Why Super PACs have more power than ever in elections

What’s one thing people across the U. S. can agree on? Hint – it’s about money. Voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to our democracy. So if most people don’t like all this money in politics, then who does? The answer, on this episode of Throughline. This episode has been updated to eliminate an audio glitch. Guests: Michael Kang, Class of 1940 Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Henrik Schatzinger, professor of political science at Ripon College and author of forthcoming book Super PACs in the City: How Outside Money is Reshaping Local Elections To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR.

• 0:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  You already know the person who spent the most money supporting President Trump's campaign in 2024.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  His name is Elon Musk.

• 0:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  You might remember him showing up at Trump rallies.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Come on up here, Elon.

• 0:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  Jumping awkwardly around on stage.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  Take over, Elon. Yes, take over.

• 0:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  But behind the scenes, he'd spend more than $291 million to support President Trump's win.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  And we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist pumping after getting shot.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Fight, fight, fight. Blood coming down the face.

• 0:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  Shortly after the election, Musk was tapped by Trump to lead DOGE, which would slash government spending and jobs, which he represented once by pretending to fire up a chainsaw at the conservative CPAC convention.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw.

• 1:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  Musk was the biggest spender by far. But he wasn't the only billionaire trying to influence the elections. About $15 billion was spent in 2024. And what raised eyebrows was the relatively short lists of the ultra-rich people who spent it.

• 1:41Speaker 03

  Some major donors and billionaires have made public pushes for candidates this election cycle.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  So when it comes to following the money, there is a whole lot of it to keep track of in this race.

• 1:50Speaker 05

  Several high-profile billionaires are dumping massive amounts of money into the presidential race.

• 1:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  Fast forward to today. The 2026 midterm elections are already shaping up to be the most costly in American history. Part of a trend over the last several decades where the amount of money spent on elections has mostly been going up. So we wanted to look at one moment, a big moment, that seemed to open the financial floodgates.

• 2:19Speaker 06

  I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic.

• 2:27Speaker 07

  In the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, it looked like at the time that Hillary was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

• 2:36Speaker 08

  This is Michael Kang. He's a law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

• 2:41Speaker 07

  Citizens United wanted to run a documentary that told all kinds of stories that they felt were important to tell about Hillary Clinton.

• 2:47Speaker 08

  You might have heard of Citizens United, The Plaintiff, ever since its 2010 Supreme Court case. But Citizens United had for years been a conservative nonprofit that made media supporting Republicans and critical of Democrats. And their film, Hillary, the Movie, had a strong narrative.

• 3:06Speaker 07

  Generally that she was kind of an awful person. She's driven by the power. Would be a terrible candidate. She does not answer questions. Disaster in all kinds of ways.

• 3:15Speaker 09

  She is the expert of not saying what she believes.

• 3:20Speaker 07

  So they produced this documentary.

• 3:22Speaker 10

  Hillary Rodham Clinton. Could she become the first female president in the history of the United States?

• 3:30Speaker 07

  It wasn't designed to like make a lot of money.

• 3:33Speaker 08

  It was designed to be seen.

• 3:36Speaker 07

  And they wanted to distribute that movie through video on demand. Their goal at the outset was not to change campaign finance law. They just wanted to be able to show their movie.

• 3:49Speaker 08

  Citizens United wanted to run their movie on cable TV and air ads for it on broadcast TV close to the 2008 presidential primary election. But the Federal Elections Commission opposed them. Laws banned these kinds of political ads from running 30 days before the primaries.

• 4:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hillary the movie would never air. But when Citizens United took the case to court, they said, why couldn't they show their film when?

• 4:16Speaker 11

  General Electric, National Public Radio, or George Soros may freely broadcast.

• 4:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  The result of that case would completely change the American political system.

• 4:27Speaker 12

  Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal legislation that restricts how corporations can spend their money in political campaigns.

• 4:34Speaker 13

  The court's 5-4 decision opened the floodgates for corporate and undisclosed dark money to pour into the election process.

• 4:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  Since the Citizens United case in 2010, the amount of money being spent in elections has skyrocketed. But it wasn't the corporations that everyone feared would be spending the money. It has been ultra wealthy billionaires. And they're not spending it on their own. Most of that money has been going to political action committees, or PACs, that, with the help of the Citizens United decision, have been given superpowers.

• 5:08Speaker 14

  Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums, unlike campaigns which are limited with how much they're able to bring in from one specific individual.

• 5:17Speaker 07

  In the 2024 election, it was a little over $5 billion raised by super PACs. And there were about 2,500 super PACs total.

• 5:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  Super PACs can't legally coordinate directly with campaigns they support. But super PACs can control the political messaging they fund, rather than the candidates themselves.

• 5:42Speaker 15

  They changed how candidates behave, how parties compete, what donors are doing, and who really speaks to voters during a campaign. Who fears whom? And who sets the story voters remember? Super PACs did not just add money. They rewired the whole campaign ecosystem.

