Get Ready for Citizens United 2.0
Is it possible for American democracy to be further degraded by the influence of billionaires? Thanks to champion of the working class J. D. Vance and his right-wing friends, including “dark money kingpin” Leonard Leo, we may soon find out.
Vice President J. D. Vance attends a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on July 8, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
The Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010 is rightly remembered as a devastating blow to American democracy, spawning legions of super PACS and dark-money groups with unlimited funds to bring anyone who contravenes donor interests to heel. Outside spending in federal elections has skyrocketed from $730 million at the time of the ruling to a staggering $4.5 billion in 2024.
Now the Supreme Court dares to ask the question: Is it possible to make this bad situation even worse?
The court just agreed to hear a case in the fall that could result in undermining already-weakened campaign finance law. The plaintiffs in National Republican Senatorial Committee et al v. Federal Election Commission et al are seeking to emulate the Citizens United strategy, positing moneyed influence in politics as a First Amendment freedom. Federal restrictions limiting coordination between national party committees and candidates would be abolished.
A ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor would mean that corporations and wealthy individuals could spend freely on committees, which could then funnel money to candidates, bypassing existing finance restrictions (which created the need for super PACs in the first place). The Lever calls the upcoming case a “corruption bomb” and estimates that its impact will rival Citizens United if its plaintiffs are successful in winning over the Supreme Court.
The case originated from a 2022 Ohio lawsuit filed by current vice president and self-styled champion of the working class J. D. Vance. The case was designed to ascend through the court system to the Supreme Court, where it could serve as a pretext for overturning a previous ruling against exactly the kind of regulation skirting its plaintiffs are after. Vance’s original lawsuit was part of a broader coordinated strategy by conservatives to chip away at the last remaining protections against corporate money in politics.
Perversely, the Republican plaintiffs have argued their case by citing the rise of super PACs since Citizens United as a problem, claiming that their preferred outcome would slow their ascent. That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. If corporations and billionaires have yet another wide-open channel through which to influence the US electoral system and they’re able to spend directly on party committees, that probably will minimize those corporations’ and billionaires’ need for Super PACs. It would also increase their overall influence in politics.
The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, declined to defend existing federal campaign finance laws. Instead, the administration submitted a brief to the Supreme Court supporting the plaintiffs. Dark-money groups spent $1.9 billion on the 2024 federal election cycle, up from $1 billion in 2020, with the bulk of it going to Trump’s presidential campaign.
The administration was joined in its support of the case by a cast of usual suspects, including the US Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governors Association. Little wonder: while Democrats have raked in a considerable amount of corporate money since Citizens United, the Republican Party has outpaced them eight to one. Eight of the top ten largest donors in 2024 gave to Republican candidates, with the largest single donor, Elon Musk, contributing over $290 million to Donald Trump and other Republican races.
The GOP, high on Donald Trump’s reelection victory and the establishment of a 6–3 conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court, is keen on taking the lucrative strategy — which Sen. Bernie Sanders calls “legalized bribery” — to the next level.
To their credit, several official Democratic Party entities have motioned to intervene against the plaintiffs in the case. Still, very few Democratic politicians have actually run campaigns without corporate money since Citizens United. Notable exceptions include Sanders and fellow democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, all of whom have refused the help of super PACs on principle.
Dark-Money Ouroboros
An important force behind the upcoming Supreme Court case is Leonard Leo, a conservative legal activist and Trump adviser who sits at the helm of a vast dark-money network that‘s largely responsible for delivering the court a right-wing supermajority. Leo is sometimes referred to ominously as a “dark money kingpin.” Now, he’s using his financial networks built in the aftermath of Citizens United to secure the influence of dark money itself.
Leo has devoted decades to carrying out the Federalist Society’s vision of filling the country’s courts with conservative ideologues. The hope is that judges can succeed in advancing right-wing projects where legislatures, hampered by majoritarian politics, have failed. His fingerprints were all over the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, for which Leo handpicked three of the justices who voted in the majority and orchestrated the broader legal strategy.
Beyond bountiful judicial appointments, Leo’s nonprofits and their subsidiaries have recently pushed states to tighten voting laws, tried to scrub public-school curricula of content that runs afoul of conservative orthodoxy, and financed organizations pressing states to remove millions of Americans from the Medicaid rolls. Leo describes his goal as “operationalizing and weaponizing” conservative ideas “to crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society.”
Leo’s network, particularly through nonprofits like Marble Freedom Trust, the Concord Fund (formerly Judicial Crisis Network), and Rule of Law Trust, has provided substantial financial support for legal challenges aimed at dismantling campaign finance regulations. These groups are known for channeling large sums to support lawsuits and amicus briefs that push for deregulation of political spending. This Citizens United 2.0 Supreme Court case is the pièce de résistance, and J. D. Vance’s original lawsuit was critical to the operation. Vance has long been connected to Leo, joining his Teneo Network group in 2018 and delivering a private speech to members at a 2021 retreat.
The timing of the SCOTUS case is no coincidence. Current finance law was put in place by the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which was later amended in 1974 to create the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the regulatory body that has since overseen and enforced campaign finance law. But right now, the six-member FEC is in profound disarray. Missing three members due to two resignations and one controversial firing, it lacks quorum. Thus it is unable to appear in court, make statements, or otherwise defend itself and its remaining bedrock regulations. From the standpoint of actors whose main interest is kneecapping the commission, now is the perfect time to strike.
The broader implications of this legal gambit extend far beyond campaign finance into the foundational structures of American governance. If successful, the case would mark another milestone in the systematic capture of democratic institutions by wealthy interests, following decades of strategic investments in judicial appointments, think tanks, and legal advocacy organizations. If the plaintiffs are successful, the ruling will accelerate the transformation of elections into auctions, where deep pockets determine outcomes. Wealth has already achieved a level of political dominance that rivals or exceeds the robber baron era. Citizens United 2.0 could cement that oligarchic structure into constitutional law.