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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear GOP Effort to Further Gut Campaign Finance Law
Watchdogs say the spending coordination limits that Republicans are challenging were put in place to "guard against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions."
Jun 30, 2025
The Supreme Court is taking up another Republican legal case seeking to erode campaign finance law and give more power to the wealthy donors seeking to influence elections.
On Monday, the court agreed to hear a challenge to campaign finance restrictions which limit the ability of party committees to directly coordinate spending with individual candidates. The anti-corruption group Public Citizen argues that this provision was put in place to "guard against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions."
The challenge was brought by the National Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committees, as well as the 2022 campaigns of two Ohio Republican congressmen: former Sen. JD Vance, who has since become vice president, and former Rep. Steve Chabot, who lost his re-election bid in 2022.
The case seeks to overturn rules implemented in the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971, which put strict limits on the ability of party committees to spend money in coordination with specific candidates. The Democratic National Committee will defend the rule before the court after filing a motion to intervene.
The rules were put in place, in part, to stop wealthy donors from using parties to get around rules about coordinating individual spending with candidates.
Under current law, how much coordinated spending parties can undertake is limited by the population of the state or district in question. At most, parties can coordinate nearly $4 million worth of spending for a single Senate candidate and $127,200 for a single House candidate.
The Republicans bringing the challenge have argued that the limits on coordinated spending violate the First Amendment.
The Campaign Legal Center, which has argued before the court against weakening these rules, has described them as a powerful bulwark against corruption.
"Since the party coordinated spending limits were enacted in the 1970s, these limits have checked the corruptive effect of large contributions flowing through party committees to candidates and prevented the quid pro quo exchanges that such contributions would otherwise facilitate," they wrote last year in a policy page arguing against the GOP challenge.
"Because the limits allow political parties to spend only a prescribed amount of their money in direct coordination with a candidate," the Campaign Legal Center continued, "they moderate the risk that a party committee could effectively pass on every big donation—or six-figure check collected via joint fundraising—to the donor’s chosen candidate in the form of coordinated expenditures."
"This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment and everything to do with Republicans' obsession with creating a government by and for billionaires," said Brett Edkins, a spokesperson for the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America.
In 2001, the Supreme Court upheld coordination limits in another case brought by Republicans: FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee.
In that case, often described as the Colorado II decision, the majority ruled 5-4 that "a party's coordinated expenditures, unlike expenditures truly independent, may be restricted to minimize circumvention of contribution limits."
Since then, however, the Supreme Court has helped the Republican Party chip away at laws that kept powerful donors in check.
Most notably, in the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC case, they ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech and that individuals could spend unlimited amounts of money influencing the election process, so long as it was not directly coordinated with candidates and instead done through "independent expenditure only" committees, more commonly known as super PACs.
"In the 15 years since the Supreme Court's abysmal Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and billionaire campaign spending, the corruption of American politics has gone from bad to worse," said Jon Golinger, a spokesman for Public Citizen.
Despite the supposed wall of separation, most candidates now rely on super PACs for large amounts of their political communication and organizing. In 2015, a report by Public Citizen titled "Super Connected" found that 45% of super PACs spending over $100,000 directed that spending toward a single candidate.
The amount of election-related corporate spending directed to these largely unaccountable entities has exploded in recent years. According to OpenSecrets, outside spending reached an unprecedented $4.5 billion in the 2024 election, compared with just $555 million in 2008, the last presidential election year before Citizens United.
The top three individual spenders—the Mellon family, Elon Musk, and the Adelson family—spent a combined $369 million to help Donald Trump win the presidency.
"The right-wing supermajority on the Court already dismantled decades of campaign finance protections in Citizens United, and now they’re poised to gut what few remain, inviting billionaires to bankroll candidates through political parties with no limits," Edkins said.
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Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Is About More Than Just New York City
The lesson learned from Mamdani’s success is that voters want strong policy positions that will actually produce change.
Jun 26, 2025
Thirty-three year old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory over scandal-ridden and disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo paves the way for a future apart from tired Democratic establishment rhetoric, giving Americans hope for the left after the election of President Donald Trump.
