Citizens United: Money Is Speech w/ Celina Stewart (Part One)

0:00Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from radio topia. My name is Jody Avergan. This is 50 weeks that shaped America, our semi-quince antennae look at the moments in history that brought us to this moment, 250 years into the American experiment. And as listeners know, all this month we have been doing a collaboration with the Kettering Foundation, we're calling it Democracy Under Construction. We've been looking at some of the key moments throughout US history when American democracy has expanded, contracted, re-aligned, been contested. We've talked about the Bill of Rights, Seneca Falls, Southern Realignment. Listeners will note that we've been going in chronological order. So today, one of the more recent consequential moments that shaped our modern democracy, the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which enshrined the idea that corporate spending is protected speech and unleashed a slew of dark money spending in our modern

1:01politics. It was one of those vintage five-four decisions we are certainly living in the shadow of all sorts of five-four decisions these days. But this is our chance to talk about money in politics. This week, in two parts, we will get into the history of dark money. How citizens of the United, the case went down and what it all means for our democracy. Here, as always, Nicole Hema of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. Kelly's health under construction a little bit. You're dancing back from a... Yeah. Just a little bit. Yeah, actually, there's the sniffles everyone, but you know, podcasting must go on. And our special guest this week, we are so excited to be joined by Selena Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters. I'll talk a little bit about the organization and why we're so excited to have you on. But Selena, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, everybody. Hello there. So, yeah, the League of Women Voters, nonpartisan voter education, voter rights organization, you do all sorts of amazing work around elections and voting rights as well as campaign finance

2:01reform. So it's no surprise that LWV and Kettering and us are all pals because we are all interested in democracy and... Preserving it. Preserving it and the health of it and so forth. But I also say at a personal level, your voter guides are my go-to thing when I'm about to head into the ballot box. So I appreciate you and all your work and all your advocacy. And Kelly, were you saying you're a... Yeah, I'm a member. All right. I've done some work for the League of Women Voters and so they gave me a little picture frame with the membership card in it. And it's like one of those vintage membership cards. It's like, oh my god. I love this. So very, very special, especially in Boston. Yeah. We have a healthy League of Women Voters chapter here in Nashville as well, which I have had the great fortune of working with and I'm such a fan of the organization. So it's really amazing to have you here. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, Selena, thank you for all your work and thanks for joining us as we talk about Citizens United and we will get into the kind of how it all went down, the arguments,

3:02the decision and obviously the fallout. But I wonder if you could start with a sort of bigger story or bigger picture, which is obviously we're here in America's 250th year. We're framing a lot of this around the semi-quince in tenio. And do you have initial framing thoughts about how about this question of money and politics and how in meshed it has been into the American experiment over these last 250 years? I mean, was it something the founders were actively thinking about? Is it, do you see it as a through line? I do. So the League is a national organization. We are in all 50 states plus DC and over 800 local and state leagues around the country. So I feel like we are everywhere. I feel like we are the eyes and ears of what is democracy in so many ways. But I think the League's story is that this decision in particular accelerated this long running democratic problem, which is when wealth can be converted into political power without some meaningful transparency for guardrails.

4:02I think when that happens, voters begin to doubt whether government is responsive to them. And the League opposed the decision while it was in court, we condemned it when the ruling was issued and we spent years since pushing for disclosure, strong reinforcement of campaign finance laws and limits on super PAC influence and things like that. But I think this tension between wealth power and democracy as this self-government is as old as our American experiment, 250 years, right? But the nation's founders did not really face super PAC. No way. Or like modern great campaign's been in. But they were deeply concerned about things like corruption, powerful, special interest groups. You can see that with how the constitution is constructive. This concentration of power, they did so many things to avoid that. And really it was this question about whether government would serve the public good or whether it would would ever serve these few special interests. And I think that the constitution tried to avoid that. So I think when we think about these founding ideas, it gives us like two principles that

5:05are often intention. This broad freedom of political expression and this commitment to our republic that government must be accountable to the people. And so citizen United sits really directly in that tension. So I think for the League, the question is whether ordinary voters can still see who's trying to influence them. Whether candidates compete without this dependence on a tiny set of wealthy interests or wealthy people, whether democracy really remains grounded, this idea that people are centered or whether money, wealthy individuals are centered. Yeah. And it's funny. We'll get to this. But both the dissent and the opinion refer to the founders and kind of, you know, couch themselves in the founders' intention. We'll read a little bit from that when we get to it. But any other initial thoughts from Nikki Eikelli and then we'll get into some of the history here? Well, I do love that framing of accountability to the people being such a core part of how small-de-democracy is constructed.

