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citizens united
Samuel Alito's Anger Problem
The right-wing Supreme Court justice has a well-established pattern of outbursts that has not subsided with his remarkable success in dragging this country backward.
Jul 23, 2026
You might think that an archconservative who has used his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court to send US law back to the 1920s would take a victory lap and maybe chill just a bit. But no. Despite his success in helping to dismantle abortion rights, attacking public-sector labor unions, elevating gun rights, promoting “religious liberty,” and destroying the Voting Rights Act, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is still seething mad, motivated by ideological extremism and a stack of personal grievances, some dating to his childhood in Trenton, New Jersey.
Alito’s well-established pattern of outbursts was on full view during the court’s June 26 announcement of several late-term rulings. He set the tone for the session by reading a summary of his cruel 6-3 majority opinion that denied political asylum-seekers the right to enter the country before reaching the US-Mexico border (Mullin v. Al Otro Lado). Finishing quickly, he paused before moving on to summarize another of his opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor apparently took the break in the action as a cue to read a synopsis of her dissent. Dissenters often refrain from reading their summaries, but there is nothing unusual about them opting to speak up, provided they give advance notice of their intentions.
Sotomayor blasted Alito’s handiwork. “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” she said. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.” Her remarks apparently enraged Alito, making him look, in the words of NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nine Totenberg, like “he had just bitten into a lemon.”
“There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said, uttering remarks that, in the staid confines of the nation’s most august judicial body, were veritable obscenities that prompted audible gasps from spectators and reporters in the gallery. A court spokesperson later clarified that Alito was in fact notified of Sotomayor’s plans, but to date, he has not publicly apologized. Like the president whose policies he almost always supports, Alito invariably overreacts and never recants.
The problem is not that Alito has personal hang-ups—we all do—but that so many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land.
Who can forget Alito sneering on live TV during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, mouthing the words “not true” as the president decried the court’s Citizens United opinion and the impact it would have on future elections, including greater foreign influence? Since then, Alito has only gotten more unhinged and offensive, becoming a regular featured speaker at Federalist Society events, railing against the legalization of gay marriage, labeling the Second Amendment and freedom of religion as “unfavored” constitutional rights, and condemning liberals as a threat to civil liberties.
In September 2021, Alito went ballistic after The Atlantic magazine staff writer Adam Serwer penned a column accusing the court’s right-wing majority of releasing a 5-4 shadow-docket ruling on Texas’ newly enacted vigilante abortion law in the middle of the night to minimize public outcry. In an hour-long live-streamed speech delivered at University of Notre Dame, he excoriated the press for portraying the court’s conservatives as “a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” and for feeding “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”
In June 2023, Alito again went off the rails with an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that lambasted a ProPublica report that in 2008 he took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska, flying for free aboard a private jet owned by Republican megadonor Paul Singer. The problem, according to ProPublica, wasn’t just that Alito had failed to recuse himself from reviewing lawsuits involving Singer’s hedge fund, but that he also failed to note anything about the excursion on the annual financial disclosure forms required under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
Claiming he had no duty to reveal the junket, he argued that his spot on the private jet “would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat” if he had not accepted the billionaire’s offer of a free ride, and that gifts of “hospitality” need not be reported. In a follow-up interview with the Journal, he added, “Congress did not create the Supreme Court” and “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”
Alito’s official court opinions have been equally acerbic and hyperbolic. They arguably reached a crescendo in his 2022 majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). Not content with simply overruling the 50-year-old precedent on which US women had come to rely as an essential part of their healthcare, he wrote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
When used by a high court justice, the phrase “egregiously wrong” is an insult and a sign of contempt. And to add further insult, Alito reached deep into the bowels of Anglo-American common law to override Roe, citing the work of Henry de Bracton, a 13th-century English cleric and judge who condemned abortions as homicide, and a 17th-century English jurist who sentenced at least three women accused of using witchcraft to death.
What’s behind Alito’s fury and habit of issuing norm-breaking invective? As Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall told The Wall Street Journal in an article published this month, “Alito thinks of the other side as the enemy.” And true to Segall’s observation, Alito unwittingly admitted as much at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner in 2024, when documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor asked whether there was any way the country could overcome its terrible polarization, then surreptitiously recorded Alito’s answer that “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”
Like most extremists, Alito has views that derive not just from his abstract political beliefs, but from his lived experiences growing up in a predominantly white Christian community as the son of deeply religious Catholic Italian immigrants, and later as an out-of-place right winger at Princeton University and Yale Law School.
In a revealing new biography, Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, journalist Peter S. Canellos offers a compelling psychological portrait of Alito as a man dismayed by the demographic and secular changes that have transformed and, by his estimation, degraded the country of his boyhood. Alito has been on a mission to reverse those trends ex cathedra from his perch on the Supreme Court.
The problem is not that Alito has personal hang-ups—we all do—but that so many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land. On June 30, NPR’s Totenberg erroneously reported that Alito planned to retire so that President Donald Trump might nominate a younger right-wing zealot to the bench. The story turned out not to be true and was promptly retracted. Too bad for her—and even worse for the country.
