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brennan center for justice
Over 80% of All US Voters Support Ending Dark Money’s Grip on Democracy
"The public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds. To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring."
Jun 04, 2026
The Brennan Center for Justice on Tuesday published a poll showing that American voters believe the country faces a serious corruption problem, and supermajorities support taking major action to end the role of dark money in US politics.
The poll, which surveyed 2,000 registered voters across the country, found 79% support "a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections." The proposal would essentially overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which opened the door to unlimited corporate spending in US elections.
The poll further found that 85% of Americans support "mandatory disclosure for all federal campaign contributions and spending"; 81% support "the creation of a new federal ethics enforcer"; and 69% support "a constitutional amendment limiting the president’s pardon power."
Support for these anti-corruption measures was widespread across both political parties, with 84% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans backing the amendment granting government the power to regulate and limit campaign spending. The proposed mandatory disclosure law drew even more widespread support, with 88% of Democrats and 85% Republicans registering approval.
The poll found Republican voters far less inclined to support proposals that would specifically limit presidential powers, but even in those instances, a majority of Republicans favored a law limiting presidential pardon powers and a law that would let the US Congress and state governments sue the president for alleged violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause that bars presidents from receiving foreign gifts.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote that he was struck by Americans' widespread support for the poll's proposed reforms, noting that "it's hard to find a set of proposals with a wider bipartisan appeal."
Waldman also noted that voters see corruption as why the government has become unresponsive to key voter concerns about housing and affordability.
"Policymakers should understand that the public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds," he wrote. "To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring. A government that is not performing. And there is a willingness to name names and assign blame."
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'We Need Action': Ro Khanna Calls for Expansion of 'Morally Bankrupt' Supreme Court
"The next Democratic White House does not need a court reform commission like some college seminar," said the California Democrat.
May 12, 2026
With a right-wing supermajority controlling the US Supreme Court, and the recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais yet again displaying the court's "war on constitutional democracy," as one legal expert put it, US Rep. Ro Khanna is pushing for Democrats to move with just as much certainty as the far-right justices as soon as the party is able to reform the court.
In a social media post Tuesday morning, Khanna (D-Calif.) suggested the Democratic Party has all the information it needs to take decisive action to rein in the court as soon as it controls the White House once again—instead of simply "exploring" the possibility of judicial reform.
"The next Democratic White House does not need a court reform commission like some college seminar," said Khanna, who has been named a potential 2028 presidential contender. "We need action. We need term limits for justices. We need to expand this morally bankrupt court from nine to 13."
Khanna is among the progressive lawmakers who have previously expressed support for replacing Supreme Court justices' lifetime appointments with term limits and for expanding the court, which polls have found the majority of Americans support.
The congressman's comments came three days after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was interviewed by Ali Velshi on MS NOW about the Democratic Party's plans to reform the federal government, should it retake the US House of Representatives and Senate after the November midterm elections and the White House in 2028.
Jeffries called for "nationwide judicial reform," without mentioning specific actions the party should take to reform the court following multiple corruption and ethics scandals involving right-wing Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as well as rulings like Callais, which eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for Republican legislatures to redraw congressional maps and eliminate the electoral power of Black communities in the South and across the country.
The ruling of the supposedly nonpartisan high court appeared timed to allow the GOP to redraw districts before the midterms, maximizing their chances of winning seats.
"We are going to have to explore massive judicial reform, state by state and at the federal level, and everything should be on the table, as far as I'm concerned," said Jeffries.
Democrat Judicial Takeover?!
Hakeem Jeffries just proposed a left-wing takeover of the U.S. court system NATIONWIDE if Democrats regain power:
"We're going to have to explore judicial 'reform' state by state and at the federal level...everything should be on the table as far as… pic.twitter.com/yUBN2Wy9Zu
— Conservative Brief (@ConservBrief) May 11, 2026
Ahead of the Callais ruling late last month, the Brennan Center for Justice published a report on several actions Congress could take "to fix the Supreme Court," which currently "wields vast power with minimal accountability" and has the confidence of less than a quarter of Americans, according to polling. Lawmakers, said the group, should take actions including:
- Enacting 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices as well as a system of regular appointments, allowing each president to name two justices per term and "infusing the institution with fresh perspectives and lowering the stakes of each confirmation process, all while enhancing the democratic link between the court and the public";
- Requiring justices to abide by a binding code of ethics, similar to those that guide every other court in the US, instead of a voluntary code that was adopted in 2023 after outcry over several ethics scandals;
- Curbing abuses of the court's "shadow docket," which the Trump administration has asked justices to use dozens of times to intervene in lower court rulings in order to protect its own political agenda from legal rulings; and
- Allowing cameras in the courtroom in "an important step toward transparency" that would "help Americans better understand how the court reaches decisions that affect their lives."
Advocacy groups including Demand Justice have called for expanding the court from nine to 13 seats, a move that the group says is "straightforward, constitutional, and grounded in history," with Congress having changed the number of justices that sit on the court six times in the past. A number of Democratic lawmakers have expressed support for court expansion, and former President Joe Biden convened a commission to study reforms in 2021.
At The Guardian on Tuesday, Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, recalled the historian Henry Steele Commager's 1943 warning that the Supreme Court "had never been a friend to US democracy, and it never would be."
"For anyone committed to the advancement of majority rule, he added, judicial review 'is wrong in theory and dangerous in practice,'" wrote Sarat, who said the Callais ruling put the danger Commager warned of "on full display"—as have a number of rulings since the court allowed unlimited corporate spending on elections in 2010 with its Citizens United ruling.
"Commager would not have been surprised by what has unfolded since 2010, but he would have warned Americans against despair," wrote Sarat. "He would want us to get busy trying to save what is left of our democracy by using our votes and our voices. There is no time to waste."
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'The FBI Has the Records': 2020 Arizona Audit Info Subpoenaed by Grand Jury
The records taken by the FBI relate to an audit that confirmed Trump's loss in the Grand Canyon State to former President Joe Biden.
Mar 09, 2026
The FBI has served the Arizona State Senate a grand jury subpoena for voting records related to the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the latest sign that the federal government is working to investigate an election that President Donald Trump lost more than five years ago.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, the grand jury subpoena "was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate, which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans in Maricopa County" months after Trump lost the 2020 race to former President Joe Biden.
Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, confirmed that he had received and complied with the subpoena, and revealed in a social media post that "the FBI has the records" related to the post-2020 audit.
As noted by MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard, the audit in question was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct online security firm that confirmed Trump's defeat in the Grand Canyon State.
"The Cyber Ninjas found that, in fact, Joe Biden had won the county, per their hand count, by 360 more votes than originally believed," Hillyard explained.
The Trump administration's subpoena of the audit records comes at the same time that it is demanding Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes hand over his state's voter registration data.
As explained by the Brennan Center for Justice last week, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is "seeking access to highly sensitive voter information, including partial Social Security numbers," as part of its subpoena.
The Brennan Center also said it teamed up with the Campaign Legal Center to file a brief to oppose the Trump administration's lawsuit against Arizona, which it described as "part of an unprecedented nationwide effort to force states to turn over private voter data."
The FBI in January executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target,” Ivory said. “But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue.”
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