• 6:04Speaker 08

  Money has always played a role in American elections. But for the most part, there were rules that kept the biggest spenders from corrupting the process. Even today, it feels like there are very few things that most Americans agree on. Yet polls have consistently shown that voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to American democracy. So if most people don't like all this money in politics, then who does? I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

• 6:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  And I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. On this episode of Throughline, the explosion of money in elections, despite America's long history of trying to prevent it.

• 6:51Speaker 16

  Hi, this is Jill McAfee from Atlanta, Georgia. And you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from iXL. The first few weeks back at school set the tone for the rest of the year. iXL is designed to help kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. Covering pre-K through 12th grade, iXL offers personalized, interactive practice in math, language arts, and science. One subscription covers everything for all the kids in your home. Receive an exclusive 20% discount on an iXL membership at ixl.com/npr.

• 7:33Speaker 17

  This message comes from NPR sponsor, Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the biases that may affect your investing decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

• 8:05Speaker 17

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini.

• 8:36Speaker 10

  Part one, Cat and Mouse.

• 8:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 1971, there was a rush of money heading to Washington DC. Literally, and infamously, suitcases full of cash, all going to support the reelection campaign of President Richard Nixon.

• 8:55Speaker 18

  For four years, President Nixon has responded to the needs of the people. That's why we need President Nixon now more than ever.

• 9:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the 70s, it had become expensive to run political campaigns. Television had become popular and running ads on TV cost a lot of money. But getting in front of a mass audience was a must for politicians. At the same time, Congress passed its first major campaign finance bill called the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FICA. FICA capped campaign contributions and spending for things like ads, and also forced candidates to disclose the names of anyone donating over $100. In the weeks before the law took effect, Nixon's campaign would raise millions of dollars from secret donors.

• 9:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the end, Nixon's campaign was forced to turn over his donors list. And when they did, volunteers from a group called Common Cause started connecting the dots between corporate donors on his list and political favors that Nixon seemed to be doling out.

• 10:04Speaker 19

  The former head of American Airlines and the current chief of Goodyear Tire and Rubber told the Urban Committee how they gave $55,000 and $40,000 respectively to the Nixon reelection committee. Both contributions were illegal.

• 10:19Speaker 07

  There's actually not a lot of campaign finance regulation before the 1970s at the federal level. Really, very lax enforcement of whatever campaign finance laws we had at the time.

• 10:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  The first major campaign finance law passed in the United States was the Tillman Act in 1907, when Teddy Roosevelt was accused of accepting large corporate donations for his presidential run in exchange for political favors. The Tillman Act prevented corporations from making direct contributions to influence federal elections. And for most of the 20th century, corporate spending was seen in both law and culture as a potentially corrupting force in elections. Eventually, unions were also limited from making candidate contributions. But it wouldn't be until after Watergate and amendments to FICA that experts say real reforms were put in place.

• 11:17Speaker 07

  It's really 1974 amendments that put the teeth into federal campaign finance law. And they do a bunch of different things. One is they apply contribution limits across the board for everyone. So anytime you're exchanging money in the campaign finance system, there's a limit on how much you can give.

• 11:37Rund Abdelfatah?

  FICA put limits on how much individuals could give to candidates, how much they could give to political parties, and how much parties could also give to candidates.

• 11:47Speaker 07

  So if you wanted to give to a candidate, you had a limit of $1,000. If you wanted to give to a party, there was a limit. If a party wanted to give to a candidate, there was a limit. It also had disclosure rules. So that meant every time a candidate receives money above a certain amount, they have to disclose it. Every time they spend money in a significant way, they have to disclose that. And anyone who's really active in federal campaign finance politics has to register. And then, in addition, there were expenditure limits, which meant that candidates could only spend so much. So as a candidate, you don't have to worry about your competitor outspending you because you were both capped.

• 12:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  The next year, in 1975, a group of libertarian and conservative politicians filed a lawsuit, arguing that fundraising and spending limits made it harder for newcomers to run against favored incumbents.

• 12:43Speaker 08

  The case is known as Buckley versus Vallejo.

• 12:48Speaker 07

  Counsel, you may proceed whenever you are ready. James Buckley is a conservative politician. He was a former US senator. He is one of a bunch of politicians that challenges the FICA amendments, the whole campaign finance system under the First Amendment.

• 13:03Speaker 08

  Buckley argued that limiting the amount of money campaigns can raise and spend limited what those campaigns could say to potential voters. To Buckley and others, money was speech, and the First Amendment guarantees that right to free speech.

• 13:20Speaker 20

  The greatest campaign reform law ever enacted was the First Amendment. We rely on the proposition that good speech will drive out bad. And all opponents ask, is it the court enforce that?

• 13:36Speaker 08

  On the government's side, attorneys argued that the caps on spending were justified in order to prevent corruption rather than to censor speech.