6:05And even though that's been imperfect over the course of US history, that has been a central aspirational value. And in thinking about accountability, a ton of money and politics is a way of side-stepping that democratic process because there are other roots to power than the support of the people. And that then becomes just an enormous problem. I'm obsessed with this idea of accountability and politics right now and thinking about the way that corporations and pinch on that. Just maybe writing a book about it. No, I think all of that is so spot on. The idea that like, I mean, we've been doing so much on the 250th and thinking so much about like we, the people and these sort of original ideas that the founders had. And you know, the fast forward, you know, two centuries and a half and to see how much wealth, exorbitant amounts of wealth that the founding fathers could not have even bathed them, you know, billions of dollars going into these campaigns. This was not at all the intent, nor the goal of what they envisioned.

7:08And so, in some ways, it just reminds me of how far away we've moved from some of the things that they were trying to steer clear of. Yeah. We will get also, of course, to this central question and idea and legal argument of whether corporations are indeed people and have the same speech rights as people, which is really kind of what this rested on and also the big idea. I think that kind of this injected into this or maybe not injected, but certainly, you know, we can see this ruling as the culmination of that argument. Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for separation of church and state. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. If you're a listener to this show and you've seen the history, you know that these founding ideas aren't just written down in some old document, they have to be preserved, contested,

8:09defended by the people who believe in them. Recently, this work has taken AU to the state of Texas, where they are defending the rights of freedom of and freedom from religion for more than a dozen families who are fighting against the ten commandments being posted in their children's classrooms. You can find out lots more about that work and American United's work for freedom without favor and equality without exception by visiting their site. Go to AU.org-10c. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Folks, I'm not sure where you're listening to this from, but I wonder, did it happen to you the first crisp day of the fall, the one where you reach to the back of your closet and find that sweater you haven't touched in a couple months? It happened for me just last week, and thank goodness I have Quince because I was able to meet that crisp air with a 100% Mongolian cashmere crew neck. I've got it in the color Sea Spray Green, which is quite nice, a little touch of luxury

9:12for these newly chilly nights. So, whether you're reaching back into the closet or even better, looking to refresh as the seasons turn, Quince is here for you. Everything at Quince from sweaters to jackets to shirts to even bedding and accessories is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman, so you're paying for high quality, not brand markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to Quince.com. Click free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And here's a tip. When Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was this day. It's the best way you can support the show. Thanks to you and thanks to Quince. So actually let's trace the kind of arguments about money and power that built over the course of the, let's say 20th century, leading up to the moment we're marking here, which

10:16is around 2009, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 with Citizens United. But Nikki, you want to take us through a little story of how this country of ours has tried to wrestle with questions of money and politics? Indeed. I mean, we have to go back to our problematic faves back in the progressive era, who are looking at the scene and seeing a concentration of wealth that just had not been experienced in the United States before an enormous explosion in wealth in the industrial era and then the concentration of that wealth in the hands of corporations and a few very, very, very wealthy men and wealthy families. And there was a real concern at the time that all of this money in politics was corrupting democracy. And so the populist movement, the progressive movement, they were pushing back against this and saying, well, it's illegitimate for corporations to have so much power in politics because it's corrupting and it's anti-democratic. And so enough pressure builds that you actually get members of Congress to vote against their interests in some ways and to pass in 1907 the Tillman Act.

11:19And this bans corporations from contributing to candidates. Now is it perfect? Oh, of course, it's not perfect. They're giant loopholes. Like individuals can donate as much as they want and they can get reimbursed by corporations which is wild. Just creating a little faster there. But it's a start. The first step toward the goal of freeing Congress from the power of money is Congress free from the power of money in the next decades, not really. That's the next 20s? Yeah. It's the 1920s. The wealth inequality grows and grows in the United States. And even when that is reigned in some in the mid 20th century, corporations are working side by side with government. Big business, big labor and big government is kind of the triangle that is supporting US federal power. And so by the time you get to the 1970s, it's the same questions again. There's so much money in politics. There's so much corruption in politics. And now you have a new wave of reformers who are in Congress because of Richard Nixon, Watergate.