Cuomo was the darling of the corporate PACs, who have held the Democratic Party in a stranglehold for decades; he was endorsed by former President Bill Clinton, funded by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and took money from Republican-backed super PACs. His campaign strategy rested entirely on name recognition rather than grassroots organizing that connects with everyday New Yorkers.
Mamdani’s campaign was the opposite of all of that: He started out polling 1% in February with little funding, being a relatively unknown state assemblymember. His campaign was truly a grassroots effort—being outspent multiple times over by Cuomo, Mamdani relied upon an army of tens of thousands of volunteers who spent months leafleting and knocking on doors.
For the Democrats who will continue to stick to the line of their corporate sponsors: Watch out for progressives like Mamdani who are coming to challenge you.
Since Trump’s election, establishment Democrats have suggested a number of ideas for how to win back the country, attempting to recapture the working class who have been ignored by both parties. Suggestions include Rep. Seth Moulton’s (D-Mass.) to throw trans people under the bus, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s to reach out to far-right commentators like Charlie Kirk, and James Carville’s idea that Democrats should “play dead.” Mamdani’s election was voting Democrats rejecting all those ideas in favor of an aggressive and progressive platform to resist Trump.
Mamdani’s lack of seniority, both in age and years in office, represent a crack opening in the gerontocracy and nepotism in American politics. Cuomo represents the ways of the past. He’s not just an elderly lifelong politician, but the son of a former governor. Mamdani’s nomination signals that the Democratic Party is hungry for new leadership with fresh ideas. However, a fresh face can also sometimes be a Trojan Horse for old and tired ideas.
One such case is Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), the young Massachusetts congressman with ambitions for higher office who may seem promising because of his age and supposed charm, but is no more than a vessel for the same old neoliberal order that got us in this mess. Auchincloss and others have promoted the “abundance movement”—basically a repackaging of neoliberal ideas under a new banner. What separates Mamdani from Auchincloss is that Mamdani is more than a pretty face with “refreshing” words; he is an authentic populist in the best sense of the word, with bold policies garnering mass appeal.
Mamdani’s plan to make buses fast and free, freeze the rent, and make childcare universal deeply resonates with New Yorkers facing a crippling affordability crisis. Mamdani’s policies are widely popular, but you would never see them come out of the mouths of politicians like Cuomo and Auchincloss whose corporate backers have them on a leash. Because he couldn’t compete with Mamdani on policies that improve the lives of New York City’s residents, Cuomo tried making the race about something thousands of miles away.
Cuomo tried to use Mamdani’s principled support for Palestinian human rights as a weapon against him, as if calling for equal rights between Israelis and Palestinians is a scandal equivalent to Cuomo’s harassing 13 women. Ironically, one of Cuomo’s ads accusing Mamdani of antisemitism was blatantly Islamophobic, depicting Mamdani’s beard edited to appear darker and thicker. The media joined forces with Cuomo in a debate by singling out Mamdani with a question on where the candidates’ first foreign trip as mayor would be. Cuomo and three other candidates said Israel, while Mamdani stated he would stay in New York City to address city issues. The moderators then jumped on Mamdani, questioning him on “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” to which he replied that he believes it has the right to exist “as a state with equal rights,” an idea unacceptable to an unapologetic supporter of Israel’s racist policies like Cuomo.
What Cuomo fails to understand is that the issues most relevant to Jewish New Yorkers are the same issues important to all New Yorkers. The real antisemitism in this race is Cuomo’s belief that New York City Jews care more about Israel than their fellow New Yorkers.
Mamdani was endorsed by a number of Jewish organizations and prominent Jewish individuals including Jewish Voice for Peace Action; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); and his fellow candidate and highest-ranking Jewish official in the city, Brad Lander. Hopefully the lesson learned from Mamdani’s victory is that voters want strong policy positions that will actually produce change, and that will embolden other Democrats to adapt some of the messages and policies central to his campaign. For the Democrats who will continue to stick to the line of their corporate sponsors: Watch out for progressives like Mamdani who are coming to challenge you.
For Mamdani, his race for mayor is not yet over. In the general election he faces off with corrupt incumbent Mayor Eric Adams who is running as an independent and the Republican nominee, right-wing vigilante Curtis Sliwa. There is a possibility that Cuomo will also run as an independent, but his concession in the primary likely means he has given up his bid for mayor.
