Sixteen Years Ago the Court Chose Corporations and Billionaires Over the Rest of the Country

Citizens United changed everything.

January 21st is a day that changed how our country works – or doesn’t – for the American people. Sixteen years ago, the Supreme Court issued its Citizens United decision. In that infamous ruling, the Court overturned its previous decisions that had prohibited corporations from making independent campaign expenditures and running ads for political candidates. Since then, political spending has morphed into something truly monstrous with a devastating impact.

Even at the time, with no benefit of hindsight, critics understood that corporate spending in elections would erode American democracy. In his State of the Union address that January, President Barack Obama told the nation, “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 elections. 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.” Well, as we know, American elections are now bankrolled by special interests.

We all know that corporate — and now billionaire — money shapes political campaigns, elections, lobbying, and, ultimately, what becomes law, policy, and the dominant culture in the United States. As accustomed to that reality as I think I am, I’m still blown away by the numbers showing the rise in political spending since Citizens United.

According to an analysis by End Citizens United, in 2010, the total cost of federal elections was $3.6 billion, or $5.2 billion if you adjust for inflation; in 2024, it was $15.9 billion. To rest on this point so we don’t let ourselves skim over it: That’s over $10 billion more dollars that wealthy interests spent trying to influence elections — in a single election year.

The staggering increases in political spending come in all forms — for elections, lobbying, Super PACs, dark money groups, you name it. In the 2008 cycle, Super PACS spent $574 million. By the 2024 cycle, Super PACs spent $4.5 billion. That’s an almost eight-fold increase in political spending by groups that often take dark money, which enables their donors to obscure their identities. Dark money groups themselves have also exponentially increased since Citizens United. In the 2010 cycle, political donors gave $144 million to organizations that don’t have to disclose their donors. During the 2024 election cycle, donors spent $1.9 billion as the number of dark money groups continued to increase.

At this late stage, unfortunately, candidates running for office in the United States need funds to operate a viable campaign. The question is where their money is coming from and who they’ll be beholden to as a result. This year, ahead of the midterm elections, End Citizens United rolled out a list of Congressional candidates representing a wide range of districts, backgrounds, and perspectives, who have pledged to refuse corporate PAC donations, support bans on congressional stock trading, and crack down on dark money. Because this year’s elections will be a referendum on how a broken political system has hurt Americans, Democrats across the country are unifying around this anti-corruption message.

Republican members of Congress, meanwhile, have been voting in near total compliance with President Trump, even as his administration flaunts its seemingly nonstop pay-to-play corruption. Many of these Republican members of Congress themselves have taken part in flagrant grifts. A few illustrative examples:

• Representative Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania has faced repeated scrutiny for trading while in office. The latest report shows that Bresnahan pushed for data center companies to expand in his district at the very same time that he bought stock in a major supplier for data centers. Politico reported that since Bresnahan bought the stock, it “ has risen by about 109 percent.”

  Previously, Bresnahan dumped up to $130,000 worth of stocks in Medicaid service providers just days before voting for the Republican’s mega-bill that cut over $1 trillion in Medicaid services and gave more tax breaks to the wealthy.

• Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan has a husband who is a very active stock trader — while she’s a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and has access to insider information as a member of Congress. Last August, NOTUS reported that McClain was late in reporting over 500 of her husband’s stock and bond trades. Among those trades was a sale of up to $450,000 worth of Palantir, which has multiple government contracts, after the company’s stock went up.

  Then, this month, the online outlet Sludge reported that McClain’s husband purchased $100,000 worth of stock in Elon Musk’s company xAI just days before the Pentagon announced that it would use Musk’s Grok throughout the Defense Department. When asked by NewsNation about the apparent conflict of interest, McClain said that what her family had done wasn’t insider trading because, “If it was, we wouldn’t have bought $100,000 in shares, we would have bought a heck of a lot more.” Yes, that was her defense.

• Representative Derrick Van Order of Wisconsin used campaign funds to pay for his trip to Washington, D.C., where he attended the January 6^th riot at the Capitol before he was elected, according to a complaint by Wisconsin Democrats. According to FEC filings, Van Orden’s campaign spent $4,022.72 on travel to Washington. The FEC, which has developed a pattern of ignoring campaign violation complaints, threw out this one too. In response, the dissenting commissioners wrote, “Putting aside that the use of campaign funds to support the passive attendance at an ordinary rally by individuals… would be a questionable use of campaign funds, this was no ordinary rally.” At the time, The Daily Beast reported that the Congressman was beyond police barricades at the rally.

When we look around and wonder what brought us to this moment in American politics and life, the short answer is Citizens United. The disastrous ruling has enabled big donors and corporations to have outsized influence on elections and politicians, who in turn make self-interested decisions at the expense of the American people. While the situation is dire, there is some hope: As we wrote about last week, advocates across the country are developing innovative solutions to combat the impact of Citizens United.