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SCOTUS as Tyrant: Handmaiden to Corporate America
In exercising its power today, the Supreme Court’s priority is not the state of the nation, but the well-being of corporate enterprise.
Jul 22, 2026
The Supreme Court of the United States today is the final arbiter of public policy—deciding incontestably which laws will stand and which will not—but that power was simply asserted by the court years ago, never bestowed by the Constitution or in law.
Merriam-Webster defines a tyrant this way: an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty. Close enough?
In exercising its power today the court’s priority is not the state of the nation, but the well-being of corporate enterprise in America.
A recent example: On June 29, 2026 the court issued its decision in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. It found unconstitutional the statutory isolation of the Federal Trade Commission from partisan political interference. It said President Donald Trump could fire Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter not for cause—inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance, as specified in the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914—but only because she is a Democrat.
By neutering the Voting Rights Act, encouraging gerrymandering, and freeing Trump to gut the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the court is up to its enrobed necks in rigging the upcoming elections.
The largest winner by far was not Donald Trump, but every corporation in America regulated by law. There are dozens of other independent regulatory agencies protecting the American people from harmful activities, conditions, and practices. So critical are these agencies to the health, safety, and welfare of the nation, Congress intentionally set them apart from the executive branch, to insulate them from the back-and-forth of partisan politics. The court has upended that safeguard, exposing the agencies to the whims of Donald Trump—who can staff them now with corporate-friendly Republicans. (Trump wasted no time in decapitating the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the agency funding election security measures at the state level.)
Note how the Supreme Court jeopardized the regulatory agencies. It declared as unconstitutional the provision in the Federal Trade Commission Act protecting commissioners from capricious removal. The court can do this because it holds a power known as judicial review. It measures the laws underlying its cases against the Constitution, and strikes down those it finds inconsistent.
Supreme Court justices were never elected, but they nullify laws enacted by people who were—the Congress and the president. Every time it does so the court literally overrides democracy. Isn’t that tyranny?
This is not remotely what the Framers of the Constitution intended.
Article III Section 2 specifies what the Supreme Court can do. Except for infrequent interstate and international litigation the court functions with appellate jurisdiction. The court can do either of two things: It can uphold a lower court decision, or overturn it. Nothing else. That’s it. The court is empowered to sit in judgment of law cases. Nowhere is it empowered to sit in judgment of the laws.
The Framers meant the court to be subordinate. In Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton said this:
The Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of powers... it can never attack with success either of the other two [branches]…
And in Federalist 81 he was explicit:
...there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration [i.e. the Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution…
Today’s Supreme Court invalidates laws without a speck of constitutional authority, and it has done so for 233 years.
That takes us back to 1803 and the Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison.
Federalist President John Adams in the last days of his term appointed 16 new lower court judges—all of Adams’ Federalist persuasion. Among them was William Marbury. The judges’ commissions were to be delivered by the secretary of state, as specified in the Judiciary Act of 1789, but in the scurry of a departing administration they were not. Then Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as president. Intending to appoint judges of his own party instead, Jefferson ordered his Secretary of State James Madison not to deliver the commissions. Marbury sued for his, citing the 1789 law. John Marshall’s Supreme Court found Madison guilty, but also saw the Judiciary Act as slightly askew of the Constitution. It was the pickiest technicality, but on that basis the court dismissed the case.
Chief Justice Marshall said in the court’s written decision, “It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... a law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” So said John Marshall, but nobody else, certainly not the writers of the Constitution.
Marshall claimed judicial review simply by fiat and set the subordinate court on the road to tyranny.
Note where our Supreme Court is today. By neutering the Voting Rights Act, encouraging gerrymandering, and freeing Trump to gut the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the court is up to its enrobed necks in rigging the upcoming elections.
Judicial review was initially benign. After Marbury it wasn’t invoked again for 57 years, and might have remained tolerable had not the court paired it with another appalling action: a decision enabling corporate enterprise eventually to dominate the writing of public policy.
In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court simply declared chartered corporations were persons as described in the 14th Amendment, with rights guaranteed by the Constitution: free speech, equal protection under the law, etc. The declaration violated the protocols for establishing legal precedents, but later courts cited the case anyway. Corporate personhood—prima facie preposterous—became a matter of stare decisis, “settled law.”
If corporations have constitutional rights and if they can prove in court those rights are violated by a law, they can sue to have the law overturned. They can use judicial review as a weapon.
And after Santa Clara County they did.
The 14th Amendment was meant to grant citizenship to Black Americans, freed from enslavement by the Emancipation Proclamation, and to guarantee their equal treatment under the law.
Three-hundred and seventy-seven cases based on the 14th Amendment were heard by the Supreme Court over the 27 years following Santa Clara County: 19 of them dealt with Black citizens seeking equal protection under the law; 288 were initiated by corporation citizens, also seeking equal protection—primarily to invalidate irksome laws.
