A California crypto billionaire who donated nearly $5.5 million to Kamala Harris's presidential campaign is now spending $6 million trying to destroy a Trump-backed Republican congressman in his own party's primary. The weapon of choice is a clean energy super PAC. The target is Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, a House Freedom Caucus member who has been loudly trying to kill federal renewable energy subsidies. And the whole thing is somehow completely legal.
Who Is Writing the Checks
The money is flowing through a group called the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition super PAC, which has raised $6.7 million this cycle. Fox News Digital reviewed FEC filings and found that essentially all of that cash comes from one person: Chris Larsen, the California-based billionaire chairman of Ripple, the crypto infrastructure company.
Larsen has donated $6 million to the super PAC since February 2026. His latest single check was $5 million, which Fox News Digital notes is his second-largest individual donation ever, trailing only the $5.44 million he gave to Future Forward PAC in 2024 to back Harris. He has also donated over $1 million to the Jane Fonda Climate PAC and over $1 million split between the DSCC and DCCC. This is not a man who is confused about which team he plays for.
Larsen's online bio describes him as a climate philanthropist who founded the Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation in 2021. His stated priorities include the climate-driven home insurance crisis and making climate change a bipartisan issue again. Spending millions to kneecap a Republican in a Republican primary is, apparently, his strategy for achieving that bipartisanship.
What the PAC Is Actually Doing
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition has spent roughly $1 million so far opposing Ogles and backing his primary challenger, Charlie Hatcher, Tennessee's former agriculture commissioner. Then the group bought another $700,000 in ads on top of that. So we're looking at close to $2 million dropped into a single House Republican primary in Tennessee.
Tom Matzzie, the PAC's executive chairman and the CEO of solar company CleanChoice Energy, made the mission explicit when he told Axios: "Our campaign is here to show that politicians who oppose clean energy do so at their own political peril. Andy Ogles is next." That is not a subtle message. That is a warning shot.
The strategic logic here is not that complicated. If you can make an example of a loud anti-subsidy Republican by funneling enough outside money into his primary, you send a signal to every other House member thinking about touching clean energy funding. You don't even have to win. You just have to make it expensive and painful enough that the lesson sticks.
What Ogles Is Saying About It
Ogles, to his credit, is not pretending this is confusing. He told Fox News Digital exactly what he thinks is happening: "When you have a group spending roughly $2 million in a Republican primary, that tells you how much money they're making off of government subsidies, and they're upset that the government welfare has been taken away from them."
He also thinks his closeness to Trump has painted a target on him. "It's because I'm close to the president. It is because I am outspoken. And quite frankly, it is because I speak plainly on these issues," Ogles said. Trump has endorsed him and called him "fantastic," so that relationship appears intact for now.
Ogles frames his position as anti-subsidy rather than anti-solar. He told Fox News Digital he has personally considered putting solar panels on his farm shop, but insists he does not want or need a government subsidy to do it. Whether voters in Tennessee's 5th District find that distinction compelling will be determined at the ballot box.
The Part Where This Gets Genuinely Weird
Sit with this for a second. A crypto billionaire who just spent $5.4 million trying to elect Kamala Harris president is now spending $6 million trying to knock out a Republican in a Republican primary, through a clean energy PAC whose chairman simultaneously runs a solar company that benefits from the exact subsidies at the center of this fight.
That is a lot of self-interest dressed up as civic engagement. The PAC is perfectly legal. The spending is disclosed. But the idea that this is purely about climate altruism and bipartisan bridge-building strains credulity in ways that deserve to be said out loud.
This is also a window into how outside money works in the post-Citizens United world. You do not need to convince Republican voters of anything. You just need to flood a primary with enough cash to make a race competitive that otherwise would not be, force the incumbent to spend resources he would have saved, and hope the math works out. Larsen can afford to try this in multiple races simultaneously and still have money left over for lunch.
The Primary Stakes
Tennessee's 5th Congressional District is not a swing district. Whoever wins the Republican primary almost certainly wins the general election in November. That is why the primary is the only game worth playing for a Democratic-aligned outside group with money to spend.
Hatcher, the challenger, is not some fringe candidate. He was Tennessee's Commissioner of Agriculture, which is a real job that requires actual governing competence. Whether he is genuinely competitive or just a vehicle for the outside money to make Ogles's life miserable is a question the primary results will answer.
Ogles, meanwhile, is leaning into the martyr framing. "If trying to build an energy sector that is self-reliant, because it's a national security issue, makes me an extremist, then so be it," he told Fox News Digital. He is betting that Tennessee Republican primary voters will be more offended by a California crypto billionaire meddling in their race than they are attracted to a solar-friendly challenger. That is probably a reasonable bet. But $2 million buys a lot of television.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is about climate change. And sure, Chris Larsen clearly cares about climate change. He has the foundation, the PAC donations, the bio page, the whole deal. But a man who runs a crypto company, an industry with a carbon footprint roughly comparable to a medium-sized country, spending millions to influence Republican primaries through a super PAC whose chairman runs a solar company that profits from the subsidies in question is not exactly a disinterested environmentalist. This is money chasing money, with a green coat of paint slapped on top.
That does not make Ogles a hero. He is a House Freedom Caucus member who helped dismantle clean energy funding that economists and energy experts broadly agree was doing useful work. His "I just don't want government subsidies" line is the kind of thing that sounds principled until you remember that the fossil fuel industry has been swimming in federal subsidies for a century and nobody in the Freedom Caucus seems to lose sleep over it. His all-of-the-above energy stance has a conspicuous gap where coal and oil sit comfortably and solar gets the lecture about self-reliance.
But here is the thing nobody wants to say plainly: a Democratic megadonor buying his way into a Republican primary to punish a Republican for Republican policy positions is not democracy working. It is money working. The left spent years, correctly, losing its mind over outside dark money distorting elections. Disclosed super PAC spending is better than dark money, legally and ethically. It is still a billionaire's priorities overriding a district's. Larsen does not live in Tennessee's 5th. He does not vote there. He just writes checks there. We should be able to criticize that regardless of which side of the aisle is doing it.
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