought in almost $1.3 million in contributions from its inception in May 2017 through the end of April 2018, most of that coming from just four six-figure donors. Roughly one in every four dollars raised by Acronym in its first year of operation went to its super PAC, according to OpenSecrets analysis of tax records and campaign finance disclosures.

On top of Pacronyms roughly $1.9 million in spending disclosed to the FEC since 2018, pages tied to Acronym have spent more than $5.9 million on digital advertising according to OpenSecrets analysis of Google, Facebook and Snapchat ad data.

Acronym has also bankrolled digital operations seeding an array of hyperlocal partisan propaganda pages that mimic local news outlets and launched a political tech company called Shadow Inc. exposed as the secret Iowa caucus app vendor after chaos at the caucuses. Shadow Inc. was paid by both current presidential candidate Joe Biden and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigiegs 2020 presidential campaigns, according to FEC disclosures.

A common thread among the groups is the role of liberal dark money powerhouse Sixteen Thirty Fund and its sister 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund. The groups have fiscally sponsored at least 80 groups in a way that leaves almost no paper trail. Sixteen Thirty acts as a pass-through agency funneling millions of dollars in grants from wealthy donors. Acronym and American Bridge have each accepted hundreds of thousands from Sixteen Thirty Funds operation while Priorities USAs foundation arm has given it at least $100,000.

Unite the Country, a super PAC supporting former vice president Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, is spending at least $1 million to air a coronavirus-related attack ad on TV news programs across the country.

So far this cycle, Unite the Country has raised more than $12 million and while most of the super PACs donors are disclosed, the identities of some of its biggest financiers remain a mystery.

Bidens campaign has also released ads criticizing Trumps handling of coronavirus, but is spending much less. Traditionally, super PACs function as candidates attack dogs, running run negative ads that candidates wouldnt want to be associated with.

Before the release of these new ads, neither Bidens sole Democrat rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Biden or Trump aired a political ad on television since last Tuesday, according to the New York Times

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Democratic 'dark money' groups and super PACs target Trump with multi-million dollar coronavirus ad campaign - Center for Responsive Politics

After Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced the $2 trillion coronavirus economic rescue package last week, Democrats balked at the bill for a variety of reasons. But the main issue was oversight.

On March 25, just before the updated deal passed into law, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer highlighted how Democrats "secured tough new requirements on federal grants and loans to any industry," but then added later in the day that "neither side can be completely happy with the final product."

That appears to be the case among at least some of his Democratic colleagues.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a fellow New York Senator, joined Yahoo Finance and expressed some of her concerns about the oversight provisions in particular.

We have some oversight, she said. It's not everything I would have wanted, but it's at least the beginning of oversight.

Other Democrats, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on Gillibrands left, have also raised concerns,

One area that could get more focus as the money rolls out in the weeks ahead is existing executive pay.

On that front, there's not a lot of restrictions on the money, Gillibrand said. They could still be paying a CEO $10 million a year and that's outrageous. So there, I would have preferred some restriction on CEO pay.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, leaves after a vote coronavirus legislation at the US Capitol. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The bill does contain restrictions on increasing CEO pay, Gillibrand supports.

Comparing this bill to TARP, which she opposed, she said, this smells different, that's for sure.

Sunshine is always a good disinfectant, said Gillibrand, highlighting the restrictions on dividends and stock buybacks as well as increasing CEO pay.

One section within the 880-page bill has received some attention. On page 518, it lays out a series of restrictions on stock buybacks, dividends, and limitations on compensation for businesses receiving direct loans from the new $50 billion credit facility established by the bill.

Then, on page 519, it notes that the Treasury Secretary may waive the requirement under clause (ii) with respect to any program or facility upon a determination that such waiver is necessary to protect the interests of the Federal Government.

Similar language is present throughout the bill to give flexibility to officials as all this money gets distributed.

Schumers argument, made recently on the Senate floor, is about transparency. If any of these loans look untoward, if any of these loans don't look right, if any of these loans shouldnt go to where theyre going, the public, the Congress, will know quickly and that will put pressure on the Treasury Secretary not to do them, and certainly not to repeat them.

The question is whether that will be enough for Democrats on the left who remain deeply suspicious of the Trump administrations motives. David Sirota, a senior advisor and speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders, has been particularly vocal online, highlighting this provisions.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has promised to keep pushing on oversight:

Ben Werschkul is a producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.

