Citizens United<\/a> case of 2010, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and four other conservatives struck down the long-standing limits on campaign spending, including by corporations and unions. They did so on the theory that such spending was \u201cindependent\u201d of candidates and was protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment. <\/p>\nThey said the limits on contributions to candidates were not affected. Those limits could be justified because the danger of corruption where money bought political favors. This triggered a new era of ever-larger political spending but most of it was separate from the candidates and the parties. <\/p>\n
Last year, billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to support Donald Trump\u2019s campaign for reelection. He did so with money spent through political action committees, not directly to Trump or his campaign.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the campaign funding laws limit contributions to candidates to $3,500. <\/p>\n
Lawyers for the National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed out this trend and told the Supreme Court its decisions had \u201ceroded\u201d the basis for some of the remaining the 1970s limits on campaign funding. <\/p>\n
At issue Tuesday were the limits on \u201ccoordinated party spending.\u201d In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress added limits on campaign money that could be given to parties and used to fund their candidates. The current donation limit is $44,000, the lawyers said. <\/p>\n
Washington attorney Noel Francisco, Trump\u2019s solicitor general during his first term, urged the court strike down these limits on grounds they are outdated and violate the freedom of speech. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe theory is that they\u2019re needed to prevent an individual donor from laundering a $44,000 donation through the party to a particular candidate in exchange for official action,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
If a big-money donor hopes to win a favor from a congressional candidate, the \u201cwould-be briber would be better off just giving a massive donation to the candidate\u2019s favorite super PAC,\u201d Francisco said. <\/p>\n
The suit heard Tuesday was launched by then-Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and other Republican candidates, and it has continued in his role as vice president and possibly a presidential candidate in 2028.<\/p>\n
Usually, the Justice Department defends federal laws, but in this instance, the Trump administration switched sides and joined the Republicans calling for the party spending limits to be struck down. <\/p>\n
Precedents might have stood in the way. <\/p>\n
In 2001, the Supreme Court had narrowly upheld these limits on the grounds that the party\u2019s direct support was like a contribution, not independent spending. But the deputy solicitor general, Sarah Harris, told the justices Tuesday that the court\u2019s recent decisions have \u201cdemolished\u201d that precedent. <\/p>\n
\u201cParties can\u2019t corrupt candidates, and no evidence suggests donors launder bribes by co-opting parties\u2019 coordinated spending with candidates,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney, joined the case in the support of the court limits. He said the outcome would have little to do with speech or campaign messages. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re underselling the actual corruption\u201d that could arise, he said. If an individual were to give $1 million to political party while that person has business matter before the House or Senate, he said, it\u2019s plausible that could influence \u201ca deciding or swing vote.\u201d <\/p>\n
The only apparent difficulty for the conservative justices arose over questions of procedure. <\/p>\n
Washington attorney Roman Martinez was asked to defend the law, and he argued that neither Vance nor any other Republicans had legal standing to challenge the limits. Vance was not a current candidate, and he said the case should be dismissed for that reason.<\/p>\n
Some legal observers noted that the limits on parties arose in response to evidence that huge campaign contributions to President Nixon\u2019s reelection came from industry donors seeking government favors. <\/p>\n
\u201cCoordinated spending limits are one of the few remaining checks to curb the influence of wealthy special interests in our elections,\u201d said Omar Noureldin, senior vice president for litigation at Common Cause. \u201cIf the Supreme Court dismantles them, party leaders and wealthy donors will be free to pour nearly unlimited money directly into federal campaigns, exactly the kind of corruption these rules were created to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel I. Weiner, an elections law expert at the Brennan Center, said the justices were well aware of how striking down these limits could set the stage for further challenges. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was struck by how both sides had to acknowledge that this case has to be weighed not in isolation but as part of a decades-long push to strike down campaign finance rules,\u201d he said. \u201cThose other decisions have had many consequences the court itself failed to anticipate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court\u2019s conservatives signaled Tuesday they are likely to rule for Republicans and President Trump by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[39787,49510,13540,1436,49513,49511,21980,3622,5194,48,52,51,49342,47,50,49,16610,1748,2214,68,49512],"class_list":["post-88931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-campaign-funding","tag-campaign-money","tag-candidate","tag-case","tag-conservative","tag-contribution","tag-corruption","tag-court","tag-free-speech","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-limit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-political-party","tag-republicans","tag-supreme-court","tag-tuesday","tag-wealthy-donor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}