12:23We think of Watergate as the break in and the cover up. But there were actually a lot of campaign finance crimes involved too. A lot of people went to jail for campaign finance while breaking associated with Watergate. And so Congress passes the Federal Election Campaign Act, which sets up the Federal Election Commission, the FEC. And that creates the regulatory structure that do we still have it today, really? Hard to say. But you will now it will sound familiar. You might not know the Tillman Act, but you know the FEC. Can I ask a sort of naive question of all of you and still going to maybe you can jump in here. But what is the reason that so many of these regulations and so much of this effort to curtail the power of corporations and money with politics lands on elections as opposed to the many other ways I can assume a rich person could influence the politics of the day. Why is elections the focus? Well, that's where power lies in the country. Both at the federal or not both, but at the federal, state and local level. Those are the people who make decisions about our everyday lives. And I don't know.

13:23When we talk about civic education, I think it's a perfect storm or imperfect storm or horrible perfect storm. I don't know how to say it. But it's the taking away of civics that people don't understand actually who does what for them, like who controls the road, who controls what you learn at school, who controls the money or the price of gas and housing and all of those things. With these federal laws that really are supposed to be the floor, this is our baseline level of coverage, laws, et cetera. And so I think that because of how powerful these people are, it makes sense to me that businesses would be like, let's go get close to power. But the problem is, is that in a democracy, even a capitalistic one, people still have the opportunity. It should have the opportunity to elect. They're elected officials and not be influenced unduly by businesses who do not consider their personhood when making decisions. And then with, you know, if we go back to the founders idea of democracy, if that's where we gain our legitimacy from, their idea was a democracy requires an informed public.

14:27And there was this real concern, especially by the mid-20th century that television was being used to manipulate people and people were being malinformed or misinformed and that it was a real problem to pump a ton of money into elections because that money could be used to mislead people. And so you'd still, I mean, it still be the person who won the most votes, but they would be sort of voted in on false pretence. Yes. So it's not just about buying to put a crudely politicians, but it's also about skewing the uninformed public. Absolutely. And everyone knows that negative ad campaigns are most effective. So if you can even create doubt, right? It might not be necessarily true, but if you can get the person to believe, did you know that such a shot sure like every time someone does whatever it is? Like if there's any kind of language that can allude to a negative impact on the way

15:28the voter is influenced and thinking about a particular candidate, those things are insanely effective. And so by dumping a ton of money into that, there's no way you can sort of combat, at least if you're on the other side of it, that kind of avalanche of wealth and visibility and volume. The genius of what you're saying right now, but the huge problem that it creates is the average American sometimes doesn't know that they're encountering that type of information. They just think information. I guess we're talking to people. They're just like, oh, that was a negative or positive. He was just telling us that this person's bad, whether this used to invoke this person. So they're just sometimes seeing it as just information without interrogating the bad or good. Now, because of, you know, people like us, which is like, oh, no, that's bad because it does these things. But I worry because I think that just the, we're being pushed into a world where we are encouraged not to think. Yes. Not to critically think most importantly.

16:31And that creates issues because I think when you have, when people work all day, hopefully you love your job. But if you don't, sometimes TVs are out when I can't. You're just watching TV and you get a barrage of information and your brain is just trying to absorb all the things. And so when you use that space and people don't always have, or know what it means to encounter a negative ad or an ad that's to persuade you to have a negative association with a person, place or thing, you know, how do you come back that? Yeah. And not to jump too far ahead, but especially when most people aren't getting their information from television anymore, they're getting it from social media and things aren't ads in the same way. And I kind of know what a political ad campaign ad looks like on television. So we kind of know that we're encountering advertising sometimes. But in this new media environment, we are just constantly getting stuff. And so you see a real or you see a headline or a post on X and it creates an impression

