Ramtin Arablui and Randa Abdelfattah

Laws banned these kinds of political ads from running 30 days before the primaries.

Hillary the movie would never air.

But when Citizens United took the case to court, they said, why couldn't they show their film when... General Electric, National Public Radio, or George Soros may freely broadcast.

The result of that case would completely change the American political system.

Since the Citizens United case in 2010, the amount of money being spent in elections has skyrocketed.

But it wasn't the corporations that everyone feared would be spending the money.

It has been ultra-wealthy billionaires.

And they're not spending it on their own.

Most of that money has been going to political action committees, or PACs, that, with the help of the Citizens United decision, have been given superpowers.

In the 2024 election, it was a little over $5 billion raised by super PACs, and there were about 2,500 super PACs total.

Super PACs can't legally coordinate directly with campaigns they support.

But Super PACs can control the political messaging they fund, rather than the candidates themselves.

They changed how candidates behave, how parties compete, what donors are doing, and who really speaks to voters during a campaign.

Who fears whom, and who sets the story voters remember.

Super PACs did not just add money, they rewired the whole campaign ecosystem.

Money has always played a role in American elections.

But for the most part, there were rules that kept the biggest spenders from corrupting the process.

Even today, it feels like there are very few things that most Americans agree on.

Yet, polls have consistently shown that voters from all political parties overwhelmingly see unlimited spending in elections as a threat to American democracy.

So if most people don't like all this money in politics, then who does?