17OCT

No Going Back PAC spends $29.2m in week

2 min read

17:30UTC

The super PAC tied to MAGA Inc reported $29.2m of new spending across 49 federal races between 16 and 22 September, more than doubling its total.

← Back to SLF's gifts to Texas PAC match Musk's to SLF Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsAssessed

Key takeaway

Trump's new Super PAC doubled its spending in a week and now reaches 49 races.

No Going Back PAC, which shares its treasurer and contact details with MAGA Inc, Donald Trump's main Super PAC, reported $29.2m of new independent expenditures dated 16 to 22 September⁠¹⁠². The money spread across 49 federal races, five for the Senate and 44 for the House, according to its 48-hour filings with the FEC. A super political action committee may raise and spend without limit provided it does not consult the campaigns it helps, which is what separates an independent expenditure from a party's coordinated buys.

CNBC had counted about $21m in the committee's filings as of 12 September, concentrated in a handful of Senate contests⁠³. Its total is now at least $50m, more than double in about a week. Its House spending in that single week, about $12.3m, exceeds the NRCC's entire August coordinated total, according to the two sets of filings.

Its biggest buys were in the Ohio Senate race ($5.82m), Michigan Senate ($4.49m), North Carolina Senate ($2.92m), New York's 3rd District ($2.05m), Texas Senate ($1.87m) and New Hampshire Senate ($1.76m)⁠⁴. The Texas money lands on top of two new committees that had already reported $85m of Senate advertising there without naming a donor.

Four of its five Senate races are among the NRSC's five largest coordinated recipients in August. Iowa, the NRSC's second-biggest bet, is missing from the Super PAC's list. The overlap puts party coordination and Super PAC advertising behind the same Senate candidates, from committees that by law cannot plan it together.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A Super PAC called No Going Back PAC just reported spending $29.2m trying to influence 49 different congressional races, more than double what CNBC had counted for it only a week and a half earlier. Under federal law, groups like this must tell the FEC within 48 hours whenever they spend a large sum trying to help or hurt a candidate, but they do not have to say who gave them the money in the first place.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

No Going Back PAC's spending growth is structurally tied to the 48-hour notice requirement rather than a voluntary disclosure choice. Federal law compels a filing within two days of any independent expenditure over $10,000 in the pre-election window, so the doubling shows up as reportable activity almost as soon as it happens.

The PAC's initial Statement of Organization, by contrast, carried no donor names, since that filing only registers the committee's existence and does not trigger the same disclosure requirement.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Because donor identity is not required alongside the 48-hour spending notice, voters in the 49 targeted races will see the scale of outside spending against or for their candidate without knowing who is funding it before they vote.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from United States

United States

Primary parallel: SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010), decided weeks after Citizens United, created the modern Super PAC by holding that a group making only independent expenditures cannot be subject to contribution limits, the direct legal ancestor of No Going Back PAC's structure.

Counter-parallel: The 2012 election cycle's super PACs mostly filed monthly or quarterly, letting large single donors go unreported for weeks; the 48-hour notice regime that flagged this week's $29.2m jump is a later procedural tightening, so today's faster disclosure of spending totals coexists with the same absence of donor identity SpeechNow.org established.

Consensus view: Critics of dark-money disclosure timing treat a PAC that doubles its reported spend in a week, without a matching donor disclosure, as a sign that 2026's outside-spending surge is running through vehicles built for speed rather than transparency, since federal law only forces a 48-hour notice on independent expenditures, not a donor list.

Counter-view: A more favourable reading of the same 48-hour notices is that they make No Going Back PAC's activity more visible in real time than most super PACs a decade ago, when disclosure often waited for a quarterly report; faster reporting rules are themselves a post-Citizens United reform, not a gap.

Key tension: Whether the current disclosure regime, built around speed rather than donor identity, gives voters meaningfully more information than it did in 2012, or just more frequent updates about the same anonymity.

Sources:Federal Election Commission·Federal Election Commission·Federal Election Commission

Mentions:Donald Trump →MAGA →New Hampshire →Iowa →NRCC →Citizens United →New York →Texas →CNBC →Michigan →North Carolina →New York's 3rd District →NO GOING BACK PAC INC. →MAGA Inc →SpeechNow.org v. FEC →Super PAC →

First Reported In

Update #18 · Republicans spend first, Democrats hold cash

Federal Election Commission· 24 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

No Going Back PAC spends $29.2m in week

Trump's political operation has widened from a handful of Senate races to 49 contests in a single week of filings.

Led to

Ohio Senate race draws $44.1m in a week

No Going Back PAC added $4.93m in Ohio after $5.82m the previous week.

Occurred 30 Sept 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

James Talarico's campaign

Talarico's campaign reported raising $56.34m in the quarter to Ken Paxton's $10.17m, and says he has been off the trail since 30 September with flu. Texas PAC, whose only donor is SLF, has spent $131.5m in the race, more than twice what the campaign spent.

Senate Majority PAC, spokesperson Lauren French

French said on 8 October that the Democratic super PAC was watching Kansas closely, but its booked airtime covers nine states and Kansas is not one. Whether SMP spends there decides if Adam Hamilton's 13-to-1 fundraising edge meets outside Republican money alone.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State

Raffensperger's office reported 188,667 in-person votes on the first day of early voting, a midterm record. He expects turnout to challenge 2022's near 4m.

Sam Hayes, North Carolina State Board of Elections

Hayes's board reported 1,392 SAVE flags, about 0.02% of the roll, and says no voter will be removed automatically. The board is asking flagged voters to cancel or prove citizenship by letter, while eligible voters keep the right to vote on 3 November.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Thune, the Senate's Republican leader, said the government-paid ads should not be funded by taxpayers. His objection puts the party's own Senate leadership against the administration on the DHS spending.

The White House and Donald Trump

The White House calls the five DHS ads public-service announcements with no call to action; Trump called them "rather standard", then said his political fundraising would pay. A White House official said there are no immediate plans to repay.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.