As the centuries turned corporations succeeded in overturning minimum wage laws, child labor laws, laws limiting the workday, workmen’s compensation statutes, laws limiting corporate lobbying, and laws regulating utility companies. They sued for and won additional constitutional rights, those granted by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—rights of privacy and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Between 1905 and the mid-1930’s, the Supreme Court found some 200 corporate-restraining laws and regulations to be unconstitutional.
As the 20th century progressed the toxicity grew. The combination of judicial review and corporate personhood would prove in time to be fatal to democracy.
In a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valero, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional the 1910 Corrupt Practices Act, a law strictly limiting the money political candidates could spend campaigning. No, the court said, spending money is a form of free speech, and the Congress cannot abridge that right. Dollars are words? Isn’t that also prima facie preposterous? Two years later in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the court overturned the 1907 Tilman Act, prohibiting corporations from spending money on political campaigns. Citing Buckley, the court said the equivalence of money and speech applied to corporations as well.
Bellotti, however, clashed with an existing law, not prohibiting but sharply limiting corporate campaign contributions: FECA, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972.
In 2010 the case of Citizens United v. FEC resolved the clash. If corporations could not be restrained at all, then how much they spent was immaterial. Section 441b of FECA was unconstitutional. Out with it. Corporations can spend as much as they please.
But not to worry, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:
...independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption…The appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in democracy.
Yes, prima facie preposterous, as documented in a 2026 study by the Brennan Center: 92% of registered voters surveyed said corruption is a major problem in politics and government, citing campaign contributions from corporations and billionaires as the causative factors.
After Citizens United a torrent of corporate money cascaded into the political campaigns of both parties, protected by the right of free speech. And for years corporate lobbying had been protected by their right of petition. The corporate grip tightened in a frontal attack on democracy.
Corporations today outspend citizen interest groups in lobbying by a factor of 86:1. In the 2024 election cycle corporations and their PACs and super PACs contributed 71% of the total of campaign donations, about $10.65 billion. “Large private donors” (read billionaires) contributed another $2.85 billion, 19% of the total. Small individual donations came to $1.5 billion, about 10%.
By any measure corporations and to a lesser extent billionaires are the dominant influencers of federal governance today. Their financing of political campaigns renders elected officials into indentured servitude, open to corporate requests. Then corporate lobbyists specify the details.
Public policy today routinely advances not the well-being of the American people, then, but the preferences of corporate America and its embedded billionaires.
This is what the Supreme Court has enabled, after Marbury, after Santa Clara County, after Buckley, after Bellotti, after Citizens United, after Trump v. Slaughter,
Dollars outweigh votes.
This article is drawn from a book the author is completing, The Triumph of Corporate Oligarchy: How It Defeated Democracy, Normalized Fraudulent Warfare, Devastated a Thriving Nation, and Enabled the Trump Presidencies.
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'A Disaster for Democracy': Report Shows Surging Corporate Spending in 2026 Elections
"The intense escalation of corporate spending we are now seeing shows that it is well past time for salvaging American democracy to be treated with the urgency that it deserves."
Jun 30, 2026
As the right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court on Tuesday handed down a 6-3 ruling that campaign finance reform advocates warned would give special interest groups and rich donors yet another way to curry favor with politicians, a new report from government watchdog Public Citizen revealed how "corporate supremacist" groups have already set records for spending in this year's midterm elections.
There are still more than four months to go until the general election, but according to "The Rise of Corporate Supremacist Super PACs,” by research director Rick Claypool, this campaign cycle accounts for nearly one-third of all corporate political spending since the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruling.
That decision has enabled corporations and groups including super political action committees (PACs) to spend unlimited money on elections, and in the 2026 cycle alone, they have already spent $517 million—"a figure sure to soar as the November general election approaches," said Public Citizen.
"These totals reference disclosed political spending, not any contributions from dark money organizations that keep donors secret," the group emphasized.
The amount spent this year by Big Tech, fossil fuel companies, the cryptocurrency industry, and other sectors whose bottom lines could benefit from lax government regulations represents a sizable chunk of the $1.58 billion that corporations have spent on federal elections since 2010.
The 2024 election cycle saw $461 million poured into campaigns by corporations, a sum that dwarfed previous corporate political spending.
Public Citizen released its report as the Supreme Court ruled in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, striking down regulations that for decades have restricted political parties from coordinating campaign spending with candidates.
The report offered more evidence that the high court "has reorganized America for the worse," said law professor Zephyr Teachout.
Four industries—crypto, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting companies—have spent $294 million collectively to influence the elections, said Public Citizen, accounting for 57% of the corporate spending.
In 2024, the crypto sector pioneered the playbook corporations are using this year—"prioritizing corporate priorities over parties or candidates and using their financial power to discipline sitting lawmakers and candidates."
PACs including the pro-AI Leading the Future and the sports betting industry-backed Win for America PAC are some of the top recipients of the corporate case, taking $50.1 million and $43 million, respectively.
A Win for America spokesperson told Axios in April that the super PAC's backers "seek candidates who will thoughtfully approach regulation and ensure legal sports betting can continue to support communities through billions in tax revenue and jobs across America," while Josh Vlasto of the pro-crypto PAC Fairshake said in 2025 that the committee is "building an aggressive, targeted strategy for next year to ensure that pro-crypto voices are heard in key races across the country.”