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Not everything I would have wanted: Democrats still raise questions about oversight in the coronavirus deal - Yahoo Finance

In the effort to reassert some influence over negotiations involving the breadth and scope of Coronavirus relief legislation, Republicans made a bad bet. They played politics, cynically appealing to the threat posed by a ballooning debt at a time when fiscal prudence is a tertiary concern. Republicans were duly savaged in the press and, ultimately, retreated from this indefensible terrain. The magnitude of the crisis demanded it. Democrats observed all this and promptly went about making all the GOPs same mistakes.

On Sunday night, and again on Monday afternoon, Senate Democrats failed to support a motion to open debate on a massive $2 trillion economic assistance bill. That bill, a product of bipartisan negotiations, briefly collapsed amid what the minority party claimed were provisions that provided big corporations with too much relief and not enough oversight. But hours before Sunday nights vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inserted herself into negotiations by promising to introduce her own relief bill that would compete with the Senates version, helping to scuttle an emerging consensus in the upper chamber of Congress. It was one of the most politically ill-considered documents this crisis has yet produced.

The House legislation was loaded up with giveaways and sops to favored Democratic interest groups. The bill included $33 million for NOAA, $100 million to NASA for construction and environmental compliance, $300 million for PBS, $500 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, $90 million to fund AIDS research, $35 million to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and even a conspicuous $7 million to a Washington D.C.-based charter school to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.

That bill would compel struggling airlines to substantially offset their carbon emissions. It would force the firms that received relief to maintain officials and budget dedicated diversity and inclusion initiatives. It would establish programs to expand the use of minority banks and minority credit unions, and require federal departments to utilize their services. It would bail out the U.S. Postal Service and strengthen collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions. It would establish federal guidelines for early voting and same-day voter registration.

Some of these are doubtlessly worthy goals. Others are shameless panders to pro-Democratic interest groups. Most of these provisions are of little relevance to the Americans suffering amid an acute crisis that demands immediate action. Pelosis intervention in the process was a reckless act that contributed to yet another day of bloodletting on Wall Street. What mass delusion led Democrats to presume that such an odious document would do anything other than backfire on them? Possibly the same assumption that led Democrats to corral themselves in a box canyon in January of 2018: that the press would always come to their rescue.

Then, amid an impasse over the fate of Barack Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Democrats engineered a government shutdown with the expectation that they could control the narrative and secure a quick political victory. They counted on the press to overlook the fact that Democrats had demanded the restoration of long-term funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program from Republicans and, when they got it, voted against it. They counted on the voters, to say nothing of the partys more moderate members, to be as committed to the legal status of illegal immigrants as the partys activist class. They counted on the conventional wisdom, which held that the GOP, as the party of limited government, would always get the blame for a government shutdown no matter which party was truly responsible for it. All those assumptions collapsed under Democrats, and, within days, the party sued for peace.

Perhaps Democrats operated under the same presumptions that failed them in 2018. Maybe they expected the press to forgive the obscenities in the House bill because, as Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly said, This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision. Certainly, some reliably complacent venues like the New York Times editorial board complied, but the risible effort appears to have dissuaded more reputable institutions from following suit. Whatever the flawed premise under which Democrats were operating, its implosion was swift. By Tuesday morning, Pelosi had suddenly warmed to the bipartisan Senate bill. If Democrats have benefited at all from the beneficence of the press, its that theyve managed to avoid being reprimanded for their callousness and scorned for their ignominious retreat.

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Democrats Wrongly Thought Media Would Cover for Their Overreach - Commentary Magazine

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to the media while visiting the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, which will be partially converted into a hospital for patients affected by coronavirus, March 23, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters)Its not out of the question if Biden keeps looking out of touch and irrelevant.

Democrats are publicly talking about contingency options for their July convention in Milwaukee in case the coronavirus persists in being a public-health threat. But privately, some are also talking about needing a Plan B if Joe Biden, their nominee apparent, continues to flounder.

Some Democrats are openly talking up New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose profile has soared during the crisis, as a Biden stand-in. Yesterday, a Draft Cuomo 2020 account on Twitter announced that Times have changed & we need Gov. Cuomo to be the nominee. Our next POTUS must be one w/an ability to lead thru this crisis.

