S6E2: The Legal Background

This is Larry lessig. So on January 21, 2010. Jesus. More than 14 years ago, I was in an airport in San Francisco about to climb onto a plane back to the Austin. And I sat in the airport and as quickly as I could, read an extraordinary decision that had just been released by the United States Supreme Court, Citizens United versus fec. And my team told me I needed to record a video responding to that decision. And so sitting in the airport with my cell phone, really old cell phone, really poor quality, focused out towards the tarmac, I did a selfie video for two and a half minutes trying to put the decision in context. And boy, was I young and kind of weird looking in a. Kind of. The video is kind of a Dan Aykroyd like news report. I'm not trying to be funny at all. Not funny at all, but kind of weird in that way. And. And you can watch the video. We'll put a link in the notes to this episode. I basically said in the video, look, the court has upheld the freedom of corporations to say what they want. And what about it is important? Well, the going to say a lot of stuff, but the more important problem is the dependence that politicians have on private money to run their campaigns. And so I tried to pivot that story from the idea that we should be finding a way to suppress corporate speech towards the idea that we should be finding a way to fund differently political campaigns. That public funding, and my favorite version of public funding, vouchers was the more important fight than the fight against corporations speaking. Okay, part of that's still true, I guess, but the case that triggered that video and then an extraordinary amount of reformatory work, Citizens United States is a case that's basically misunderstood, I think, by everybody. And so in this episode, episode two of season six of the podcast, another way I'm going to unpack that decision a little bit and help you see what it means and what it doesn't mean and help you understand just how wrong we were back then about its significance. About its significance, not the significance of what followed after it. And after you see the significance of it and what followed after it, I hope you will leave this episode recognizing that however wrong you think Citizens United is, and however much you'd like to reverse Citizens United and however hard you work to pass an amendment to the Constitution to overturn Citizens United, Citizens United didn't give us super PACs. Citizens United does not have to be overturned to end super PACs. And people who tell you that the only way to end super PACs is to overturn Citizens United States are both telling you that super PACs can't be ended because this court is not going to overturn Citizens United or they're telling you that we will win the fight against Super PACs 10 years from now when the extraordinary people building the movement to amend the Constitution finally have the force they will need to get that amendment passed. I don't mean to say anything to suggest I love Citizens United. I don't. I think Congress needs a wide range of discretion to assure that our political system earns the confidence of the public. And I think Citizens United makes that harder. But I do believe we ought to recognize where we could win the most important fight that we could have. And that's the fight to end super PACs. And that win depends upon people speaking the truth. And the truth is Citizens United did not give us super PACs. Okay, let's start with the decision. Citizens United involved a movie made by the non profit corporation Citizens United attacking Hillary Clinton. And in trying to distribute the movie, they recognized and were threatened because federal campaign spending law restricted the ability of a corporation to spend its money in political contests. Now that's not donate money to a political campaign. That's a separate question and that's illegal under federal law. But this is a separate question. What if the corporation, and again, this is not Exxon. This is a non profit corporation. What if the corporation decides to spend its money to oppose a political candidate independently of the candidate? That's what Citizens United was trying to do. And what the FEC said was that violated federal law. Now, this wasn't the first time the Supreme Court had to address the question whether independent spending could be regulated under the Constitution. The first time they addressed that in a complete way was a case called Buckley v. Valeo. That case was decided in 1976. It's a per curiam decision, which means no justice signed the opinion. And so no doubt that billion page opinion, which I don't know whether I really believe 10% of American lawyers have even read that billion page decision was no doubt written in large part by law clerks or people filling in the very, very technical details necessary for that opinion to address the question whether campaign finance law that had been passed after Watergate was constitutional. And in that law passed after Watergate, the law purported to limit the ability that a rich person could spend or limit the ability of a rich person to spend money independently of a campaign. So could an individual, you know, Ross Perot or George Soros or the Koch brothers, could they take their money and by a full page ad in the New York Times attacking the candidate running for Senate or a candidate running for President or supporting a candidate running for Senate or candidate running for President. Because of course, a full page in the New York Times is expensive, just like ads on ABC and NBC are expensive. And so that money would be a lot of money if they wanted to spend it. And the question is whether campaign finance law could limit them in spending that money. Well, the Court in Buckley said, look, we have a First Amendment that First Amendment limits Congress's ability to restrict free speech. A law that says that you can't spend your money to promote a political