The Lincoln Project, the once omnipresent Trump antagonist group that reached its zenith during the 2020 campaign, is struggling to remain relevant following President Donald Trump‘s return to the White House.
At its height, the political action committee raised tens of millions of dollars and cut ads critical of the president, but in the aftermath of sexual misconduct allegations made against one of its founders, former John McCain aide John Weaver, combined with Trump’s 2024 win, the Lincoln Project’s political power appears to have all but dissipated.
Current Lincoln Project players, including sole surviving cofounder and board member Rick Wilson and senior adviser Joe Trippi, did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s inquiries regarding the group’s growth strategy during Trump’s second administration, though it continues to undermine the president through anti-Trump ads, voter organizing, opposition research, its social media presence, and its events before November’s midterm elections.
“98 days until the midterms, that’s it,” the Lincoln Project wrote on X last week. “98 days to decide whether MAGA keeps the House, keeps the Senate, and keeps doing whatever the hell it wants. We aren’t waiting. We launched our effort to flip 26 seats and take back Congress. The money we raise in the next 98 days goes directly into the fight.”
To that end, the Lincoln Project raised $9.2 million between Jan. 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, spent $9.3 million, and had $95,000 cash on hand, according to June’s Federal Elections Commission PAC financial disclosure documents. It did, however, also report having $642,000 in debts.
That fundraising figure and burn rate are well below the $87 million it raised, $82 million it spent, and $5 million cash on hand it had during the pinnacle of its political power, captured by the FEC’s 2019-2020 reporting cycle.
In an interview, former Lincoln Project cofounder Reed Galen, who departed the group in 2024 after an earlier leadership exodus following the allegations against Weaver, among other issues, told the Washington Examiner the group’s original success was, in part, because of timing.
Other cofounders included George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, and Mike Madrid.
“It’s important to understand the providence, which is when we launched the thing in December of 2019, Trump hadn’t been impeached and COVID wasn’t a thing yet,” Galen said. “He was on track to win in 2020 and COVID changed all that. I think what often gets missed is we were in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills, which were understanding Trump’s many, many pathologies and having him, for lack of a better way to put it, stuck in a cage, which was the residence of the White House, because he couldn’t leave either.”
At the height of the Lincoln Project’s political power, for example, the group was sued by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over billboards it paid for in Times Square, New York City.
Galen recalled how the Lincoln Project would, too, reserve airtime on Fox News, but only in the Washington, D.C., market where Trump would most likely see it.
“Once he reacted, the flywheel got spinning and that flywheel led to more attention, which led to more money, which led to the ability to do more to make Trump crazy, and the job at that time was to be Trump’s main antagonists,” he said. “Now it’s not just the Bulwark, it’s the Meidas Touch guys and everybody else. So the environment is getting very, very, very crowded.”
In addition to the number of anti-Trump organizations, Galen contended the Lincoln Project’s political power has declined because the president and his family “don’t freaking care anymore” about the criticism as well.
“There’s stuff that pisses him off and everything else, but shooting ads into the residence, he’s so far beyond that and in a place where he just now feels, I mean to the extent anybody could feel, invincible,” he said. “Like, ‘You assholes. It worked once. It’s not going to work again.’ He doesn’t really care. In fact, he’s happy to have it. You know why? Because he wants to be the center of every conversation, even the ones with people who don’t like him. You know why? Because he’s occupying your brain space.”
Regardless, Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley criticized the Lincoln Project for having “a real problem with their damaged reputation” because of the Weaver allegations, which included the McCain aide sexually harassing men and providing others with personal and professional favors in exchange for sex, for which he apologized.
“They’ve been consistently wrong about Trump and MAGA,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “They must feel like the castaways on Gilligan’s Island. No one wants to save them. It looks like Lincoln has been assassinated in two centuries.”
For former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye, the Lincoln Project appeared “more about making money than having an impact.”
Current Republican National Committee press secretary Natalie Baldassarre added that the Lincoln Project “lost momentum because they’re a bunch of losers who have no place in the Republican Party.”
Schmidt, one of the Lincoln Project founders, announced at the end of 2025 that another anti-Trump endeavor would spend upwards of $100 million on 60 House races during the midterm elections. The PAC, Save America Movement, raised less than $100,000 before it was terminated in May.
Despite Trump’s popular vote win, the first time a Republican has laid claim to that accomplishment since former President George W. Bush in 2004, other anti-Trump organizations do appear to be resonating politically during the president’s second coming, including a media company called the Bulwark.
In June, Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell welcomed the news that more than 1 million people had signed up to receive the company’s newsletters and that it had more than 140,000 paid subscribers across Substack and YouTube.
“When we started to build The Bulwark, we had no idea we’d get here,” Longwell, who started the company as a not-for-profit organization in 2018 with the help of Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes, wrote. “We just saw the need for something that could bring together Americans who were alarmed about this moment we’re living through — and wanted to create something better.”
Others, including lawyer Heath Mayo’s Principles First grassroots organization, which was started in 2019 as a more centrist counterpart to the Conservative Political Action Conference, have gained enough traction to attract criticism from MAGA supporters, such as pardoned Jan. 6 offender, former Proud Boys leader, and Oath Keepers founder Enrique Tarrio, who attended the Principles First summit in 2025 to confront former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone.
A day later, the Principles First Summit organizers received a bomb threat, which resulted in an evacuation of conference attendees.
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“Most just want a good life & a government they can trust,” Principles First wrote on X. “It’s not about red or blue—it’s about protecting democracy & the rule of law. If you’re concerned but new to politics, you’re not alone.”