[SPEAKER_00]: We will hear argument this morning in case 24, 621 National Republican Senatorial Committee versus the Federal Election Commission.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.
[SPEAKER_03]: On this week's episode of Five to Four, Peter, Reannon, and Michael are talking about National Republican Sanitorial Committee, the Federal Election Commission, or if you prefer that in letters instead of words, NRSCVFEC.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a case from this past term, in which the court overturned a law capping how much money political parties conspend in direct coordination with individual candidates.
[SPEAKER_03]: In effect, ruling creates a workaround for donors who want to give more money to a candidate than they're legally allowed to.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have now coordinated spending that functions like a contribution.
[SPEAKER_01]: Political parties can sort of almost become vehicles for circumventing a contribution limits.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the latest in a long line of cases, which the court has sought to undo decades of good governance laws aimed at raining in the influence of money and politics.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is five to four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to five to four where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have hidden away our civil liberties Like Donald Trump hiding in a catering cart.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Peter.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm here with a ran and hey everybody and Michael must have been a big catering cart.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's not a small guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not a tiny person young.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have the president crowd you.
[SPEAKER_04]: He must have he must have been balled up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So most people probably heard the story by now, but Donald Trump in order to avoid assassination presumably board an air force one wave to the cameras.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they snuck him off to another plane on a catering cart like he hid inside.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: a catering cart, insanely funny, VP level stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, like, rather than get the plane to just like the point where it's like, we're 100% sure that Iran's not going to blow this up right now, sir.
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone is like, what if we snuck you now with the case?
[SPEAKER_04]: I honestly bet that he just liked that idea too much.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, he loves it.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was like, that's so fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's his favorite part of being the president.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little trick, he thinks he's playing on everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, they he presumably huddled up inside a catering cart and then they put them on another plane.
[SPEAKER_05]: But that also means he left like a bunch of staffers in like the entire White House press core.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're as decoys to possibly get bombed by Iran.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a timeline where that plane gets bombed by Iran and then, and everyone's like, oh my god, the president has been killed in the Trumpshark.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, uh oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: Imagine the feeling that you would have when he pops back up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And like, that's not crowded in the catering.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's like, I outsmarted them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew it was coming.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh my god, we've never heard the end of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Today's case, national Republican
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a case from the end of this past term, about campaign finance specifically, it is about political candidates coordinating with political parties.
[SPEAKER_04]: The Federal Election Campaign Act is a law from the early 1970s that sought to regulate campaign finance.
[SPEAKER_04]: Part of that law is
[SPEAKER_04]: was a cap on coordinated party expenditures.
[SPEAKER_04]: What that means is that political parties are allowed to spend their money in coordination with political candidates, but there is a limit on how much.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we are talking about that limit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if the Republicans want to coordinate some ads with a Republican candidate of their choice, for example, they can, but they can't pass that threshold.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, that's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Certain, there's a cap on how much they can spend.
[SPEAKER_04]: The point of this,
[SPEAKER_04]: is first to avoid allowing donors to end run around campaign contribution limits by just like sending their donations to the party.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then also you have broader concerns about corruption, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: The whole reason campaign contribution limits exist is because without them, a large donor is might be able to dictate what a candidate says and does.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, either or not, there was a time when people in Congress thought that might be a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there's this law.
[SPEAKER_04]: Come with us.
[SPEAKER_04]: A Supreme Court in a six to three decision, said this all sounds like it violates the first amendment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about our speech?
[SPEAKER_04]: What about the speech of the Republican Party?
[SPEAKER_02]: What about our speech and how our money is speech and how that's really, really important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we take one or even two cases of term.
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like about our money being our speech.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can they just take one case and be like, can't paint finance laws don't exist anymore?
[SPEAKER_04]: So that we don't have to do two of these here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, bit by bit, like we knew this was coming.
[SPEAKER_02]: This holding about this, but it's so specific.
[SPEAKER_02]: We knew it was coming because citizens united.
[SPEAKER_02]: Set this, you know?
[SPEAKER_05]: Disgrew with my co-hosts.
[SPEAKER_05]: These are two cases a year where that we have labs that we get to just.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like all the same talking for it, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I take it back.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's content and we appreciate all content in this house.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's start with the law.
