Monday, July 28, 2025 - A new feature coming to Apple iPhones could jeopardize up to $25 million in Senate fundraising and $500 million in party fundraising overall, warns a memo produced by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
"Apple's iOS 26 update introduces aggressive message
filtering. Political texts — even from verified and compliant senders — will be
treated as spam by default, silently sent to an 'Unknown' inbox with no alerts
or notifications," said the NRSC
memo, obtained by Punchbowl News. "That change has profound
implications for our ability to fundraise, mobilize voters, and run digital
campaigns."
Apple, which is rolling out iOS 26 in September, is making
the change in order to give people better control over the text messages they
receive, including from political groups that have increasingly bombarded
voters' messaging apps.
According to the memo, the only way to prevent political
texts from being automatically treated as spam is getting voters to reply to
the message chain — which is already almost impossible, and even more so if the
texts are filtered to begin with.
"We've spent years complying with rigorous
standards-providing full documentation, opt-in proof, and message samples via
Campaign Verify and The Campaign Registry — yet Apple ignores that. Carriers
respect it. Apple doesn't," said the memo. "NRSC alone could see a
$25M+ revenue hit. Since 70% of small-dollar donations come via text, and
iPhones make up 60% of US mobile devices, the macro effect could be over $500M
in lost GOP revenue."
Furthermore, the report noted, it's not just fundraising
texts that will be impacted: "GOTV messages, voter persuasion texts,
rapid-response messaging, election day reminders — these are time-sensitive,
critical communications. iOS 26 breaks all of that."
Democratic strategists, by contrast, expect some losses from
the change but not devastating ones, with Democratic digital advertising firm
Authentic's director Mike Nellis telling Business Insider, "If you're
panicking about losing $500 million in revenue, it probably means you were
scamming people in the first place. If you can't raise money online without
misleading your supporters, you deserve what you get."
This comes as Republicans have sounded the alarm over other
technology changes' potential impacts on their ability to message the base;
some experts have suggested that is their motivation in backing a
Senate bill that would prohibit car manufacturers from phasing out AM radio, a
medium where right-wing talk shows dominate.
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