candidate or a political idea is a law that restricts free speech. Now, there's a whole side argument about whether we should say that money is speech. And in a certain sense, that's what the Court says. And I'm not going to engage that argument, but I actually don't think it matters much. And I certainly don't think we should live in a world where Congress is free to limit money that you spend to promote political ideas or have unfettered freedom to limit the money you spend to promote political ideas, because that's a scary world. So I'm going to put all of that argument aside for right now. I just want to focus on what the logic was that led the Court in Buckley to conclude that Congress, in fact, could not limit a rich person's freedom to spend their money, whether earned legally or not, to promote or support or oppose a political candidate. And the reasoning was this. Though the First Amendment said Congress can make no law, there were certain exceptions implicit in that command. And one of the exceptions was laws which were aiming to end corruption or the appearance of corruption, as the Court described it. Now, corruption is a pretty broad term if you look at Justice Breyer's dissent in a case called McCutcheon, which we'll talk about later in this season. Corruption has lots of conceptions, lots of different ways you can imagine speech being corrupt. But the particular kind of corruption which Buckley spoke of is something called quid pro quo. Corruption. Quid pro quo. This for that, and that type of speech is corruption. Because a political system where we believe the politicians are doing what they're doing because they're getting some money in exchange. A money, a gift, property, whatever, is a corrupt system. It's a core conception of corruption. When a politician votes to support legislation, we want that politician to be deciding whether the legislation makes sense for his constituents, her donors, whatever, but not because they've entered into a deal. A contract to vote that way in exchange for a certain amount of money. And so what the Court said in Buckley was, if you're regulating quid pro quo corruption, then you could limit speech. But if you're not regulating quid pro quo corruption, you can't limit speech. That was the simple idea. So if you take that simple idea and apply it to the question of a rich person spending money independently of a candidate and a campaign, could limiting that rich person spending that money be a limit that was trying to avoid quid pro quo corruption? And what the Court in Buckley said was, no, because if the speech is independent almost by definition, as Justice Kennedy would later say in Citizens United, by definition there isn't a quid pro quo. Or think of it the other way around. If there's a quid pro quo, if there's a. If you put an ad in the New York Times supporting me as a candidate, I will get your daughter into a military academy. If there's that quid pro quo, then the speech is not independent. So the point is independence means no quid pro quo. Or if there's quid pro quo, then it's not independent. And so if it's not independent, yes, the government can limit that speech because then it's like a campaign contribution and the government can limit contributions to campaigns, Buckley said in another part of the opinion. But if it's independent, there is no justification, no sufficient justification, no sufficient government interest for restricting that speech. And if there's not a sufficient interest in America, that speech is free. Buckley spoke about rich people. The question in Citizens United was whether the same logic applied to corporations. Not just corporations, but labor unions or any group that gets together and wants to spend its money independently of. Of a campaign. Now, again, Citizens United triggered a whole bunch of what I think of as ultimately unnecessary argument about whether it was a case that gave corporations First Amendment rights. Because I actually think Scalia, in his concurring opinion in the decision, framed the decision in the right way. He said, look, whether corporations have rights or not, the First Amendment talks about Congress, not persons. It talks about Congress's limits or limits on Congress to regulate speech. So the question, Scalia said, was just simply whether limiting corporations ability to spend their money independently of a political campaign was a limit that advanced the interest of avoiding quid pro quo corruption. And framed like that, it's hard to see why it's different from Buckley. Because if in Buckley, the Court said independent speech can't be limited because by definition, independent means no quid pro quo, that same Logic would apply to corporations and labor unions and any other group of people with a pile of money they want to spend. And so Citizens United said corporations were free to spend money independently of a political campaign, as much money as they wanted independently of a political campaign. Because under the First Amendment, there could be no justification for restricting speech when there wasn't a quid pro quo involved or the risk of a quid pro quo involved or the appearance of quid pro quo and fault. Okay, now, the reaction to Citizens United was not a reaction grounded in logic. It was a reaction grounded in consequence. So we weren't thinking when we reacted to Citizens United about that logic. It wasn't really logic that motivated us. What we were thinking about was the obvious practical effect when we Chicken Littles. And I was one of those Chicken Littles. I, not only in that terrible video after the decision, but in many other speeches, went out on the road and talked about the disaster this was going to be to the political system. And the reason we thought it was a disaster was because we expected corporations were going to spend ungodly amounts of money trying to affect political decisions. And because they had ungodly amounts of money, we thought we had just