17:32that's really sticky. But you don't go any further than that. And you're left with kind of this impressionist view of what the world is. Yes. You don't involve AI because then it's all around. Let's get to all that. And certainly, I think, you know, this is why these questions of transparency around where the information is coming from, which is really a big part of citizen's United case or so critical. Or that's where so much of the regulation has tried to put up some guard rails. Bicki, you want to keep talking about some other 20th century regulations? Then we'll sort of we can take another sort of step back, see what that landed us. And then we'll talk about citizen's United itself. Well, sure. I mean, one thing that we should say just to finish the FEC conversation is what they were doing was they were putting restrictions on money being spent and money being contributed to campaigns. They established public financing for presidential campaigns. You wouldn't have to rely on donor money. And then they were like, also, please don't use your campaign funds for like personal stuff. Like don't buy yourself a house with campaign funds. That was that was the wording, please. They're like, don't do what Nixon did with his way. I don't know what would be good.

18:34But then just a few years later, the Supreme Court, I think, is the baddie in most of this conversation today comes out with a ruling called Buckley Veeville. And the Buckley ruling is long. It's incomprehensible. It's the court coming through and it's applying the First Amendment to campaign finance. And it's saying that because of the First Amendment, Congress can't restrict campaign expenditures because spending money was like speech itself because you know, in this modern world, every form of speech requires money behind it, whether it's printing a hand bill or running a television ad. And basically, it's had like, campaigns can spend as much money as they want. That is their free speech right. People can't contribute however much they want, however. It's still constitutional to regulate contributions. It's just campaigns have to be allowed to spend as much as they want. And so then you have a kind of arms race for how to get that money into a campaign. And you can do that sometimes by nominating people like Michael Bloomberg who can then

19:39sell finances campaign. So it was kind of the first snapback against campaign finance. And that was out of the water gate scandal stuff, right? So the Buckley Veeville, I think, comes out of Jim Buckley's Senate campaign in 1970. But yes, it's all tied up in the conversation about campaign finance and reform. And then you don't really get another big push. I mean, you get attempts at getting campaign finance reform in like the 1990s under Clinton, but it's really wants to get John McCain in the catboard seat working with Russ Feingold and the early 2000s that you do get a pretty significant piece of legislation, the McCain Feingold law, that is trying to, you know, you can still regulate the money officially coming into a campaign. But at the time you couldn't regulate money being donated to the party. This is soft money. And they were like, but so much money is now being donated and unlimited amounts to the party. And then the party is creating ads for their candidates.

20:41So it's like a back door to finance campaigns. And they're like, we want to stamp out that soft money. And so that's the big campaign finance reform that happens right before Citizens United. So the unity of thoughts on any of those major reforms of the kind of second half of the 20th century. So I think it's good that people were, or the legislators were trying to do something, right? Obviously they saw, they saw this coming down in pipeline. And but that always happens like bad things happen and then we are forced to kind of try to see around the corner just to see what we're coming. We've seen it as so many instances campaign finance. We saw we're registering. We're experiencing that now. But so often I think that Congress is in a proactive stance where they're like, oh my god, did you see what just happened? Maybe we should write a law about it to try to get it to work. That's not when Congress is writing laws. Yes. Right now they're just sitting there with, whoa, with that. But I do think there's some value in that. And I think that that's kind of where we're stuck now.

21:45Because the three branches of government, government are not actually functioning how intended. There's all this expansion, constriction, restrictions that are happening. And when those three branches don't operate completely independently, we get situations like what we had with Citizens United because the court completely blew up that case. It was actually, it was about a movie. Yeah. A movie where people wanted to be able to have political content and a movie. And then the court reheard the case and expanded the scope of it, which is how we got here. So I do think, and I think the McCain find goal, that was in early 2000s, right? So it wasn't at all. It wasn't until like 30 years later, until people were just like, okay, this is getting out of control. But if you look at the growth and campaign spending between that time, it had grown tremendously. I don't know the exact amount. I just know that it was millions upon millions that had been invested in that during that time. Like, okay, these people, these small group of people, lobbyist businesses, et cetera,