• 13:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  So what is the ruling that comes out of this case? And how does it sort of play out over the next several decades?

• 13:54Speaker 07

  One is, it says campaign finance is First Amendment activity, and it's protected by the First Amendment.

• 14:02Speaker 08

  Basically, because reaching people takes money, restrictions on spending are effectively restrictions on speech. This was a huge deal, and maybe an even bigger deal today. This is the moment when the Supreme Court decided that.

• 14:17Speaker 07

  The government can regulate how much I can give to your campaign, but it can't stop me from spending a million dollars on what I believe. And if that happens to be saying how great a candidate you are, that's OK. It can't restrict that.

• 14:32Speaker 08

  So free speech. You can spend whatever you want to say whatever you think, but you can't contribute whatever you want directly to a campaign because that could lead to corruption, ala Teddy Roosevelt or Richard Nixon.

• 14:46Speaker 07

  The court decided in Buckley, that's a big enough worry in a democracy that the government should be able to regulate that. And I think that's really where you see this cat and mouse game start up in earnest.

• 15:01Speaker 08

  Kang says it wasn't easy for wealthy people to spend their money on their own megaphone during elections. They needed help from political groups or the parties themselves. And that money was restricted. Yet through the 1980s and into the 1990s, campaign costs were rising, and people were finding ways around the FICA laws. Enter soft money, a loophole that allowed parties to collect big sums of money for generic party-building activities.

• 15:29Speaker 07

  Things like voter registration and get out the vote. And so you had this creep of ultra wealthy people spending more and more money in politics from the 90s into the 2000s.

• 15:39Speaker 08

  Which meant that candidates were focusing more and more on the money.

• 15:43Speaker 07

  So now, you have kind of this unlimited appetite for money because you want to be able to be sure you're not going to get outspent in a dramatic way.

• 15:53Speaker 08

  And advertisements and marketing and media can make up a majority of the campaign costs.

• 15:59Speaker 07

  And what we've seen, obviously, over the FICA era as the money keeps going up.

• 16:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  I don't remember a time where a candidate is not immediately getting elected and then turning around and beginning to fundraise again for their reelection campaign. It's just like a constant fundraising machine, it seems like.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  Exactly, right. And that has lots of effects on politics. The politicians are spending less time doing their their actual job and more time raising money. It distracts them from kind of what we consider like what's important about their job, which is making policy and thinking about what's good for the country. There's lots of reasons to think that's not a great development in campaign finance.

• 16:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Then came the controversies. On the Democrat's side, President Bill Clinton got in hot water when his campaign received foreign donations and held fundraising events at the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans had their fair share of scrutiny for contributions they received. And then came a senator from Arizona, who used these controversies in his 2000 presidential campaign.

• 17:06Speaker 22

  Until the last breath I draw, I will fight to eliminate this soft money, to give that government back to the people of America who have had it taken away from them. That's what this campaign is all about.

• 17:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  When John McCain ran for president in 2000, he emphasized campaign finance reform. McCain ended up losing to George W. Bush in the Republican primary, and was astoundingly outspent. But in 2002, he introduced the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Finegold Act. It was designed to end soft-money contributions, which had soared by this time. And the law forced candidates to stand by their ads with messages like this.

• 17:51Speaker 22

  I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message.

• 17:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  And the McCain-Finegold Act also restricted corporations and unions from running ads or media mentioning federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. This was called electioneering communications, and was meant to limit a kind of a tack ad close to elections. And it would be this last law that would be at the heart of a case about a movie that would change the way money in American politics works.

• 18:27Speaker 10

  So who is the real Hillary Clinton? Is she a brilliant trailblazer, poised to make history as the first female president? Or is she ruthless, cunning, dishonest, willing to do anything for power?

• 18:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, Hillary, the movie.

• 18:47Speaker 23

  Hi, I'm Carolyn from Tallahassee, Florida, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR. Throughline keeps me captivated with every episode, unraveling history in a way that teaches me something new and fascinating each time. Thank you.

• 19:06Speaker 16

  Part two.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab. Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

• 19:44Speaker 17

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. The floodgates open.

• 20:06Speaker 08

  In the 2000s, Jim Bob had already made a name for himself in conservative legal circles. Starting in the late 1970s, the Indiana attorney represented a number of conservative groups. And that led him to fighting for how they use their money to get their messages out. And in the 2000s, he had become the go-to guy for campaign finance cases.

• 20:29Speaker 24

  I think the government is just really grabbing for more regulation and more control, more prohibition on speech.

• 20:35Speaker 08

  For Jim Bob, the more speech, the better. Meaning, the more ads telling you what a candidate believes or what others believe about them, the better.

• 20:44Speaker 24

  One of the questions, you know, people need to ask themselves, you know, is having knowledge about the positions of candidates on issues, what they're for and what they're against, is that good or bad? I mean, I argue that it's good.

