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The US National Academy of Sciences has released two reports on geoengineering that recommend investments in solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Geoengineering has become known as the US government's "Plan B" response to climate change. Geoengineering proponents have recently pushed for government funding of geoengineering research in Nature and the Washington Post.
At first glance, this seems prudent: of course we should have more information about all of the options. Most geoengineering backers insist that these are only extreme measures of last resort. SRM (now rebranded as "albedo management" by the NAS report) which proposes blowing sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight and lower global temperatures or CCS, which proposes to stuff billions of tonnes of CO2 into defunct mines and oil wells, are Plan B: only to be considered if governments can't agree on emission targets in Paris later this year. Is geoengineering deplorable or deployable? We won't know, backers argue, unless we do the research.
Plan B?
Saying we need more information sounds reasonable, but geoengineering research that involves experimentation and builds actual hardware is a clear and present danger to the climate for two reasons. If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible "Plan B," Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship. The fossil fuel industry is desperate to protect between $20 and $28 trillion in booked assets that can only be extracted if the corporations are allowed to overshoot GHG-emissions. The theoretical assumption that carbon capture and storage will eventually let them recapture CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it in the earth or ocean provides the fossil fuel industry with the best way to avoid popping the "carbon bubble" other than outright climate denial. Spraying sulfates in the stratosphere can - theoretically - lower temperatures until carbon capture and storage techniques are viable. In other words, geoengineering research is becoming the only tool the fossil fuel industry has left to undermine the political and corporate will to lower actual emissions now.
"If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible 'Plan B,' Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship."
Geoengineering could justify continued emissions, but it may also do direct damage to the climate. The two NAS reports are quiet about budgets and don't define the scale of field studies. Most scientists concur that geoengineering is extremely risky, but also say that only very large field trials will yield useful data. Experimentation, in other words, equals hardware development and effective deployment. We already have examples: between 1993 and 2009, 11 governments conducted a dozen geoengineering experiments in international waters to see if spreading iron particles on the surface of the ocean could lead to the sequestering of carbon dioxide on the ocean floor. The first experiments dumped iron into 50-60 km2 of ocean. When that didn't work, they increased the surface area six-fold until the final 2009 dump was 300 km2. It still failed. The geoengineers wanted bigger experiments, but three different UN conferences intervened and have effectively banned ocean fertilization. Sagely, the NAS report now concludes that ocean fertilization "is an immature technology whose high costs and technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits."
NAS also talks about the need for governance but only in the context of the United States. Stratospheric aerosol spraying can be undertaken by one country or a "Coalition of the Willing," even though the impact will be global. For this reason, the United Nations must be in charge.
What about Plan A?
There is much that scientists don't know about planetary systems. The acknowledged gaps in Plan A research have widened from a crevice to a chasm to a canyon. It would be extraordinarily foolhardy for policymakers to advance Plan B before Plan A's research issues are addressed.
It is difficult, for example, to establish Plan A emission targets (or, for that matter, Plan B's levels of stratospheric aerosol spraying) when governments don't disclose their current emissions. China underreported its annual GHG emissions by about 20%, while the USA's recent emission reductions aren't quite what they're fracked up to be. America cut back its emissions to 1992 levels because fracking lowered the demand for coal - but the coal was still burned overseas. The UK's 14% reductions (between 1990 and 2008) in greenhouse gas emissions were erased by its 20% increase in emissions from outsourced manufacturing. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian emissions dropped 10 - 14% but only because farmland was temporarily abandoned.
"Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue."
How can we pursue "climate interventions" and call them scientific if governments don't get the data right?
Governments have also had difficulties keeping track of their biomass, with implications for Plan B's carbon capture and storage strategies. According to a UNEP report, up to 30% of all timber exports are mafia-controlled and 90% of tropical deforestation is due to illegal trade - making biomass calculations problematic. Meanwhile, India overestimated its forest cover by about 10%.
Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand have all flip-flopped on their emission commitments while the UK has cut back its renewable energy support. The EU's carbon credit scheme is a laughingstock. This makes Plan A's emission goals - or the levels of Plan B's stratospheric aerosol interventions - subject to unexpected and dangerous changes.
