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.