• 21:00Speaker 15

  His arguments boil down to four points.

• 21:02Speaker 08

  This is Henrik Schatzinger.

• 21:04Speaker 15

  Professor of political science at Ripon College in Wisconsin.

• 21:08Speaker 08

  And he has a book coming out called Super PACs in the City.

• 21:12Speaker 15

  His first argument is that ordinary people should be able to pool money in groups to really compete. So he frames the decision or the case as one that will level the playing field.

• 21:26Speaker 08

  So in other words, if a super rich person wanted to run for office, under the law, they could spend whatever money they wanted to run ads. Bopp argued that regular people would be forced to pool their money together to equal one rich person's buying power. So groups of people, including corporations, unions, or political action committees, should be able to do just that.

• 21:49Speaker 25

  You can't stop rich people from spending money. But what you can do is have a system that, number one, people of average means can contribute and be effective. And that requires groups.

• 22:02Speaker 15

  His second argument is that the campaign finance laws are really about protecting incumbents.

• 22:09Speaker 08

  Incumbents had name recognition in war chests. Challengers often relied on smaller donations.

• 22:16Speaker 15

  His third point, he argues that the laws are so complex and confusing that they can become a deterrent for people to run for office.

• 22:24Speaker 24

  The whole idea behind the First Amendment was to protect political speech and thereby protect the right of average citizens to participate in our democratic process.

• 22:35Speaker 15

  And the last argument he makes is about civic courage. He argues that you should not need a lawyer and a stomach for harassment to really support the cause. He casts enforcement as intimidation. And he says the laws chill political participation.

• 22:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  And that brings us back to Hillary the movie.

• 23:01Speaker 10

  What is the truth about Hillary Rodham Clinton?

• 23:04Speaker 26

  It's a recklessness that's born of arrogance that goes back to her 1960s roots and their narcissism.

• 23:12Rund Abdelfatah?

  Remember, the Federal Elections Commission rules prohibited the film from being aired. In 2007, Jim Bopp signed on as the lawyer for Citizens United, the organization behind the movie.

• 23:25Speaker 15

  He saw Citizens United as a First Amendment rescue mission, if you will.

• 23:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  In a way, the case was similar to the other campaign finance cases he'd taken on before. Those four main arguments that show political speech and paying for political speech are protected under the First Amendment.

• 23:48Speaker 15

  In his telling, Citizens United is about freeing speech, not freeing money.

• 23:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  When he went before a federal court in 2008, he said the film was just like any other news program, like 60 Minutes. And so it should be allowed to be broadcast. The judge laughed at him. Citizens United lost the case. But then it went to the Supreme Court, a court that had become more conservative in the 2000s.

• 24:19Speaker 07

  So initially, the case is a kind of small case.

• 24:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Northwestern Law Professor Michael Kang.

• 24:25Speaker 07

  Citizens United is really about this obscure provision in McCain-Fingold.

• 24:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  Which prevented corporations or unions from funding certain ads that clearly mentioned candidates on broadcast television 30 days before a primary election.

• 24:41Speaker 07

  So the really narrow question here is whether video on demand constituted a broadcast communication under McCain-Fingold. Very limited, not likely to change campaign finance. But when the case went up to the Supreme Court, something happened.

• 24:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  It was kicked off by Justice Samuel Alito.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography, that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned?

• 25:12Speaker 07

  At oral argument, there's a critical moment where the Deputy Solicitor General, Malcolm Stewart.

• 25:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  Who represented the US government and the FEC in this case.

• 25:22Speaker 07

  Gets engaged with this back and forth with Justice Alito. And Justice Alito starts to wonder if this sort of ban could be justified in the same way maybe a federal ban on books could be justified.

• 25:39Speaker 27

  I'm not saying it could be banned. I'm saying that Congress could prohibit the use of corporate treasury funds and could require a corporation to publish it using its.

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Well, most publishers are corporations. And a publisher that is a corporation could be prohibited from selling a book?

• 25:56Speaker 27

  Well, of course, the. The statute contains its own media exemption for media.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  But I'm not asking what the statute says. The government's position is-

• 26:05Speaker 07

  And Alito is kind of like a dog with a bone. He just won't let go of this point. So he keeps going after Stewart.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  The government's position is that the First Amendment allows the banning of a book if it's published by a corporation.

• 26:19Speaker 27

  Because the First Amendment refers both to freedom of speech and of the press, there would be a potential argument that media corporations, the institutional press, would have a greater First Amendment right.

• 26:30Speaker 07

  Tries to say this is not really what this case is about, which was true. But then Alito says, well, like, what's the answer? Could we ban corporate money from funding a book that engages in political advocacy? And ultimately Stewart says-

• 26:44Speaker 27

  We could prohibit the publication of the book using the corporate treasury fund.