22:48are starting to influence. And we could see the writing on the wall that the money spent was actually leading to people winning certain race. And so I think Congress stepping in saying, hey, we've got to put some restrictions on this. And then the court kind of blowing it up a little later is very tough. Yeah. But I like that idea of kind of losing or atrophy, and just the dynamic between Congress and the real world and a kind of like continual. It's like a game of cat and mouse with the cat fell asleep or whatever for 30 years. You know, I mean, on that front, do you or any of you, but Selena, you can answer first. I mean, do you point to a moment and since we just did this sweep of the 20th century, do you point to a moment in US history and say kind of, we sort of had it figured out there. There was a good balance there between the power and the way that money influenced politics and the voice of the people and the way we ran our elections. Or has it always been problematic in one way or another? I mean, I feel like it's something that we've always had to keep our eye on, especially as I think about when things started to really trip up and it's when people have more

23:52access to money and movie money more quickly. Because also around the time that banks started to try more digital ascending. And so when I think about people's access to information access to money, movie money more quickly, and also just wanting to influence politics generally, that the convergence of those things may have kind of been the foundation to speak this along the or the Grease path to kind of speed it along this way. So we're a capitalistic society. There's always been a conversation about power in this country. There's always been the powerful and the powerless and very little in between that. Right? We saw the evolution and the growth of the middle class was that middle area between wealth and poverty. But I think that when we think about the progression of politics, especially after Nixon and what we saw there, because as you said, Nikki, there were some who can't be finest laws outside of just, you know, the stuff that's in very similar now, it's like we're

24:54living the same nightmare just a row decades later. But I think all of those things kind of came together to put us where we were right before the citizen's United Decision came out. Yeah. Kind of spurred that. I also tend to think about like who are the candidates that are being elected and how regular are they? Like do you have like sort of Joe Schmoh candidate or you have these billionaires, multi-millionaires that are becoming, you know, governors that are becoming senators that are becoming congressmen and that becomes, I think, really problematic in ways where it tells you one that the path to leadership requires an exorbit amount of money that you can't just be the regular guy that wants to run for office anymore. You have to have serious backing. And we've also done episodes and talked about how a lot of presidents broke. They didn't have, you know, didn't have a lot of money. They didn't get their money until after they left office or something like that. But I think we're no longer looking at candidates that are sort of this, you know, started from

26:00the bottom now or here kind of moment where they are. Not run or red-lear him now. But this idea that like we expect a lot of our candidates now to be moneyed. We expect them to not just be educated but to be wealthy to sort of have their these large pots of cash and influence and that makes everything un, not just untenable but unfeasible. Right. And I think the Trump is kind of an inflection point in the sense that we expect our candidates to have a lot of money and we expect our candidates to be very famous because there are two ways to get attention in this economy, to buy it or to, you know, be able to suck all the oxygen out of the room and Trump has both of those. And I think that's kind of what we're, it'll be interesting to see the kinds of candidates that rise to the top going forward. If you can buy your way into the attention economy or if you have to have that special algorithmic sauce to do it. Yes. Early 20th century. So like 1900s up until about the six, I don't know, I don't want to lie here.

27:05Sixties I think. You saw a lot of politicians who were like teachers, farmers, mall business owners, veterans, local attorneys. So not these big huge attorneys, etc. And then you, I think Nikki, you mentioned this earlier with the evolution of TV. You could see more. It put people more in contact with things. It wasn't just listening to people on the radio. It's like this. Now we have TV. We can see the things. And then the dot com era. Yes. And the 20 2000s. Like where all of these self-made millionaires, people just started gaining a tremendous amount of wealth at younger ages, which allowed them to do more things. And so I think if we look just over the 21st, the 20th century and then the 21st century, just how things evolved from people having access to things. Who were politicians back then versus who it is now? Yeah. It's pretty different. Well, I mean, we're doing this America to 50 moment. If I've learned anything about the founders, it's that most of them were like farmers

28:08and wanted to mostly be farmers. And they were like, okay, once in a while we'll get together and talk about politics and write some docs, but I really want to go back and just do the farming. And this is the important thing. And that's your plantation owner. Okay. I was about to say, well Franklin, a couple of farmers. Yeah, well, you know, we really did the plan. But I do think it's never done with the farming. But I, you know, I'm fair enough. I'm mostly joking here, but I do think this idea that politics is not the defining, you know, everything, you know, that, yes, for sure. And moreover, I think something you're pointing out here and it wasn't really part of Citizens United, but it's just such an important dynamic in when we think about money and politics is that, you know, you can have all these restrictions that we've been talking about on the spending, but then the flip side, as you said, Kelly, but then where does the money actually come from in order to provide a path for someone who is not moneyed independently to be able to enter politics? And, you know, it's always about figuring out both sides of that coin. And mostly I feel like our regulations have not been about sort of more equal financing.