Claypool said the report shows that "a decade and a half after Citizens United, corporations are starting to spend on politics like never before."
"This corporate spending is a disaster for democracy," he said. "If the current, broken campaign finance system remains unchallenged—and corporate spending is allowed to drown out the voices of real voters and real people—these corporate campaigns will keep multiplying, even as voting rights for individual Americans face escalating attacks.”
Behind the "corporate supremacist super PACs," reads the report, the biggest beneficiary of corporate spending is the President Donald Trump-supporting MAGA Inc., which has received $120.6 million in direct contributions from companies including Crypto.com, UnitedHealthcare, and Energy Transfer Partners.
The report comes two weeks after campaigners in Montana announced they had collected signatures that far exceeded the minimum requirement to force a statewide vote on a ballot measure that, if passed, would block corporations from pouring money into elections.
"Time and time again, Americans have demonstrated they want elected officials who are willing to stand up for them against the powerful and predatory corporations that attempt to dominate our daily lives," reads the Public Citizen report. "Lawmakers can demonstrate their fearlessness and independence from corporate influence by passing legislation that empowers the public while reducing the influence of Big Business demands to prioritize profit-maximization over Americans’ health, safety, and democracy."
The group called on Congress to pass the "Abolish Super PACs Act, the DISCLOSE Act, and, ultimately, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United."
"The intense escalation of corporate spending we are now seeing," concludes the report, "shows that it is well past time for salvaging American democracy to be treated with the urgency that it deserves."
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In Gift to Billionaires, Supreme Court Buys Vance's Argument Against Post-Watergate Campaign Finance Rule
"Americans deserve a Supreme Court that upholds our fundamental freedoms—not one that consistently sides with billionaire donors and diminishes the power of everyday citizens," said one democracy defender.
Jun 30, 2026
Just days after Vice President JD Vance suggested that if Watergate happened today, it would barely make the news, let alone end a presidency, the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Tuesday embraced the Republican's argument against a 1974 campaign finance rule that Congress passed in response to the seismic scandal.
Specifically, the court struck down restrictions on political parties coordinating campaign spending with candidates. The ruling is the result of a 2022 lawsuit filed by Vance, then a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio; Steve Chabot, then a GOP congressman from the same state; and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and its House counterpart.
The high court had previously upheld the rule in 2021, but as with the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign spending by corporations and ultrarich individuals via super political action committees (PACs), the majority cited the First Amendment to the US Constitution in its 6-3 decision in NRSC v. FEC. The three liberals dissented.
Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at the group Issue One, stressed that Tuesday's decision opening up "a new avenue for wealthy donors and special interests to buy favor with political candidates" is part of "a string of disastrous campaign finance rulings from the Roberts Court that began with Citizens United and have left our political system awash in large contributions that most Americans could never dream of giving."
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, similarly declared that "the right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court thinks Citizens United didn't go far enough. Today they gave their blessing for billionaires to buy even more influence over the politicians who represent us."
"Americans deserve a Supreme Court that upholds our fundamental freedoms—not one that consistently sides with billionaire donors and diminishes the power of everyday citizens in our democracy," Edkins asserted, calling on Congress to add more members to the court once President Donald Trump finishes his second term in 2029.
"Congress should rein in this rogue court once Trump leaves office by enacting major reforms, including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and expanding the court with justices who will defend our democracy and our fundamental freedoms," he said.
In the meantime, Americans will have to contend with the new ruling in the November midterms as well as the next presidential cycle in 2028.
Along with calling out a high court that yet again "twisted the First Amendment to help billionaires and corporations buy our elections and bend our government to their will," Public Citizen democracy advocate Jon Golinger argued Tuesday that "we have to combat this outcome by increasing transparency so voters know who’s paying for election ads, empowering small donors and public matching funds, and passing the Democracy For All Amendment to empower Congress, the states, and the voters to put in place reasonable protections to guard against campaign finance corruption."
The ruling came as Public Citizen released a report documenting the historic $517 million in corporate spending on the 2026 cycle so far—money that has largely gone to "industry-prioritizing super PACs" and the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc.
Democratic Party leaders, who hope to reclaim majorities in both chambers of Congress this November, also ripped the new ruling.
In a joint statement, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, as well as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), who lead the party's campaign arms for each chamber, called it "a win for billionaire donors and special interests who want more influence over the GOP agenda and an invitation for corruption."
"Republicans have failed the American people with a record that has ripped away healthcare and raised costs on families, and they know voters will hold them accountable in November—which is exactly why they are rewriting the rules in an effort to drown out the will of the voters by flooding elections with more money from their billionaire backers," they said.
"Democrats are fighting back for the American people," the trio added, "and in November, voters will reject Republicans' toxic agenda and efforts to rig the system and weaken our democracy by electing a Democratic House and Senate majority."
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'Montana Plan' Targeting Corporate Money in Politics Secures Enough Signatures for Ballot
"More than 500 Montanans gathered signatures in all 56 counties, without a single paid signature gatherer, and blew past the 30,121 signatures needed to qualify. That is what grassroots democracy looks like."
