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The Republican National Committee has vastly outpaced Democrats in the crush for cash ahead of the midterm elections, holding a nearly $100 million advantage at the close of 2025, according to year-end filings to the Federal Election Commission.As Democrats have struggled in the Trump era, the RNC tallied $172 million raised in 2025, with $95 million cash on hand at year’s end. In contrast, the Democratic National Committee posted $145 million for the year, with $14 million on hand and $17 million in debt, to start the new year underwater.It’s all pointing to a turbulent election cycle ahead as President Donald Trump fights political headwinds that tend to brush back the party in power, in this case Republican control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, and reward challengers during the midterms.In the campaigns for control of Congress, the total hauls are less stark. House Republicans posted one of their stronger years, raising $13 million in the last month of the year, to close with more than $117 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the main campaign arm. House Democrats trailed slightly at $115 million.Both of the House committees started 2026 with about $50 million cash on hand, according to the filings, which were due to the FEC this weekend. A similar dynamic is playing out in the Senate.House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday the GOP’s overall fundraising haul left him “bullish” on the party’s chances to not only hold onto their razor-thin majority in the House, but grow it with more members.“We’re going to have a war chest to run on,” Johnson, R-La., said on “Fox News Sunday.”To be sure, the fundraising totals reflect the 2025 calendar year, before the onslaught of actions and events that have scrambled the nation’s politics in the first month of the new year.From the U.S. military attack on Venezuela to the shooting deaths of two Americans protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis, it’s not at all certain whether voters and donors will undergo lasting shifts in their attitudes toward the political parties.“Momentum is on our side,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which supports the House Democrats.He said the Republicans are “running scared” because the Democrats have better candidates and a better message for voters as the party tries to wrest back control of the House.In the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $88 million in 2025, closing out the year with $19.3 million cash on hand. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $79.8 million, but ended up slightly better with $21.7 million cash on hand. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Every company wants to be innovative. Most approach this by trying to hire highly creative specialists or by spinning up a new innovation team. But companies that consistently innovate do something different: They build company-wide systems focused on customer solutions and make innovation part of everyday business. Smart organizations focus on building reliable processes to understand customers, test assumptions, and scale what works. In my experience at Verra Mobility, the difference between companies that talk about innovation and companies that deliver it often comes down to a repeatable process that drives creativity. QUESTION EVERYTHING YOU “KNOW” The biggest innovation killer isn’t resistance to change; its the assumption that we already know the answer. When someone says they “know” what customers want, we dig deeper. Who did you talk to? How long ago did you talk to them? In our business reviews, we’ve made it mandatory for every business review to include not only operational performance, but also market updates and competitive intelligence. We want to push people to ask more questions, not just review more slides. This creates a culture where expertise is valued, assumptions are challenged, and customer insight drives decisions. When you force teams to back up their opinions with current data, they start questioning how they’ve worked and look for better solutions. UNDERSTAND WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT TO ACCOMPLISH Most innovation fails because we solve the wrong problems. Teams focus on how customers are using a product instead of understanding what theyre trying to achieve. Take time to sit with customers and understand their complete workflowswhich teams they interact with, how they’d be impacted by process changes, and identifying opportunities to improve. Go deeper than marketing personas to understand the decision makers who will ultimately sign off on new programs. A few years ago, a car rental company client told us their biggest issue wasnt reconciling $100 traffic violations, it was accounting for daily $10 tolls. We created a whole new business line for automated toll management. We started with one state, then expanded based on what worked. MAKE EXPERIMENTATION PART OF THE PROCESS Innovation requires observation, but success requires testing assumptions quickly and cheaply. We’ve built experimentation into our standard improvement process. When teams create solutions, I ask them to identify their biggest assumptions upfront, then look at the probability that assumption is correct. If we’re not sure, we test it quickly with a pilot or single customer trial. Take rough prototypeseven napkin drawingsdirectly to customers. The less finished it looks, the more honest the feedback you receive. When something looks polished, people don’t want to hurt your feelings. When it’s obviously a sketch, they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong. Rather than funding only well-developed ideas in annual planning cycles, we create ways to test concepts early and build our business on what succeeds. MAKE INNOVATION EVERYONE’S JOB Innovation isnt a special teams responsibility. Everyone needs the mindset that there’s always room for improvement, and that they play an active role in identifying solutions. When innovation is part of everyones daily work, it becomes sustainable. This means regular forums where teams share customer insights and have clear processes for moving from hypothesis to experiment to implementation. It means bringing together product management, sales, and customer success to ensure new innovations don’t create support nightmares. Most experiments will failbut they’ll fail fast and cheap, not slow and expensive. THE INNOVATION DISCIPLINE Here’s what most companies get wrong: They think innovation is about creativity and inspiration. While those are important, real success is driven by discipline and systems. Companies that succeed long-term create processes where good ideas surface, get tested quickly, and spread when they work. Any organization can do that if theyre willing to watch, question, and pilot solutions quickly. David Roberts is CEO of Verra Mobility.