• 26:50Speaker 07

  That seems to be a critical moment for Citizens United. Generally speaking, most people think it's OK for the government to regulate big money in politics and regulate campaign ads, which may influence people's views about the election and is where most of the money is spent. But banning books sounds like something else. And so Alito is kind of connecting the specter of book banning that we're sort of familiar with and has this really ugly connotation with what the government was trying to argue in that case.

• 27:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Yeah, it seems like a very intentional and calculated choice of metaphor in this case, right? Because book bans, book burning, it has a very negative, specifically, connotation in most people's minds. It's like the most dramatic form of censorship that we often think of. But it's interesting then to apply the idea of censorship of free speech to corporate spending.

• 27:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think the way that campaign finance reformers would present campaign finance regulation is we're not trying to swing the election one way or the other. We're not trying to censor speech. What we want to do is regulate how much influence people with a lot of money have over the election and equalize, to some degree, the amount of, say, we all have as citizens in a democracy. But what Alito was doing was connecting campaign finance regulation with this worry about government making choices about what's acceptable speech and picking sides in the debate, which is much more in the conservative direction. And one of the conservative anxieties about campaign finance regulation is the

• 28:35Speaker 07

  word that that's what the government is trying to do in some sort of more subtle way. And so instead of deciding Citizens United on this narrow question, instead, the court comes back and says, we want you to reargue this case, rebrief this case. We're going to do it over, but we're now going to engage this much larger question about whether the federal government constitutionally can prohibit corporate money from funding election speech.

• 29:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  In other words, the Supreme Court wanted to take on a much bigger question, one that had already been settled by decades of legal precedent. Could the government really ban corporate spending on elections? Did the free speech under the First Amendment right extend to corporations like it did to individual people? Later that year, 2009, the case came back to the Supreme Court. By this time, Barack Obama had become president after massively outspending John McCain with unprecedented help from private donors.

• 29:41Speaker 07

  So when Citizens United goes back to the Supreme Court the second time for reargument, it's a pretty momentous oral argument. It's Elena Kagan's first argument as Solicitor General. Everyone knows that basically the future of the campaign finance system is on the line. And we're not surprised when Citizens United wins the case ultimately because at the argument, Kagan goes in and essentially is trying to limit the loss.

• 30:11Speaker 28

  If you're asking me, Mr. Chief Justice, as to whether the government has a preference as to the way in which it loses if it has to lose.

• 30:19Speaker 07

  What case of ours, what case of ours? If we lose this case, we do have a preference on how we lose this case. Right? We don't want to lose this case so badly that we lose all campaign finance regulation. So it's no surprise when the government loses. But it is pretty dramatic.

• 30:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today, the Supreme Court struck down federal legislation that restricts how corporations can spend their money in political campaigns.

• 30:49Speaker 15

  The five to four majority led by Justice Kennedy said that political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment. And the identity of the speaker does not remove that protection.

• 31:04Speaker 08

  Whether it's an individual or a group of individuals, maybe who work for a corporation. If they want to spend their money on getting their message out, they can't.

• 31:14Speaker 15

  So they rejected the idea that corporate wealth creates a special corruption risk that justifies a ban.

• 31:23Speaker 07

  These restrictions on corporate spending have been around since 1907.

• 31:28Speaker 08

  The Tillman Act of 1907, the United States' first law to ban corporate spending in elections.

• 31:35Speaker 07

  And now we've blown a huge hole in campaign finance law. And the worry along these lines is that the floodgates will open to corporate money. And that's really where all the attention is. The Supreme Court has said, like people, corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy and expenditures without restriction. That had always been a critical distinction. We treated people differently than corporations. And corporations don't have to be treated like people. So it's not really the reasoning of the case. That gets sort of blown up in the reaction to the case. But that's the immediate reaction. It's like, what's this going to do? How much are corporations going to spend?

• 32:20Speaker 07

  The irony is that Citizens United's ultimate importance is really not about corporations. Because certainly for-profit corporations, for the most part, there are exceptions, but for the most part, for-profit corporations aren't actually all that thrilled about spending a lot of money in campaigns.

• 32:37Rund Abdelfatah?

  It could be bad for business.

• 32:39Speaker 07

  It's bad for business. You know, I think Michael Jordan, at one point is asked, like, why didn't he support Democratic causes and candidates more? And he said, Republicans buy gym shoes too, right? They buy sneakers. And so by being too publicly engaged in politics, you alienate people. And we've seen lots of examples of that recently, especially. In fact, there are a bunch of corporations that argued against the outcome in Citizens United. They didn't, they didn't want to be drawn into this.

• 33:13Speaker 08

  All the attention on the Citizens United ruling overshadowed another case happening around the same time in a lower court. One that would build off the ruling from Citizens United and make the case that since corporations could raise and spend whatever money they wanted, any group should be allowed to do this. Even groups that had been restricted under McCain-Fangold and other election laws before.

• 33:38Speaker 07

  Within the same week that Citizens United has decided the D.C. Circuit hero's oral argument on a case called SpeechNow versus FEC, and decides that case two months later.