Jun 16, 2026
In a direct challenge to the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and a potential model for the rest of the nation, Montana campaigners announced Tuesday that they had collected nearly 20,000 more signatures than required to force a statewide vote in November on a ballot measure to block corporations from dumping money into elections.
The high court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision opened the floodgates for companies and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on US politics. If approved by voters, "The Montana Plan," as advocates in the state are calling the legal strategy behind the proposed Initiative 194, would "stop corporate and dark money cold" in Big Sky Country.
Initiative 194 would bar "artificial persons," including "nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, corporations, trade associations, or unincorporated associations," from "contributing anything of value to candidate elections, supporting or opposing political parties, or supporting or opposing state or local ballot issues." Violators would be "punished by forfeiting all privileges to do business in Montana."
The Transparent Election Initiative in March got the go-ahead to start collecting signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, and as of Tuesday, TEI's all-volunteer campaign had collected nearly 50,000 across all 56 counties, "far surpassing Montana's 30,121-signature statewide qualification threshold." As of last week, the Montana Secretary of State had already verified 34,906 of them.
"This campaign has been powered by Montanans from the very beginning," said Jeff Mangan, TEI's founder, in a statement. "To the out-of-state corporate and special interests trying to spread disinformation about who we are and what we're trying to accomplish: Look at the power of this volunteer army."
"More than 500 Montanans gathered signatures in all 56 counties, without a single paid signature gatherer, and blew past the 30,121 signatures needed to qualify," he noted. "That is what grassroots democracy looks like."
Mangan, a former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, also acknowledged that "we know the road to November will be a tough fight."
Already, the campaign secured a key legal victory earlier this year, when the Montana Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge filed by "a group of corporations and industry groups—comprising the Montana Mining Association, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana Stockgrowers Association, Montana Petroleum Association, Montana Trucking Association, Montana Contractors Association, Treasure State Resource Association and Billings and Kalispell’s respective chambers of commerce," as the Daily Montanan reported in April.
Mangan said Tuesday that "this is David versus Goliath. Corporate and special interests are going to spend millions of dollars on TV ads, mailers, and scare tactics trying to make Montanans afraid of their own power. But the way we win is the same way we got here: real Montanans, in real communities, having real conversations."
"Over the next six months, we're going to be everywhere—answering questions, sharing the facts, and looking voters in the eye," he pledged. "The Montana Plan is about a simple principle: Real people should govern, not artificial persons created on paper. A vote for The Montana Plan (I-194) is a vote to put Montanans back in charge of Montana elections."
TEI's announcement came a month after Democratic Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed into law a bill that also takes aim at the infamous ruling that corporations are effectively people in terms of political spending—legislation that Michael Beckel, who directs the Money in Politics project for the advocacy group Issue One, also called a "model for the country."
At the federal level, progressives have repeatedly introduced bills that would abolish super political action committees (PACS) and overturn the Citizens United decision—though, at least until the November election, both chambers are controlled by the GOP.
"Corporations are not people and money is not speech," US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) stressed while introducing a constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling last year. "In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country—this year, with a billionaire paying millions to buy a seat as Shadow President."
"My We the People Amendment hands power back to the people," she explained, "by finally ending corporate constitutional rights, reversing Citizens United, and ensuring that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people—not corporations."
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88 Corporations That Paid No US Federal Income Tax in 2025 Spent $852 Million on Recent Lobbying, Elections
"The result," said the author of a new Public Citizen analysis, "is a self-reinforcing loop where corporate cash buys policy, and policy pays cash back."
Jun 11, 2026
Eighty-eight corporations that paid no federal income tax last year spent roughly $852 million on US campaign contributions and lobbying during recent election cycles, a report published Thursday revealed.
The report, "The Current Price of Zero," was authored by Eileen O'Grady, a researcher at Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. The publication draws upon an analysis published in April by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showing that at least 88 of the nation’s largest companies paid no federal corporate income tax in fiscal year 2025, despite reporting combined US pretax income of around $105 billion.
"Using data from OpenSecrets, which compiles and publishes campaign finance and lobbying data, we found that from the 2020 election cycle through the 2024 cycle, these 88 companies have spent nearly $852 million on lobbying and campaign contributions," O'Grady wrote. "We highlight the companies that spent the most money on lobbying, hired the most lobbyists, lobbied specifically on tax issues, and contributed the most cash to political campaigns."
The federal corporate income tax rate is 21%, indicating that the 88 companies in the report dodged a combined $22.1 billion in taxes last year. Additionally, they received $4.7 billion in tax rebates, bringing their total tax breaks to approximately $26.7 billion.
“The largest and richest corporations in the country are paying zero in federal income tax, and that is a slap in the face to the American taxpayers who are struggling to afford necessities like groceries and healthcare,” O’Grady said in a statement.
"Meanwhile, these companies are spending money that could have gone to the public good on lobbying for even more special advantages and tax breaks," she added. "In this backwards, cash-fueled system, the deck is being stacked ever higher in favor of corporations, and against working people.”