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump said Sunday he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center performing arts center for two years starting in July for construction, his latest proposal to upturn the storied venue since returning to the White House.Trump’s announcement on social media follows a wave of cancellations by leading performers, musicians and groups since the president ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building. Trump made no mention in his post of the recent cancellations.His proposal, announced days after the premiere of “Melania,” a documentary of the first lady was shown at the center, he said was subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which has been stocked with his hand-picked allies. Trump himself chairs the center’s board of trustees.“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in his post.Neither Trump nor Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell, a Trump ally, have provided evidence to back up their claims about the building being in disrepair, and last October, Trump had pledged the center would remain open during renovations. In Sunday’s announcement, Trump said the center will close on July 4th, when he said the construction would begin.“Our goal has always been to not only save and permanently preserve the Center, but to make it the finest Arts Institution in the world,” Grenell said in a post, citing funds Congress approved for repairs.“This will be a brief closure,” Grenell said. “It desperately needs this renovation and temporarily closing the Center just makes sense it will enable us to better invest our resources, think bigger and make the historic renovations more comprehensive. It also means we will be finished faster.”The sudden decision to shutter and reconstruct the Kennedy Center is sparking blowback as Trump disrupts the popular venue, which began as a national cultural center but Congress renamed as a “living memorial” to President John F. Kennedy in 1964, in the aftermath of the slain president’s death. Opened in 1971, it is open year-round as a public showcase for the arts, including the National Symphony Orchestra.Since Trump returned to the White House, the Kennedy Center is one of many Washington landmarks that he has sought to overhaul in his second term. He demolished the East Wing of the White House and launched a massive $400 million ballroom project, is actively pursuing building a triumphal arch on the other side the Arlington Bridge from the the Lincoln Memorial, and has plans for Washington Dulles International Airport.Leading performing arts groups have pulled out of appearances at the Kennedy Center, most recently, composer Philip Glass, who announced his decision to withdraw his Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” because he said the values of the center today are in “direct conflict” with the message of the piece.Last month, the Washington National Opera announced that it will move performances away from the Kennedy Center in another high-profile departure following Trump’s takeover of the U.S. capital’s leading performing arts venue.The head of artistic programming for the center abruptly left his post last week, less than two weeks after being named to the job.A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center could not immediately be reached and did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Late last year, as Trump announced his plan to rename the building erecting his name on the building’s main front ahead of that of Kennedy he drew sharp opposition from members of Congress, and some Kennedy family members.Kerry Kennedy, a niece of John F. Kennedy, said in a social post on X at the time that she will remove Trump’s name herself with a pickax when his term ends.Another family member, Maria Shriver, said at the time that it is “beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy,” her uncle. “It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not.”Late Sunday evening, Shriver posted a new comment mimicking Trump’s own voice and style, and suggesting the closure of the venue was meant to deflect from the cancellations.She said that “entertainers are canceling left and right” and the president has determined that “since the name change no one wants to perform there any longer.”Trump has decided, she said, it’s best “to close this center down and rebuild a new center” that will bear his name. She asked, “right?”One lawmaker, Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat and ex-officio trustee of the center’s board, sued in December, arguing that “only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center.”On Sunday, Beatty said that once again Trump “has acted with total disregard for Congress,” which allocates funds to the center.She questioned what comes next for the artists and the building itself. “Let’s be clear: remodeling the premises will not restore the Kennedy Center to what it was. A return to artistic independence will,” she said. “America’s artists are rejecting this attempted takeover, and the administration knows it.” Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report. Michelle L. Price and Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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