[SPEAKER_02]: The federal election campaign act regulates campaign finance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the provision of the law that's at issue in this case is one that regulates what are called coordinated party expenditures.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not a campaign finance expert, you're not always wheeling and dealing in this ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_02]: eyes glazed over vocabulary, think of campaign finances happening with different kinds of transactions, two categories of transactions.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are contributions, which of course is like what a donor or a pack or a party can contribute to a candidate's campaign.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there are expenditures, which is what a pack or a party or what have you can expend on a campaign.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this provision in the federal election campaign act allows party committees, that's like the DNC, the RNC, to make what are called coordinated party expenditures, but only up to certain amounts, like you just said Peter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So coordinated party expenditures, these are expenditures or spending that benefits the election campaigns of federal candidates, and it's coordinated with those candidates, meaning the candidate can give input on how that money
[SPEAKER_02]: So a party can contribute to a candidate's campaign and they can also spend.
[SPEAKER_02]: on a candidates campaign and they can do so in a coordinated way where the candidate has input on how the party spends that money.
[SPEAKER_02]: So these coordinated party expenditures like often look like campaign advertising that the party committee is paying for, but it's in coordination with the candidate.
[SPEAKER_02]: The candidate might say, you know, I'm thinking about ads in this place or
[SPEAKER_02]: So prior to this case, those coordinated expenditures from the party to a candidate's campaign were capped at certain amounts.
[SPEAKER_02]: In 2024, for example, the last presidential election, the coordinated party expenditure limit for nominees for president in the general election coming from those national party committees was just over $32 million.
[SPEAKER_02]: The coordinated party expenditure limit for a house candidate in 2026 this year is between 65,000 and $130,000.
[SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, the coordinated party expenditure limit for a Senate candidate this year is between about $130,000 and $4 million.
[SPEAKER_02]: In that case, that range depends on the state's voting age population where that Senate candidate is running.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the status quo, though, before this case, we're talking about a lot of money, but we are talking about some limits that federal election campaign finance law had in place.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what the law said, but now, because of this case, and because of all the cases, I can't before it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have money and elections designated as free speech.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you have this court.
[SPEAKER_02]: These six, up on the court, waitin' for cases like this to come up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, clocking all of that, clocking this new context that we're in today.
[SPEAKER_02]: back in 2022, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, former Republican Ohio representative Steve Chebe, and then Senator JD Vance.
[SPEAKER_02]: That year, 2022, this polyql filed a lawsuit saying these limits on coordinated party expenditures are unconstitutional, because say it with me, money is
[SPEAKER_02]: speech.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to talk here.
[SPEAKER_02]: The case, therefore, it makes its way to the Supreme Court, another arm of the Polyhuel.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might say, but one interesting note here, just about the parties, before we get into the opinion and what the court decides, these were Republicans and the Republican Party committees.
[SPEAKER_02]: sue the FEC, the federal election commission, because the FEC is the federal agency that enforces these campaign laws.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, since the FEC is a federal agency, defending that federal agency in that lawsuit would of course be the federal government.
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, the solicitor general of the United States.
[SPEAKER_02]: But since the federal government at this time, I eat the Trump administration agrees with these guys who are suing.
[SPEAKER_02]: They say, actually, we're not going to argue against this.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to represent the FBC to defend its enforcement of these laws because we agree that the laws
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the DNC actually intervenes here and files in motion asking to sort of like be subdin and they're the ones on the side defending the constitutionality of the law saying no these coordinated party expenditure limits are constitutional and should stay in place.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there's a mechanism for interested parties if they have like a real interest in the outcome of litigation to sort of insert themselves in and defend one side or another, which is what happened here.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the legal question, of course, is whether these limitations on coordination between parties and candidates violate the first amendment.
[SPEAKER_04]: This has been litigated before.
[SPEAKER_04]: The exact question came up to the Supreme Court in 2001 in a case called Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, the FEC.
[SPEAKER_04]: The court there held five to four that the law was constitutional because a political party, spending money and coordination with a campaign was functionally the same as a campaign contribution and because these rules help mitigate corruption.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what has changed since 2001?
