The Squad Victory Fund raised $2.35 million and says no to police union money

The number stopped me for a second: $2.35 million. That is what the Squad Victory Fund has raised this election cycle, its highest total yet, according to its federal filing summary. The fund also says plainly that it will not take money from the Fraternal Order of Police.

That combination is worth sitting with. A political fundraising operation can raise a record amount while publicly refusing money from the country’s largest police union. Those two facts do not cancel each other out. They sit beside each other and ask a question about what kind of coalition progressive politics is trying to build.

What the fund is

The Squad Victory Fund is a joint fundraising committee authorized by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. It also includes four allied political action committees. The arrangement lets donors give once, with the money divided among the eight participants.

The fund reports $2,351,388.02 raised in the 2025–2026 cycle. That is the figure behind the rounded $2.35 million. Through March 31, 2026, it had spent about $1.6 million and reported roughly $68,000 in cash on hand. The committee is still active, so those totals can change.

Its donor rules go beyond the legal requirements. The fund says it does not accept contributions from corporations or their PACs, registered federal lobbyists, certain fossil fuel interests, or the Fraternal Order of Police. Contributions are generally split evenly, 12.5 percent to each participant, though a donor may direct money to a particular participant.

Why the police union line matters

The Fraternal Order of Police exclusion is the detail people will argue about. The fund’s disclosure lists it but does not explain it. That silence leaves room for people to fill in the reason themselves, and the versions they choose will say more about their politics than about the fund.

For supporters, the rule is consistent with a broader refusal of corporate, lobbyist, and fossil fuel money. It signals that the fund wants small individual donors rather than established institutional power. The record total suggests that message has found an audience.

For critics, it looks like a blanket rejection of people who work in policing. Police unions represent officers, but they also represent families, retirees, and communities that depend on public safety. A donor rule aimed at a union can read, depending on where you stand, as accountability or as dismissal.

My first reaction was that the exclusion was too broad. Then I thought about the political history behind it. The Squad emerged nationally around debates over police funding and accountability after 2020, and police union political spending has been part of that fight. In 2021, reporting by Axios found that two police union PACs spent $510,000 on efforts targeting members of the Squad.

That does not settle whether the ban is fair. It does explain why the line exists. Politics is not conducted in a vacuum, and a fundraising committee is allowed to decide whose money it does not want.

What is known, and what is not

The documented facts are narrow. The fund raised a record $2.35 million this cycle. It explicitly bars donations from the Fraternal Order of Police. It also bars corporate, lobbyist, and certain fossil fuel money. The disclosure does not give a reason for the police union exclusion.

What remains unknown is just as important. We do not know from the disclosure why the fund singled out the FOP. We do not know how many potential donors the rule turned away. And we do not know whether the record total would have been larger, smaller, or different in character if the fund had accepted police union contributions.

It would be easy to turn this into a clean story about courage or hypocrisy. I do not think it is clean. A union is not the same thing as every officer, and a fundraising rule is not the same thing as a governing policy. But symbols matter in politics, especially when the subject is policing.

What it means for voters

For ordinary people, this is not mainly a story about campaign finance mechanics. It is about who politicians feel accountable to, and who they are willing to disappoint in order to make that clear.

The $2.35 million says the fund has financial support. The FOP rule says it is willing to draw a boundary that some voters will dislike. Those are both political choices, made in public.

The harder question is whether that boundary helps or hurts the larger argument over public safety. Communities need police accountability and functioning emergency response. They also need officers who feel part of the civic conversation rather than cast as enemies of it. A fundraising rule cannot solve that tension. It can, however, tell us where a political operation believes its obligations lie.

For now, the Squad Victory Fund has made its answer clear: it will raise record money without police union donations. Whether that strengthens its coalition or narrows it is the question the next election will help answer.