DemCast USA

In 2023, DemCast USA executive director Nick Knudsen received a salary of $138,213 while the group received $287,332 in total revenue that year. ²

Background

DemCast USA is a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt left-of-center advocacy organization founded in 2019 in Franklin, Tennessee. Nick Knudsen, who leads the organization (the group’s 2019 990-EZ filing with the Internal Revenue Service lists him as president, though its website lists him as executive director) was formerly the founder and editor-in-chief of DemWritePress, a now-defunct Democratic Party-aligned news and opinion blog.³⁴ The organization promotes Democratic Party talking points in a variety of smaller state-level and larger nation-wide digital media outlets in order to cultivate support for Democratic candidates for office on the local, state, and federal level, as well as create general support for Democratic polices.⁵

In every state DemCast USA is active, the organization builds a volunteer State Leadership team consisting of at least one “State Content Captain,” “State Social Media Captain,” and “State Outreach Coordinator.”⁶

As of November 2024, DemCast USA claimed that it had 40,000 volunteers. ²

As of August 2025, DemCast USA shifted it’s focus to “The Digital Drumbeat,” a Substack that includes daily newsletters as well as information on what the group refers to as the “Pro-democracy movement.” ⁷ The group’s original website now exists as a redirect to their Substack, or their other website which they refer to as their “Activist portal,” offering social media influencers a way to publicly align themselves with the group’s causes. ^{8 9}

Activities

According to DemCast USA’s 2020 “Impact Report,” the organization raised $1.4 million for Democratic candidates and voter mobilization groups, particularly Black Voters Matter in that year’s election cycle. DemCast USA volunteer members shared fundraising links from ActBlue, a 527 political action committee launched in 2009 to act as “the online clearinghouse for Democratic action.”¹⁰

During the cycle, DemCast USA mobilized its “Focus14” program, designed to sway voter opinion in swing states, in which the organization’s volunteers sent texts to, made calls to, mailed postcards to, and knocked on the doors of prospective voters.¹¹

In June 2020, DemCast USA joined a letter featuring 600 left-of-center groups to the United Nations Human Rights Council that urged the body to convene an emergency special session in response to the “repression of nationwide protests” in response to the police-related killing of George Floyd. The letter also demanded an investigation into “racist policing” in the United States. ¹²

In June 2021, DemCast USA joined a coalition of groups calling on then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to end the Senate’s filibuster supermajority procedure to implement a federal takeover of elections and other progressive priorities. ¹³

In June 2023, DemCast USA joined the United for Democracy coalition which attacked the U.S. Supreme Court and called for legislation which would weaken the court. The coalition launched with a $1 million advertising campaign attacking the court’s decisions. ¹⁴

In April 2024, DemCast USA endorsed a bill that would create term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices. ¹⁵

In December 2024, DemCast USA joined a coalition of left-leaning groups calling on then-President Joe Biden to instruct the Archivist of the United States to certify as ratified and publish the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a defunct proposed constitutional amendment that would explicitly prohibit sex discrimination, potentially including codifying a constitutional right to abortion. The letter claimed the ERA was certified by the required number of states but that “procedural hurdles and political roadblocks have been utilized to prevent the amendment from being officially recognized as part of the Constitution” including not ratifying the amendment by the deadline imposed by the U.S. Congress. ¹⁶

In March 2025, DemCast USA posted an article promoting its podcast, The Dangerous Ones, and claimed that the traditional media was failing. The article also lamented how right-leaning podcasts had more subscribers and followers than left-leaning podcasts. ¹⁷

In April 2025, DemCast USA helped organize the “Hands Off!” nationwide protests against President Donald Trump and the then-head of the second Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk. The protests opposed cuts recommended by DOGE and tariffs announced by the administration. ¹⁸

In May 2025, DemCast USA partnered with the American Federation of Teachers union to host a “social media storm” in favor of increased spending on public schools. ¹⁹

In June 2025, DemCast USA participated in organizing or supporting protests branded under the “#NoKings” banner, a national day of demonstrations positioned as a defense of democratic norms against Donald Trump. These events were part of a larger mobilization involving over 70 Democratic Party affiliates and allied organizations across at least 19 U.S. states and multiple international locations, according to publicly available event listings on Mobilize.us, a Democratic Party-aligned organizing platform. ^{20 21}

In June 2025, DemCast USA opposed President Donald Trump’s airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program, claiming they were illegal. The group warned, “we must be prepared to push back against further authoritarian power grabs should we see attacks on U.S. targets in the region in the coming hours or days.” ²²

Partners

Institutional partners of DemCast USA include a variety of left-of-center Democratic Party-aligned voter mobilization and organizing groups, such as BlueFuture, ActionSprout, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Flip the West, Future Now, Majority 60, Patriotic Millionaires, VoteProChoice, Organizing Together 2020, Swing Left, Organizing Corps 2020, and the Young Democrats of America.²³

In addition to its institutional partners, the organization also works with influential celebrities to facilitate its advocacy. For instance, according to the organization’s 2020 “Impact Report,” Hollywood actress and activist Debra Messing is cited as a “DemCast Influencer Captain.”¹¹

The group is part of Field Team 6, a coalition of lobbying and state election advocacy organizations working towards registering more Democrat voters within key swing states and counties.²⁴

People

DemCast USA’s inaugural 2019 990-EZ filing with the Internal Revenue Service lists Nick Knudsen as the organization’s president. However, the organization’s website lists him as executive director. Just prior to working with DemCast USA, Knudsen was the editor-in-chief of DemWritePress (which he also founded), a now-defunct Democratic Party-aligned news and opinion blog. ²⁵⁴

Lori Coleman is the co-founder and director of strategy for DemCast USA. ²⁶

Jamie Carter is the director of partnerships. Previously, she was a regional field director for the Utah Democratic Party and a national organizer of the March for Truth, which demanded the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump over alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. ²⁶

Rena Korb is the co-content director of DemCast USA. Previously, she worked at Penguin Books USA, a major publishing house based in New York City. ²⁷

Mindy Schwartz is the co-content director of DemCast USA. Previously, she worked in the White House in the National Security Council for a period of four years, after which she moved to California and served as president of the San Diego chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, and as a board member of the San Diego Coalition for Reproductive Choice and the San Diego chapter of Women’s March, Inc. ²⁷

Some notable members of the board are former U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) and anti-gun activist Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. ²

Financials

According to DemCast USA’s 2023 tax returns, the group had $287,332 in revenue, $399,860 in expenses, and $22,620 in net assets. ²

Nick Knudsen received a salary of $138,213 in 2023 and the group spent a total of $311,713 on salaries that year. ²