[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously the makeup of the court, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But with it, the definition of corruption, the court used to hold that any undo influence, or the appearance of undo influence was corruption.
[SPEAKER_04]: And therefore it was constitutional to create rules to curtail it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and just to be very precise, when the government regulates in, like, a constitutionally protected area, it has to identify its interests, like it's goal here, and one of those goals that the court has previously recognized was preventing corruption, but another goal that the court had acknowledged for some important was preventing the appearance of corruption, because
[SPEAKER_05]: that reduces confidence in elections in democracy in the idea that the government responds to the people at all.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's important.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, even if there wasn't clear actual corruption, the trust in the system is something that the court was trying to protect, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But this court does not see it that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: The court has narrowed the definition of corruption substantially.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now, only quid pro quo corruption counts.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've seen this in a variety of context.
[SPEAKER_04]: They think that the only thing that counts as corruption is I give you big back of money with the dollar sign on the side and I say in exchange, I would like political favor, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's corruption, nothing else is corruption.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Brett Kavanaugh says,
[SPEAKER_04]: In short, under the court's more recent First Amendment Presidents, the government's desire to prevent or reduce influence in gration, gratitude, access, or the like for those who spend in support of or contribute to political parties or candidates is not a constitutionally permissible objective for campaign finance restrictions.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's saying, all that's free speech, all that protected free speech.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Influence, ingratiation, gratitude, access.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what the beach is, baby.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's why you run for office.
[SPEAKER_05]: Y'all, that's what they're paying for.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's sort of interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: He does a weird thing where there was this precedent in 2001 saying this is okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they created this like other contradictory.
[SPEAKER_04]: precedent where they're like corruption is much narrower than that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then now they're like, well, these aren't compatible.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Kavanaugh does a lot of talking about how the speech of candidates and parties is important in this context.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, look, parties and candidates obviously coordinate all the time, and they need some level of coordination for the system to function.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, quote,
[SPEAKER_04]: In a campaign, the coordination between party and candidate may encompass the what, when, where, how, and to whom of political activities and communications, what policy positions should the party and candidate adopt and emphasize, when and where should the party and candidate run campaign ads?
[SPEAKER_04]: What is the best content for party ads, for candidate ads, for candidate and surrogate speeches, which voters should the party and candidate target?
[SPEAKER_04]: how to best use social media, how can the party and can it avoid duplication of effort, how can the party and can it best get out the vote the list goes on?
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, here's the manual also, by the way.
[SPEAKER_04]: So almost every single one of those things I just listed is unrelated to money, like it has nothing to do with the case at all, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which positions should the candidate adopt when where should ads be run, what should the content of ads be, what should the content of speeches be,
[SPEAKER_04]: Laterally, all of those things can be accomplished with a conversation that has nothing to do with the cap on funds, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: To the extent you're doing something like deciding when to run an ad, in what market, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: To the extent we buy a lot of the speech lines of jurisprudence they have there that's still like,
[SPEAKER_05]: the RNC's speech rights are implicated there, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: They're like, it's still their speech.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, can an API be saying, well, I really want to be competitive in Milwaukee and you should run it around APM because that's when everybody tuned into the local news.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it's still the RNC's speech that's going out there, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not the candidate speech, which is what this is going to turn into, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So of everything he lists, all the different types of coordination, as far as I can tell, only one of them is relevant to the case, which is what policy positions a candidate should emphasize, because you could obviously emphasize a certain issue more if you had more money for ads, etc.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I sort of think the majority's doing a slight of hand here and they do it several times where they're like, look, it's so important that parties and candidates coordinate.
[SPEAKER_04]: Look at all the ways in which they coordinate.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the law isn't about coordination in the colloquial sense, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a restriction on how freely money can move.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just think they collapse the distinction very frequently throughout the opinion.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the big reasons for this law is to prevent what's called earmarking, which is when someone donates to a party with like the specific direction that it be given to a certain candidate.
[SPEAKER_04]: The problem with that is that it's an end run around candidate contribution limits.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can only give so much to a candidate legally under federal election law.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this would provide a way around it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You give the money to the party instead.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Cavanol says that's not a concern because there are other laws that help regulate this.
