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campaign finance
'This Is the State of American Democracy': Sanders Calls for Public Funding of Elections as Musk Buys Votes With $1 Million Checks
Independent groups spending on most expensive judicial race in U.S. history favor the right-wing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Mar 31, 2025
On the eve of what the nonpartisan law group the Brennan Center for Justice has deemed the most expensive judicial race in American history, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is calling out billionaire Elon Musk's role in Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court race and demanding the country move to public funding in elections.
"So. This is the state of American democracy," wrote the Independent senator on X on Monday. "The richest guy in the world is handing out million dollar checks in order to win a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and elect an anti-choice judge." In addition to being the richest person in the world, Musk is also a key figure in Republican President Donald Trump's administration.
"We MUST overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections," Sanders continued, referencing the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That ruling stuck down existing limits on how much money a corporation can directly spend to support a political campaign, and has since enabled unlimited campaign spending by corporations and other outside groups—including what are known as dark money groups.
On Tuesday, voters in Wisconsin will decide a contest between Susan Crawford, a liberal Dane County judge, and former Republican attorney general and current Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, who are competing to fill the seat of retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. The outcome of the race which will determine the ideological swing of the state's highest court, which since 2023 has had a liberal majority for the first time in over a decade.
Musk's super political action committee, America PAC, has spent over $12 million on the race to benefit Schimel—and another Musk-linked group, Building Americas Future, has spent nearly $6 million, according to the Brennan Center. Total spending in the race tallies $90 million, with $40.3 million going toward Crawford and $49.7 million going toward Schimel.
According to the Brennan Center, "Independent groups like super PACs and nonprofits spending untraceable dark money favor Schimel by a much larger margin: $13.5 million benefiting Crawford compared with almost $35.5 million boosting Schimel."
Musk was also accused of bribing Wisconsin voters by circulating a petition opposing "activist judges" through America PAC, and offering registered voters $1,000 if they sign the petition. Last week, Musk announced on social media that he would hold a rally on Sunday in Wisconsin and hand out $1 million checks to two voters who had already cast their ballots. He then deleted that post and clarified that "entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges," adding, "I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition," according to The New York Times.
Nevertheless, Wisconsin's attorney general appealed to the state Supreme Court to prevent Musk from using the giveaway tactic, but the court declined to hear the case Sunday.
Musk did hand out checks during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Sunday. One of the recipients was Nicholas Jacobs, the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans.
During a discussion on X that Musk hosted with Schimel and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on March 22, Musk indicated that he has been keen to shape the race because the makeup of the court could threaten how the state's current congressional districts are drawn.
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Exactly Who Are Trump and Musk Meeting at Secretive $1 Million Per Plate Dinners?
"The American people have a right to know who was there and whether the Million Dollar Dinner menu for fat cats included a deep dish of juicy government contracts, a side of tasty tax breaks, or a sweet dessert of ending investigations and enforcement actions against their companies."
Mar 19, 2025
Democracy watchdogs want to know the identities of people paying exorbitant fees to attend private dinners with President Donald Trump at his exclusive resort home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
While the existence of such pay-to-play dinners has been known about since reporting by Wired earlier this month, the events continue, including a $1 million per plate dinner over the weekend, which included an appearance by Trump's top lieutenant, the world's richest man and far-right ideologue Elon Musk.
According to Wired's more recent reporting on the latest high-priced "candlelight" gathering at Mar-a-Lago, the invitation asked "prospective guests to spend $1 million per seat" and "Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) has spent the last six weeks ransacking federal agencies, sat next to Trump at the dinner."
In response, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Tuesday demanded Trump "release the guest list of the Million Dollar-a-Plate candlelight dinners," speculating that any one of the wealthy attendees could be "government favor-seekers such as federal contractors or the CEOs of companies previously under investigation" before the Trump administration "stopped enforcement" or otherwise intervened.
"This exorbitant level of payment for presidential access raises serious concerns about the possibility of corruption by candlelight," said Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate for the group. "The American people have a right to know who was there and whether the Million Dollar Dinner menu for fat cats included a deep dish of juicy government contracts, a side of tasty tax breaks, or a sweet dessert of ending investigations and enforcement actions against their companies."
According to the reporting, the invitations for Saturday night's dinner—which was not placed on the president's official calendar—were sent by Make America Great Again Inc., a Super PAC aligned with the president, which spent an estimated half billion dollars supporting his 2024 run. "Donald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a special guest speaker and is not asking for funds or donations," the invitation stated, though exclusive access to the president was the clear intent and troubling to those concerned about high-level corruption.
