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For Immediate Release
November, 01 2011, 03:21pm EDT
Contact:
Drew Courtney or Josh Glasstetter,Phone: 202-467-4999,Email:,media@pfaw.org
PFAW Commends Proposed Constitutional Amendment to Reverse Citizens United
To restore the ability of Congress and the states to regulate corporate influence in elections, Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), along with Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Mark Begich (D-AK) have introduced a constitutional amendment that would reverse the effects of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC.
WASHINGTON
To restore the ability of Congress and the states to regulate corporate influence in elections, Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), along with Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Mark Begich (D-AK) have introduced a constitutional amendment that would reverse the effects of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The ruling, which granted corporations the same Free Speech rights as people to spend money in support of or against candidates for office, has led to an unprecedented flood of corporate money in elections across the United States, often under the cover of anonymity.
Marge Baker, Executive Vice President at People For the American Way, issued the following statement:
"In Citizens United, the Supreme Court put our democracy up for sale, and as a result, a constitutional amendment is the only way to completely stop the flood of special interest spending in our election system. I commend Senators Udall, Bennet, Harkin and the other supporters for taking this step toward bringing integrity and transparency back to the electoral process. The American people - not deep pocketed corporations - should be the loudest voice when we choose our leaders."
People For the American Way works to build a democratic society that implements the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. We encourage civic participation, defend fundamental rights, and fight to dismantle systemic barriers to equitable opportunity. We fight against right-wing extremism and the injustice it fosters.
1 (800) 326-7329LATEST NEWS
Senate GOP Approve 'Nuclear Option' to Ram Through 'Worst and Smelliest Stinkers' Nominated by Trump
"Congress is supposed to be a check on the Executive Branch, not a rubber stamp," said Sen. Alex Padilla, Democrat of California. "We won’t forget it."
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In a move that allowed for confirmation of a bloc of 48 nominees to a variety of sub-cabinet positions across the executive branch that require Senate approval, Senate Majority Leader John Thune triggered what's been called the "nuclear option" on Thursday by lowering the threshold for passage and allowing group confirmations, an unprecedented change to chamber rules that will now hamper the minorities ability to slow or stop objectionable or unqualified candidates.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the group of nominees "historically bad," and was among those on the Democratic side to warn the move would forever change the nature of the Senate.
As NBC News explains:
The rule applies to executive branch nominees subject to two hours of Senate debate, including subcabinet picks and ambassadors. It will not affect judicial nominations. Republicans say they'll allow their own senators to object to individual nominees in any given block, but the rule will strip away the power of the minority party to do the same thing.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., initiated the process by bringing up a package of 48 Trump nominees, which under longstanding rules has been subject to the 60-vote threshold. The vote to advance them failed due to Democratic opposition. Then, Thune sought to reconsider and Republicans subsequently voted to overrule the chair, setting a precedent and establishing the new rule.
Thune had telegraphed the move for weeks, accusing Democrats of creating an "untenable situation" with historic obstruction of Trump's nominees. The vote was held up for hours Thursday as the two parties engaged in last-ditch negotiations to strike a deal to avoid a rules change.
In the end, those negotiations failed and Thune went ahead with the rule change, which passed along party lines in a 53-45 vote.
"You remember that 'nuclear option' that Republicans warned Democrats to never use because it attacked the fundamental structure of the Senate and put government at risk?" asked Democratic strategist and podcast host Max Burns. "Senate Republicans just used it."
Democratic senators denounced the move in the strongest terms, vowing to remember when political winds shift in the future.
"This 'nuclear' move," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), "allows Republicans to vote through Trump’s unqualified and unfit nominees in bunches—“en bloc”—so they can’t be held directly accountable for the worst and smelliest stinkers in the bunch."
"Republicans have permanently blown up the rules of the Senate to jam through Trump's unqualified nominees," said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). "Congress is supposed to be a check on the Executive Branch, not a rubber stamp. We won’t forget it."
The GOP effort, said Schumer in his remarks, "was not so much about ending obstruction, as they claim. Rather, it was another act of genuflection to the executive branch... to give Donald Trump more power and to rubber-stamp whomever he wants whenever he wants them, no questions asked."