[SPEAKER_04]: The law says that if you earmark a party donation for a certain candidate, that counts as a candidate contribution.
[SPEAKER_04]: Plus you have disclosure laws, not leaving aside that at least a couple of the conservatives think that disclosure laws are unconstitutional.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think this is the point.
[SPEAKER_04]: The argument is like, this makes it really easy to circumvent contribution limit laws.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think that's the point.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the point is it's easy to do something very illegal.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's because this ruling makes it profoundly easy to do something that's supposed to be very illegal.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and this is very similar to other types of corruption, very hard to regulate because a lot of the, a lot of corruption happens in back rooms that no, it's not like anyone's listening or watching, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't see it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So how do you regulate it?
[SPEAKER_04]: You regulate the channels of corruption.
[SPEAKER_04]: corrupt, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the themes of this court's corruption jurisprudence over the last like 15, 20 years is you can't do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't really regulate the channels of corruption, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: All the only thing that's illegal is the big bag of money for the favor.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can only say corruption is illegal with a big contract that says corruption contract at the top.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like all of these laws that are designed to forbid things that make corruption easy, the courts like you can't do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't regulate that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so in the end, what they're doing is just like one by one opening these channels of corruption up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, last thing I should mention is that Kavanaugh at one point is like, look, this benefits both parties equally.
[SPEAKER_04]: Both parties can now do this, the same exact coordination.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is not, you know, he's trying, he's doing this like over the top.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, very, very Kavanaugh thing where he explains something that like, no, no lawyer needs explain to them.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he's sort of like addressing the question that like a lay person might have about this.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, you might think this is a partisan issue on a count of the cases being brought by the Republican Party.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's actually not.
[SPEAKER_04]: This actually affects both parties the same way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has intervened on the other side of this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, they're actively litigating against the Republican Party here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kevin, I was like, who knows who this bad face is?
[SPEAKER_02]: it's such a silly argument like it's such a silly distraction.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were talking yesterday when we were prepping for the episode Peter you were saying it sounds like Kavanaugh in Dobs when he has that concurrence that he's like where he's like this decision doesn't say abortions like good or bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: This decision affects all the states equally and those states can decide this issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kavanaugh does this a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very sort of like immature non-analysis mode of analysis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's saying that's the problem of the holding, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's saying your holding is not universally applicable or something, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: The dissents not like this is unfair because it harms Democrats.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not part of the question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's saying that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's a clarification that is not asked for and not needed clarification.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's only for like laundering the decision as neutral.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: In this particular case, a sort of a Doth protest to, um, already answered by my t-shirt sort of situation.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Where he's like, by the way, you might think Then I'm doing this for partisan reasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's like actually no one was talking about that, Brett.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: There is a descent, it's by Kagan, the other two liberals join.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's very good, I think, it's very classic Kagan.
[SPEAKER_05]: She does get the descent because, as Peter said, they're overruling this 2001 case, and she's the Libs Star A decisive girl, which for you know, on lawyers is just like,
[SPEAKER_05]: respect for precedent, the importance of cases not being overruled unless they absolutely have to be.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she loves it, she loves started to size it, she loves talking about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So she's very much in her bag, as is the case when she's breaking down, like sort of complicated laws, like election laws, and making them accessible to a layperson, like there's very much like her background
[SPEAKER_05]: with Nixon, and she's like, look, before this law, there was like the Watergate investigations, and there was Nixon, like on tape being like, yeah, we'll give the dairy industry this milk subsidy, they want, but they better remember to pay us $2 million.
[SPEAKER_05]: like legitimately like on the actual quid pro quo on tape, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's what's happening in the back rooms.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that's happening all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Always a secretive recording of the politician.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's what this laws the design to prevent amongst other things.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so part of that mechanism is
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, so there's a cap on how much you can give to an individual candidate, but there's also anti circumvention provisions, right mechanisms to make sure you can't circumvent the cap, like you can't give a bunch of money to the party and then wink wink.
[SPEAKER_05]: Now you know it's the party gives that money to the candidate, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: That's the whole point.
