Dear Robert Reich

Robert, you're so wrong on many levels, let's count the ways:

first of all, you told it on yourself when you said, "Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time)."

Apparently you, like Joe Biden OPPOSE expanding this rogue, criminal, woman-hating, immigrant-hating, democracy-hating Republican-led Supreme Court as you are willing to wait until long after you're gone for these Republican justices to retire or expire.

That's incredibly short-sighted of you but your Republican buddies across the aisle are proud of you not wanting to expand the GOP Court to a Dem majority on the Court.

Your plan to get states to pass state laws restricting corporate power in each state fails miserably.

No red state legislature will pass the kind of state laws that you hope they would pass.

Are you kidding me? Of course red states won't pass state laws restricting SUPERPACs; and even if a state did pass a state law restricting corporate power and spending, Republicans would simply challenge the constitutionality of such a state law in light of the U.S. Supremacy Clause and guess what?

This rogue GOP Supreme Court will uphold a Republican challenge to such state laws.

Robert, you're completely missing the many points that Democratic Party court expansionists make; which is that expanding this GOP Court is absolutely necessary not just for the purpose of overturning CITIZENS UNITED, but to undo this GOP Court's demolition of the Voting Rights Act, ROE v. WADE, EPA changes and a host of additional bad rulings this GOP court has made.

It's as if you didn't notice that our American democracy will not survive more years and years of this rogue criminal GOP Court disassembling and trashing decades of U.S. Supreme Court precedence Americans have relied upon our entire lives. People are scared Robert - women are scared and are literally dying at the misogynist hands of this woman-hating GOP Court with NO END IN SIGHT!!

Apparently you're not thinking about restoring a woman's right to choose nor do you seem to care that this goddamn Republican Court has already begun disassembling the Voting Rights Act.

You're not thinking about as long as Republicans remain as the majority on this Court, red state legislatures will continue to pass unconstitutional state laws that will continue to be rubber-stamped by this rogue GOP Court.

Let me make this more simple: young voters and women will not support a DNC candidate who REFUSES AND OPPOSES expanding this GOP Court to a Dem majority.

Further, I'm accusing you of being an anti-abortionist like Joe Biden who REFUSED to expand the Court prior to this GOP Court overturning ROE, despite progressives and women begging Joe Biden to please, please expand this GOP Court before they overturn ROE and key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

The next Democratic Party President and Congress MUST EXPAND THE COURT to a dem majority or this GOP majority will continue to destroy landmark Supreme Court cases, civil rights and our federal election process.

It is INSANE for any Demorat to oppose expanding this rogue GOP Court to a Dem majority.

You, like Joe Biden, are perfectly content to leave this rogue criminal GOP Court in power for the rest of women's lives, the rest of immigrants lives, the rest of voters lives.

Fuck that Bob - We The Democrats must stop the bleeding and expand this GOP court in 2029.

How to Get Rid of “Citizens United”

We can do away with it without a new Supreme Court. Nor do we need a constitutional amendment. There’s a far simpler way.

Friends,

Several of you responded to my “Sunday thought” yesterday by saying that the first step out of the mess we’re in is to get rid of the Supreme Court’s bonkers Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, which held that corporations are people — entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the rest of us.

Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.

Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.

Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).

But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.

It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. Maybe you can get it on the ballot in your state, too.

Here’s the thing: Individual states — either through their legislators or their citizens wielding ballot initiatives — have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because they determine what powers corporations have.

In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.

In fact, corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence….The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”

States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decide not to give corporations that power.

This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.

When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.

Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.

Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.

All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:

“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”

Sound farfetched? Not at all.

In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.

Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturn Citizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)

The argument is laid out in a paper that the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)

Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens United irrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.

Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way."

Robert Reich

Robert Reich is a wonderful man who deeply cares about Americans and American democracy and has tirelessly worked towards protecting and enhancing American democracy for decades.