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House GOP—and 11 Democrats—Pass Bill to 'Supercharge' Trump Anti-Migrant Agenda
One ACLU leader warned it "would hand the Trump administration more tools to criminalize immigrants and terrorize communities at the same time they are deploying federal agents and the military to our streets."
Sep 11, 2025
Eleven Democrats voted with Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Thursday to advance the so-called Stop Illegal Entry Act, which critics have condemned as "dangerously overbroad" as well as "dehumanizing and horrific."
The final vote was 226-197. The 11 Democrats who joined all GOP members present in backing the bill were Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Laura Gillen (NY), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), Kristen McDonald Rivet (Mich.), Frank Mrvan (Ind.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Tom Suozzi (NY), and Gabe Vasquez (NM).
Introduced by Congresswoman Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), HR 3486 would increase sentences for undocumented immigrants who repeatedly enter the United States illegally or enter the country and then commit a felony. The bill still needs Senate approval to reach the desk of Republican President Donald Trump, who supports it.
After Thursday's vote, Mike Zamore, the ACLU's national director of policy and government affairs, warned that "HR 3486 would supercharge President Trump's reckless deportation drive, which is already damaging our economy and destabilizing communities."
"This legislation would hand the Trump administration more tools to criminalize immigrants and terrorize communities at the same time they are deploying federal agents and the military to our streets. It would also undermine public safety by diverting more resources away from youth services and prevention programs that actually improve community safety," Zamore said. "While the House narrowly passed this bill, we thank the members of Congress who held the line and voted against this harmful legislation."
"At a time when president is threatening American cities and the Supreme Court is greenlighting racial profiling, it is vital that a growing number of elected officials are standing together in rejecting Stephen Miller's dystopian agenda to criminalize and demonize people who come to this country seeking a better life," he added, calling out the White House deputy chief of staff for policy infamous for various anti-migrant initiatives from Trump's first term, including forcible separation of families.
Speaking on the House floor, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), an immigrant herself, called the bill "Republicans' latest attempt to scapegoat and fearmonger about immigrants."
US Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) also spoke out against the bill, saying on social media: "It does nothing to protect communities or make us safer. Instead, it piles on cruel mandatory minimums, explodes prison costs, and treats families seeking safety like violent criminals. We need real immigration reform, not another zero-tolerance failure."
Congressman Dave Min (D-Calif.), the son of immigrants, said in a statement that "in talking with local and state law enforcement officers, I learned that this bill will potentially make it harder for them to do their jobs. By increasing the scope of crimes that local police officers might be expected to enforce, while not providing any funding for this, HR 3486 would effectively reduce the resources our local law enforcement has to keep our communities safe and potentially lead to increases in violent crime."
Min also pointed to the US Supreme Court's Monday ruling that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to engage in what critics have called "blatant racial profiling."
"This bill, combined with the Supreme Court's clearly wrong decision allowing ICE to detain people based on ethnicity, race, language, or place of employment, will give sweeping new authorities to ICE to perpetuate the mass incarceration of immigrants," he said. "I am deeply concerned that HR 3486 will lead to more violent attacks and unlawful arrests by ICE of the people I represent. For these reasons, I voted no earlier today."
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'Great Day' for Brazil as Coup Plotter Bolsonaro Convicted, Sentenced to 27 Years
One commentator noted that Brazil's Supreme Court "refused to cave to imperialist threats" from the Trump administration.
Sep 11, 2025
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to over 27 years behind bars Thursday after four of five Supreme Court justices on a panel voted to convict the far-right leader and seven associates of plotting a military coup and assassination of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other officials.
"This criminal case is almost a meeting between Brazil and its past, its present, and its future," said Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, on Thursday cast the third and decisive vote to convict the former president and seven co-plotters, referring in part to the two decades of US-backed military dictatorship, during which Bolsonaro served as an army paratrooper.
Lúcia joined Justices Flávio Dino, Cristiano Zanin, and Alexandre de Moraes—who, along with Lula and Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin were targeted for assassination by the plotters—in voting to convict the defendants of attempting to subvert Lula's victory in the 2022 presidential election.
