Meta wrote a $540,000 check into an Alabama super PAC.
Four days later, $70,000 of it bought support for Jabo Waggoner.

The Alabama Fair Campaign Practices Act (FCPA) database records every campaign contribution and expenditure over $50. Everything in this section comes from that database, filed under oath by the committees involved. Here it is in order.

• Contribution — 2026-05-08 (filed 2026-05-11)
  Meta Platforms, Inc. → Forge the Future Project — $540,000 cash
  Donor address: 1 Meta Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Transaction ID 1650484, receiving committee ID 9515.^[1]
• Expenditures — filed 2026-05-12
  Forge the Future Project → six independent expenditures supporting J.T. "Jabo" Waggoner — $70,302.64 total
  All six paid to the same vendor: FP1 Strategies, LLC (3001 Washington Blvd, 7th Floor, Arlington VA 22201). Labeled "Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)" on every filing — the initials are a filer typo; the SD-16 district code appears on every line, and there is no other Waggoner in the race.^[2]

  • $33,070.00 — Digital Ads · transaction 1660173
  • $14,718.00 — Phone Calls · transaction 1660175
  • $8,438.32 — Mailer · transaction 1660182
  • $8,438.32 — Mailer · transaction 1660183
  • $4,000.00 — Ad Production · transaction 1660174
  • $1,638.00 — Texting · transaction 1660176
• Primary result — 2026-05-19
  Waggoner wins Republican primary by 1,180 votes
  Certified precinct results filed by the Alabama Secretary of State. In Shelby County the margin was 36 votes.^[3]
• Then-and-now check
  Waggoner's own campaign committee shows zero direct Meta contributions
  A search of Alabama FCPA contribution records for candidateLastName=Waggoner combined with organizationName LIKE "META" / "FACEBOOK" / "PLATFORMS" returns zero results. Meta didn't write the check to Waggoner — it wrote the check to a super PAC that spent on Waggoner's behalf. Under Alabama law, a super PAC's independent expenditures don't count as contributions to the candidate. Legally, that's the point.^[6]

Alabama is not where this playbook started. Three months before the $540,000 landed in Alabama, the exact same super PAC — Forge the Future Project — dropped approximately $1.3 million into the 2026 Texas Republican primary ahead of the March 3, 2026 election. Meta transferred $1.365 million into Forge in February 2026 alone.^[9]

Where the money went in Texas:

• Kelly Hancock (R, candidate for Texas Comptroller) — approximately $495,000 in digital advertising
• Trent Ashby (R, Texas Senate) — approximately $194,000
• David Cook (R, Texas Senate) — approximately $174,000
• Brett Ligon (R, Texas Senate) — approximately $152,000
• Smaller amounts to Texas House candidates Cody Harris, Cole Hefner, and others^[9]

Per The Texan, Forge's stated Texas priorities were "conservative candidates with favorable stances on tech policy … support for domestic tech companies … AI-friendly regulatory environments … parental control over children's online activities."^[9] The Texas Legislature is expected to revisit regulation of artificial intelligence, data centers, and related infrastructure in its 2027 session — a Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor has already called for a moratorium on new data centers, and there are active calls to end the sales-tax subsidy Texas gives data-center operators.^[18]

Meta's national super-PAC portfolio is public. TechCrunch reported in September 2025 that Meta launched a super-PAC-of-super-PACs specifically to fight state-level AI and youth-online-safety regulation, with over $70 million committed across at least four state affiliates.^[7] Independent tech-policy reporting characterizes the network as "centrally focused on buying the votes needed to kill legislation and stave off accountability for their industry" — chiefly AI regulation and antitrust, with kids-online-safety used as messaging cover.^[8]

Meta is one of the largest single-corporate capital investments in Alabama's history. Two campuses are already built or committed:

• Montgomery data center — approximately $1.5 billion, ~1.3 million square feet after the September 2025 expansion announcement, coming online at the end of 2026.^[16]
• Huntsville data center ("Project Ferris") — approximately $1.5 billion, expanding to 2.5 million square feet in 2026.^[16]

Combined announced investment: approximately $3 billion. Both campuses receive state and local tax abatements under Alabama's Chapter 9B tax-incentive framework.^[19]

The 2026 Alabama Regular Session took the first real step to limit those abatements. HB399 (Rep. Hulsey, R-Helena) and its companion SB265 (Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre) cap data-center tax abatement periods at 20 years (down from 30), require large data centers (100+ MW capacity) to start paying state non-educational property tax and sales/use tax on certain purchases once operational, and allow an additional 10 years of abatement only if operators invest in local roads, broadband, water, or education.^[17] The bill went to Governor Ivey in April 2026 with her stated support for the utility-affordability package, and was enacted 2026-04-17.^[17] Effective January 1, 2027.

