Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Secret Plan to Kill Super PACs (How We Finally End Citizens United)

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

The Secret Court Case That Could Destroy Super PACs ForeverSUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co   Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz      You've been told that Citizens United created Super PACs… but that's not the full story. In this episode of Free Speech Friday, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig reveals the obscure lower court ruling (SpeechNow v. FEC) that actually unleashed unlimited billionaire money into American elections, and the groundbreaking legal strategy that could end Super PACs by 2028 WITHOUT overturning Citizens United.Backed by an unlikely coalition including Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman, Lessig and his group Equal Citizens helped Maine voters pass a historic ballot initiative banning Super PAC contributions. Now the case is headed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29, with famed Supreme Court litigator Neal Katyal arguing that nothing in the Constitution protects billionaires' "right" to buy elections. If the appeal succeeds, this case could reach the Supreme Court by 2027 and revive existing federal limits on campaign contributions nationwide.We break down: ▶ Why SpeechNow v. FEC — not Citizens United — created the Super PAC system ▶ How the Menendez bribery indictment exposed the "no quid pro quo" myth ▶ The originalist argument designed to win over conservative justices ▶ Billionaire outside spending's explosion from 0.3% to 19% of election money ▶ The AI Super PAC trying to block Congress from regulating artificial intelligence ▶ Why an Article V constitutional convention may be the backup plan ▶ What happens if the First Circuit rules on July 29, and the road to SCOTUSIf you care about money in politics, campaign finance reform, and getting billionaire money out of elections, this is the most important legal fight you've never heard of.

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Enjoy Celsius responsibly. Designed for occasional energy boost, not as part of your daily diet. Please adhere to recommended serving limits. look at the system we've got right now and think there's anything healthy about this. He wants to basically take control of the elections from the states. Nothing to stop him now. For the first time in 15 years, we might finally be able to destroy Citizens United, but not by overturning it. A groundbreaking legal effort spearheaded by Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig and backed by an unlikely coalition of billionaires, including Mark Cuban and

Reid Hoffman is taking direct aim at the legal foundation that created Super PACs. You've probably heard that the reason Super PACs exist is thanks to this really famous Supreme Court decision called Citizens United, but that's actually not the full story. Yes, Citizens United set the stage for the billionaire-backed Super PAC system that we have now, but it was actually a lower court ruling called Speech Now versus the FEC that claimed basically quid pro quo political donations to Super PACs didn't exist. And then it's actually that decision that allowed for the super corrupt system that we have today. So basically, this speech now decision that was decided just a couple months after Citizens

United was like, there's no way that somebody would donate $100 million to a super PAC boosting a candidate and expect a single favor in return. The super PAC, they argued, was independent from a political campaign. So the money couldn't supposedly correct anyone. If this sounds incredibly naive and dumb, yes. But you have to remember back in 2010 when Citizens United and Speech Now were both decided. We had a radically different political and financial landscape, and billionaires just did not have as much influence as they do today.

So it was really hard for these courts to even sort of consider the ways that billionaires might be able to warp our elections. Anyway, so the Speech Now decision happens and unleashed unlimited political donations and flooded elections with billionaire money via Superbacks. Larry Lessig, that famous Harvard lawyer that I mentioned in the beginning, he's currently targeting that speech now

lower court ruling, trying to get it overturned. And what he's arguing is that while the Supreme Court said that people can spend unlimited amounts of money on Super PACs, what it never said is that billionaires can give unlimited amount of money to Super PACs, especially when those donations create a high risk of corruption. After a big bipartisan campaign in Maine, the case is now moving through the First Circuit Court in Massachusetts, and Larry Lessig and his cadre of advocates are, hoping that it makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. Because, again, overturning speech now would basically revive long-dormant laws that are already on the books

that would cap political contributions, making Citizens United irrelevant. I can't stress enough that if this kind of weird, unconventional legal battle succeeds, it could mark the absolute end of super PACs and the beginning of a democracy that's no longer tightly controlled by a few dozen of the richest people in America. Larry Lessig came on my podcast last year to talk about a lot of this, but the circuit court that they're fighting this case in is about to issue their ruling in the next couple of weeks. So I wanted to have him back on to talk about where his legal battle stands,

what needs to happen next in order to win this fight, and how we can all get involved. Hi, Larry, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me back. So last time you were here, you were telling us about this campaign to not really overthrow Citizens United, I guess, but kind of thwart it. Can you give for people that didn't hear the last episode, kind of a recap about what you're up to.