• 33:52Speaker 08

  SpeechNow was a nonprofit created by a small group of libertarians to promote the First Amendment. Specifically, they wanted to advocate for and against different candidates. But they would have had to organize as a political committee in order to do that. They went to court to argue that wasn't fair.

• 34:10Speaker 07

  And two months later, the D.C. Circuit cites Citizens United about two dozen times in 20 pages, and says essentially, "Citizens United ties our hands in this case." Would have been a different case probably before. But because of Citizens United and what it says about the government's constrained ability to regulate expenditures, it's clear SpeechNow has the ability to be a super PAC, to be able to raise money without contribution limits, as long as they're only engaging in this kind of independent speech.

• 34:41Speaker 08

  In March of 2010, SpeechNow won. And now, any group that wanted to raise and spend unlimited money on their own messages, their own speech, they could. Within a few months, close to 80 new super PACs filed with the FEC in time for the 2010 midterm elections.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  2010 ends up being by far the most expensive midterm election in American history.

• 35:08Speaker 08

  But it wouldn't be the most expensive to date. Coming up, super PACs explode.

• 35:19Speaker 23

  Hi, this is Susannah Callahan. I'm calling from Brooklyn to York. You're listening to Throughline on NPR.

• 35:27Speaker 17

  Part three. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR.

• 35:48Speaker 17

  This message comes from NPR sponsor, Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the biases that may affect your investing decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that.

• 36:31Speaker 17

  You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. Whispering through a megaphone.

• 36:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  In January 2010, President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address. It was just a few days after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United, opening the door to massive changes to election fundraising and spending. The nine Supreme Court justices were sitting in the front row for his address.

• 37:16Speaker 07

  At one point, Obama says,

• 37:19Speaker 29

  Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our election.

• 37:31Speaker 07

  He actually comments on Citizens United and Alito mouths not true.

• 37:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  All nine of the justices, including Samuel Alito, sat unmoved while legislators rose to applause all around them.

• 37:45Speaker 29

  I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.

• 37:56Speaker 07

  I think super PACs really make their impact in the 2012 elections, where you have a presidential race.

• 38:03Speaker 30

  The jockeying to be the Republican Party's next presidential nominee has begun, and for the first time in more than 50 years, the GOP is without a clear frontrunner at this stage of the campaign.

• 38:16Speaker 07

  If you remember the 2012 race, Mitt Romney emerges eventually as the nominee.

• 38:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Northwestern Law Professor Michael Kang.

• 38:26Speaker 07

  But he has to kind of fend off challenges from like Rick Santorum, who really relies almost entirely on super PAC money.

• 38:35Speaker 11

  Who has the best chance to beat Obama? Rick Santorum, a full-spectrum conservative.

• 38:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  This was known as the zombie candidate moment, where candidates whose campaigns appear to be dead rose from their graves.

• 38:49Speaker 15

  Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign was effectively dead.

• 38:53Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Henrik Schatzinger, who teaches political science at Ripon College. He's got a book coming out this year called "Super PACs in the City."

• 39:02Speaker 15

  He had no money, no staff, no momentum.

• 39:05Speaker 31

  Newt Gingrich's effort at political resurrection is not looking so good. Today, the top staff for the Republicans' presidential campaign resigned en masse.

• 39:13Speaker 15

  In the old world, he would have just dropped out, end of the campaign.

• 39:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  But this was the new world, where just one wealthy donor could keep a candidate alive.

• 39:22Speaker 15

  And so Gingrich went actually from being dead in the water to winning that South Carolina primary with super PAC money.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  It's not that I am a good debater. It is that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people.

• 39:40Speaker 08

  But it wasn't just Republicans who made the 2012 elections significant for super PACs.

• 39:45Speaker 32

  President Obama and his reelection team have reversed course. They're now encouraging big donors to finance a pro Obama super PAC.

• 39:53Speaker 15

  So the turning point is when Obama's team gave the green light to a super PAC. It was known as Priorities USA Action. And it made a big difference. Priorities USA ran some of the most effective ads during the whole election cycle. It had some of the most well-known ads about a steelworker who lost his job.

• 40:19Speaker 33

  I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to people's lives by closing the plant. I don't think he's.

• 40:25Speaker 15

  And his insurance under Bain Capital, Mitt Romney's company, are some of the most well-known ads.

• 40:31Speaker 33

  Furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.

• 40:34Speaker 34

  Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this advertising.

• 40:39Speaker 15

  So why does all of this matter? This was the moment of normalization. It signaled that Democrats couldn't afford to take the moral high ground. And this unilateral disarmament was basically political suicide.

• 40:55Speaker 07

  If you're running against someone who has this unrestricted channel of money supporting them, it's hard to compete with them unless you do it too. Campaign finance is incredibly competitive. National politics incredibly competitive. So where you where you put on the table this gigantic weapon, it's not surprising that both sides reach for it and use it, right? Like, it would be crazy if they didn't.