Charles Pierce, the politics blogger for Esquire magazine, wrote a piece headlined With Two Words, Andrew Cuomo Established Himself as the Leader This Country Needs Now. He enthused that Cuomos news conference last Friday essentially (shutting) down the economy of his state . . . was a master class in leveling with the public.

Fueled by favorable national publicity that governors rarely get, Cuomo has quickly become the standard-bearer for liberals who dont want to quickly open up parts the economy at the same time we combat the coronavirus. This Tuesday, the governor tweeted: We are not willing to sacrifice 1-2% of New Yorkers. Thats not who we are. We will fight to save every life we can. I am not giving up. Last weekend, Cuomo told reporters he might go into Manhattan himself to yell You are wrong at people defying his lockdown.

Democrats are increasingly worried that Joe Biden will have trouble being relevant and compelling in the long four months between now and when he is nominated in July. Lloyd Constantine, who was a senior policy adviser to New York governor Eliot Spitzer from 2007 to 2008, puts it bluntly: Biden is a melting ice cube. Those of us who have closely watched as time ravaged the once sharp or even brilliant minds of loved ones and colleagues, recognize what is happening to the good soldier Joe.

Indeed, Biden seemed to disappear when the virus began dominating the news cycle early in March. Bidens media presence abruptly shriveled, writes Kalev Leetaru, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. In contrast, daily mentions of Cuomo as of last Sunday accounted for 1.4 percent of online news coverage compared with 2.9 percent for Trump.

In an attempt to remain relevant, Bidens campaign team hastily built a TV studio in the basement of his Wilmington, Del., home and began streaming daily appearances by him from it this week. They have not gone well.

In his first outing on Monday, Biden looked as he were lost somewhere on the set of Waynes World, the 1990s comedy movie that pretended it was a public-access cable show broadcast from a basement.

Biden stumbled, slurred his words, misnamed one of the nations governors, lost his train of thought, and had to desperately signal to staff for help while he was on camera.

A Tuesday appearance went no better, even though it was with a friendly liberal group of interviewers from ABCs The View. We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what no matter what, Biden asserted to universal head scratching. He attempted to pick up on Cuomos assertion that lives must be the absolute priority in the crisis but with limited success:Idont agreewith thenotionthatsomehow its okaytoletthe let people dieand Im not surethatwould happen.

Liberal pundits arent even trying to defend Bidens recent media performances. Alex Wagner, a former MSNBC anchor and current co-host of Showtimes political-magazine show The Circus, wrote a piece this week for The Atlantic magazine called: Stay Alive, Joe Biden: Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence. She discussed Bidens current status as if he barely existed: Biden was never really convincing anyone on the stump his political power at this point is an idea, held collectively, about how to defeat Trump.

Of course, the mathematics of how Governor Cuomo could be drafted to become the Democratic nominee are daunting. He has zero delegates and no campaign and cant be seen as being distracted by politics during a crisis. But Emily Zanotti of The Daily Wire says that if states continue to postpone or cancel upcoming primaries, a window of opportunity could be there: Cuomomay be able to fill a hole for needy Democrats who are concerned that neither of the two frontrunners, [Bernie] Sanders and Biden, are within striking distance of winning a majority of delegates and the Democratic nomination outright.

And strange things happen in politics. In 1940, businessman Wendell Willkie didnt enter a single primary, his supporters pinning their hopes on a receptive audience of delegates at the Republican convention. Skeptic Alice Roosevelt Longworth sneered that his support came from the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs.

Then the Nazi blitzkrieg struck. Adolf Hitler overran the Low Countries and France in May and June of 1940. The French signed an armistice on June 22, the day Willkie arrived in Philadelphia for the Republican convention. The international crisis and how the party should respond to it dominated delegate deliberations. After a series of carefully orchestrated spontaneous demonstrations of delegate support, Willkie was nominated on the sixth ballot. His campaign stumbled in the fall and he lost 55 percent to 45 percent to incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. But he achieved something no one had thought possible by even getting nominated.

Of course, much has changed since 1940, and conventions are no longer such free-wheeling affairs as they were then. But Democrats know that politics has again become fluid and surprising in recent years witness the strength of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in their respective parties.

Joe Biden began his presidential campaign as the front-runner last year. Then he was almost eclipsed by crushing losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, only to be rescued by a landslide victory in South Carolina. He of all people knows that if we look at how the nomination battle has gone so far, nothing is really over until its over.