The report's key findings include:
- The 88 corporations that paid no federal corporate income tax in 2025 spent $712 million on lobbying and $140 million on campaign contributions over the last three election cycles;
- Comparing the taxes the corporations saved against the cost of their political spending, they collectively made a 3,000% return on investment;
- Coinbase Global spent the most of any company—$89 million—followed by CVS Health ($66 million), Honeywell International ($56 million), American Electric Power ($47 million), and Duke Energy ($35 million);
- On average each year, these companies together have sent 1,119 lobbyists to influence the federal government, including on tax issues and legislation that changed the tax code in favor of corporate giveaways; and
- Since the beginning of 2025, these companies have collectively laid off at least 21,200 workers and announced plans to lay off thousands more.
"Our findings suggest that while Republicans lawmakers rewrote the tax code to enshrine massive giveaways to wealthy corporations, those same corporate tax dodgers poured millions into lobbying and political campaigns that yielded further tax breaks, which in turn has bankrolled even more political influence," O'Grady wrote. "The result is a self-reinforcing loop where corporate cash buys policy, and policy pays cash back."
The report singles out two related pieces of legislation—President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law by Trump last July 4—which enabled "several common strategies the companies used to get tax breaks and rebates."
"The most commonly used corporate tax giveaway, accelerated depreciation, enabled more than half of the companies to collectively avoid $11.4 billion in taxes by allowing them to write off capital investments immediately," O'Grady noted.
"In addition, a tax break supercharged under the Big Ugly Law allowed more than 30 companies to immediately write off research and development expenses, which alone netted them at least $4.4 billion in savings," she added, using a common liberal epithet for the OBBBA.
Since the US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling—which affirmed that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment—nearly $20 billion has been spent on US presidential elections and more than $53 billion on congressional races, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Spending on 2024 congressional races was double 2010 levels, while presidential campaign contributions were more than 50% higher in 2024 than in 2008, the last election before Citizens United.
Ultrawealthy and corporate megadonors played a critical role in Trump’s 2024 victory. Fossil fuel interests spent more than $445 million during the 2024 election cycle on campaign donations, lobbying, and other efforts to elect Trump and his Republican allies, plus pass policies that benefit their climate-wrecking businesses. Artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are fast emerging as some of the most prolific lobbyists. Trump and Republicans in Congress have promoted policies and legislation boosting these sectors and shielding them from government regulation.
Elon Musk—the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and majority owner of X who could soon become the world's first trillionaire—is the most prominent of the numerous Trump donors who have been rewarded with Cabinet nominations and other key appointments in “an administration dominated by billionaires and corporate interests,” as Americans for Tax Fairness executive director David Kass described it.
O'Grady wrote that "corporate tax dodgers spend lavishly on lobbying and campaign contributions that feed into more tax breaks, which in turn fund even more political spending on policies that serve to pad corporate profits—and the cycle continues."
To remedy this, the report asserts: "It is imperative that Congress undo the Republican tax giveaways to corporations like bonus depreciation and research and development write-offs. In addition, the corporate rate must be increased to at least the 35% rate that stood before the 2017 law."
"Corporations should not be able to deduct multimillion-dollar bonuses. And Congress must prevent multinational corporations from avoiding taxes by booking profits in offshore subsidiaries by equalizing the domestic and international tax rates," the publication concludes. "With these and other reforms to our tax code, our nation could have more than enough revenue to breinvest in American communities and make life more affordable for everyone. It’s time to finally put people over corporate profits."
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States Have Found a Way to Fight Back Against Citizens United
Federal attempts to overturn the ruling by amending the US Constitution or legislating against corporate spending have repeatedly failed. But now several states are experimenting with new ways to get this flood of corporate money out of politics.
Jun 05, 2026
More than 15 years ago, the Supreme Court removed limits on corporate political spending in its notorious Citizens United decision, ushering in an era of unprecedented influence by moneyed interests.
As a result, a small group of ultra-wealthy donors have skewed the political system to their advantage—and today, social scientists link the growing gap between rich and poor to that seminal 2010 decision.
Federal attempts to overturn the ruling by amending the US Constitution or legislating against corporate spending have repeatedly failed. But now several states are experimenting with new ways to get this flood of corporate money out of politics.
The state of Hawaii just passed a first-of-its-kind law redefining corporations as entities that aren’t allowed to spend money in elections anywhere within the state. The effort could kick off a powerful state-by-state pushback that succeeds where federal efforts failed.
Curtailing corporate influence on the political system is essential at a time when corporations are thriving while ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet.
This simple idea is the brainchild of Tom Moore, senior fellow for democracy policy at the Center for American Progress. “It’s not regulation; it’s redefinition,” Moore told me. “States create corporations, and they give powers to all the corporations that operate within their states.”
So if the federal government and the Supreme Court enable corporations to influence elections, states can counter that merely by changing the definition of a corporation. And that’s precisely what Hawaii did. Effective starting July 2027, corporations doing business in the state are redefined to “not include the power to spend money or contribute anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures.”