29:09It's mostly been about stamping down kind of where the money is flowing in from. As we go into the break, a reminder that this episode is part of a month-long collaboration with the Kettering Foundation called Democracy Under Construction. And if you care about these issues, how democracy can work for everyone, then be sure to check out Kettering's very own podcast, The Context. It is a mix of history, political science, analysis, conversations with activists and historians and big thinkers. Earlier this year, host Alex Levitt spoke with Nicole Hannah Jones about what it means to be patriotic in the year 2026. There was also a recent very moving episode with a peace activist from Kenya about building peace and security in countries afflicted by violence and autocracy. The conversations are so smart, so illuminating, and also just really engaging to listen to. I've been binging on the context. I hope you check it out as well. The context from Kettering, hosted by Alex Levitt, find it wherever you get your podcasts or at Kettering.org slash the context.

30:09Okay, we'll be right back. If you ever had the urge to sneak behind the cordoned-off areas of a museum, or roam the halls after closing time, the Smithsonian's flagship podcast Side Door will sneak you behind the scenes of the world's largest museum and research complex. Come learn about the ghosts that supposedly walk the museum halls after dark. How a train robbery gave rise to criminal forensics, why leeches are actually the coolest thing ever, and how to get away with murder in the Arctic. Maybe. You'll discover stories of history, science, art, and culture you won't find in a display case. You can listen to Side Door wherever you get your podcasts, or find us online at si.edu-sidedoor. This show is supported by Odo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated

31:11and confusing. Odo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odo at od.com. That's od.o.com. Let's turn to Citizens United itself, and Selena, you kind of hinted at some of the dynamics of the case. Let me lay out, and I always give the lawyer, but of course we have a lawyer here, so that's very useful. Let me lay out the basic contours of it, and then of course we will talk about the decision and the fallout. As you kind of hinted at, the original Citizens United case was fairly narrow, and it was about a 90 minute documentary about Hillary Clinton that was called Hillary the Movie.

32:13And Nikki, are you the only one on here who's watched Hillary the Movie? That's your world. That is my world. Yes, we're playing fast and lose with the word documentary here. But yes, I mean it was a- What's your letter box threaten for Hillary the Movie? If you've seen a deneshed asouza documentary, you've seen Hillary the Movie. It's the same genre. So Citizens United is this sort of conservative nonprofit organization, they make this movie Hillary the Movie, they finance it, they want to run it during the Democratic primaries in 2008, when of course as we remember it's Hillary and Obama, they are no fans of Hillary, I think they're sort of flowing from the long-standing 90s sort of Clinton conspiracy theory world, and they want to run this on cable TV in the weeks leading up to the election, and they want to make a video on demand, but then also just like give the option for cable networks to basically run it. And this comes into conflict with FEC regulations about basically running ads close to elections.

33:16And so the central question is pretty narrow, as you said, is this 90 minute documentary should it be treated the same as a 30 second campaign ad, which of course would have limited when it could run and how it could run? And so in March 2009, the cases initially argued on those merits, and the interesting thing is that the story of Citizens United in many ways is that they just kind of like metastasizes and becomes much bigger and bigger and bigger over the course of the arguments, and as it enters the Supreme Court. And I would say that in some way the door gets cracked to that actually by the FEC, which is sort of on the other side of the argument here, because during one of the arguments here, a lawyer for the FEC sort of argues that the same logic that would prevent this documentary from airing could also be applied to a book or a Kindle book. For some reason they always talk about Kindles very to the end, but they speak technology. They can tell. It could be, you could also apply this to a Kindle book or a book that is written about