The defendants—who in addition to Bolsonaro include army generals and former Defense Ministers Walter Braga Netto and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; former Institutional Security Minister Augusto Heleno Ribiero; admiral and former Navy Commander Almir Garnier Santos; former Justice Minister Anderson Torres; and former presidential adviser Márcio Mirando—were found guilty of crimes including attempting a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempting the violent abolition of democratic rule of law, and aggravated damage of the state's assets.
Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, a former Bolsonaro aide who turned state's witness, was sentenced Thursday to two years of confinement under open conditions, the most lenient form of carceral punishment in the Brazilian justice system.
"The government wanted to remain in power by simply ignoring democracy—and that is what constitutes a coup d'état," Moraes said ahead of his vote on Tuesday. "The leader of the criminal group made it clear—publicly and in his own words—that he would never accept defeat at the ballot, a democratic loss in the elections, and that he would never abide by the will of the people."
Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years, 3 months in prison, with penalties for the other convicted defendants still uncertain as of Thursday evening. Bolsonaro, who is 70 years old, denies any wrongdoing. He is currently under house arrest and could remain there until after exhausting the appeals process. He is already banned from running for any office until 2030 due to his abuse of power related to baseless claims of electoral fraud.
Justice Luiz Fux voted Thursday to absolve Bolsonaro, asserting that there was "absolutely no proof" that the former president took part in or was even aware of the coup and assassination plot.
However, Lúcia argued that there was copious evidence indicating that Bolsonaro and his accomplices acted "with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions."
"They acted to hijack the soul of the republic," she said. "The case files show a coordinated criminal enterprise by the defendants, who adopted the methods of a digital militia to attack the judiciary, the electoral system, and the electronic voting machines."
The landmark verdict came amid acute political polarization in Latin America's biggest democracy and threats from the office of US President Donald Trump to unleash American "military might" in defense of the "Trump of the Tropics," as Bolsonaro is often called. The Trump administration has already slapped 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports and has sanctioned Moraes.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to Thursday's developments by vowing on social media that "the United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt."
Like Trump in 2020, Bolsonaro made many baseless allegations that his loss in the 2022 election was due to fraud, fueling lies and conspiracy theories that led to the January 8, 2023 mob attacks on government buildings. Around 1,500 Bolsonaro supporters were arrested in the days following the storming of Congress and the presidential offices.
While many right-wing Brazilians were outraged by the convictions, leftist lawmakers and others applauded what Lula's Workers' Party (PT) called "a historic moment for Brazil."
Brazilian Secretary of Institutional Affairs Gleisi Hoffmann (PT) said on social media, "The conviction of Jair Bolsonaro and his accomplices by the Federal Supreme Court expresses the vigor of democracy and national sovereignty."
"They were convicted in due legal process, based on compelling evidence of the crimes they committed," she continued. "It is a historic, unprecedented decision so that they may never again dare to attack the rule of law and the will of the people expressed at the ballot box."
"It is also the proud response of Brazil's judiciary to the economic sanctions and absurd coercion of the Donald Trump government, in conspiracy with the traitors to the homeland in the service of Bolsonaro," Hoffmann added. "Today... Brazil told the world that crimes against democracy are intolerable. And they are unforgivable."
Federal Deputy Talíria Petrone (Socialism and Liberty-Rio de Janeiro) called Thursday "the greatest day ever," while former colleague Jean Wyllys also hailed this "great day."
Erika Hilton, a Socialism and Liberty federal deputy representing São Paulo, taunted Bolsonaro with the prospect of a lengthy stay at a notorious maximum security penitentiary.
Federal Deputy Benedita da Silva (PT-Rio de Janeiro) said on social media that "democratic Brazil is proud and celebrating the firm decision" of the high court, "whose members suffered countless threats, including death threats, from the conspirators against the democratic rule of law."
Referring to the United States, da Silva praised the justices, who "did not bow to the threats to our sovereignty from the greatest external power."
"Now we have to defeat the amnesty coup of the convicted plotters that they are still trying to pass," she added, a reference to efforts by the right-wing Congress to pass clemency legislation for Bolsonaro. "No amnesty!"Keep ReadingShow Less
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