Notably: Waggoner co-sponsored SB265. The Senate vote was 30-0.^[17] That's on the record and it should be said. The question isn't what Waggoner did on this bill. The question is what a $540,000 check from the company most affected by the next round of data-center legislation does to what any senator does in 2027 — when Meta's lobbyists sit in his office and the next abatement fight lands on the Rules Committee calendar.

Waggoner is Chair of the Alabama Senate Rules Committee — the seat that stacks the Senate floor calendar and decides what reaches a floor vote.^[10][11] He is also co-leader of the Alabama Artificial Intelligence Commission — the state's front door for how Alabama regulates AI and the data centers that run it.^[10]

Meta's national super-PAC branding names "parental control over children's online activities" as a stated priority. That framing has been used elsewhere to argue Meta funds Waggoner because of Alabama's HB173 (a 2026 bill that would have imposed platform-level controls for minors). Here's what actually happened on the record:

• HB173 died in the House Children and Senior Advocacy Committee on 2026-02-05 — chaired by Rep. Ginny Shaver (R-Leesburg), not by Waggoner and not in the Senate. HB173 never reached the Senate, so the Rules Committee never had jurisdiction over it.^[12][13]
• HB161 — the App Store Accountability Act — passed the same day (2026-02-05, Senate 35-0), was signed by Governor Ivey on 2026-02-18, and takes effect 2027-01-01.^[20] Waggoner voted YES.^[20] HB161 puts age-verification and parental-consent requirements on the app-store gatekeepers (Apple and Google) rather than on individual platforms like Instagram. Meta's national policy position favors this framework.^[8]

Meta's Alabama check was written three months after HB173 was already dead. On the kids-online-safety bill that actually passed the same session, Waggoner voted yes. The story on this page is not that Meta paid Waggoner to kill kids-safety legislation — that framing doesn't survive the record. The story is a $540,000 check into an Alabama Senate leader's PAC in the same year Alabama began writing the rules for the tax breaks Meta relies on. That question stands on its own.

The issue on this page isn't personal — it's structural. Elected officials should raise money from the people they represent. Not from a super PAC that gets 100% of its Alabama funding from a single California company with $3 billion of infrastructure and open regulatory questions in the state.

Spencer doesn't have a problem with data centers. Alabama benefits from them. He doesn't have a problem with Meta doing business here. He does have a problem with a $540,000 check from Menlo Park getting more attention in Montgomery than a Hoover parent gets. And he believes Alabama voters — not California investors — should decide what Alabama's tax code looks like.

Alabama FCPA URLs occasionally rotate and the state search interface can be flaky. So we saved copies of the actual API responses that back every claim above, plus PDF snapshots of the most-cited state and journalist pages. Every JSON file is the raw response from fcpa.alabamavotes.gov; every PDF is the page as it appeared to a browser on 2026-07-18. If a state URL 404s, these are what you cross-check against.

• The $540,000 contribution + full receipts for the Forge PAC
  Every contribution "Forge the Future Project" has ever received in Alabama.
  PDF: meta-to-forge-540000-2026-05-08.pdf (rendered from the FCPA public contribution detail page).
  JSON: fcpa_forge_all_contribs.json · fcpa_forge_receipts.json
• The $70,302.64 in independent expenditures for Waggoner
  Every line item Forge spent supporting Waggoner: digital ads, phone calls, mailers, texting, ad production. All six are individual PDFs of the state FCPA expenditure detail pages.

  • Transaction 1660173 — $33,070.00 — Digital Ads Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)
  • Transaction 1660175 — $14,718.00 — Phone Calls Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)
  • Transaction 1660182 — $8,438.32 — Mailer Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)
  • Transaction 1660183 — $8,438.32 — Mailer Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)
  • Transaction 1660174 — $4,000.00 — Ad Production Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)
  • Transaction 1660176 — $1,638.00 — Texting Supporting J.D. Waggoner (SD-16)