• 41:23Speaker 08

  Since Citizens United, billionaires have spent 160 times more in federal elections. They are the biggest contributors to super PACs. And there are loopholes that allow them, if they want, to remain anonymous. This is a term you may have heard called dark money. Super PACs, by law, actually have to disclose their donors. But if a billionaire chooses to donate to a group, and that group chooses to donate to a super PAC.

• 41:51Speaker 15

  I call this financial pinball.

• 41:53Speaker 08

  The billionaire's name isn't the one that gets disclosed.

• 41:57Speaker 07

  It's really, I think, the super PAC era where the wealthy really dive into national politics in this really full-throated way. And I think part of what happens is the Citizens United decision and some of these changes, the evolution of the system, kind of give a brighter and brighter green light to the ultra wealthy to do this. And that kind of changes the culture and the wealthier people spend more and more without feeling bad about it or anxious about it. But I also think what's important in all of these changes, and certainly culminating in the super PAC era, is that the ultra wealthy, you don't necessarily want to run your own ad. That's not what you're good at, and you don't have the infrastructure to do that.

• 42:40Speaker 07

  So what's really helpful is to have a political professional who's aligned with your views, who comes to you and says, hey, we'll do all the work, just give us the money. And what the super PAC allowed those professionals to do is have this uncapped channel to a few wealthy people who could fund a very sophisticated, very effective ad campaign.

• 43:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  And here's where things get a little wild. As we've established, super PACs can't coordinate directly with candidates or specific campaigns. There's too much potential for corruption. But the law says nothing about using information that's floating out there, free for anyone to use.

• 43:22Speaker 15

  So you can frame public coordination as how campaigns whisper through a megaphone by winking in plain sight.

• 43:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  Here are just a few ways super PACs can unofficially and legally get on the same page as the candidates they support.

• 43:42Speaker 08

  First up, red boxing.

• 43:44Speaker 15

  This is when candidates put messages on their website. You often see a box that says, voters need to know, as followed by certain themes and target audiences.

• 43:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  But it's actually not for voters.

• 43:56Speaker 15

  Exactly. Those messages are directly meant for super PACs to use for their own ads.

• 44:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  Next up, silent B-roll.

• 44:07Speaker 15

  Polished, soundless video that's posted online.

• 44:11Speaker 15

  On YouTube, for example, or Vimeo and other spaces. So outside groups then lift it for ads so everything stays on brand without a single phone call.

• 44:21Speaker 08

  Public memos.

• 44:23Speaker 15

  Sometimes candidates issue briefs and opposition research posted in public. And then outside groups can recycle the language nearly word for word. You also have what we call slow walked announcements. So, once you announce your candidacy as a candidate, you can no longer coordinate with these outside groups. But before you announce it, you can do whatever. So sometimes what you see is that they delay the formal launch while the outside machine raises money and builds the infrastructure first.

• 44:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is why several super PACs are headed by former campaign leaders, people who have inside knowledge of the election strategy.

• 45:07Speaker 15

  When consultants leave the campaign, the candidate campaign, they have to sit out a cooling off period, 120 days, and then they can then join the super PAC.

• 45:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  Then there are super PAC fundraisers who ask candidates to be a guest. And you might be asking yourself, but isn't that type of coordination in order to raise money illegal?

• 45:30Speaker 15

  Candidates can headline super PAC events and publicly applaud the group's work. But then they leave the event. And this, after that, is when the ask takes place for donors to contribute to the super PAC.

• 45:52Speaker 08

  These are just some of the loopholes that people like Henrik have seen. And super PACs aren't just working in federal elections. They're in state and local politics, too. And this is where they can really have an outsized impact.

• 46:06Speaker 15

  More and more cities are seeing the same experience. And no matter what office, city council, mayoral, or school board, where you see outside money pouring in. You know, why are local races more and more... Targets of super PACs. It's because a few hundred thousand dollars in super PAC money can dwarf what candidates can raise. It can set the agenda, it can define candidates and frame the story. Local elections often have less media coverage and less voter attention. So ads do more of the teaching there and more of the persuading. There is, of course, also a local media vacuum.

• 46:48Speaker 15

  We have over 200 counties in the US that don't have a local newspaper anymore.

• 46:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  And may soon not have a local radio station.

• 46:57Speaker 15

  And that too. So that may have no local source whatsoever. So when local news is thin or nonexistent, these super PACs become the narrator of the race. They fill the silence with their own script.

• 47:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  What are the upsides to having these super PACs in our politics? And what are the downsides?

• 47:20Speaker 07

  If you have to come up with upsides to the super PAC politics, what it means is there's more money for speech, right? So that's the idea, that people should be, in theory, more informed and have more information at their disposal. And that more candidates potentially have access to money and don't need to be able to reach many, many donors to be able to give flight to their campaign. So in theory, more money means more possibilities for candidates and more discourse for voters to hear and be informed about politics. I think that's probably the strongest argument for super PACs.