The novel approach is well-protected against legal challenges. Moore explained, “The Supreme Court has said consistently for 200 years that [the power to define corporations] is a matter of state law, that the federal courts don’t have anything to do with that.”
The impact of this on Hawaii’s politics are likely to be monumental. “Basically, in Hawaii politics, local, state, and federal, every dollar that’s spent will be from an individual human being,” said Moore. “It’ll be disclosed, it’ll be voluntary. And that is a gigantic difference from what we have right now.”
Hawaii’s law doesn’t overturn Citizens United—it makes the 2010 ruling meaningless within its borders.
Residents of Montana are pushing a similar effort. Activists there are gathering signatures to place a measure on the November ballot to similarly redefine corporations so they can’t spend money in elections. If the measure passes, it will go into effect in January 2027, six months before Hawaii’s law takes effect.
In fact, according to Moore, Hawaii’s legislators borrowed the language for their bill from Montana’s ballot measure and sped it through their legislative process, pleasantly surprising advocates. Moore is confident the Montana effort will succeed. “They’re in very, very good shape, they’re incredibly well-organized,” he said.
At least 14 states, including New York and California, are currently considering similar bills, and Hawaii’s new law prompted interested lawmakers from two other states to contact Moore. “We’ve had outreach from folks in almost every state,” he said. Given the fact that it’s been less than a year since Moore first published his idea, the speed at which it’s caught on has been remarkable.
Curtailing corporate influence on the political system is essential at a time when corporations are thriving while ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet. “At the end of the day, corporations don’t actually work for their shareholders, they work for us because we create them through our legislatures, through our laws,” said Moore.
“And if corporations are doing something in our state that we don’t like, we have the power as citizens and working through our legislators to do something about that."
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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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In Delaware, Corporations Can Now Vote. Are We Insane?
In the United States of America, this is what it has come to.
May 30, 2026
Corporations can now vote in Delaware. And they’re doing it.
Seriously. Not dystopian science fiction or a new novel by an AI version of George Orwell. Actual corporations — what America’s first Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall, in 1819 called “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law” — are today voting in elections for everything from the mayor and town council to referendums on corporate taxes and limits on corporate behavior.
What could possibly go wrong?
There are, after all, more corporations than people in Delaware. They can now decide who’s going to run the government, what the laws are, and — through their votes to elect humans who’ll take corporate money to do what corporations want (something else that corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized) — even what regulations companies must follow and what limits there are on their behavior.
In a few weeks, my next book will be coming out, “Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told,” and the timing couldn’t be more synchronous.
The book, written like a murder mystery but 100% true, tells the story of how a corrupt Supreme Court clerk conspired with a corrupt Supreme Court justice to hand “corporate personhood” to the railroad corporations that were then among the richest and most powerful in the world.
The decision was handed down in 1886; in it, the Court itself didn’t say a single word about corporate personhood. Back then corporations had the rights of “artificial persons” so they could pay taxes, own land, and execute contracts and lawsuits, but nobody seriously claimed they could assert human rights like free speech, privacy, or the right to vote.
But the clerk of the Court, a wealthy plutocrat named John Chandler Bancroft Davis, slipped into the headnote of the case — a commentary for law students and others wanting a summary of a decision, which carries absolutely no legal weight whatsoever — that the Chief Justice, Morrison Remick Waite, had claimed corporations were “persons,” implying they had rights under the 14th Amendment.
The railroads then hired a few retired members of Congress who were on the committees that wrote the Amendment as frontmen and for the next five years they traveled the country claiming that the “actual intent” of the authors of the 14th Amendment was to grant human rights to corporations, not former slaves.
Their efforts worked; just ten years later, in the Covington & Lexington Turnpike v. Sandford case, the Court cited the Santa Clara decision and ruled:
“[C]orporations are persons within the meaning of the constitutional provisions forbidding the deprivation of property without due process of law as well as a denial of the equal protection of the laws.”
That badly abused Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, was written to liberate formerly enslaved people, and its language is pretty clear about that:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (emphasis added)
The railroad corporations claimed that because they were taxed at different rates on property they owned in Santa Clara and Santa Ana counties in California, they were “persons” being denied the “equal protection of the law.” The Court determined that the California constitution already dealt with tax issues like that, giving the railroad the relief they wanted, but there was no federal action at all.
However, the lie about corporate personhood buried in the headnote took root and lives on to this day. For example, yesterday afternoon I asked DuckDuckGo’s AI the question:
“Who won the 1886 Santa Clara Supreme Court decision?”
And the answer I got back was:
“The Southern Pacific Railroad Company won the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the railroad, affirming that corporations are considered ‘persons’ under the Fourteenth Amendment.”
None of that is true, but it was nonetheless the basis of the 1978 First National Bank v Bellotti decision written by Lewis Powell himself (of “Powell Memo” fame), claiming that because corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights — including the First Amendment right to free speech — they could spend big bucks to swing elections. In that decision, the Court majority footnoted:
“It has been settled for almost a century that corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U. S. 394 (1886); see Covington & Lexington Turnpike R. Co. v. Sandford, 164 U. S. 578 (1896).”