Yeah, so most people who think super PACs are the worst thing that our democracy has encountered, which is literally 97% of people, think that it's the Supreme Court that gave us Super PACs, that the case Citizens United was the case that produced Super PACs and that if we're going to end Super PACs, we have to find a way to overturn Citizens United. And the problem with that is the Supreme Court's not going to overturn Citizens United. So that's a way of saying we're stuck with super PACs. But in fact, the Supreme Court didn't create super PACs. It wasn't Citizens United.

It was a lower federal court case decided three months after Citizens United that made an extension of Citizens United, an extension which is completely logically false. And nobody has had a chance to tee this question up to this court. And we now have that chance, assuming the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear our appeal at the end of the month. rules with us, we will be in the Supreme Court, and we'll give the court a chance to clarify that Citizens United doesn't mean we have to live with Super Pacts.

So can you explain this lower court decision a little bit more? Why does everyone think that Citizens United created Super Pax and not this other random ruling that I guess most people haven't heard of? Yeah, I mean, mainly because Citizens United was such a famous, infamous opinion at the time it was decided, really for unrelated reasons. I mean, the court stated clearly that it was recognized. effectively First Amendment rights for corporations. Many people were completely upset about that idea,

and they feared that corporations were going to leverage their enormous economic wealth into controlling elections everywhere. I mean, chicken little's, I was one of them. We're running around saying, this is disastrous because the amount of influence that has been unleashed by this decision is unmatched in our history.

But in fact, the real power that was produced produced after Citizens United came not from the freedom for people to spend money they had, but the freedom to contribute unlimited contributions to committees, political action committees that will then spend that money for them. That's the super PAC. And that decision, the lower federal court case of Speech Now versus FEC, was an extension of the reasoning of Citizens United and just plainly false in its extension of that reasoning. Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote,

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Concern about your gambling or that of someone close to you. Call 16-531-2600 or visit conexontario.ca. So you have been involved in this legal crusade to, I guess, amend or get that decision change. Can you tell me about what you've been up to and how have you been going about thwarting this secondary decision? Well, I mean, you know, when the mistake in speech now became clear, I think the case that really demonstrated this to people was the indictment of Senator Robert Menendez. So Menendez was indicted and the claim was he had promised. a quid pro quo, this for that bribe. And the bribe was he would extend government favors

to a Florida businessman in exchange for the Florida businessman giving money to Menendez's Super PAC. So there's a quid pro quo involving a super PAC. Now what the DC Circuit had held in speech now was that there was no risk of quid pro quo corruption, this for that corruption with a contribution to a super PAC. But here it was, contribution to a super PAC.

that was plainly involving a quid pro quo. Indeed, the lawyers for Menendez had the chutzpah to file a motion to dismiss the indictment saying, the thing you've indicted us for, the D.C. Circuit says cannot happen. So therefore, we have to be innocent. And of course, the court has chuckled at that, but it revealed the mistake. And from that moment, people like Larry Tribe and Al Schuller and Richard Painter and Norm Eisen wrote this really powerful paper showing that Citizens United did not mean super PACs. And so groups like Free Speech for People were the original most active group trying to tee this question up to litigate it.

They tried to go back to the D.C. Circuit to get the D.C. Circuit to reconsider it. They would have nothing to do with it. We went to Alaska, and we tried to get the Alaska courts to rule as a matter of originalism, the Conservatives' theory of constitutional interpretation that you could regulate super PACs. And we won in the lower court, but then the Supreme Court of Alaska ruled against us, which blocked our ability to get to the United States Supreme Court. Court. Then we worked with free speech for people to try to tee this issue up in Massachusetts, to get it on the ballot. And the Attorney General, now governor, blocked it, saying it violated the First Amendment. And the Supreme Judicial Court wouldn't decide that question unless we gathered signatures. So it was like a million-dollar filing fee. We had to gather signatures before they would decide whether we could bring this to the people. And then I was telling the story at a dinner in Maine,

organized by a group called Leadership Now. And an extraordinary politician, a guy named Rick who was a Republican state senator, was at this dinner, and he said, well, if Massachusetts won't do it, why do we do it here in Maine? And that was the moment we decided that we would, my group, Equal Citizens, would help support an initiative in Maine.