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Could a Draft Cuomo Movement Be in the Democrats Future? - National Review

Voters heading to the polls in November will see three Democratic options for three Summit County Council seats, almost certainly assuring the body will remain unanimously Democratic.

The real race for the candidates in the two contested races, then, is getting their name on the November ballot, something that will be decided in a June primary or, if candidates get enough delegate support, at the Democratic county convention next week.

That raised the stakes for the Summit County Democratic Party caucus, which on Tuesday decided the roughly 100 people who will vote at the county convention and was held remotely for the first time due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Meredith Reed is the chair of the Summit County Democratic Party and she reported some ups and downs with the unprecedented call-in caucus, but that overall it was a success and the party might want to use some aspects of the system in the future.

Turnout was tremendous, Reed said. We were blown away. We had lots of people saying thank you.

More than 400 people registered to participate in the caucus, more than 200 indicated interest in serving as a delegate for their respective precincts and 340 called in Tuesday to vote for a delegate to represent their neighborhood at the county convention.

There are 45 voting precincts in Summit County and two people are selected from each to serve as voting delegates at the county convention, scheduled to take place on Thursday. The precincts are geographically bound and roughly correspond to neighborhoods. For each area that had more than two people interested in becoming a delegate, voters were asked to list their preferences in a ranked-choice voting process.

That led to a long night of vote tabulating, Reed said. Once the dust settled, 104 people had been selected as delegates 82 precinct delegates and 22 publicly elected officials and party officeholders.

Since no Republicans are running for county elected office, there will only be Democratic names on the ballot, barring a write-in candidacy. Summit County Republicans canceled their caucus and county convention, chair Jennifer McDonald said.

There are five people running for three County Council seats: Council Chair Doug Clyde is running unopposed; Snyderville Basin Planning Commissioners Malena Stevens and Canice Harte are vying for the seat currently held by Kim Carson, who is retiring; and two-term County Councilor Roger Armstrong is running against newcomer Jill Fellow.

Clyde is virtually assured of his partys nomination. The other two races would go to a June 30 primary unless one of the candidates gets 60% of the vote at the county convention.

That would mean a threshold of 63 of the 104 delegates, but Reed said there will likely be fewer than 100 delegates who vote. The threshold is 60% of voters, not of total delegates.

The four candidates received a list at noon on Monday of the 410 people who had registered to participate in the caucus. In the end, those people selected 82 delegates from the more than 200 who had indicated interest in serving. In years past, the candidates would travel to three county caucus sites one each in Park City, North Summit and South Summit and deliver short speeches to each precinct. This year, that couldnt happen, and the candidates had limited time to make their pitches.

Reed noted a truncated calendar was not set by the county party, with the deadline to file for office being Thursday, March 19, and the caucus the following Tuesday.

Stevens said the constraints on the caucus made it more challenging to interact with individual members of each precinct.

Emails and phone calls became even more critical components of the campaign with the virtual caucus and will continue to be as we move forward to the Democratic Convention, Stevens wrote in an email.

Harte said that, while he was making as many phone calls as he could, the abbreviated schedule increased his reliance on friends and family to help communicate his message to potential delegates.

Armstrong said he had some late nights trying to communicate with his fellow Democrats, estimating he wrote 350 or 400 emails over four days.

Fellow took a more hands-off approach, saying the change motivated her to spread a message of community engagement and that the unusual circumstances might bring more voices to the table.

At some point, telling people which neighbor to vote for just seemed like interfering with community engagement, Fellow wrote in an email. I was hoping neighbors would call each other and talk about the issues.

It appears the convention will go ahead as scheduled on April 2, Reed said, though exactly how that will happen has yet to be determined.

She said shed like to run the convention in a similar way as the caucus, with people calling in, but that presents logistical challenges like how to keep votes anonymous. She also noted the county party has less control over how to run the convention, taking cues from the state party. She said it appears likely convention voting will be done by mail.

Though the caucus was grueling for executive committee members, Reed said there were some benefits to the change. For one, it increased access for those who couldnt spend multiple hours in a school gymnasium on a weeknight. Another benefit was that people announced their intention to run as delegates before the day of the caucus, potentially allowing others in their neighborhood to weigh their choices more carefully.

Weve really tried hard to make it as accessible as possible, Reed said.

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Turnout 'tremendous' for the Summit County Democrats' call-in caucus, influencing two County Council races - The Park Record