15. It was a pretty good year for anti-pay-to-play rules in court as the SEC anti-pay-to-play rule for investment advisers to public pension fund survived a court challenge, Hawaii got to keep its anti-pay to play law, and the Hatch Act was upheld 11-0 in the DC Circuit.
14. Wisconsin took the cake for legal contortions to avoid Supreme Court review of the John Doe saga when the State Supreme Court fired the special prosecutor in the case.
13. Maryland’s strong new campaign finance law passed in 2013 went into effect. It’s the first of its kind to require corporate disclosures directly to investors.
12. Montana is combatting dark money with a new bipartisan law requiring disclosure of electioneering communications.
11. Sadly, the SEC was unmoved by clever graphic subway ads urging them to fight dark money from corporations in elections. But shareholders continued to hold their firms accountable through shareholder resolutions on corporate political activity.
10. It was also a good year for public financing as Seattle passed the nation’s first publicly financed voucher system for local elections. And Maine voters voted to strengthen their public financing system.
9. A Crossroads GPS document from the FEC finally saw the light of day after a court order.
8. Vermont won a key case on coordination and enmeshed PACs.
7. Shell left the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known as ALEC) in August making it the 106th corporation to cut ties with the group.
6. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s “soft money” ban is being challenged, again. This ban was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003 in McConnell v. FEC.
5. The FEC deadlocked in a way that gave a free pass to a foreign pornographer and his foreign corporations that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a LA election. But the California Fair Political Practices Commission stepped in to pick up the slack.
4. The Department of Justice reminded all that it is on the campaign finance beat as a campaign manager was sentenced to 24 months for coordinated campaign contributions and false statements.
3. Dark money is being used by 2016 presidential hopefuls to bankroll their campaigns, including GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s “unprecedented” benefit of hidden cash from the Conservative Solutions Project.
2. A mere 158 families provided nearly half the seed money for the Democratic and Repubican presidential candidates.
1. If that wasn’t enough to convince you that money in politics matters, consider how much reforms are being fought about tooth and nail. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell leveraged his power over the federal budget to strip campaign finance rules from federal law through anti-campaign finance reform riders.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
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We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
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With love, rage, and solidarity,
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