Supreme Court ‘destroys what’s left’ of corruption laws in overshadowed ruling: expert

While the Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday regarding birthright citizenship dominated news headlines, another ruling delivered by the court moments earlier may ultimately “destroy what remains of America’s anti-corruption laws,” journalist David Sirota warned.

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“For the last 2 years, [we have] been warning about this case spearheaded by [Vice President] JD Vance,” Sirota, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, wrote in a social media post on X.

“It is his plot to create Citizens United 2.0 and destroy what remains of America’s anti-corruption laws. Today, the Supreme Court gave Vance the ruling he sought.”

In 2024, Vance and others filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission in an effort to, as The Lever described it in 2024, “abolish some of the last barriers separating candidates and buckets of cash from corporations and wealthy donors.” Specifically, Vance and other signatories to the suit sought to permit megadonors to “use national party committees to directly coordinate their limitless spending with candidates.”

And on Tuesday, the Supreme Court delivered Vance a major victory, one that will eliminate limits on how much political parties may spend on candidates and their ability to coordinate spending together.

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According to lawyers for the Democratic Party, the ruling is expected to “fundamentally reshape the campaign finance regime,” NPR reported, adding that the “potential for actual or apparent corruption is obvious.”

Back in 2024, Tara Malloy of Campaign Legal Center warned that the ruling would effectively turn party committees into “huge conduits for big donors.”

“They would do so in a way that would really make them channels of corruption,” Malloy told The Lever. “Because unlike a super PAC, a party committee is uniquely tied to their candidates and here they’re seeking to spend unlimited amounts of money in direct coordination with candidates.”

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