  Raw JSON: fcpa_forge_exp2.json (20 KB, all 43 Forge expenditure records including the non-Waggoner ones)
• Meta's Alabama contribution history
  Every contribution Meta Platforms Inc. has made under the "META" and "Meta Platforms" corporate names in Alabama. fcpa_meta.json (44 KB) · fcpa_meta_platforms.json
• Proof of the negative: Waggoner never took Meta money directly
  Zero-record responses from four different searches that would have surfaced a direct Meta-to-Waggoner contribution. This is what makes the story legally load-bearing — Meta gave to a super PAC, the super PAC spent on Waggoner, but Waggoner's own committee has never received a Meta check. fcpa_wag_meta.json · fcpa_wag_fb.json · fcpa_wag_platforms.json · fcpa_zuck.json
• The wider pattern — Meta's national super-PAC strategy
  Snapshotted PDFs of the news reporting behind the "this is a playbook, not a coincidence" claim.
  techcrunch-meta-super-pac-2025-09-23.pdf — TechCrunch, Sep 2025, on Meta launching the super PAC to fight AI regulation.
  the-texan-meta-super-pac-texas.pdf — The Texan, on Forge dropping $1.3M into Texas primaries.
  al-reporter-hb173-punted-2026-02-05.pdf — Alabama Reporter, Feb 5, 2026, on HB173 getting punted in House committee.
  legiscan-hb173-status.pdf — LegiScan's current status page for HB173.
  wikipedia-waggoner-rules-chair.pdf — Wikipedia, confirming Waggoner's Rules Committee chairmanship.

JSON files retrieved from fcpa.alabamavotes.gov on 2026-07-18; formatted for readability, nothing edited. PDF snapshots rendered from the live pages on 2026-07-18. If the state site or a news outlet changes their URL structure later, these copies remain the record of what was published at the time.

Every citation is a direct link to the primary source (a government filing, a court record, an on-the-record news report). If a link 404s, contact the campaign and we'll fix it.

1. Alabama FCPA — Contribution/Donation Search API, transaction ID 1650484 (Meta Platforms Inc → Forge the Future Project, $540,000 Cash Itemized, 2026-05-08). fcpa.alabamavotes.gov
2. Alabama FCPA — Expenditure Search API, committeeName=Forge the Future Project. 43 records filed 2026-05-12 across seven candidates. Full expenditure list available on request.
3. Alabama Secretary of State — 2026 AL Republican Party Primary Precinct Results (canvass certified 2026-05-26). sos.alabama.gov (ZIP)
4. Ballotpedia — J. T. Waggoner biographical + district record. ballotpedia.org/J.T._Waggoner
5. Alabama FCPA — Contribution search for committeeName LIKE "Forge the Future" returns totalRecords=1 (the Meta contribution above). No other Alabama contributions on file.
6. Alabama FCPA — Contribution search for candidateLastName=Waggoner combined with organizationName filters META, FACEBOOK, PLATFORMS: totalRecords=0 for each. Same search for individualLastName=Zuckerberg statewide: totalRecords=0.
7. TechCrunch, 2025-09-23 — "Meta launches super PAC to fight AI regulation as state policies mount." techcrunch.com
8. Independent tech-policy reporting on Meta's multi-super-PAC strategy across states. Public dossier; use as context, not a wire report. byteiota.com · yahoo.com
9. The Texan — "Super PAC Owned by Facebook Parent Company Meta Spends Big in Texas Primaries." thetexan.news
10. Alabama Senate Republican Caucus — Jabo Waggoner member page. alsenaterepublicans.org
11. Wikipedia — J. T. Waggoner (Rules Committee Chair confirmation). en.wikipedia.org
12. Alabama Reporter, 2026-02-05 — "House committee punts votes on social media, joint custody regulations." alreporter.com
13. LegiScan — AL HB173 2026 Regular Session. legiscan.com
14. 280 Living — "Meet the candidates: Alabama State Senate District 16." 280living.com
15. WBHM — "2026 Alabama primary election results." wbhm.org
16. Governor Ivey newsroom (Meta Montgomery data center announcement, May 2024). governor.alabama.gov · Made in Alabama (Sept 2025 expansion, $1.5B total). madeinalabama.com · WHNT (Huntsville $1.5B). whnt.com · Meta's own data-centers directory. datacenters.atmeta.com
17. HB399 / SB265 — Alabama data-center tax-abatement limitation, 2026 Regular Session. legiscan.com/AL/bill/HB399/2026 · SB265 engrossed text · Alabama Reporter, 2026-04-10 — "Alabama Senate sends bill to limit data center tax breaks to governor." alreporter.com · Data Center Dynamics coverage. datacenterdynamics.com
18. CBS News Texas — Democratic Lt. Governor candidate calls for data-center moratorium. cbsnews.com · Texas Scorecard on Meta-backed PAC. texasscorecard.com
19. Alabama Department of Revenue — Chapter 9B Abatements framework. revenue.alabama.gov
20. HB161 (App Store Accountability Act, 2026 AL Regular Session). Alabama Reporter, 2026-02-19 — "Gov. Ivey signs App Store Accountability Act into law." alreporter.com · Senate roll call (35-0, Feb 5, 2026, incl. Waggoner YES). bamapolitics.com