Super PAC

one ad.

So the biggest super PAC and associated nonprofit is one called Leading the Future and Building America AI.

So Leading the Future is a federally registered independent expenditure only committee.

Its FEC filings through June 30th show $75.8 million raised, $44.76 million dispersed, and $31 million cash on hand.

Its pitch is notably calibrated to the backlash.

Don't make residential rate payers subsidize data centers, protect water and environmental resources, require developers to pay their costs, but continue building.

Earlier AI super PAC activity was primarily about electing politicians favorable to light or AI regulation.

But now the network is specifically directly buying public opinion advertising over the physical infrastructure required to run AI data centers.

And next, Trump is finally opening his war chest, but doesn't want anyone to look inside.

Now, for months, Republicans in tough races, and there's a lot of them this midterm, have been asking Trump's super PAC, MAGA Inc., to open its $400 million war chest.

This week, some money finally started flowing, but it's not from MAGA Inc.

On Tuesday, a brand new group called No Going Back PAC announced that's an interesting name, reserved about $25 million in ad buys.

By Wednesday, that number had grown to roughly 47 million, spread across several races.

And the New York Times reports that this group is linked to Mega Inc., according to two people familiar with the plants.

So just what are they hiding and where is that money coming from? Elon Musk is spending millions to send voters to a website that takes far more than it gives.

If you've seen ads telling you to verify your voter registration at VoteSafe, be careful.

So it's looking good for them, but everybody expects that to tighten, partly because now the national attention is coming in and now the national money is coming in.

President Trump just said this week that some of his MAGA Inc. Super Inc. money, MAGA Inc. Super PAC money, I should say, will be coming here to North Carolina.

So while it looks good for the Democrats, it's looked good for the Democrats in a lot of previous Senate cycles here at this point in the race.

And there's still a long way to between now and election day.

He's sending out checks to television stations.

Yeah, HMP is the House Democratic-aligned super PAC, which is trying to win back the House.

We're going to talk to him about his strategy, what he sees the landscape as.

And furthermore, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is guaranteeing a Republican victory.

Today, that legacy powers 1.4 million jobs across all 50 states.

That's how Boeing backs America.

Mike Smith, the president of House Majority PAC, the super PAC supporting House Democrats.

Welcome to Fire Day.

This sudden U-turn coincided with a major American investor in ByteDance emerging as one of the most prolific donors in US politics.

Reports indicate that Jeff Yass played a pivotal role in reversing Trump's support for the ban, while contributing over $16 million to the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. Super PAC.

On top of that, the Trump campaign realized that TikTok had been extremely helpful in reaching Gen Z voters, who increasingly get their news from the platform's passive feed.

Trump himself credited the app for his newfound popularity with young voters, amassing over 16 million followers on his personal account.

Circuit Court of Appeals ruling a few months after that, on SpeechNow versus FEC, which allowed unlimited contributions.

SpeechNow gave birth to super PACs, which today's guest calls the most corrupting dimension of an extremely corrupted system.

And he argues that in order to strike at the root of our democracy's core corruptions, we need to take down super PACs.

To discuss just how we can do that, we are joined by Lawrence Lessig.

He's a Roy L. Fuhrman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.

Thanks for having

me.

So as I mentioned in the intro, the SpeechNow versus FEC decision created super PACs.

Yeah, I mean, I guess the big question that I have between now and Election Day is how much money is actually spent on all of these races.

And that's because Republicans have this very well covered financial advantage in theory, largely on the super PAC side.

side, and then on the National Committee side, the RNC has a lot more cash than the DNC, and due to the Supreme Court decision, has the ability to use that cash more directly on races and more efficiently on races than they have in the past.

So that is real.

And then you have this Trump-affiliated super PAC, MAGA Inc., that That has over $300 million on hand, more than that at this point.

And we don't know exactly how and where they're going to spend.

They have announced that they're – or they've reserved ad time in Texas in the Senate race, which makes sense because that was a race that other Republican groups did not want to spend in because they blame – I think, you know, Trump in part for the outcome of that primary, Paxton winning the nomination and as a result, making the Senate race more competitive.

So I think that was always going to be like a priority for the MAGA Inc. Super PAC.

He's here to work for Trump.

I want to ask you, I was driving the car and I heard one of these Super PAC commercials about you that you're going to let rapists and murderers out of prison if you're elected and you're too dangerous to vote for.

I know you've talked about some sort of reform proposals.

Respond to that ad.