We organized gathering the signatures. Once the signatures were gathered, we step back and let the campaign be run by Mainers exclusively. And then in 2024, by a 74.9% vote, 600,000 Mainers voted to end Super PACs in Maine. That's the largest number of people who have ever voted for anything

in the history of Maine. And so that decision, ending Super PACs, was then challenged immediately one month after the vote by two Super PACs, who said it violated their free speech rights. And so that teed up the litigation. And in May last year, they had oral arguments. We stepped into the case to help the Attorney General

because we wanted to advance the originalist argument and the Attorney General was going to do the traditional quid pro quo analysis under Citizens United. We recruited Neal the tariff slayer Katyal to be our lawyer. And Neil and the Attorney General succeeded in getting the district court judge

to say something that no district court had ever acknowledged. Because in all the other cases, speech now and then a bunch of other circuits that followed speech now, the court said there's no real. risk of quid pro quo corruption with a contribution to a super PAC. That's the premise that says, you therefore can't regulate it. But this court said, oh yeah, of course, there's a risk of quid pro quo corruption with a contribution to a super PAC. And of course, she had to say that because there was

so much evidence of this across the country, so many examples. Menendez was one, there's another, you know, obviously the president in April of 2024, he was speaking to a bunch of oil executives, and he told them, if you raise a billion dollars for me, I promise on day one I will relax oil regulations. Well, there it is, a flat quid pro quo, and it was the only way you get a billion dollars into a campaign is through a super PAC. So there it is a quid pro quo with a super PAC.

In the face of all of that, the district court couldn't deny it. So she said, yeah, let's acknowledge that there is this kind of risk of corruption. But she did something no court has ever done. She said, even though there's a risk of corruption, The state of Maine has no power to do anything about it. And that's clearly wrong. It's way beyond anything the United States Supreme Court has ever said.

Certainly nothing that the First Circuit has ever said. So we think it tees us up for a really great opportunity for the court to reverse, then teeing it, giving it to the Supreme Court. And giving the chance to the Supreme Court, I feel like I'm giving them a gift because, you know, people like my friend Bernie Sanders had gone around saying, the Supreme Court decision is the worst decision in 100 years. It's destroying American democracy.

Citizens United has to be reversed. But I think the Supreme Court can just write an opinion that says, actually, we like Citizens United. Nothing wrong with Citizens United. So we're not going to reverse Citizens United. But nothing in Citizens United says that if you can identify a risk of quid pro quo corruption, you can't regulate it. And here, the evidence is overwhelming that these super PACs are created,

exactly the dynamic of corruption that campaign finance law is allowed to address. And so, therefore, you should be allowed to limit it. So the state of Maine is allowed to limit it. And if the state of Maine can, the federal government can. So there's an existing federal law that would just come back to life. So that would be an enormous victory. The whole country would say, hazeh. They would be astonished that the United States Supreme Court had ever done anything to do something good in the context of campaign finance jurisprudence. But we think it's perfectly consistent with what they have said, and that's why we expect they're going to do it. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below

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You can also get my newsletter on Patreon. Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. So the case speech now is the one, as you said, that really supercharged citizens united and kind of made the problems that we have today of reality. You tried in Alaska, you tried all these other tactics, and basically just got traction in Maine,

where you got this overwhelming amount of public support, it sounds like, for pursuing this legal case. So where do things stand in Maine? What is sort of like the latest stuff? of that court battle, and what should people be paying attention to? Well, so the decision from the lower court in the district court in Maine came down in July last year. The decision that said that we're going to recognize the force of speech now, and so therefore, this initiative is blocked. And so now we appealed that. And on July 29th in Boston,

the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the appellate court governing Maine, will hear an appeal to decide whether to reverse the district court case or to affirm it. And again, I think that the district court case is so completely, obviously wrong, that we're very optimistic that between Neil Katyal and the Attorney General from Maine, we will convince the court to reverse. And if it reverses, then that will create a split between the First Circuit and the other circuit courts that have considered this question. And it's a very important issue. So that kind of split is the exactly the kind of dynamic that leads the Supreme Court to take a case and to review it. So we think if the First Circuit acts quickly, there's a chance we could get this decided by

the United States Supreme Court by the end of the next term, by the middle of 2027, which would be enormously important because what that would mean is that we could, in principle, end super PACs by 2028, which, given the super PACs that are growing right now, for example, the AI Super PAC, which is standing up to basically block the ability of Congress to regulate anything regarding AI, this would be an enormous gain, critical timing to get that. And so that's why we're pushing as hard as we can to get this decided by the First Circuit. What are the chances that this circuit court does actually overturn the initial decision made it mean? You know, I think the chances are very good because there's basically no basis for the district court's

decision. The district court constructed a whole new theory of the First Amendment to explain why that even though there was a clear risk of corruption, there was nothing the state could do about it. In addition, we've also, the reason why Neil is in the case is that we're pushing very hard on the originalist argument. You know, the real foundation for this line of jurisprudence is not Citizens United, it's Buckley v. Vallejo, a case that was decided at the height of the Berger court, 1976, just about three years after Roe versus Wade. Buckley was the case that was reviewing a major law that was passed in the wake of the Nixon corruptions to regulate campaign finance. It created public funding for elections. It was the first to limit the size of contributions.

