Congress
Crypto super PAC to spend $30 million in bid to take down Sherrod Brown
A super PAC funded by the cryptocurrency industry is preparing to spend at least $30 million in the Ohio Senate race to try to block Democrat Sherrod Brown from returning to Washington, the group’s most aggressive move of the 2026 midterm cycle to date.
The move by Fairshake, a super PAC group bankrolled by a trio of leading crypto companies, comes just days after Democrats voted down an industry-backed digital asset bill on the Senate floor.
The group spent more than $40 million in 2024 to help defeat Brown, who was then the Senate Banking Committee chair and a leading critic of the crypto sector in the chamber. Brown is now mounting a comeback bid in the Buckeye State, where he is facing Sen. Jon Husted in a special election to replace Vice President JD Vance.
The Ohio race has long been seen as a top target for the crypto group, which has more than $120 million in the bank. But its money had been kept on the sidelines for months as the crypto bill, known as the Clarity Act, was pending in the Senate, where it needed Democratic support to advance. The $30 million campaign against Brown, which the group confirmed to Blue Light News, is by far its biggest play of the 2026 cycle thus far.
Brown was a key roadblock to industry-friendly crypto legislation when he served as Senate Banking chair — a perch he used to highlight risks associated with digital assets.
Ohio is one of several GOP Senate seats that Democrats are hoping to capture in order to chip away at Republicans’ majority in the chamber. Brown lost by about four percentage points in 2024 to GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno — who is now a leading crypto booster in the chamber — but Democrats hope he will perform better this year with President Donald Trump’s popularity lagging.
It’s unclear where else the crypto group will spend its war chest, which comes primarily from the crypto firms Coinbase and Ripple and the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz. It backed both Democrats and Republicans in key 2024 Senate races, but some Democrats fear that its spending will be more lopsided in favor of the GOP this cycle as the industry seeks to punish Democrats for voting down the Clarity bill.
The Ohio spending was previously reported by the New York Times.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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