[SPEAKER_05]: it prevents a donor from giving $500,000 to a joint committee that will all go to one candidate when the actual cap is about $7,000, right, for a primary number.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like one basically doesn't exist and the other is substantial.
[SPEAKER_05]: And your point is this is basically all you need to do the classical analysis.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have a compelling government interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you have a narrowly tailored law to that end, capping individual contributions and crafting prohibitions on obvious methods of circumvention of those caps.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, check, check, check, it's all here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it all makes sense, she's saying.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and she's like, look what happened here.
[SPEAKER_05]: The candidates campaign on its own produced a political advertisement and sent it to the party with just an invoice, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: She's just like, the campaign did stuff and then just builds the party.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the party responded, received, will process.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, that's it.
[SPEAKER_05]: making it, it's not a collaborative speaker, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: She does a nice job explaining what these joint fundraising committees are, it's the candidate's own campaign committee, plus all 50 state parties, so like the state Democratic Party for Hawaii, the state Democratic Party for New York, and then the National DNC, all join one committee.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so the contribution limits for each,
[SPEAKER_05]: For the national party is $44,000, and then $7,000 to the campaign itself, if you do the math, that's $551,000 significantly more.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it all can be done in one check to like the Michael Lairoff joint victory fund, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: One check, and now after this ruling, all that money can in turn be spent on my campaign.
[SPEAKER_05]: which is very much a $550,000 donation to my campaign.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's like, this is exactly what the law is designed to prevent.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she says the only thing that's different about it now than it was like 15, 20 years ago is that it's more dangerous because it used to be that there were aggregate limits on the amount of donor could give to federal candidates.
[SPEAKER_05]: at all, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: In total.
[SPEAKER_05]: And those are gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what happened to those?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because of this case, McCutchenv FEC.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she says, I think her strongest point is in a footnote to this, which I wish she had been in the body.
[SPEAKER_05]: But she says, look, the descent in McCutchen warned about this, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Briar wrote a descent that very much warned about this.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she says, I'm just going to read from her here.
[SPEAKER_05]: The McCutchen majority described as, quote, divorced from reality,
[SPEAKER_05]: quote and foreclosed by quote, experience and common sense and quote, the scenario of a donor giving a $500,000 check to a joint fundraising committee composed of a candidate and national party committee in most of the party state party committees.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's the majority in McCutcheon.
[SPEAKER_05]: And before McCutcheon, the government could cap the total amount of money you could donate to candidates period across races.
[SPEAKER_05]: After McCutcheon, you can't.
[SPEAKER_05]: And before this case, you couldn't allocate
[SPEAKER_05]: $550,000 worth of donations to one candidate, and after this case, for all intents and purposes, you can.
[SPEAKER_05]: And after describing this, Kagan points out that Kamala Harris had a joint fundraising committee that raised donations of $550,000.
[SPEAKER_05]: Donald Trump had a 48-state joint fundraising committee that raised $530,000 donations, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: So we're already living in this reality created by McCutchen of these massive donations one-time donations and now it's going to be very easy for those to be funneled to individual candidates.
[SPEAKER_05]: On the started decisive stuff, she also has a strong portion of the opinion where she's like, well, look, Brett's strongest argument for why we need to overturn this case is, you know, what's changed in the last 25 years is that parties are no longer on even footing with superpacks, that independent expenditures have gotten so out of control that it's weakened parties, who are such an important player in our political system.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so it's weakened their speech rights and so we need to strengthen their hand by allowing them to coordinate with their candidates so they can compete so incredibly funny argument.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we didn't we just do this last week where we were talking about independent agencies.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right and the court had just given the president like the ability to reign over independent agencies like a king and Neil Gorsuch is like.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a big problem, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: How powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are.
[SPEAKER_05]: How powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how powerful they are, how
[SPEAKER_05]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, come on.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're talking about like why the Democrats intervened here because, you know, the big picture narrative is that super PAC money in particular, and this is not about super PAC money, but it's about money in politics, but like the massive increase in money in politics over the last 15 years.
[SPEAKER_04]: initially benefit of Republicans more but over time it drew even and at times has benefited Democrats more right now in this particular case about parties the DNC's broke the RNC's flush maybe that's relevant here maybe the Democrats just want us you know stand up for what they think their base believes
[SPEAKER_04]: But at the end of the day, I actually think this is one of those issues.
