Campaign Legal Center

And now, back to the podcast.

In September 2026, Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Donald violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by directing MAGA Inc.'s spending.

The law prohibits federal officeholders from soliciting, directing, or spending what's known as soft money.

Those are funds raised outside federal contribution limits in order to influence federal elections.

Citizens United allowed unlimited independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

The reasoning? Well, spending conducted independently of candidates would not create the same risk of corruption as direct contributions.

Campaign Legal Center argues that Donald's involvement with MAGA Inc. undermines that independence, calling into question the legal basis for allowing the organizations to accept unlimited contributions in the first place.

The Citizens United decision has so much to answer for because, according to that same Supreme Court, Money is speech and corporations are people.

We will be back with you soon to discuss today's election in detail and some exciting news.

Our next episode will be led by my colleague Sophie Feldman, who heads up our social media at Campaign Legal Center.

She'll be joined by some heavy hitters from Campaign Legal Center, President Trevor Potter and Executive Director Adav Nody, who will bring you fresh analysis and discuss what's ahead.

Until then, thank you for listening and for participating in the world's oldest continuous democracy.

As you know, it remains a work in progress.

Talk about what's most recent in the court ruling on this case.

Now, the NAACP is a part of that fight in California, along with our partners at Campaign Legal Center, Democracy Defenders, and more.

The administration showed up with a thumb drive and a sticky note and tried to compel officials to use that thumb drive to pull up a list of 20,000 people who were purportedly not qualified to vote in California.

This was a baseless, error-prone, shoddy 11th-hour attempt to hijack the election in California, plain and simple.

Equal Opportunity Pass-Throughs While AIPAC honed the playbook, the pass-through strategy has now been adopted by other lobbying powerhouses to obscure their political spending in races where their imprimatur could be a liability.

It's clear that using pop-up super PACs to conceal election spending is becoming an increasingly common tactic for wealthy special interests to hide their influence in elections, analysts with the Campaign Legal Center wrote in a July brief.

That includes the AI lobby, which is staring down the barrel of its own public relations disaster.

In June, Public First Action, a dark money nonprofit associated with Anthropic's political spending arm, gave $2 million to Latino Victory Fund, which at the time was spending heavily on boosting Espaillat's campaign in New York.

So technically, he is the incumbent in the seat, Bob Brooks.

And the polling shows him ahead still in this race.

Lead left tried the same strategy unsuccessfully in two congressional races in Texas and Nebraska, leading to a complaint from the campaign legal center alleging violations of campaign finance disclosure law.

On the Democratic side, the veterans group Vote Vets has been accused of acting as a pass-through for party leaders and a new corporate Democratic machine to support establishment Democrats over progressives without the appearance of intervening in the primaries.

Talk about the, what's most recent, uh, in the court ruling on this case.

Yeah, the NAACP is a part of that fight in California, along with our partners at Campaign Legal Center, Democracy Defenders, and more.

Um, the administration showed up with a thumb drive and a sticky note and tried to compel officials to, uh, use that thumb drive to, uh, put pull up a list of 20,000 people who were purportedly not qualified to vote in California.

Um, this was a, a, a, a baseless, uh, error-prone, shoddy 11th hour attempt to hijack the election in California, plain and simple, and it's now been rejected by four courts: a district court, the Ninth Circuit twice now, and as of yesterday, the US Supreme Court, in a one-sentence order, declined to take up the case.

Talk about what's most recent in the court ruling on this case.

Now, the NAACP is a part of that fight in California, along with our partners at Campaign Legal Center, Democracy Defenders and more.

The administration showed up with a thumb drive and a sticky note and tried to compel officials to use that thumb drive to pull up a list of 20,000 people who were purportedly not qualified to vote in California.

This was a baseless, error prone, shoddy 11th hour attempt to hijack the election in California, plain and simple.

Talk about the, what's most recent, uh, in the court ruling on this case.

Yeah, the NAACP is a part of that fight in California, along with our partners at Campaign Legal Center, Democracy Defenders, and more.

Um, the administration showed up with a thumb drive and a sticky note and tried to compel officials to, uh, use that thumb drive to, uh- pull up a list of 20,000 people who were purportedly not qualified to vote in California.

Um, this was, uh, a, a, a baseless, uh, error-prone, shoddy 11th hour attempt to hijack the election in California, plain and simple, and it's now been rejected by four courts, a district court, the Ninth Circuit twice now, and as of yesterday, the US Supreme Court, in a one-sentence order, declined to take up the case.