Last week, Punchbowl News published an internal memo the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) sent to its members, warning that Apple’s upcoming iOS 26 operating system for the iPhone could cost the organization $25 million in donations. The NRSC is the Republicans’ primary Senatorial fundraising arm. The memo further said the changes could cost the greater GOP half a billion dollars in lost political donations.
The change? A new “aggressive message filtering” feature, according to the NRSC memo, that Apple is introducing in iOS 26’s Messages app, which handles both iMessages and regular SMS text messages. This feature will filter texts from unknown senders—like the kind the NRSC sends out to phones across the country to raise political donations—into a siloed inbox where the i