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No sooner had the Supreme Court issued its opinion in a big campaign-finance case yesterday than my inbox began filling up with nongovernmental organizations and Democratic leaders decrying the ruling.
In the case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the justices struck down a law limiting the amount of money that political parties can use for coordinated spending on candidates. On first glance, the ruling is yet another in a string of cases in which the Court’s conservative majority has overturned laws that try to regulate the flow of money in politics, citing the right to free speech.
“Today’s ruling is a win for billionaire donors and special interests who want more influence over the GOP agenda and an invitation for corruption,” the leaders of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee thundered in a statement. Michael Waldman, head of the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, took a similar line: “Today’s campaign finance ruling is part of the Roberts Court’s 16-year drive to destroy anti-corruption laws.” The Elias Law Group, a top Democratic law firm, said that the decision “needlessly overturns its own precedent to destroy a long-standing pillar of federal campaign finance law.”
The bleakest predictions about the decision may yet come true—contemporary American politics seldom disappoints pessimists—but I think another interpretation is more likely. NRSC will help empower the political parties, reduce the appeal of super PACs, and potentially even improve transparency, all of which are positive changes. The conservative majority may have unintentionally stumbled into a good result for election law, at least within the bounds of the deeply broken status quo.
The law in question is, like all campaign-finance rules, arcane. Individuals are permitted to give only a set amount to candidates, and the statute was designed to keep donors from funneling greater sums by passing them through the parties. It set a limit on how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates—$65,300 in most House races in 2026. Meanwhile, the Court has issued many decisions demolishing existing campaign-finance laws over the past couple of decades, including Citizens United v. FEC, which struck down limits on outside spending, as did a lower court with its decision in SpeechNOW.Org v. FEC, which paved the way for super PACs, both in 2010. That shift means that far more money is sloshing around, but instead of going to parties, it’s going into independent groups such as super PACs, which have comparatively little regulation or disclosure rules.
The idea that political parties should be stronger may be counterintuitive to most Americans, who hold both the Democratic and Republican Parties in low esteem. But many political scientists have argued that one reason American politics is such a mess is that the party organizations have been weakened for decades, through steps that include the deregulation of campaign-finance and also “good governance” reforms such as choosing candidates via transparent primaries rather than in smoke-filled rooms. Weak parties are less able to squash candidates whose positions come from the fringes of their coalitions, or massively wealthy candidates—or both, in the case of Donald Trump, whom the GOP establishment disdained but proved powerless to stop in 2016.
“Unlike Superpacs, the political parties are accountable to the voters,” Rick Pildes, a professor at the New York University School of Law, told me in an email. “They aggregate a broad array of interests, unlike ideological Superpacs; the money to parties is fully transparent, unlike Superpacs; and political parties are the major vehicle through which voters get messages about a governing agenda.” He added, “Even if you believe there’s too much money in politics, it’s better to have that money flow through the political parties than these unaccountable, outside groups that are often narrowly focused.”
Lifting the ban on coordination won’t eliminate super PACs, which raised $5 billion in the 2024 election, but it will make them less alluring to donors. Money can be used more efficiently if it’s going directly to a party and candidate, rather than to a super PAC that is legally barred from coordinating with a candidate.
One reason Democrats reacted angrily to the ruling is that, in the immediate term, the GOP will likely benefit. (This is also the reason Republicans brought the suit.) Bloomberg notes that Republican committees have more money in their coffers than their Democratic counterparts do, even as many Democratic candidates are out-raising their opponents. In the long run, though, both parties will benefit.
Like a huge majority of Americans, I would prefer a far more restrictive campaign-finance regime, one that made money less important, thus freeing elected officials of the need to spend astonishing amounts of time fundraising, and reduced the political sway of billionaires and wealthy special interests alike. This spring, The New York Times reported that one-fifth of federal-campaign donations in 2024 came from billionaires and their immediate family members—a total of more than $3 billion. But the current Supreme Court has demonstrated that it will strike down almost any law that attempts to restrict this type of spending as an infringement on the First Amendment—as it did in this case.
Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, wrote in an email that he agreed with the “core argument” of the NRSC ruling, but added, “The problem of mega-donors and independent spending will not go away because of this decision.” In its other recent jurisprudence, he said, “the Court has ruled that independent spending cannot corrupt the way a direct contribution can. This is a ludicrous legal assumption, but it will not be changed soon.”
NRSC v. FEC does nothing to fix these broader systemic problems with money in elections, but it’s a baby step toward a more functional politics.
Related:
- Trump exposes the holes in campaign-finance laws.
- Small donors still aren’t as important as wealthy ones.
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
- Anne Applebaum on Trump’s anti-patriotic trap
- Jonathan Chait: There’s nothing democratic about these socialists.
- Putin is slipping into delusion.
- Alexandra Petri: “I went to the Great American State Fair and I may never sleep again.”
Today’s News
- President Trump announced that the United States will not renew the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement on trade, which he had negotiated and signed in 2018.
- Trump’s financial disclosure yesterday revealed that he made almost $1.2 billion from his cryptocurrency businesses last year, putting his net-worth estimate at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.
- A couple were arrested after scaling to the top of the needle on the Empire State Building in New York City, where they were filmed apparently getting engaged.
Evening Read
The Vultures Arrived Before the Rescue Teams
By Gisela Salim-Peyer
Big earthquakes flatten buildings into rubble the same way everywhere. Last Wednesday, when back-to-back quakes of magnitudes 7.5 and 7.2 rocked a large part of my native Venezuela, I found some dark consolation in the thought that such tragedies are impartial to place. The tectonic plates deep below had exerted their formidable powers because this is what they sometimes do. The suffering would be acute, but its precedents were universal and as old as the Earth.
But Venezuela’s man-made disasters didn’t take long to exacerbate the natural one.
More From The Atlantic
- Young Republican activists are turning against Trump.
- Something is happening in the Democratic base.
- The Kennedy Center’s latest defense raises a new mystery.
- The Supreme Court’s utterly mainstream ruling on women’s sports
- A tough day for NPR
Culture Break
Watch. The Bear’s series finale (streaming on Hulu) bids a profoundly warm farewell, Shirley Li writes.
Play on. To understand the history of America, look to the history of its sports, Sally Jenkins writes.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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The post A Supreme Court Decision That Might Actually Improve Politics appeared first on The Atlantic.
