A right-leaning digital consulting firm is claiming that Google’s Gmail service is flagging Republican fundraiser emails as suspicious while leaving Democratic fundraising emails untouched, the second time major GOP groups have claimed such actions are being taken against them.
Targeted Victory, a political marketing consulting firm with a largely Republican base, claimed in a statement posted to social media in August that Google was flagging emails from their clients that contained links to WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform, as “dangerous.”
Clients of Targeted Victory include U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, according to confirmation from Blackburn’s spokesperson, as well as Tennessee Republican U.S. Reps John Rose and Andy Ogles. Clients also include major GOP leaders including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, among many others, according to 2024 financial records.
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, listens during Tenn. Gov. Bill Lee’s speech during Agriculture Day on the Hill at the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville, Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
Blackburn and Rose are currently running against each other in the 2026 GOP primary for Tennessee governor.
“In short, Google has been labeling conservative fundraising links as ‘dangerous,’ while Democratic links have no labels,” Targeted Victory said in their statement.
Links to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, were not flagged, according to a video the company purported showed proof of bias.
“Censoring conservative voices is standard operating procedure for the big tech platforms,” said Blackburn. “No longer can they choose sides. They must treat Democrats and Republicans equally.”
Financial records show that Blackburn has been a client of Targeted Victory since at least 2016.
More: Why did Marsha Blackburn wait so long to announce for governor? Consider the money
The claim of bias from Google’s email servers is the second time such an issue has been raised, with the first being in 2022 when the Republican National Committee accused Alphabet, Google’s parent company, of intentionally sending the party’s emails to users’ spam folders.
The complaint fueled a major lawsuit against Google that was dismissed in 2024 after a California federal judge said the RNC was unable to demonstrate “sufficient harm.”
The RNC appealed the dismissal in January.
Video testing Gmail filters alleges bias
In a test video posted by Targeted Victory, the company opens Gmail and sends two separate emails: one with a link to Ohio governor candidate and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s fundraising page, and one with a link to ActBlue’s main landing page for general Democratic donations.
The video shows both emails being opened, and while the ActBlue email appears normal, the WinRed email has a warning message in red that says “this message seems dangerous,” with advice to avoid clicking any links enclosed.
“If Gmail is systematically flagging emails containing WinRed links, it could be suppressing Republican fundraising and voter outreach at scale,” Targeted Victory said in their statement. “Google needs to fix this now, and we won’t stop until they do.”
In response to questions from The Tennessean, a Google spokesperson said the accusations are baseless and mischaracterize Google’s security functions.
“Protecting people from spam and phishing is a top priority,” the spokesperson said. “Like other email service providers, we use a wide range of shared signals and threat data from across the industry to keep our defenses strong. And to be clear, our filters are applied equally to everyone, regardless of their political views.”
The spokesperson explained that the warning labels that appeared on certain emails with WinRed links were not caused by Google.
Rather, the label was applied because a third-party vendor placed WinRed on its blocklist, according to the spokesperson, after campaigns sent emails with links to WinRed to Gmail users who hadn’t opted in to receiving emails.
Email servers like Google regularly receive lists from third-party services of potentially harmful or unwanted links and emails. Those lists act as one of many pieces of information the email server, like Gmail, pulls from to label emails.
The Tennessean attempted to replicate the exact example shown in the video, and no warning labels were present.
In a statement on social media, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a message in May accusing Google of a similar problem: filing the committee’s emails from “recent election cycles” straight to spam in users’ accounts.
The statement asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into the matter, and asked that the “cost of Google’s suppression” should be calculated by “not only in dollars never raised, but in votes never cast.”
New complaint three years in the making
The issue of alleged bias in Google’s email filters was first brought up in early 2022 when the RNC accused Google of “relegate(ing) millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building.”
The accusations cited a study from the University of North Carolina as proving that Google labeled “significantly” more RNC emails as spam over Democratic emails, despite the authors of the study later insisting that their findings do not support the Republican claims in a Washington Post article.
After the accusations were levied by the RNC, Google launched a temporary pilot program in August 2022 to exempt qualified political emails from Gmail’s spam filter, which the RNC opted to not participate in, according to court documents.
The RNC filed the lawsuit in October 2022, alongside a Federal Election Commission complaint, accusing Google of violating a number of laws and acting outside the protections of Section 230 law, which grants large protections to internet companies.
“When the Republicans take The House this better be on the top of their list of things to fix,” said Donald Trump Jr., in a post on X in 2022. “Democrats would put people in jail for this level of election interference and in kind financial contribution if it went the other way and benefited republicans. Where is the FEC?”
Both the lawsuit and the FEC complaint were dismissed in 2023, with an amended suit similarly dismissed in 2024.
The RNC appealed the dismissal in January, with the RNC accusing Google of violating California’s Civil Rights Act, among other laws.
Google has asked the court to affirm the 2024 dismissal.
“The RNC’s core contention—that this spam filtering was the product of political discrimination rather than the politically neutral Gmail algorithm reading signals from Gmail users about which emails they are likely to consider spam—is demonstrably false,” Google’s response to the revived lawsuit stated. “The same Gmail algorithm governs emails sent by the Democratic National Committee—and everyone else.”
The case is set for oral arguments in October.
Case has ties to larger Trump administration goals
The lengthy case has close ties to the Trump administration, which has been vocal in both terms about wanting to change protections enshrined within Section 230.
More: Trump vs. Big Tech: Everything you need to know about Section 230 and why everyone hates it
Leading the RNC’s 2022 lawsuit was Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and former vice chair of the California GOP.
Dhillon was nominated by Trump in December 2024 as the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice.
Trump, in his announcement for Dhillon’s nomination, praised her for “taking on big tech for censoring our free speech,” referring to her many free-speech lawsuits filed on behalf of conservative clients, including a group of Google employees and the Berkley College Republicans, as well as challenges against mail-in ballots and COVID-19 restrictions.
In Targeted Victory’s statement regarding the 2025 warning labels, the group thanked Launchpad Strategies for “teaming up on the testing and collaboration on the effects that Google’s biases and suppression are having.”
Launchpad Strategies is the official digital vendor for President Donald Trump.
Though company details remained incredibly elusive for months after its November 2023 creation, recent financial records show that the company received nearly $80 million in 2024 alone, with only $121,000 coming from customers other than Trump-connected committees and groups.
More: Trump campaign funnels millions to ‘mysterious’ Delaware LLC: Report
The group merged with three other firms in March to create American Made Media Company and is helmed by close allies and strategists of Trump, according to an Axios report on the merger.
The USA TODAY Network – The South region’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Have a story to tell? Reach Angele Latham by email at alatham@gannett.com, or follow her on Twitter at @angele_latham
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Republican emails are being flagged as dangerous by Google, firm says