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[link removed] [[link removed]] John,

The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC opened up our system to untraceable, unlimited anonymous money.

We pay the costs of this decision every day – but it is particularly noticeable in an election year.

With less than a month until Election Day, OpenSecrets, the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics, is predicting [[link removed]] that the 2024 federal election will be the costliest ever, coming in at least $15.9 billion.

As of October 7, outside spending (largely by super PACs) reached $2.6 billion – nearly a billion dollars more than in 2020.

And if the current spending trends hold, OpenSecrets projects that total outside spending for the entire election cycle will exceed $5 billion.

That means *billions* are being spent to influence the election, and there’s no telling what corporations, special interests or wealthy donors are behind much of it. All thanks to Citizens United .

John, what we do know is that just a handful of massive donors are making an outsized impact on the 2024 elections. OpenSecrets reported that the top 10 individual donors have contributed $599 million this cycle. That’s 7% of all money raised, from just 10 people trying to influence the election.

This spending estimate also came the same week as an alarming report [[link removed]] in the New Yorker about the ways the crypto industry has leveraged outside spending, using a super PAC called Fairshake, to intimidate candidates into taking pro-crypto stances. It also came the same week that the Koch network’s super PAC launched [[link removed]] an ad campaign spending millions in key Senate races.

We can’t let big money buy—or corrupt—our politicians. This is not hypothetical. It’s happening right now. That’s why CREW has been fighting to overturn Citizens United and expose the anonymous dark money that has flooded into our elections ever since that disastrous decision.

Help us fight the influence of dark money in politics by supporting CREW with a donation today → [[link removed]]

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Thank you,

Robert Maguire
VP of Research
CREW
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