[SPEAKER_04]: Corruption issues broadly, campaign finance in particular, but corruption issues broadly are just one of those issues where like Democrats are just better.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like your median, libass, democrat is dramatically better than your median conservative, your median Republican.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's annoying because I think if you ask the average person,
[SPEAKER_04]: which parties better on corruption.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is one of those things where they'd be like, well, everyone's corrupt, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: The sort of common wisdom is that both parties are equally corrupt.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's sort of a holistic argument where you can say, well, both parties are indebted to big donors in similar ways.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's true.
[SPEAKER_04]: But
[SPEAKER_04]: If you put Democrats in power, corruption laws get stronger, is basically a lock.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can see that over the last 15 years.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's insanely frustrating that this is like not part of the Democratic platform, because they can't anger the donors that fund them, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's such a weird little tension here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we were having a conversation when we were prepping this about how...
[SPEAKER_04]: You could probably trace a lot of the Democratic Party civil war that everyone's talking about to big donor money, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you have all these issues where it's not really like there's a big split amongst Democrats.
[SPEAKER_04]: What's happening is that there's a split between the base and big donors, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So like, there's no split on Israel among Democrats.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a slam dunk.
[SPEAKER_04]: Democrats don't like Israel.
[SPEAKER_04]: Democrats think it's a genocide.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is like that shows up in the polling time after time.
[SPEAKER_04]: The split is between the base and the people who have the money.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we see that all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: You see that across a number of issues.
[SPEAKER_04]: The sort of defining feature of the Democratic Civil War is just money.
[SPEAKER_04]: You look at someone like
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that campaign exist without citizens united?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: She disappears like one of the vendors.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: 60 million dollars to that campaign for for what from whom?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Arguing what what's the platform?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is that possible?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is what we're saying?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is all years down the line from citizens united.
[SPEAKER_02]: And something that everybody opposed to citizens united said was exactly what was going
[SPEAKER_05]: My strong suspicion is that there are other issues that follow the same pattern, all sorts of institutional reform, stuff that's wildly popular with the base, whether it's ditching the filibuster, court reform, and Medicare for all stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: The divide between that and party leadership in Congress.
[SPEAKER_05]: is most easily explained by the fact that a handful of wealthy donors don't give a shit and don't want them to spend their time on court reform, right, when they're wealthy enough that they benefit from a lot of the conservative rulings, you know.
[SPEAKER_05]: on the court.
[SPEAKER_05]: They might not love dogs or whatever, but they don't care enough, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Nobody's giving millions and millions of dollars to the Democratic Party to explain the court from 9 to 15.
[SPEAKER_05]: Unfortunately, if there was someone, it would be taken more seriously.
[SPEAKER_05]: Peter did mention the Civil War, and I do want to emphasize that's very real.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can see it playing out.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can see comments from people like Warnock made a comment last year about how he didn't think
[SPEAKER_05]: You can see it in people like born and endorsing a lot of insurgent Senate campaigns throughout the country, even leading to some very stupid decisions on her part, like endorsing a guy with a known Nazi tattoo, who was a former, you know, Blackwater Merck type.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, on the other side was Schumer's handpicked person.
[SPEAKER_05]: He was going to support Schumer and Platinum was anti Schumer, and so it's like it's not hard to pick out who are the senators who are
[SPEAKER_05]: leadership and it's in part because leadership is very sort of in hawk to hand full of donors and and you can see it like how they behave you can see it and how people's behavior changes once they ascend to leadership right like Gillibrand has gotten phenomenally worse since you got put in charge of this sent campaign committee.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's wild.
[SPEAKER_05]: How, like, you can track her descent.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, she was, like, loosely aligned with, like, a Liz Warren.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: A decade ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's crazy what happened to her.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think the most salient example is making Islamophobic comments about Zoron Mamdani.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's like, no history of anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where'd you learn that girl?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you can also see this tension in no, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes this quote unquote civil war within the democratic party is defined also as like a DSA versus, you know, the party establishment or like, you know, quote unquote true democratic candidates where you also have democratic leadership being like, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not the Democratic Party.