34:17Hillary Clinton, and it was supposed to influence an election. And it's actually that kind of reference to a book that would be published by a corporation or whatever that actually ends up being the thing that eventually just this Kennedy and the Supreme Court kind of gloms onto and says, well, wait a minute, hold on. Now we're talking about something much bigger. We're not just talking about this one documentary and whether it qualifies as a campaign ad, but now we're talking about books and all sorts of other kind of larger issues. But so the FEC sort of introduces that idea that this might be about something much bigger. It does go to the Supreme Court, and initially they do vote five, four on this sort of narrow question. Let's just let this film air. But then there is a lot of back and forth, and I don't need to, it's very, it gets very intricate, and I'm sure came of having lawyers know all the details, but basically like John Roberts writes this initial opinion and says like, okay, it can air, but on this very narrow question of it's different from a 30 second ad. But then they kind of go back on it because Kennedy keeps bringing up this idea of the book Kindle hypothetical.

35:18And eventually the rest of the majority comes around to Kennedy's ideas that this might be about something much bigger. And then just a suitor writes a descent. And in his descent, he kind of accuses Roberts of maneuvering procedure to get at this bigger idea. And then they basically like what, they scrap it, bring it back and rewrite it. And it's in the rewriting that all of a sudden they start to really engage with these larger questions of corporate speech and this huge cascade. But I don't know, so it's correct if I got any of that wrong, but I guess my, you know, I just sort of the way that it evolved is so fascinating to me. Yeah, I, okay. So it was initially argued in the spring like March, right? And then the court ordered a re-argument literally to let's wait. Yeah. I'm like, who got to them in two months? Like, what's, look at the Supreme Court entry log. Right. Right. Which corporation? Yeah, I know, right? Right. I'm not the court.

36:19Who is it, John Roberts? Who's, who's House of E.M. dinner? Hmm. You know, those have to think of something happened because the court had already ruled on this in March and then ordered a re-argument, which went kind of wild. Now now we look at John Roberts and we can look at the history of the, like, oh my God, it's, have these shenanigans, have these shenanigans. But I'm, that period between March 24th and June 29th is real curious to me. And like, something happened in that two months to change the game and have the court not only what feels like invalidate what they had already written, but to go back and now expand the scope of this is something that completely changed how, and paying finance laws happen. And how corporations are treated in this country and having free speech as an entity that is created. You know, so it's pretty wild. Because the court had solved the original problem in the favor of the right wing organization. Yeah. You know, like your film can air. So you didn't even need the book hypothetical, even though the book hypothetical campaign paperbacks

37:23like this have been around for ages. Yes. And the thing has ever happened to them. There hasn't been an FEC ruling saying that you're like unsafe at any speed against John Kerry has got to be pulped or anything. So like Kennedy is getting obsessed with a problem that does not exist. And even if it existed, the ruling that they initially landed on would have covered that. Yes. Yes. And a book is certainly not the same thing as a TV yet. I mean, my goodness. A book you got in by versus a TV. Yes. You go down by otherwise you're sitting in your couch watching a commercial and I was not going to pop up and you're seeing it. Yeah. They want it to make this ruling. I mean, this is something that we see with the court a lot these days. But when they want to rule something, they find a pretense for it and they rule it. And that's why you ultimately get with citizens united is something that I don't think many people expected because it hadn't been argued on these terms to begin with. And this absolutely sweeping ruling that makes the argument that not only are corporations people too, but they are people with free speech rights and those free speech rights include

38:27money, which is now speech. So some of that is building on Buckley, but they go big. Yeah. It's a gree just, I mean, it is a gree just to think that a corporation could have all the rights and privileges of a person like while never dying and having protection that people don't have. Yes. And an endless amount of capital in order to do that is just astounding to me, astounding that you could say it with a straight face. Who are we that you would like? So here's the deal. It's crazy. We should sort of dig into the argument about corporate speech in a second, but I'm just curious. Selena, and I know you weren't at the League of Women voters at the time, but you know, obviously this has been your world for a long time. I'm curious, just people who cared about voting rights and were watching campaign finance issues. Is it fair to say that they didn't realize necessarily what was at stake? I mean, I certainly think as a journalist at the time who wasn't covering this day by