It also tried to limit the ability to spend money independently. So it did a lot of things. Buckley is this massive decision, 144 pages per curiam, meaning no justice signed it. It's just an issue from the court, striking down bunch of the law and upholding parts of the law. And that's the decision that created this whole jurisprudence, this whole standard that you've got to worry about whether you're regulating quid pro quo corruption or not. Now, one point about that opinion that has been clear to, at least originalists from the very beginning, is it made no effort to explain why its decision had anything to do with what the framers meant when they enacted the First Amendment. But the question the Supreme Court is increasingly asking is not whether something's a good idea, it's whether it's in the Constitution. Really, is it in the Constitution?

And the argument that Neil is going to be pushing in the First Circuit is that the First Circuit should at least consider the fact that never has a court evaluated whether this whole line of jurisprudence is consistent with his originalism, so that we get to a chance to be in the Supreme Court and say to those conservatives, look, you. take away a woman's right to choose because you say that's inconsistent with originalism because there's no original meaning in the Constitution to secure a right of a woman to choose. Okay, fine. But there's nothing in the Constitution to guarantee the right of a billionaire to control elections either.

Both of those should be open to regulation by the states or by the federal government. And so therefore, you should step back from this extraordinary activism in the of a principle that isn't in the Constitution anywhere. There's no quid pro quo principle in the Constitution and just allow the people of Maine, 75% of them affirming they want to end super PACs to end super PACs. And so we think these two arguments go together

to create a condition where the court is like, well, what's in it for us to go the other way? I mean, you know, really. I mean, nobody can look at the current American political system. This is the sense in which Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. You can't look at the system we've had right now and think there's anything healthy about this.

You know, we've the level of kleptocracy, the level of super PAC influence, the dominance of a tiny group of Americans. New York Times did a study where they showed that in 2010, the year speech now created super PACs. And the total percentage of outside money from billionaires was 0.3%. And in 2024, it was 19%, meaning a 63-fold increase. And that's completely predictable in a world where you have unlimited contributions because everybody's going to be targeting these super wealthy tech bros, whatever, who want to control American politics and leads most Americans to just look at the system and say, this is just totally corrupt. Why do I have anything to do with this system?

Because, you know, I don't have a billion dollars to hand out to anybody. So we think that this environment, this climate, is the perfect moment for them to recognize. there's no reason for them to change their principles. What they should do is apply their principles, and if they do, then people of Maine and the people of the United States have the freedom to end this corruption. What if the circuit court just upholds the decision in Maine

and this original sort of relies on that original speech now decision and Citizens United, and it's basically like, oh, we don't want to rock the boat, so for whatever reason, we're just going to uphold things. Yeah, you know, courts have been known to do things like that. I'd be very surprised. It's a really good court.

It's relatively small, really serious in the way it thinks about these things. But if they do, then I think we're kind of stuck. And I think it triples down on the movement that groups like American Promise have been pushing to build support for an amendment to the Constitution that finally tells the court to just step back. The amendment to American Promises pushing

basically is an amendment to direct the court to not take it upon itself to be deciding these kinds of questions when legislatures, the initiative process, the people, have stated how they want to make their political process more trustworthy. And obviously, the money that's in our system right now renders it deeply untrustworthy. And so what is the reason? What's the justification for the court stepping in

and, like, striking it down? Because, again, never. did we the people ratify a constitution that purports to give this power to the court? There's no quid pro quo clause in the Constitution. So the idea that we ever set up a constitution to create this ability of the court to police the political process like this is just not supported by the history. And so that's why we think there's going to be a real reason for them to step back. And, you know, if there's no reason for them to change their jurisprudence to rule against us,

And if they see that ruling with us, we'll leave the whole country to say, well, the court is actually doing the right thing, then, you know, it's all upside for them. And only downside if they try to change their principle and trying to change their jurisprudence again. I'm curious, like, say the circuit court does rule in your favor and they overturn this previous court decision. What are the chances of the Supreme Court even taking it on? Because couldn't the Supreme Court also just be like we don't want to rock the boat? we're not going to take, we're just not going to take that on? Yeah, so ordinarily, you know, the court has extraordinary discretion to ignore problems that are being created all over the place.

But there's a certain class of cases which they just can't avoid. And so that class of cases is when there's a conflict in the circuits. So some circuits are going one way and other circuits are going the other way about a really important issue. And so that's clearly what this would be. The First Circuit would clearly state that it's separate from the other circuits. that would force the court to recognize that the law in New England is different from the law in California. And so it's got to step in and decide what, in fact, is the law.