• 48:05Speaker 07

  I think the worry is, it doesn't really work out that way in practice. That you end up still with kind of distributional problems where it just means the richest candidates and the richest people have more influence. And the average voter may not be all that informed by more ads. That the ads aren't all that informative and the money goes for all kinds of things that just make our politics worse, depending on your point of view about things. I think all of the campaign finance law, there's this kind of irony about it, which is campaign finance law is all about the prevention of corruption. That's really what the constitutional debate is about. To what degree can the government restrict campaign financing activity to prevent corruption?

• 48:47Speaker 07

  But really, what we're worried about in campaign finance reform is about whether the ultra wealthy just have too much influence and they sort of drown out the average people in a democracy where we're all supposed to be equal citizens. So there is this kind of disjunction between where the law sort of centers in terms of the debate and really kind of the political case for campaign finance reform. And that's always been the way that conservatives who want to take down campaign finance regulation

• 49:26Speaker 07

  sort of aim their firepower is to say, really, this isn't about preventing corruption. This is about silencing people with money and it's about this kind of censorship. And they're not 100% wrong about that because a lot of campaign finance reform really is about correcting what people see as a kind of distributional problem in American politics and that wealthy have too much money. Conservatives and progressives, though, have a different view about whether that's okay or not.

• 49:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  I mean, at this point, is it possible to reverse the amount of money that's being spent by super PACs in American politics? Or is this now just a foregone conclusion of every election?

• 50:10Speaker 07

  I think it'd be very hard to reverse things, given that campaign finance law is constitutionalized. So it's not just a matter of Congress changing the laws. What the Supreme Court really does is lock in kind of the level of constitutional protection and limit what Congress can do. So that's why I think people who are trying to undo Citizens United focus on a constitutional amendment because that's the way you would have to do it or have a different court decide, you know, overrule Citizens United, but that's not going to happen for a very long time.

• 50:46Speaker 08

  There are some laws that can be passed to strengthen campaign finance regulation despite the Citizens United and Speech Now rulings. Henrik says that many of them would be done at the local level.

• 50:59Speaker 15

  In some cities, we see top donor disclaimers, like in San Francisco. So voters can actually see who the top three donors are to an ad. And the Supreme Court actually has green lighted these types of disclosures. Some cities have small donor public financing. Seattle has democracy vouchers. We can also find ways to perhaps better support local journalism and local information. And so it's to build a better, if you will, infrastructure to uplift candidates so that they don't have to rely on these super PACs.

• 51:44Speaker 15

  You cannot buy yourself to a win. It just doesn't work that way. Ultimately, voters are not stupid. If they have strong convictions, all these ads, they will not necessarily do all that much good. In fact, they can actually hurt you.

• 52:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  At a certain point, do the super PACs pose a real existential threat to our democracy?

• 52:09Speaker 07

  That's a very big question. I think campaign finance issues can pose a real threat to the integrity of our democracy and the way that people feel about it. I think it is corrosive to the confidence Americans have about the way the country works. I think both from the left and the right, you see this lack of confidence in how fair the country works and the way that average people can't get a fair shake. You see that in polling where people feel like the system in America is kind of rigged in all kinds of ways. And I think campaign finance is certainly one part of that.

• 52:49Speaker 07

  We've only opened more doors to more money, certainly for the last 30 years. And generally speaking, money kind of goes in one direction in campaign finance. It's generally been more and more rather than less.

• 53:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah.

• 53:12Speaker 08

  I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 53:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  This episode was produced by me.

• 53:19Speaker 08

  And me and.

• 53:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Christina Kim.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Devon Katayama.

• 53:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Irene Noguchi. Kiana Morhathan.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Thomas Coltrane.

• 53:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  Fact checking for this episode was done by Andrea Lopez Cruzado.

• 53:35Speaker 08

  Thanks to Johannes Derhi, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keely.

• 53:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes.

• 53:47Speaker 35

  Navid Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Anya Mizani.

• 53:52Speaker 08

  And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at [email protected]. And make sure to give us a rating or review on Apple and Spotify. Helps other people find the show. And we love hearing from you.

• 54:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thanks for listening.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from iXL. The first few weeks back at school set the tone for the rest of the year. iXL is designed to help kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. Covering pre-K through 12th grade, iXL offers personalized, interactive practice in math, language arts, and science. One subscription covers everything for all the kids in your home. Receive an exclusive 20% discount on an iXL membership at ixl.com/npr. This message comes from Data IQ Agent Management. Most enterprises can count every device, every login, and every contractor. Almost none can count their AI agents.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Take control of your agentic workforce with one view across every platform and tool, showing what's driving revenue, what's drifted, and who signed off on it. Visit dataiku.com. That's data I K U dot com.