[SPEAKER_02]: They shouldn't be allowed to run as Democratic Party candidates.
[SPEAKER_02]: Their plan is to take over the Democratic Party and change the Democratic Party and they shouldn't be able to use our resources, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it really reveals their capture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Their capture to the donors, like, what is actually the threat?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, because, right, what do you think the Democratic Party is?
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the threat posed by candidates who are not beholden to these huge, huge, wealthy donors, corporations and packs and all of this stuff, who are more popular than you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the disconnect is that you're not connected to the base because you are beholden you are captured by these finance structures.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not democratic establishment versus DSA so much
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, right and the only way to fight back is to subscribe on Patreon that we can become Billionaires It's one subscriber at a time.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's one at a time folks.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how Billionaires are made.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a like do you understand how big One billion dollars is is how many patrons?
[SPEAKER_02]: How many five dollar a month patrons do we need to be making a billion dollars
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you have to take out the cut-to-patreon, which fucks us up.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you factor in fees, of course, it'd probably be more like 260 million, something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is two thirds of the American population.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's a billion a year with just half that many.
[SPEAKER_04]: We could do it in two years.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd be fine with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we find with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not waiting three years though.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to wait three years.
[SPEAKER_04]: Also, of course, part of this goes to Leon Nefak, who once becoming rich would join the democratic machine.
[SPEAKER_04]: He'd be going to be established and become Islamophobic.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what's the thing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Balance that out.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's important you make all three of us billionaires, so that we can outweigh it, which, of course, would require.
[SPEAKER_04]: Closer to about 650 million, one thing that is likely to happen from this decision because of this decision is that parties get more power, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that means that the democratic establishment.
[SPEAKER_04]: is going to be able to direct money more than they were before, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Decision makers within the party are being given more power.
[SPEAKER_04]: Undeniably bad for the base if we really are in a base versus established struggle in the democratic party.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: The silver lining is that maybe it's bad for the Republican base, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe the Republican party gets a little more power which I know sounds bad, but when you're talking about the Republican establishment versus
[SPEAKER_04]: You win some.
[SPEAKER_04]: You lose some.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all the wash.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think this sort of like medium term effect of this is that the party establishment grows stronger.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have to say that on the Democratic side at least can't be good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like Kagan talks a lot about the way and we talked a lot about the way this enables quit pro quo corruption, which sort of presumes the candidate is in charge of all the money.
[SPEAKER_05]: But ultimately, an important in-between step is, you know, the candidate makes this big joint fundraising committee.
[SPEAKER_05]: Someone cast someone writes a big check to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that all goes to the national party, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It all goes to the DNC or the RNC.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then it's up to the DNC or RNC, you know, obviously with the tacit approval of the donor or maybe not so tacit, just verbal agreement.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, straight up expectation.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: They get to decide whether or not to give all that money to the candidate or not.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so this method of fundraising could be choked off for disfavored candidates who take a position that anchors, you know,
[SPEAKER_05]: Christian Gillibrand, for example, like Peter said, a real problem in the medium term, and one of the reasons why it's very important to dislodge them sooner rather than later.
[SPEAKER_04]: Alright, next week, premium episode, really talking about a few things, including the fact that John Roberts published a some-stack post-contact reader, John Roberts, influenced Sarah John Roberts.
[SPEAKER_05]: You saw your newsletter, Peter, and it was like, I wouldn't, I need to get in on that sweet sweet newsletter cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Follow us on social media at 545, subscribe to our Patreon.com slash 545 all spelled out for access to premium and ad-free episode special events, our Slack, all sorts of shit.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you next week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.
[SPEAKER_05]: 5 to 4 is presented by ProLog Projects.
[SPEAKER_05]: This episode was produced by Andrew Parsons.
[SPEAKER_05]: Leon Nefak provides editorial support.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We had to use that metaphor by the way because the other option was AOC finally being officially single and we didn't want to give Michael the opportunity to shoot a shot and then bear us the whole podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: Worst case in areas you actually do start dating AOC and ruins the podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: That would be the worst.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to cut all this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry guys, you have sounds like loser shit.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I agree.