And so we think there's a pretty high chance that they would want to take it on. Now, if this takes the First Circuit a long time to decide, and so it pushes it very close to the 2028 election, you could understand them trying to find a way to delay deciding it in the middle of an election. because, you know, if you have an election and people have $100 million super PACs stepped up and they've all built their whole political campaign around the idea of super PACs, it might be really disruptive to, like, change the rules at that point. So that might be a reason why they'd try to find a way to avoid addressing it. But, you know, the First Circuit could decide this very quickly.

It's not terribly difficult once you see it. And if they did, then we could be in the Supreme Court very quickly. If this whole thing fails, which hopefully it doesn't, But you mentioned this group that's potentially pushing to get an amendment to the Constitution. This issue feels like, and you said there's something that most Americans agree on. I mean, it seems like everyone in terms of the public on the left and the right wants all of this big money, billionaire money out of politics. But it doesn't seem like a lot of the people in Congress want that. And I've done a bunch of reporting.

I mean, you mentioned the AI super PAC. There's all of these different super PACs that a lot of Democrats are pretty involved with or they get, money from. What are the chances of that taking place given the fact that people in Congress kind of, they seem to like the system? Yeah, so, you know, a lot of my friends pushing for an amendment have a lot of faith in Congress. Jeff Clement, who leads American promise, when I told him we were going to take this case to the courts, he said, well, you know, I'm all with you, I support what you're doing. I just don't think you're going to have five votes in the Supreme Court. And I said, Jeff, you know, I'm with you. I support with what you're doing, but I don't

think you're going to find, what, 17 Republican senators. in the United States Senate that it would take to get an amendment out of Congress. And so that's why I've been very much for a long time, but now really strongly a believer, that it's time for us to take seriously the idea of an Article 5 Convention. So there are two ways to amend the Constitution. One is that Congress proposes the amendments, and then the amendment goes out to the states

and either state legislatures or state conventions, ratify it as Congress decides. Or the second way is a 34 states, say to Congress, we want you to call a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments, then there would be a convention called, and then that convention can propose amendments. Now, you know, the reality is there are a lot of things that I think we need to address constitutional reform, too. You know, for example, we've got this authoritarian presidency created by the combination of the immunity the Supreme Court has given the president,

as well as this absolute power over the vast majority of agencies and maybe not all, but we have no clear way to understand which. This is a distortion of any sensible structure for running a government the size of our government. The idea that every administration is able to kind of wipe the slate and put in a whole new swath of political appointees forcing administration to go to one side to the other side is just crazy.

Or even more importantly, Look at what's happening right now with the agency that's supposed to be making sure that elections are secure. The president fires everybody in that agency because now the Supreme Court has said he can fire everybody. And so there's nobody in that agency except the people he will appoint. He will appoint a whole bunch of people who are willing to do his bidding and his bidding here has been to say that he wants to basically take control of the elections from the states. Nothing to stop him now given the way the court has interpreted of the president's power. So I think there's a bunch of things we need to actually have an opportunity to address constitutionally.

And I think we need to push the constitution back towards the people. I think one of the biggest problems is the way we've allowed lawyers and judges to take over control of the meaning of the constitution. Like in some sense, it's above ordinary people. And as a lawyer, nobody would let me be a judge, but as a lawyer, I can say that's crazy. There's no reason we can't rely on the good judgment of American people in making some of these critical constitutional judgments. And money in politics is the easiest. The Brennan Center has just released an extraordinary report cataloging attitudes around the corruption and the problem of money in politics. This is the issue that we are overwhelmingly, like in the 90% united on.

And yet, as you say, Taylor, Congress is not going to do anything about it because they benefit from. the system where at least they can't imagine how they could succeed in a different system. So I'm all for creating a process that allows the Constitution to be more responsive to we the people so that we can begin to have a constitution that is kept up to date, not by judges, not by presidents appointing judges to amend the Constitution through judicial decisions, but instead by creating a healthy constitutional republic once again. Well, that's certainly something that we can support, hopefully. Well, Larry, thank you so much for joining me today and breaking all of this down and excited to kind of see, I guess, how the circuit court rules and where this campaign will go.

But my fingers are crossed. And even if it doesn't go in your favor, it sounds like there's some other options to pursue as well. So really appreciate you joining me today. Thanks for having me. All right, that's it for this week's episode of Free Speech Friday. If you like my work, please, please, please buy a paid subscription to my substack newsletter at usermag.co. That's usermag.com or support me on Patreon via the link below. I rely on direct donations from you guys to keep this podcast going to talk about these things,

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