brought onto the field of political discourse the dominant player, corporations who were going to spend their billions to buy up every election. And we would see no more democracy because instead we'd see a system bending over backwards to keep the funders of their campaigns, even though indirectly, happy. That turned out not to be truth. It turned out that corporations actually spend relatively little, literally like less than six or seven million dollars in the country as a whole promoting or opposing political candidates. And why? Well, because corporations quickly learned the high price of free speech. Target targeted a governor's candidate in Minnesota who was pro LGBTQ rights and quickly found themselves being picketed all across the country. Corporations learn that if their business is to make money, they're not going to make a lot of money if they alienate half of the potential audience who might be buying their product. This is a lesson Elon Musk has not yet learned, which makes me puzzled why people think he's some kind of business genius. But anyway, I'm not going to make this episode or this series about that figure. But corporations in general are more rational than Elon Musk couldn't resist. And what they learned was that if people associated them with political campaigns, they were going to become much more challenged in their objective to make money in the American economy. So the reality is, Citizens United did not lead to an explosion in corporate Spending, promoting or opposing political candidates. So what did. Well, in our obsession with Citizens United, none of us, or certainly I wasn't. I'm not going to speak for the other activists in the campaign finance movements. What a terrible name. And you know, for 20 years, we've been talking about there's got to be a better name, and yet we still haven't found a better name. But anyway, others in. I like the name corruption, so I'm going to use it. Corruption movements may have been focused on this, but I certainly missed it. In our obsession about Citizens United, we missed a decision addressing a related question decided three months later by the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals, which is the kind of preeminent court in the United States Court of Appeals in the United States, just below the United States Supreme Court. And three months after Citizens United, in March 2010, they decided a case called SpeechNow versus FEC. And SpeechNow addressed a different question because, of course, there's no reason to address the same question. The Supreme Court has just decided the question whether you could spend unlimited amounts of money independently of a campaign. Instead, the question the court in speech now addressed was whether you could contribute unlimited amounts of money to a committee that was then going to spend unlimited amounts of money opposing or supporting a candidate independently of that campaign. Now, the difference is not just a difference in words, right? I mean, spending is about putting speech into the marketplace. And we understand how spending happens, and we understand how you would know whether that spending was coordinated with a campaign. I mean, did the campaign and the committee talk about what they were going to spend? Did they have some understanding? Was there some secret code? Was there a algorithm they both were decided they would adopt to decide what they were going to spend their money on. All of those were ways to figure out whether the spending is actually independent. And if it's independent, Citizens United says it's free of regulation. But contributions raise a wholly different question. Because, you know, if you're a super PAC or your political action committee and you receive a check from Joe Schmo, million dollar check that says, I love candidate John Smith, and I want you to do whatever you can to help candidate John Smith, you don't know why that check was sent to you. The check doesn't say, I spoke to John Smith and therefore decided I was gonna send a million dollars to you. Cause John Smith's gonna help me. Or I never met John Smith. I have no idea who he is. I've never spoken to him and would not speak to him. Because I'm giving you a million dollars to support him. You have no idea of that. The campaign of that committee receiving that million dollar check has no clue what happened to induce that check to come to that committee. So the point is, these two words are not just different because they're different words, they're different because they point to a wholly different environment of activity. And whereas in one we have a clear way to know whether the rule has been obeyed, namely, is the speech independent? Meaning is it engaged in without connecting to the campaign, the political action committee that receives checks has no easy way to know anything about what led to that check appearing in the mailbox or in the inbox of an online contribution site. Okay, that difference should have mattered, but the DC Circuit ignored it. And what the court held was the First Amendment not only protects your right to spend unlimited amounts of money, it also protects your right to contribute unlimited amounts of money to a committee that will then spend unlimited amounts of money for the purpose you've decided you're going to spend it. As the court said at the end of its opinion, this is page 694 to 695 for the law geeks wanting to look it up. The court said, quote, in light of the Court's holding as a matter of law, and for non lawyers, what that means is really as a matter of logic. Remember, Citizens United basically said independence means, logically means that there is no quid pro quo. So as a matter of logic, by definition there's no quid pro quo. And so by holding that, the court held as a matter of law that it's independent. So the Court said, in light of the Court's holding as a matter of law that independent expenditures do not corrupt or create