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The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a significant campaign finance case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission [ [link removed] ]. Because we all witnessed Elon Musk spend over $250 million [ [link removed] ] to elect President Trump and then receive his own special position from which he took a wrecking ball to the federal government, it may be difficult to summon a healthy sense of outrage about what in a previous era would seem like a major threat to a functioning campaign finance system and democracy. The decision, however, will be consequential for multiple reasons, including that it’s likely to affect the midterm elections.
Vice President J.D. Vance helped initiate this case. Remember how Vance first rose to power: During the 2022 election cycle, Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist worth about $20 billion, spent roughly $15 million to help elect Vance [ [link removed] ] to the U.S. Senate. Thiel had already advanced Vance’s career by hiring him at his global investment firm and then backing Vance’s own venture capital firm. The $15 million contribution to Vance’s super PAC, Protect Ohio Values, was, even in our post-Citizens United world, an unusually large sum from one individual in support of one politician.
In 2022, End Citizens United and Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint [ [link removed] ] with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Vance and Protect Ohio Values had illegally coordinated by using a secret website to share information including campaign strategy documents. Later, the FEC voted to dismiss the complaint. Former Commissioner Ellen Weintraub and a recent Congressional report [ [link removed] ] have described [ [link removed] ] an established pattern of Republican commissioners strategically voting in lockstep to block investigations and enforcement of potential campaign finance violations. As Weintraub told [ [link removed] ]Democracy News [ [link removed] ], over the last 15 or so years, campaign finance has become a partisan issue, and Republicans have strategically worked to dismantle nearly all regulations.
In keeping with that strategy, in 2022, Vance co-filed a complaint [ [link removed] ] to the FEC, along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and former U.S. Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio. In their complaint, the Republicans argued that the federal law that limits how political parties and campaigns can coordinate and share funds violates the First Amendment.
That might seem like a minor issue, but to understand why that matters, here’s some important context: As the law stands, individual donors, like Peter Thiel, can only give $3,500 [ [link removed] ] directly to individual candidates per election (or $7,000 for the two-year election cycle). Post-Citizens United, donors don’t expect to buy off a future member of Congress with a few thousand dollars. So, wealthy individual donors support candidates by funneling huge sums of money through outside groups like super PACs, the way Thiel gave $15 million to Protect Ohio Values with the hopes of electing Vance. At least on paper, political parties, non-party groups, and candidates are restricted in how they can coordinate and share funds, but the donors still hope their millions indirectly buy them influence.
The current Republican challenge to federal law wants to blow open the limits on coordination to turn that indirect influence into more straightforward control. In other words, should the Republican petitioners prevail, donors could give much more to political parties and those parties could work more directly with politicians’ campaigns.
It’s fair to ask: After the Supreme Court already opened the floodgates to billions in political spending in Citizens United, why would Republicans bother to challenge this one seemingly minor limit that their billionaire donors are largely circumventing anyway?
Well, the 2026 midterms are just around the corner. With this case, the Supreme Court could easily hand megadonors yet more fuel to advantage their preferred Republican congressional candidates. If we expect that the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority will side with the Republicans – and that’s a reasonable assumption – then we can also expect next year’s election cycle will feature even more megadonors handpicking candidates, even more relentless political TV ads, and an even greater suppression of small-dollar donors’ voices.
The Republican Party is very reliant on megadonors like Thiel and Musk. If those donors can give upwards of a million dollars directly to candidates and political parties without any intermediary, our political system will be vulnerable to even more pay-to-play corruption than we’re already seeing splashed across headlines by the hour. This change will also disproportionately harm Democratic candidates, which generally count on small-dollar donors [ [link removed] ] more than the ultra-rich, unlike their Republican counterparts. With everything that’s happening, it’s difficult to fathom billionaires having an even greater hold over our elected officials than they already do, but this Supreme Court case could push the country even further in the direction of all-out oligarchy.
On a more daily basis, we’re also going to be pummeled with more political ads if the Supreme Court sides with the Republicans. This will seem like insider baseball, but in this case, it matters: Candidate committees pay for TV ads at lower rates than super PACs. So, if someone like Thiel hands, say, the Maine Republican Party hundreds of thousands of dollars to reelect Senator Susan Collins, with that money, the party will be able to coordinate with the candidate, whose campaign can theoretically run many more ads because of the much cheaper cost. We all know that the increase in ads won’t mean a better-informed public. The relentless barrage will only mean more vitriolic spin, more kickbacks for political consultants, and more annoyance for everyday people who will be forced to absorb more negative, and often misleading, ads.
If the Supreme Court once again increases the influence of megadonors, it will also decrease the influence of small-dollar donors, i.e. everyday people. If, for example, the Maine Republican Party raises several million dollars from just a few donors, they don’t need their staff and volunteers to spread out across the state raising funds by appealing to potential small-dollar supporters in every county. The same is true of the Democratic Party. Without fundraising caps, the political parties will be incentivized, even more than they already are, to woo a small number of very high-rolling donors, not everyone else. The result, of course, is more of the same, a politics geared for the rich and powerful and not everyday Americans.
The context in which NRSC v. FEC is being argued is in itself proof of how deeply money has corroded our political system and our country. How can we forget that a billionaire-funded network of organizations raised an estimated $250 million to remake the federal courts and install the current conservative supermajority? Those justices are not going to stop here. For the 20 years he’s been on the High Court, in numerous opinions [ [link removed] ] much less famous than Citizens United, Chief Justice John Roberts has helped chip away at campaign finance regulation, and there’s no reason to believe that he and the other conservative justices will end their long-term project with this decision. The only way to stop this assault on democracy is for pro-reform candidates (also known as Democrats in the current environment) to take back Congress and pass legislation to put power back in the hands of the people.

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