The failure of Cuomo’s bid is a signal to establishment Democrats across the country that their voters no longer tolerate support for Israel or buy into the allegations of antisemitism thrown at anyone who opposes Israel’s policies.
In these difficult times where we are facing a potential new forever war in the Middle East, the immoral kidnappings of immigrants, and increased repression of our movements, this seemingly underdog victory in New York City is a beacon of hope for all us who still believe a better world is possible.
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8 Senators Demand Super PAC, Dark Money Ban in Democratic Primaries
"We cannot allow billionaires and powerful corporate interests to continue undermining democracy by injecting unlimited amounts of money into the political process."
Jun 17, 2025
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and seven of his Democratic colleagues on Tuesday urged party leaders to ban super PAC and other forms of dark money from party primaries to curb outside corporate giving and the shadowy influence of the megarich.
"We cannot allow billionaires and powerful corporate interests to continue undermining democracy by injecting unlimited amounts of money into the political process," states the letter to Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "As you know, the Supreme Court's 2010 decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has been a disaster for our country."
Citizens United allowed corporations and outside organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on U.S. politics, often by giving through unaccountable political action committees (super PACs), which can take donations from groups that don't have to disclose the source of their funding. Since the high court's landmark decision, "dark money groups have spent at least $4.3 billion on federal elections" alone, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Schumer has said that "overturning Citizens United is probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy," the senators' letter notes. Martin has promised a resolution on dark money and that he "will be pushing hard for our party to come up with solutions on this so that we actually have our candidates and campaigns realize that we have to live our values."
"We support legislation to comprehensively reform campaign finance to remove the corrosive influence of money in our elections, including by overturning the Citizens United decision," the senators wrote. "But we don't have to wait until then. There is action we can take now to get billionaire super PACs and dark money out of Democratic primaries. In recent election cycles, right-wing billionaires have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding super PACs to dominate in our primaries."
"In addition to intervening in Democratic primaries, it is not uncommon for these same super PACs and dark money groups to fund general election campaigns where they work overtime to defeat Democrats," they pointed out. "The result: they have defeated a number of excellent members in the House and Senate. That is unacceptable."
Republican President Donald Trump was elected to a second term last year with significant support from the richest person on Earth, Elon Musk—who then spearheaded the administration's sweeping assault on the federal bureaucracy via their so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"The American people are disgusted with a corrupt political system that allows Elon Musk to spend $270 million to elect Donald Trump. They want change. We can make change," argued Sanders (Vt.) and Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (Md.).
"If our opposition to Citizens United is going to be taken seriously, we must begin by cleaning our own house. Super PAC money and dark money must be banned from Democratic primaries," the coalition asserted, pointing to a recent example of state action as proof that the policy "is not some pie in the sky dream."
As the letter details, "The Arizona Democratic Party recently took steps to bar super PAC money from primaries by adopting a resolution committing to 'ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that candidates in Democratic primaries are not benefited by, dependent on, or elected due to outside or independent electioneering spending' and launching a process to develop enforcement procedures to implement this commitment."
After those moves, Sanders—who caucuses with Democrats and sought the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020—had congratulated the Arizona party "for getting the ball rolling on this enormously important issue," declaring: "Billionaires must not be allowed to buy Democratic primary elections. Other states should follow suit."
Similarly, the new letter congratulates the state party and says that "the national Democratic Party must follow."
Since last November's election, when Democrats lost not only the White House but also both chambers of Congress—setting up Trump and Republican lawmakers to push their "Big Beautiful Bill" that would give tax cuts to the rich while gutting key healthcare and anti-hunger programs—Sanders has challenged Democratic Party leaders to actually prioritize working people and launched a Fighting Oligarchy Tour that's visited several states.
Meanwhile, Schumer has faced pressure to step down from leadership after leading nine other members of the Democratic caucus in helping Republicans advance a GOP stopgap funding bill to a final vote in March. That decision provoked fresh calls for progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—a frequent speaker on Sanders' tour—to launch a primary challenge against him for 2028.
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