the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. Contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures also cannot corrupt or create the appearance of the corruption. The court has effectively held that there is no corrupting quid for which a candidate might in exchange offer a corrupting quo end quote. Okay, so law sometimes sounds more robust and obvious than it obviously is. Because though that kind of sounds right. Yeah, if you can spend without there being the possibility of a quid pro quo, then you should obviously be able to give without the possibility of there being a quid pro quo. Though it sounds on the surface that that's kind of right, there's an obvious flaw in that logic that should have been noted way back then, but has become undeniable in the 14 year sense now. Before I describe that flaw, let's just make clear just how insignificant people thought this Opinion would be. The court decided this opinion. The D.C. circuit held this, decided this against the argument made by the fec. So against the government's argument, the court said that you can't limit contributions to committees that make independent expenditures. For the same reason you can't limit expenditures by those same committees. But the government didn't even appeal the decision. The Attorney General said there was no reason to appeal it in a letter he wrote to Congress explaining why he didn't. Because it was an insignificant amount of political speech. Just a tiny amount of money was going into these committees that were spending their money independently of political campaigns. A tiny little amount of money because they were limited in the amount they could raise the to $5000. So you could spend $5000 to a committee, give $5000 committee that was going to spend its money independently of a campaign, or $5,000 to the campaign itself. Which are you going to do? Well, you're obviously going to give your money to the campaign first. So these independent expenditure committees were spending pennies in the campaign finance system. They were insignificant. And so what the Attorney General thought was no reason to fight this fight because these tiny little committees are not going to matter in politics. They didn't even appeal the decision or ask the court to take it up through its certiori procedure. The decision was left unreviewed. But there is, and should have been seen at the time an obvious flaw in the logic that led to the speech now versus FEC decision. Maybe the easiest way to see it is to see it in the context of obvious examples, because I'm committed to not making this partisan, either Republican or Democrat. I'm going to give you two examples that show you this flaw as clearly as it can be shown. One from a Democrat and one from a Republican. So let's start with the Democrat, one of my favorite United States Senators. Robert Menendez, Democratic senator from the state of New Jersey, recently resigned because of a second corruption scandal that he faced. But the first time he was Prosecuted was in 2015, five years after SpeechNow versus FEC was decided. In that case, Menendez was charged with engaging in a quid pro quo with a Florida businessman. The quid pro quo was that Menendez would help the Florida businessman with certain problems he was having in the federal government. And in exchange, the Florida businessman would send a bunch of money to a super PAC that supported Robert Menendez. Okay, now notice what this is. It's a quid pro quo that involves a contribution to a super pac. That super PAC would have no way to know about the quid pro quo. They weren't involved in the quid pro quo. They didn't themselves create the quid pro quo. They just received a check from a Florida guy who wanted to help Robert Menendez. So they got the check, they cashed it, they spent it to help Robert Menendez. But Menendez had inspired that check by his promise, as alleged, to help the Florida businessman. So this was a quid pro quo involving a contribution to a super pac. This was a quid in exchange for a corrupt quo. Remember the line from the D.C. circuit's opinion? Quote, the court has effectively held that there is no corrupting quid. That's the promise of government favor which a candidate might in exchange offer a corrupt quo. Sorry, I got the quid and quo backwards here. Let's do it again. The court said in speech. Now, the court has effectively held that there is no corrupting quid. That's the money that is sent to the super PAC for which a candidate might in exchange, offer a corrupt quo. Namely, I'm going to help you with the government. But there is, in the Menendez case, at least as alleged, the jury didn't convict because they didn't think there was sufficient evidence. But that's beside the point here. The point is, in the indictment, as alleged, there was a quid pro quo, and it did involve a contribution to a super pac. So unlike spending by a rich person, which does logically mean there is no quid pro quo if it is, quote, independent contributions to an independent political action committee do not, as a matter of law or as a matter of logic, mean there could not have been a quid pro quo. Now, Menendez's lawyers had the chutzpah to file a motion to dismiss the indictment, because what they said was in the indictment, what was alleged was exactly what the D.C. circuit in speech now said was not possible. And so if it was not possible as a matter of law, he couldn't be indicted for it as a matter of law. And of course, the district court judge chuckled at that argument. But that argument pointed out the obvious point. Point that the D.C. circuit was flat out wrong. Just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. A contribution to a committee that is going to make its expenditures independently of a campaign could obviously involve a quid pro quo. And that was what was alleged against Robert Menendez. Okay, that's the Democrat. Let's talk about the Republican. I'm recording this podcast on August 10, 2024. The campaign