A New Supreme Court Case Could Give the Wealthy Even More Political Power
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By Mike Ludwig / Truthout
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska cast a deciding vote for the GOP’s unpopular budget package after publicly admitting the bill is “bad” and would disadvantage people across the United States. After negotiating carveouts to protect some of her own constituents, Murkowski urged House Republicans to make revisions before sending the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk. Polls show the package is historically unpopular given its size and scope, but even Republicans who raised concerns about harming their own constituents fell in line.
“I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans who are not going to be advantaged by this bill,” Murkowski told reporters after voting for the package. “I don’t like that.”
However, the House quickly voted along party lines to pass the bill, including multiple Republicans who previously expressed concern over deep cuts to health care and nutrition programs their constituents rely on. The cuts will pay for Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown as well as tax cuts to benefit his wealthy donors; all in all, the bill is projected to cost low-income families about $1,600 each year while boosting incomes for the highest earners by $12,000. At least two Republicans announced early retirement from Congress after facing controversy over Medicaid cuts that will push millions off health insurance. Trump signed the legislation into law on July 4.
With at least one safety net hospital in Nebraska already announcing plans to close due to funding insecurity, and Democrats chomping at the bit for the midterms, why did so many vulnerable Republicans fall in line? Democrats say Republicans are terrified of Trump, but according to Omar Noureldin, the senior vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, the corruptive influence of big money in politics is a key reason why a bill like this one could pass. That influence exploded after the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, which dissolved decades-old restrictions on corporate political spending and ushered in the era of super PACs that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money. The cost of campaigns skyrocketed, and tens of billions of dollars now pour into federal elections during a single season.
“A budget is a moral document. The reason why a bill like that can pass even though it has destructive effects on communities in red states and blue states is because of the corruptive influence of money in politics,” Noureldin said in an interview. “We’re at a place where a billionaire’s budget passed because money prevailed over morals.”
Along with a coalition of public interest groups, Common Cause was instrumental in passing the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which created the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and set limits and rules for political contributions that became the bedrock of modern campaign finance law. Republicans and right-wing groups have challenged the law in court ever since, allowing conservative judges to chip away at contribution limits with Citizens United and related cases over the years. As Republicans deliberated over Trump’s bill on June 30, the Supreme Court agreed to consider another GOP lawsuit against the FEC.
“You can’t begin to understand why one party would pass a bill that is unbelievably unpopular for stripping health care from poor people unless you understand Citizens United,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, in an interview.
The case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear calls on the First Amendment in an attempt to dismantle one of the last remaining pillars of campaign finance law. With Trump appointees among a solid conservative majority, the court will consider whether to strike down limits on coordinated campaign spending between candidates and political parties, which would blow the cap off the amount of money wealthy donors can funnel toward their preferred candidate through partisan “coordination” committees. The effort is a longtime priority for Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former GOP Senate majority leader who has long argued for more money in politics and filed a brief in support of the lawsuit in January.
The Justice Department has traditionally defended the FEC regardless of which party controls the White House. However, the Trump administration refused to intervene in this case, leaving the job of defending limits on coordinated campaign spending to the Democratic Party. For the first time, Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign outsourced many key functions to super PACs and outside groups funded by a handful of wealthy donors, including tech mega-billionaire and DOGE founder Elon Musk, who was rewarded with a powerful, if temporary, position inside the White House. Musk is now attempting to forge his own political party after falling out with Trump.
“We refuse to sit on the sidelines as Trump’s DOJ and the Republican Party attempt to throw out longstanding election laws for their own benefit,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement with other party leaders last week. “Republicans know their grassroots support is drying up across the country, and they want to drown out the will of the voters.”
At issue are limits on how closely campaigns and political parties can coordinate the spending of donations from wealthy supporters of a particular candidate. Republicans argue political parties exist to elect candidates, so limits on campaign spending violate their First Amendment rights. However, Weissman said the GOP conflates the right to speak freely with the ability of the ultra-rich to drown out competing voices during election season. The Supreme Court has agreed with Republicans in past cases, including Citizens United, which famously granted corporations free speech rights.
“The shell of what’s left is dollar restrictions on direct contributions to candidates,” Weissman said. “There’s already unlimited spending by rich people and corporations on outside entities such as super PACs … but if the outside entities are the specific party structure and can coordinate with candidates, then that direct contribution restriction is of diminishingly microscopic importance.”