39:30day and it just as a citizen at the time, I think part of the experience of seeing citizens United come down was like a little bit of like, well, wait a minute. What? They decided about this. They realized the question was that big to begin with, but on the inside did people realize that, oh my gosh, this is building to this huge thing? The League is a bunch of dope women who are really, really smart. So when the League, when this case first came at the lower court before it got to the Supreme Court, we filed an AMICISP in association with the Constitutional Accountability Center that was our co-AmICIS there. The brief support of the FEC's, the FEC, and urged the court to affirm or to support the District Court's ruling to preserve the continued vitality of Austin V. Michigan, which was, I think it was Michigan Chamber of Commerce. That was the case. Also, the McConnell versus FEC was also in play. But these cases allowed Congress to limit.

40:32This is why it was important because we had exercising this independence between the branches, but it would have allowed Congress to limit how corporations could spend money on election-related advertising and political activities. I think that we were in on this early, as this case was matriculating through the appellate system. Then in 2010, we issued a statement saying the Supreme Court had made a tragic mistake. The league doesn't always use that strong language, especially back then, but we said it was a tragic mistake and we called the decision constitutionally irresponsible, warning that it would produce anti-democratic revolution in campaign finance. We set it back then in 2010. The league statement really emphasized these two core concerns that we have, which was the first that elections should not be corrupted by this vast corporate wealth, who just couldn't, would never be in the same position as the everyday citizen, the everyday American. That two voters should remain at the center of the democratic system and not corporations

41:34or money. That was not what the constitutional intended. Just the case itself seemed to be one of the very early signs that the constitutional framework and the framing, the framework of the constitution were being challenged. It was like this testing of the lines. I think that the league was on it very early, pushing back and we continued. We have continuously supported the Disclose Act in Congress, which continues to require disclosure. Oh my god, my cat's hair. What the heck is this fairy tale? I'm familiar with this. Sorry about that. We've been supporting the Disclose Act for a while. This recently, we have vote for 11.org, which is our all-stop, one-stop-shock. Information is tough. You talked about our voter, guys. That comes from the vote for 11 apparatus. But just over the last two years, we have added a campaign finance element to our website.

42:35Because we think it's really important when we can track, especially federal races, but we also have it for state races too. Who's supporting this particular candidate? Is it what business is it? Large donor or what donor is giving large amounts of money? That has been something that has grown. We weren't sure how popular it would be when we first added it a couple of years ago on 2022 testing it. But it was so popular, we noticed that people repeatedly went to those pages. So now we've expanded it for 26 and continuing to expand through 2022. But people have a right to know that. And if the government's not going to force people to know it, then you can at least find out this information. Free on vote for 11.org. Selena Stewart of the League of Women Voters. Okay, that is where we're going to leave it with part one of our two part look at the Citizens United ruling. You hear Selena talk there a little bit about the efforts to help voters who are navigating the post-citizens United political landscape. Next episode, we'll really get into what that landscape looks like.

43:36The idea of corporations having speech and rights, how the dark money started to flow after the ruling, the way the information and disinformation shape our modern politics, and a little bit more about what may come next. Thanks again to the Kettering Foundation for all their support this month on behalf of Nicole Himmer and Kelly Carter Jackson. My name is Jody Abergan. We'll see you next episode for part two. This day is a proud member of Radio Topia, a network of independent artist produced listener supported podcasts. Don't forget to sign up for our America 250 Watch newsletter. Every Thursday you'll get exclusive access to analysis and information about the semi-quince centennial commentary from our team and a list of fascinating things that happened that week throughout history. And on Sundays for our paid subscribers, you get early ad free access to our 50 weeks that shaped America series plus other bonus conversations throughout the year.

44:37Join in find out lots more, support the show at thisdaypod.com. You can also follow this day pod on Instagram, Blue Sky and on YouTube. Get in touch with ideas or feedback at this day pod at gmail.com. Jacob Feldman is our researcher, Colin Nukua, does our transcripts, special thanks to Audrey Mardovic, Yuri Lasordo, and everyone at Radio Topia. Extra special thanks to you for listening, subscribing, rating and reviewing, and telling others about the show. My name is Jody Avergan. We'll see you soon. Radio Topia.

45:40From PRX.