has changed pretty dramatically over the last couple weeks. As President Biden, who I am convinced will go down as one of the most consequential presidents of our republic's history, certainly the most consequential president since Lyndon Johnson for all the extraordinary things he was uniquely suited to pass, which is why Bernie Sanders supported him when the whole world was going against him, because Bernie Sanders cares about getting stuff done. And he knew Biden, the quintessential ex senator, knew how to maneuver stuff through the Senate. So Biden was supported by Bernie Sanders as many and many because he was so effective as his job, at his job. But Most of America, 3/4 of America, thought he was not competent, unfit to continue as president. And an extraordinary act of responsible politicking, he stepped aside. And Kamala Harris, and now Tim Walls are the candidates who are running against the Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, oh, my God. Fellow Yale graduate J.D. vance. And we don't know what's going to happen in November. So I don't know whether I will become an enemy of the state for saying what I'm going to say right now. But regardless, I'm going to tell you a story that mirrors the story about Robert Menendez to demonstrate just again, why speech now, the D.C. circuit decision is so obviously wrong. It was heavily reported that in a speech Donald Trump gave before an audience of oil and carbon monopoly executives, Donald Trump said, I will relax the regulations that now stand on top of the oil industry if you guys will raise a billion dollars for me. That's not a quote directly. We don't have a clear direct quote. But let's say because it's not. I'm not trying to prosecute Donald Trump for corruption. I just want to make the example clear about what it says about what should be regulable in campaign finance law, whether what was reported was true or not. It's the structure of what's reported that's important. So imagine it's true that Donald Trump says, in exchange for your billion dollar contribution, I will change the following regulations. That's a plain quid pro quo. That's exactly the sort of thing that the Supreme Court has said again and again and again. The government has a legitimate interest to regulate, and it regulates it sometimes through bribery prosecutions. When there is a bribery prosecution, the court just asked the question, was a government favor offered in exchange for some returned benefits that came as a form of a gift? I mean, a payment directly to the candidate or a payment to a campaign. Regardless, the point is the gift is this for that. The contribution is this for that. That bribery prosecution would conceivably be possible, especially for a candidate running for office. Let's put aside the immunity question that Trump versus the United States triggered. At least for a candidate running for office. You can be prosecuted for bribery, but the point is that bribery is involves a contribution to a super pac because you can't give Donald Trump's campaign a billion dollars. Contributions to a campaign are limited because of the risk of quid pro quo corruption. The only way a billion dollars is going to be channeled into Donald Trump's effort to be elected president in 2024 is if the money was given to a super PAC. So once again, we have a contribution to a super PAC involved in a quid pro quo. Once again, we have shown that there is a corrupting quid for which a candidate might, in exchange, offer a corrupt quo. Once again, in actual reality, we see the examples. And so the assumption the D.C. circuit made when the D.C. circuit said that there could be no quid pro quo corruption involved in a contribution to a independent political action committee is just wrong. Okay, so I need to address a footnote like argument which people often raise to me when I make this point to them. They say, well, okay, if the government can regulate quid pro quos, why not just say that's what the government should regulate? So if there's bribery involved, if there's a quid pro quo, I'll change these regulations. If you give me a billion dollars, then prosecute the candidate for that. Don't limit contributions to committees because you're trying to avoid that kind of quid pro quo corruption. And the point to recognize is the Supreme Court has directly addressed this question in Buckley vs. Vallejo, the foundational case for modern campaign finance jurisprudence. The argument was made directly that these contributions should not be limited when you could also be prosecuting the quid pro quo. And what the court said was, sure, you can prosecute the quid pro quo. That's fine. But that's not all the government can do, because it's going to be hard to prove that quid pro quo corruption. Not everybody is as bold or blatant or oblivious as Donald Trump was in giving a public speech, making the offer of a bribe part of the speech. Not everybody's going to be that stupid. So what the public could reasonably believe is that these kinds of bribes are going on in the background. And that's why, when we're talking about campaign contributions to a committee directly, the contributions are so low, because nobody really is going to believe that a candidate for president is going to sell his or her soul for a $3,300 contribution, which is the maximum amount you can give in an election cycle right now to candidate running for federal office. Nobody's going to believe that, or nobody's going to reasonably believe that. And so it's not reasonable to believe that you're selling your soul or making a deal in exchange for a contribution of just $3,300. That not only avoids the belief in the public that there is corruption going on, it also avoids the incentive in the candidates for that kind of corruption. And so that's the same logic that should apply in the context of super PACs, because, yes, of course, you should be able to prosecute and could the quid pro quo, the explicit quid pro quo, Robert