As Hafiz Rashid writes for The New Republic:
Trump holding fundraising dinners only two months into his presidency is historically unusual. Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told Wired that he “can't recall a sitting president in the first weeks of his administration asking for millions of dollars in fundraising.
"The concern is less about fundraising and more about access and influence. People hoping to get favorable treatment view it in their interest to donate money to Trump," Moynihan said.
Why wasn't this dinner on the White House's schedule? Perhaps Trump didn't like the attention given to the previous one, or there was something else going on. Mar-a-Lago is the site of many of Trump's ethically questionable actions, including one-on-one meetings with business leaders who are willing to pay him $5 million for the privilege. Perhaps Trump wants his moneymaking schemes to get as little attention as possible.
For Golinger of Public Citizen, the secretive dinners—where fabulously wealthy people have exclusive access to the president that working-class Americans could never hope for—is part of a much larger and nefarious effort by the rich and powerful to further increase their stranglehold on elected officials, a process which has only become easier with the loosening of campaign finance laws, including the 2010 Citizens Uniteddecision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"These pay-to-play dinners are only possible because of Citizens United and show how desperately we need to fix it," Golinger said. "These dinners demolish the fiction of independent expenditures that the Supreme Court relied on 15 years ago to justify its Citizens United decision, which abolished reasonable limits on campaign spending."
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Crypto Giants 'Already Getting Their Payoff' as Trump SEC Drops Coinbase Lawsuit
The Securities and Exchange Commission's decision to drop its legal action against Coinbase was called "proof positive that the crypto industry's flood of campaign spending has paid off."
Feb 24, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's Securities and Exchange Commission has delivered a significant victory to the cryptocurrency industry by agreeing to drop a major lawsuit against Coinbase, a crypto exchange platform company that spent heavily on the 2024 election and donated a million dollars to President Donald Trump's inauguration.
The SEC's decision, announced Friday by Coinbase's chief legal officer, marks the latest evidence of the nascent industry's growing political influence and the current administration's readiness to ditch corporate enforcement efforts. The New York Timesnoted Friday that the SEC under the Biden administration sued Coinbase in 2023 "on the grounds that the digital currencies sold on its platform constituted unregistered securities that put consumers at risk of financial harm."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "the SEC abandonment of its case against Coinbase is proof positive that the crypto industry's flood of campaign spending has paid off."
"The now-abandoned lawsuit against Coinbase involved the most basic assertion of SEC authority: Coinbase cryptocurrency offerings are actually securities and must be registered and regulated as such," said Weissman. "Retreat from this basic assertion is a massive gift to the industry, which can only be understood in light of its massive political spending in the last election."
According to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, Coinbase spent over $46 million trying to influence the 2024 election, part of a broader wave of spending from the cryptocurrency industry.
A trio of pro-crypto super PACs spent over $130 million in an effort to "elect a crypto-friendly president and members of Congress," OpenSecrets noted in a blog post just days before the 2024 contest.
Public Citizen argued ahead of the 2024 election that Coinbase's campaign spending appeared to be illegal because the company is a federal contractor.
BREAKING: The SEC has dropped its enforcement case against Coinbase. Coinbase spent $46 million to influence the outcome of the election. Now they're already getting their payoff.
— More Perfect Union (@moreperfectunion.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 9:34 AM
The SEC is currently led by Acting Chair Mark Uyeda, whom Trump appointed to the post following the resignation of former Chair Gary Gensler, a proponent of tough crypto regulation.
Following the November election, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong met privately with Trump, who has profited massively from his own foray into crypto. The two discussed personnel appointments, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Since taking office last month, Trump has moved to stock his administration with crypto enthusiasts, including some with glaring conflicts of interest.
The Coinbase CEO's sister, Kathryn Armstrong Loving, has been identified as a member of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. Coinbase, meanwhile, "brought on Trump's campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita as a member of its Global Advisory Council," Sludgereported.
Weissman of Public Citizen warned Friday that "when the crypto crash happens," the SEC's decision to drop its lawsuit against Coinbase "will go down as one that made it far worse than it would have been."
"The SEC decision is also an important marker in the Trump administration's rush to abandon prosecution and enforcement actions against corporate criminals and wrongdoers," he added. "This is not just an abandonment of those already wronged by corporate wrongdoers, it is an invitation to a corporate crime spree and epidemic of corporate wrongdoing. Americans, watch your head, watch your wallet, and watch your back."
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