Soros-backed group readies millions to pressure Murkowski if Supreme Court vacancy opens

By SUZANNE DOWNING

July 1, 2026 – The brief but explosive rumor that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring from the US Supreme Court lasted only minutes Tuesday, but it was enough to reveal just how prepared leftist judicial activists are for the next vacancy.

The frenzy began after NPR mistakenly published a story reporting that Alito was stepping down. Veteran public radio Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg later acknowledged she had misheard a court announcement and accepted responsibility for what she called the worst professional mistake of her career.

NPR quickly retracted the story and issued a public apology after confirming that Alito had not announced his retirement.

But behind the scenes, one George Soros-backed advocacy group made clear it has been preparing for exactly that moment.

According to a memo obtained by Politico Playbook, Demand Justice has already committed an initial $3 million campaign in partnership with the activist organization Indivisible to oppose any Supreme Court nominee put forward by President Donald Trump should a vacancy occur.

The campaign would specifically target Republican senators viewed as potentially persuadable, including Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn.

Demand Justice official John Orton told Playbook the organization already has advertising, websites, rally signs and even illuminated projection (“beam”) signs prepared in advance.

“We’re essentially sending up the flare in those states that the incumbent senator… is going to have to make a choice between the Constitution and Donald Trump,” Orton said, according to the memo.

For Alaska, that means Murkowski would likely become an immediate focus of an expensive national pressure campaign.

Demand Justice was founded in 2018 by former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon and former Barack Obama White House judicial adviser Christopher Kang. The organization was created specifically to influence the federal judiciary from a progressive perspective, opposing conservative judicial nominees while advocating for policies such as expanding the Supreme Court and reshaping the federal bench.

The organization originally operated as a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund before becoming independent several years later. The Sixteen Thirty Fund is one of the largest nonprofit advocacy organizations managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based consulting company that oversees a network of progressive nonprofit funds. It is the definition of dark money.

That broader Arabella network—which also includes the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund and the Windward Fund—has become one of the largest financial clearinghouses for left-of-center advocacy campaigns in the country. The arrangement is a sophisticated dark-money network because the donations flow through nonprofit entities that are not required to publicly disclose their contributors.

Demand Justice itself is organized as a 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit, meaning it also is not required to disclose its donors publicly. Public reporting has shown that after separating from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the organization raised nearly $6 million from only a handful of anonymous donors, including multiple seven-figure contributions.

Early financial backing also came from organizations affiliated with billionaire investor George Soros, including the Open Society Policy Center, according to publicly reported funding records and congressional Republican analyses.

Demand Justice also operates an affiliated political action committee that raises disclosed contributions for election spending, while its nonprofit advocacy arm continues to rely largely on donor privacy protections.

Demand Justice has become one of the nation’s most prominent leftwing organizations focused exclusively on judicial politics. It played a central role in campaigns opposing conservative Supreme Court nominees during Trump’s first administration and has advocated structural changes to the federal judiciary, including expanding the number of Supreme Court justices.

Its latest plans would rely heavily on Indivisible, the nationwide grassroots organization that emerged following Trump’s first election in 2016. Indivisible maintains local chapters across the country, including several active groups in Alaska that have regularly organized demonstrations, lobbying campaigns and coordinated pressure efforts aimed at Murkowski and Alaska’s congressional delegation.

For Murkowski, whose opposition votes on Trump judicial confirmations have frequently drawn national attention, the memo suggests that Alaska would once again become a battleground in a high-dollar fight over the future direction of the nation’s highest court.