Menendez was prosecuted for that. Donald Trump maybe should be. But in addition to prosecuting the bribery, the court has consistently, for 50 years upheld the idea that you could prophylactically limit contributions to make it both unlikely that such a deal was happening and that there wouldn't be the incentive to make a deal for that amount of contribution. But that's not the world we live in right now. The world we live in right now is one where the oil executives can themselves personally, their corporations can't but themselves personally give the candidates $3,300 in a cycle. Their corporation can create a political action committee that can raise money to give to the candidate. They can give, I think it's 5,000, maybe 10,000. I don't remember the exact number right now. But they can give, you know, a little bit larger amount of money in an election cycle. But those executives can write a check for a billion dollars and give it to a political action committee called a super pac. And that super PAC can then spend its money to support Donald Trump. And that spending, of course, can't be regulated because of Citizens United. But the contribution could be the product of a quid pro quo, therefore the product of corruption. And so the contribution should be regulable. If the contribution to a political campaign is regulable. The same logic applies in both contexts. Okay, that's the mistake. That's the core of the argument that will ultimately lead the Supreme Court to get that those Citizens United protects the spending. It does not have anything to do with the contribution. Or put differently, even though the spending could be independent, there's no reason to believe the contribution is independent. And if the contribution is not independent, if it's part of a quid pro quo, then the government should have the power, the people should have the power through A referendum like the main question one, or their legislature or whatever way they want, the people should have the power through themselves directly or representatives to restrict that corruption. Okay. SpeechNow is decided in 2010. There's not many super PACs around at the time. They're not spending a ton of money. And so very quickly, the decision of the D.C. circuit gets echoed in other circuits around the country. Very quickly, the judges are keen to demonstrate that they can follow logic, just like the D.C. circuit has. And they were going to boldly rule that, yes, contributions are unlimited. And so, as the second Circuit Court of Appeals articulated in one of its decisions addressing the question of super PACs, quote, few contested legal questions are answered so consistent consistently by so many courts and judges, end quote. And so those courts and judges have consistently held that the logic of Citizens United applies in the same way to contribution to an independent political action committee. Those courts and judges have consistently missed this. Obvious, at least, obvious to us, tutored as we have been by the practices of politicians the likes of which we've maybe never seen before. But politicians like Menendez and Donald Trump, they've missed it. But just because they've missed it doesn't mean it's not here. It's here. And it's true. Contributions to independent political action committees raise the same concern, quid pro quo corruption, that contributions to political campaigns themselves do. That's the end of episode two. In episode three, we're going to talk about the significance of this money, this super PAC money in politics today. This season of Another Way is dedicated to the work of the Mainers supporting Maine. Question 1. Citizenstoendsuperpacs.org we're trying to rally Maine citizens to vote yes on question one, to pass an initiative that will tee up the question to get the court to give the answer that I believe the court is going to give the answer that though Citizens United remains the law thought decision does not mean that super PACs must remain reality. As I said at the end of episode one, I urge you to do what you can to support that initiative. That means if you're in Maine volunteering to help get people out to vote to support the initiative, it means contributing 5 or $10 even, just to show that there are hundreds of thousands of Mainers who actually support that initiative. And even if you're outside of Maine, you're free to support Maine in whatever size contribution you want to pass that initiative. The main initiative would limit contributions to committees that spend money independently of a campaign to support or oppose a political candidate. It would not affect ballot question committees like the Citizens to end Super PACs. It would not affect party committees. It's just the one narrow class of committees that are what we call in federal law super PAC committees. Please do what you can to support that work and do what you can to spread this podcast. Because I explained really blathered for a long time in the last episode. These podcasts fight an algorithm. That algorithm does not make them apparent to many because these are not podcasts trying to drive hatred and anger at anything except judges. And nobody seems to care much about judges. So the point is, if we're going to get this out there, if we're going to spread this, it takes you doing something. It takes you spreading it by an email. It takes you sharing it and saying, hey, please give this a listen. Listen to how Maine could tee up the most important campaign finance question we've seen in a generation and why there's hope. Harvey Milk. Gotta give him hope. There's hope that that decision will finally end super PACs. These episodes are produced by Equal Citizens by Josh Elstrow and his fantastic work. You can find out more about them and Equal Citizens at Equal Citizens. Please use the form there to give me feedback or ideas as I produce these podcasts. And thanks so much for listening. This is Larry Lessig. Stay tuned for episode three. Sam.