You may have seen stories over the past few days — aside from coverage of Donald Trump being the first president in our nation’s history to be impeached multiple times — about this or that ginormous corporation “taking a stand” after Trump incited a horde of his MAGA adherents to carry out an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

That’s because some companies have announced that they are suspending political contributions to Republicans who fomented the insurrection by denying the election results or even to all candidates of any party.

Big Business wants us to know they have had enough of Donald Trump.

Well, here’s a message to Corporate America:

So, everything Trump did right up until he incited an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was hunky-dory with you?

• Like launching his campaign for president by essentially calling anyone coming to the U.S. from Mexico a rapist?

• Like revealing his true attitude toward women with his “grab ’em by the p----” remark less than a month before he was elected?

• Like installing unqualified, corrupt grifters to run one federal agency after another?

• Like calling the murderous neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people”?

• Like having militarized agents at the border rip infants from their mothers’ arms and warehouse them in cages?

• Like lobbing paper towels at hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico?

• Like calling nations whose citizens are predominantly people of color “shithole countries”?

• Like being credibly accused of sexual assault and rape by numerous women?

• Like repeatedly echoing white supremacists via his now suspended (in another example of a for-profit corporation finding its “conscience” a bit late in the game) Twitter account?

• Like telling four members of Congress — all women of color — to “go back” to the countries they came from (which, for three of them, is THIS country)?

• Like getting impeached (the first time) for colluding with a foreign country to damage his political opponent and undermine our democracy?

• Like deploying federal troops against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters so he could preen with a Bible at a church across the street from the White House?

• Like demanding the execution of five Black and Latino teenagers falsely convicted, but eventually exonerated, in the 1989 murder of a jogger in Central Park?

• Like willfully failing to protect the American people from the deadliest pandemic we’ve faced in at least a century — pointlessly allowing hundreds of thousands to die, millions to become infected, and our economy to collapse?

• Like his entire damn presidency and every other greedy, racist, misogynistic, corrupt, and vile thing he’s ever done?

And only now that Trump has attempted what amounts to a coup d’etat — and with his presidency mere days from ending anyway — have you had enough?

Let’s be honest.

Whatever you thought of him as a human being, you tolerated — and in many cases actively supported — Donald Trump and countless other politicians like him because you got even more of the tax cuts (for yourselves and your overpaid executives) and regulatory rollbacks you always wanted.

Look, we just had an election, so the political cycle is in a lull right now where there wouldn’t be as much money going into politics anyway.

Something tells me the corporate cash will start flowing again the minute candidates (whether Democrat or Republican) start habitually mouthing things like “free enterprise” and “red tape” and “prosperity.”

You wanna stop enabling disasters like Donald Trump?

Then STOP using your outsized (and so often ill-gotten) financial power to drown out the voices of everyday Americans in local, state, and federal elections.

Just stop.

Two things I’m asking Public Citizen supporters to do today:

ONE

Take a look at our new report — Bankrolling the Disenfranchisers — showing that Big Business financed members of Congress who challenged the election results on behalf of Donald Trump to the tune of a staggering $170,000,000 over just the past three election cycles.

TWO

Join us in calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s abysmal Citizens United ruling.

Public Citizen was among the very first organizations to call for an amendment 11 years ago. We’ve been one of the leaders of that nationwide grassroots movement ever since. And we will not stop until Citizens United is relegated to the scrapheap of history where it belongs.

Add your name.

(For those who go back with us, this is not the first time — and it won’t be the last — that we’ve given you an opportunity to take action on the issue of money in politics. Please go ahead and add your name again. With all that’s at stake, it is more than OK to take action again and again.)

Thank you for taking action.

For democracy,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

P.S. For half a century, Public Citizen has been advancing policies that put the needs of everyday Americans before the greed of billionaires and Big Business. That legacy of progress and that ongoing work could not matter more right now, as our nation transitions to a Joe Biden presidency that will be as progressive as we — you and Public Citizen, together — make it.

Of course, we’re also busy undoing damage the Trump administration has already done and watching out for whatever shenanigans a lame-duck Donald Trump tries to get away with. And — like so many nonprofits and small businesses — we continue to experience financial strain related to the coronavirus pandemic.

If you can, please make an emergency donation today to support the critical work we’re doing together or even join our popular Monthly Giving program. Thank you.
 
 
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