The viral claims are wrong: FEC campaign spending reports are still searchable

If you’ve seen the Instagram reel making the rounds this week, you already know the claim: the Federal Election Commission has supposedly been hacked, and Super PAC reports are no longer visible. The reel’s premise is that Super PACs must file reports publicly every 24 hours and that those filings have now vanished.

Something real did happen, but the available reporting describes an attempted intrusion, not a confirmed break-in — and the problem was with submitting new reports, not with viewing ones already on file. The FEC’s electronic filing system went offline around 10:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, about a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. The agency took the system down after detecting what an FEC electronic-filings officer called a “bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems,” in an email reported by Reuters. “As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web facing services,” the officer wrote.

Miles Martin, FEC deputy press officer, said the agency’s status update showed the filing system was offline while IT staff worked to restore service. But the “website search for FEC reports is not affected,” Martin said.

That distinction matters for the viral claim. The outage blocked the ability to electronically submit new disclosures, not the public’s ability to read what was already on file; the FEC’s public search function for previously filed reports stayed up throughout. As of Oct. 28, 2026, the FEC had not confirmed that any data was accessed, removed, or changed, and had not said when filing would resume. The agency also said filers would not be fined for late filings as long as they submitted within 24 hours of the system coming back online, according to an automated FEC outage email reported by Politico.

What the 24-hour rule actually covers

The “every 24 hours” premise comes from a real rule, but it is narrower than the social media claim suggests. A 24-hour independent-expenditure report is triggered when a filer’s independent expenditures for a single election reach $1,000 or more, but only after the 20th day before the election and more than 24 hours before Election Day. It is due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern the day after the spending was made public.

A separate 48-hour report kicks in when spending reaches $10,000 or more before that final 20-day window. Spending made public within 24 hours of Election Day is generally disclosed later, on the filer’s next regular report. These expedited reports also cover only independent expenditures — spending for or against candidates made without coordinating with that candidate — and only federal races, not state-level contests.

Texas money: where it’s actually reported

The outage does not erase what Texans already know about record spending in the state’s biggest races — especially because state-level spending is reported to the Texas Ethics Commission, not the FEC.

In the U.S. Senate race:

• Advertising spending between Ken Paxton and James Talarico has exceeded $500 million when primary races and future ad reservations are included.
• Talarico reported raising a record $64 million in the third quarter of 2026.
• Republican-aligned outside groups spent more than $175 million since Sept. 1 supporting Paxton or attacking Talarico, according to AdImpact data.
• Elon Musk contributed $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, which directed the money to a super PAC supporting Paxton, according to Associated Press reporting.

In the governor’s race:

• Reports covering Sept. 25 through Oct. 24, 2026, show Greg Abbott raised $26 million and spent $35.8 million.
• Gina Hinojosa raised $17.5 million and spent $19.1 million in the same period.
• Over the prior year, Abbott had spent about $281 million, compared with Hinojosa’s roughly $36.8 million.
• The governor’s race — and most Texas statewide money — is reported to the Texas Ethics Commission, not the FEC, so the federal filing outage does not affect public visibility of that spending.

What to do before Nov. 3

If you want to see the money behind a Texas race right now, the places to look are still up. For federal-race money — the U.S. Senate contest between Paxton and Talarico and U.S. House races — use the FEC’s public search tools at fec.gov/data, which remained available during the outage and include previously filed 24-hour and 48-hour independent-expenditure reports. For state-race money — governor, lieutenant governor, Railroad Commission, and legislative races — use the Texas Ethics Commission’s campaign-finance database, where electronically filed contribution and expenditure reports are searchable and the underlying database updates nightly.

None of this means the outage was nothing. It means the gap is narrower than the viral post suggests. The outage blocked only submission of new near-real-time independent-expenditure notices in the final days; any spending not captured by 24-hour or 48-hour notices during the outage will still show up in filers’ next regular quarterly or monthly disclosure reports once filing resumes.

The FEC has confirmed an attempted intrusion, not an actual breach, and no evidence has surfaced that any filed reports were altered or deleted. What was already public stayed public, and what could not be submitted will come out in the next regular report. If a filing looks missing, check the two databases first — fec.gov/data for federal races and the Texas Ethics Commission site for state races — before treating a social-media claim at face value.