Luckily our federal campaign laws already allow that but they have been hamstrung. Congress could do a lot to empower that avenue.

So what to do? Restricting the agency or writing protections even more stridently isn’t going to dislodge the court. A remaining avenue is the devolution of enforcement to other entities not in the executive. For example, using private lawsuits.

It essentially ends the chance of enforcement against the sitting president willing to obstruct and their party. But that chance wasn’t big to start. We already saw complaints against Trump routinely blocked by his party’s commissioners who hold a veto. www.citizensforethics.org/reports-inve...

reupping this post on a court's conclusion that Trump is aware of his supporters' penchant for violence and uses it for political gain.

Which means CLC can leapfrog the moribund agency and seek relief directly against the groups - which at least gives a possibility of some kind of relief that the agency was never willing to provide even when staffed.

FYI - a court can only dismiss with prejudice when it has a case properly before it and has authority to review the issue on the merits.

Standards that depend on secret conversations and subjective intents are no substitute to clear limits that can be monitored by outsiders. The Court should stop pretending otherwise.

Given how easy earmarking to disclaim, and how hard it is for an outsider to detect, its likely rampant. In fact, in the three civil investigations that delved into donor communications, unreported earmarking was discovered in every one. Yet they were discovered by happenstance.

And new evidence ads only additional support. New York released results of an investigation into super PACs connected with now EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. It showed donor communications promising funds to a c4 would "all" go to a super PAC without disclosure. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

And it shows they're even easily evadable then. A group accepted a half-million to elect a specific candidate, but treated the $ as an unearmarked general support grant because their lawyers sent the donor a letter disclaiming the intentions--despite then taking the $ and spending it as directed.

But as CREW's brief points out - enforcing those type of rules require knowing what donors are saying to fundraisers - something only in-depth investigations of political entities have been able to determine - the type of investigations the campaign-finance skeptical Justices have disfavored.

That claim is at best naïve, as CREW shows in its amicus in a case where two committees of the Republican National Party are seeking to do away with a clear limit on the amount they can spend in coordination with a candidate. They argue that subjective rules against earmarking are enough.

The Court has chipped away at one clear campaign finance line after another, often claiming the fig leaf that they were unnecessary because any really problematic money would be caught by more narrowly drawn standards.

And no, that is not a “campaign contribution.”

That framing is then used to seek court orders--government action--to cut off the flow of information that fuels critics and dissenters in the name of suppressing the "bad" speech and enable more of the "good" speech.

but the critics and dissenters, who don't enjoy the resources to hide behind and so have to respond in public, not only aren't protected, but are portrayed as villains who are chilling the billionaires' speech. ...

We've seen a version of this play out in the courts in campaign finance cases over the years. The billionaire who can, with the help of paid consultants and lawyers, give millions anonymously to fund some shell group gets 1A protections, ....