In other words, a billionaire seeking to influence a political candidate can skirt contribution limits by funneling money through the candidate’s political party, and without the current rules on the books, the party could coordinate directly with the candidate to spend the billionaire’s cash on millions of targeted ads. Campaign “coordination” committees already exist and are used extensively by both parties — the deadlocked FEC rarely enforces existing law — but a Supreme Court ruling against the FEC would further open the campaign cash floodgates and set a dangerous precedent, according to Noureldin.
“This challenge would allow for there to be basically unlimited spending by political parties to get their candidates elected, and right now there are limits on their coordinated spending depending on the rules for Senate and House races,” Noureldin said.
Billionaires are already taking advantage of holes in campaign finance law and a weak FEC. Noureldin said transparency proponents may be tempted to see an upside to parties spending unlimited donations in coordination with campaigns, because at least the names of those donors and the dollar amounts they spend must be reported to the public — a contrast to the so-called “dark money” that has exploded in politics, allowing the wealthy to influence elections anonymously. Currently, donations from an individual donor to a federal candidate’s campaign is capped at $3,500 per election under FEC rules, but donors can funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle through “additional accounts” at national party committees used to pay for presidential nominating conventions and legal challenges against election results, for example.
Under these rules, Musk openly spent $277 million to elect Trump and Republicans in the last election and went on to dismantle lifesaving USAID programs through DOGE, which researchers say could lead to more than 14 million deaths worldwide over the next five years.
Noureldin noted an FEC guidance for the 2024 election that defined “coordination” between campaigns and parties as “public” communication such as TV ads. However, fundraising solicitations and canvassing did not fall under the “public” category, allowing Musk to spend $100 million on Trump’s door-to-door ground game in 2024 while Trump centralized the Republican Party fundraising under his control.
“What we’re having here is an all-out assault on any regulation on big money in politics,” Noureldin said, adding that as of May, the FEC lacks a quorum and its ability to do anything at this point is limited. “Congress is not looking at these issues anymore, because for one, there is a benefit to having this unlimited money in politics, and that is the sort of ‘soft corruption’ we’ve been talking about.”
Noureldin and Weissman said there are already anti-corruption laws on the books against bribing politicians; the point of campaign finance regulation is to prevent billionaires like Musk from skirting these laws through third parties — including political parties. The Supreme Court has traditionally weighed the First Amendment claims made by Republican challengers in defense of billionaires, megadonors and, in this case, political parties, against the corrupting influence of unlimited campaign cash. Noureldin said conservative Supreme Court justices tend to take an “absolutist” view on corruption and have sided with the GOP’s free speech claims in Citizens United and other cases, which discourages Congress from regulating money in politics.
“What the Supreme Court does not do is make policy decisions about how much or in what context we should have tighter disclosure requirements or do other things to mitigate the harms of political spending,” Noureldin said. “Our view is that this requires more nuanced policymaking, and that is for Congress to do. But once the Supreme Court makes this a constitutional issue, then no Congress in the future can do anything, and that is what the court has been doing in these cases going all the way back to Buckley vs. Valeo,” referring to the 1976 landmark decision that struck down limits on expenditures by candidates and parties in federal elections.
Noureldin said it’s not just the soft corruption associated with unlimited campaign donations that advocates are worried about, but the perception of corruption among the voting public. After Musk and other billionaires spent billions of dollars to elect Trump and the Republicans who just voted to slash the social safety net, the latest campaign finance case before the Supreme Court could become a flashpoint ahead of the 2026 midterms elections.
“If the public believes their vote doesn’t matter, and that wealthy people are always going to get their way because of the amount of money they paid to get a candidate elected, then folks sit out elections,” Noureldin said.
A Pew survey in 2023 found that 85 percent of Americans said the cost of running a political campaign makes it hard for “good people” to run for office, and a solid majority (63 percent) said all or most elected officials ran for office out of self-interest and a desire to make money. The public also rates members of Congress poorly on listening to people in their districts, making compromises with the other party, and “taking responsibility for their actions.”
That’s why it must be lawmakers themselves, not the Supreme Court, who call out the problem and legislate new solutions for reducing the corruptive influence of big money in politics, Noureldin said.
“We do need a new national conversation about money in politics, and that needs to be led by our elected legislators, for them to come out and say, ‘Yes, the soft corruption and corrosive influence is real. I’m a member of Congress, and I am telling you.’”
Mike Ludwig
Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at Truthout based in New Orleans. He is also the writer and host of “Climate Front Lines,” a podcast about the people, places and ecosystems on the front lines of the climate crisis. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.