Because corporations don’t have mouths to speak with, Powell reasoned, their money served the same purpose. So they could “speak” freely with millions thrown into elections, corrupting our democracy to their benefit and our detriment.
Two years earlier, in Buckley v Valeo, the Court had struck down the 1970s campaign contribution limits Congress put into law after the Nixon bribery scandals. They ruled that wealthy Senator James Buckley (brother of William F. Buckley) could use his own money to finance his election campaign because his money was functionally the same thing as his First Amendment-protected free speech.
Which led straight to Clarence Thomas — the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in history, then on the take from a Nazi-memorabilia-collecting rightwing billionaire — to cast the deciding vote in Citizens United.
That bizarre decision blew up hundreds of campaign finance and other good-government laws, claiming that there should be virtually no limits on the money morbidly rich individuals, corporations, and even foreign entities could pour into US elections.
Clarence Thomas even cited the Bellotti case and, thus, its reference to Santa Clara to justify handing our democratic processes over to the richest people and biggest companies in the nation.
And now we’ve arrived at terminal insanity. As Reuters reported on Tuesday:
“A judge in Delaware, where many big U.S. companies are incorporated, ruled on Tuesday that a small town that allows corporations to vote in municipal elections was not violating the state’s constitution.
“Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz said the beach town of Fenwick Island was not diluting human votes by allowing companies and other legal entities that own property to cast votes in municipal elections.”
More corporations are incorporated in Delaware than any other state in the nation because of that state’s lax corporate laws and low corporate taxes: there are more corporations in the state than people.
And now they can vote.
I wrote Who Stole the American Dream? to wake people up to the corruption of our democracy by the rich and powerful, particularly the corporate “artificial beings” that keep buying off judges and politicians because of corrupt Supreme Court cases citing that corrupt headnote, starting with Santa Clara and then going to Covington and then straight-lined to Bellotti and Citizens United.
The entire thing is a fraud, a 140-year-long scam, as knowledgeable legislators like Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, and Elizabeth Warren will tell you in a New York minute.
And it needs to be overturned.
There are a few ways to do that, the most effective being a constitutional amendment, but reorganizing the Supreme Court and even strong legislation can take a bite out of it. I detail them all in the book, and good government groups like Move to Amend and Public Citizen have been on this case for years.
The situation, after all, has become so bad that I suggested in my book Rebooting the American Dream (which Bernie read from on the floor of the Senate in his famous filibuster) that members of Congress should be required to wear NASCAR-style patches to let folks know which corporations are “sponsoring” them.
If we don’t get active and take back our democracy for humans, corporations may one day vote one of themselves into office and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court will probably simply nod along.
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'Logical Conclusion' of Citizens United as Delaware Judge Lets Corporations Vote in Local Elections
Delaware is home to more corporations than people. Human people, that is, as under longstanding state law and the US Supreme Court's infamous 2010 ruling, corporations are people, too.
May 27, 2026
A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town's "population"—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.
"What is a 'person?' When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question," Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.
‼️‼️Delaware Superior Court upholds a municipal ordinance allowing individuals to cast votes on behalf of LLCs, trusts, and corporations in local elections against a challenge that the ordinance constitutes unlawful vote dilution for real persons under the state constitution. aboutblaw.com/blQg
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— Anthony Michael Kreis (@anthonymkreis.bsky.social) May 27, 2026 at 1:46 PM
"According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a fetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot... is not a person," the ruling continues. "This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition."
The judge noted that in 2008, the Delaware General Assembly amended Fenwick Island's charter "to expand its voter registration rolls to allow individuals to cast votes on behalf of trusts, limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations that own property in Fenwick."
"Today, the overwhelming majority of legal entity property owners in Fenwick registered to vote, and on whose behalf votes are cast, are trusts," Karsnitz added.
"I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners," the judge wrote.
"Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction," he continued," referring to the malevolent artificial intelligence-powered computer in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film version of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote."
"Plaintiff points to no other persuasive independent authority than the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution itself," Karsnitz concluded. "And matters of policy are appropriately left to legislative bodies, not the courts."
Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger told Reuters earlier this year that "a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council."
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Delaware contends that "with over 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware–roughly double the amount of actual people living in the state–the people of Delaware risk having their voices drowned out when towns like Fenwick Island allow corporate voting."
Karsnitz's ruling does not mention Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 US Supreme Court decision affirming that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment that government cannot restrict. The decision ushered in the era of super PACs—which can raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns—and secret spending on elections with so-called “dark money.”
While Delaware's corporate personhood laws long predate Citizens United, numerous critics of Monday's ruling referred to the case, including the progressive legal advocacy group Demand Justice.
"Corporations aren't people," the group asserted on X. "They don't have kids in local schools, they don't drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn't get a vote."
Some compared Hawaii, where Democratic Gov. Josh Green recently signed legislation clarifying that corporations are not people, with Delaware.
"Hawaii made a move to rein in Citizens United," writer Van Dennis posted on X, "and Delaware responded, "The fuck you are."
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