Dems brace for Trump's assault on ActBlue: ‘We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure'
Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue.
Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as 'unlawful 'straw donor' and foreign contributions to American elections' in a presidential memorandum on Thursday.
'President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,' a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. 'ActBlue has become notorious for its lax standards that enable unverified and fraudulent donations.'
Democrats had been preparing for presidential action targeting the platform in recent days, alarmed by the GOP's growing focus on the platform where they conduct almost all of their fundraising.
'By targeting ActBlue, Trump is taking direct aim at the infrastructure of Democrats to run campaigns from school board to Congress,' said Kelly Dietrich, the CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, an organization that prepares Democrats to run for office.
ActBlue raised $400 million in the first three months of 2025 alone, the biggest fundraising total in the first quarter of a non-presidential or midterm election year ever, the organization said. The platform, which processes individual contributions and funnels them to campaigns, dominates the landscape of Democratic fundraising operations.
'There are alternatives, yes, but there's no platform that has the integration and the reach of ActBlue that you could replace tomorrow,' said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant. 'This isn't a platform options problem, this is a penetration of market and depth-of-use problem ... Democrats should protest, fight [Trump's actions] in court, keep using ActBlue.'
This is not the first time that the right has attacked ActBlue. Trump's presidential memorandum follows a letter that Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Committee on Administration,
sent to ActBlue in October
. Steil asked for documents and information about how the platform verifies donors, suggesting it does not have adequate protections to prevent foreign donations.
In December, Steil
announced the documents
turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to 'automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined.' At the time, Steil called it a 'positive step forward' but said there 'is still more work to be done.'
Democrats see Trump's latest memo as a continuation of that line of attack — even if doesn't ultimately disrupt the platform's operations. Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital consultant, described the memo as a simple messaging tool, not directly imperiling ActBlue's ability to function.
'To me it looks like the continuance of peddling this lie that Democratic small-dollar fundraising is actually coming from foreign nationals, which it obviously is not,' he said.
Jeff Yao, a Democratic strategist and fundraiser, told POLITICO, 'This is the latest in a line of attacks from the far right that tries to basically use lies to affect people's confidence in ActBlue.'
But there remains concern in Democratic circles that Trump's memo is only the beginning of a broader assault on the platform.
Among some Democrats, that fear is centered in large part around the idea that the administration could move to freeze ActBlue accounts, even temporarily.
'Everything from payroll to health insurance could be affected by a bank freeze [of ActBlue accounts], which is certainly a looming concern — everyone will get the money out eventually, but if you lose a week or even three or four days to a freeze, that would really affect how campaigns function,' said Dietrich.
Nothing in the White House fact sheet detailing Trump's memo suggests that a bank freeze is currently in the works. It does, though, accuse ActBlue of being a party to fraud, stating, 'Specifically, the Memorandum notes that a congressional investigation revealed significant fraud schemes using ActBlue and, over a 30-day period during the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.'
While the Trump administration maintains the investigation is about election integrity, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital consultant, said Trump's actions concerning ActBlue are just the opposite.
'We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure — the tools that make it easier for everyday Americans to have a say in our democracy,' he said. 'That's not how this works. Trump is not going to be able to rig the midterm elections in his favor. We're not going to allow it.'
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