Plan A and Plan B both need cutting-edge monitoring of planetary systems. However, by 2020, the number of civilian US climate monitoring satellites could drop from 23 to 6 and the number of monitoring instruments from 90 to 20. Monitoring is weakest over the Indian subcontinent and apparently deteriorating throughout the tropics. In 2014, for example, scientists discovered that an important swath of the Brazilian Amazon has been completely missed by satellites. The Economist called this "willful blindness."
Recently, science has uncovered a vast deep-ocean "river"- a bacterial prairie the size of Greece beneath the Humboldt current - and reconsidered the impact of sulphates on cloud formation in polar regions that could significantly alter Plan B proposals for carbon sequestration or solar radiation management.
Money is indeed needed for climate change research. Governments should pony up and scientists should get to work. But the NAS needs to flatly condemn the deployment or hardware testing of dangerous technologies that have consequences for the whole planet."
NAS support for geoengineering research creates a political space that could lead multinational oil companies and their governments off the hook. Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue.
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The US National Academy of Sciences has released two reports on geoengineering that recommend investments in solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Geoengineering has become known as the US government's "Plan B" response to climate change. Geoengineering proponents have recently pushed for government funding of geoengineering research in Nature and the Washington Post.
At first glance, this seems prudent: of course we should have more information about all of the options. Most geoengineering backers insist that these are only extreme measures of last resort. SRM (now rebranded as "albedo management" by the NAS report) which proposes blowing sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight and lower global temperatures or CCS, which proposes to stuff billions of tonnes of CO2 into defunct mines and oil wells, are Plan B: only to be considered if governments can't agree on emission targets in Paris later this year. Is geoengineering deplorable or deployable? We won't know, backers argue, unless we do the research.
Plan B?
Saying we need more information sounds reasonable, but geoengineering research that involves experimentation and builds actual hardware is a clear and present danger to the climate for two reasons. If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible "Plan B," Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship. The fossil fuel industry is desperate to protect between $20 and $28 trillion in booked assets that can only be extracted if the corporations are allowed to overshoot GHG-emissions. The theoretical assumption that carbon capture and storage will eventually let them recapture CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it in the earth or ocean provides the fossil fuel industry with the best way to avoid popping the "carbon bubble" other than outright climate denial. Spraying sulfates in the stratosphere can - theoretically - lower temperatures until carbon capture and storage techniques are viable. In other words, geoengineering research is becoming the only tool the fossil fuel industry has left to undermine the political and corporate will to lower actual emissions now.
"If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible 'Plan B,' Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship."
Geoengineering could justify continued emissions, but it may also do direct damage to the climate. The two NAS reports are quiet about budgets and don't define the scale of field studies. Most scientists concur that geoengineering is extremely risky, but also say that only very large field trials will yield useful data. Experimentation, in other words, equals hardware development and effective deployment. We already have examples: between 1993 and 2009, 11 governments conducted a dozen geoengineering experiments in international waters to see if spreading iron particles on the surface of the ocean could lead to the sequestering of carbon dioxide on the ocean floor. The first experiments dumped iron into 50-60 km2 of ocean. When that didn't work, they increased the surface area six-fold until the final 2009 dump was 300 km2. It still failed. The geoengineers wanted bigger experiments, but three different UN conferences intervened and have effectively banned ocean fertilization. Sagely, the NAS report now concludes that ocean fertilization "is an immature technology whose high costs and technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits."
NAS also talks about the need for governance but only in the context of the United States. Stratospheric aerosol spraying can be undertaken by one country or a "Coalition of the Willing," even though the impact will be global. For this reason, the United Nations must be in charge.
What about Plan A?
There is much that scientists don't know about planetary systems. The acknowledged gaps in Plan A research have widened from a crevice to a chasm to a canyon. It would be extraordinarily foolhardy for policymakers to advance Plan B before Plan A's research issues are addressed.
It is difficult, for example, to establish Plan A emission targets (or, for that matter, Plan B's levels of stratospheric aerosol spraying) when governments don't disclose their current emissions. China underreported its annual GHG emissions by about 20%, while the USA's recent emission reductions aren't quite what they're fracked up to be. America cut back its emissions to 1992 levels because fracking lowered the demand for coal - but the coal was still burned overseas. The UK's 14% reductions (between 1990 and 2008) in greenhouse gas emissions were erased by its 20% increase in emissions from outsourced manufacturing. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian emissions dropped 10 - 14% but only because farmland was temporarily abandoned.
"Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue."
How can we pursue "climate interventions" and call them scientific if governments don't get the data right?
Governments have also had difficulties keeping track of their biomass, with implications for Plan B's carbon capture and storage strategies. According to a UNEP report, up to 30% of all timber exports are mafia-controlled and 90% of tropical deforestation is due to illegal trade - making biomass calculations problematic. Meanwhile, India overestimated its forest cover by about 10%.
Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand have all flip-flopped on their emission commitments while the UK has cut back its renewable energy support. The EU's carbon credit scheme is a laughingstock. This makes Plan A's emission goals - or the levels of Plan B's stratospheric aerosol interventions - subject to unexpected and dangerous changes.
Plan A and Plan B both need cutting-edge monitoring of planetary systems. However, by 2020, the number of civilian US climate monitoring satellites could drop from 23 to 6 and the number of monitoring instruments from 90 to 20. Monitoring is weakest over the Indian subcontinent and apparently deteriorating throughout the tropics. In 2014, for example, scientists discovered that an important swath of the Brazilian Amazon has been completely missed by satellites. The Economist called this "willful blindness."
Recently, science has uncovered a vast deep-ocean "river"- a bacterial prairie the size of Greece beneath the Humboldt current - and reconsidered the impact of sulphates on cloud formation in polar regions that could significantly alter Plan B proposals for carbon sequestration or solar radiation management.
Money is indeed needed for climate change research. Governments should pony up and scientists should get to work. But the NAS needs to flatly condemn the deployment or hardware testing of dangerous technologies that have consequences for the whole planet."
NAS support for geoengineering research creates a political space that could lead multinational oil companies and their governments off the hook. Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue.
The US National Academy of Sciences has released two reports on geoengineering that recommend investments in solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Geoengineering has become known as the US government's "Plan B" response to climate change. Geoengineering proponents have recently pushed for government funding of geoengineering research in Nature and the Washington Post.
At first glance, this seems prudent: of course we should have more information about all of the options. Most geoengineering backers insist that these are only extreme measures of last resort. SRM (now rebranded as "albedo management" by the NAS report) which proposes blowing sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight and lower global temperatures or CCS, which proposes to stuff billions of tonnes of CO2 into defunct mines and oil wells, are Plan B: only to be considered if governments can't agree on emission targets in Paris later this year. Is geoengineering deplorable or deployable? We won't know, backers argue, unless we do the research.
Plan B?
Saying we need more information sounds reasonable, but geoengineering research that involves experimentation and builds actual hardware is a clear and present danger to the climate for two reasons. If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible "Plan B," Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship. The fossil fuel industry is desperate to protect between $20 and $28 trillion in booked assets that can only be extracted if the corporations are allowed to overshoot GHG-emissions. The theoretical assumption that carbon capture and storage will eventually let them recapture CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it in the earth or ocean provides the fossil fuel industry with the best way to avoid popping the "carbon bubble" other than outright climate denial. Spraying sulfates in the stratosphere can - theoretically - lower temperatures until carbon capture and storage techniques are viable. In other words, geoengineering research is becoming the only tool the fossil fuel industry has left to undermine the political and corporate will to lower actual emissions now.
"If the US or other powerful governments accept geoengineering as a plausible 'Plan B,' Plan A will evaporate faster than Congressional bipartisanship."
Geoengineering could justify continued emissions, but it may also do direct damage to the climate. The two NAS reports are quiet about budgets and don't define the scale of field studies. Most scientists concur that geoengineering is extremely risky, but also say that only very large field trials will yield useful data. Experimentation, in other words, equals hardware development and effective deployment. We already have examples: between 1993 and 2009, 11 governments conducted a dozen geoengineering experiments in international waters to see if spreading iron particles on the surface of the ocean could lead to the sequestering of carbon dioxide on the ocean floor. The first experiments dumped iron into 50-60 km2 of ocean. When that didn't work, they increased the surface area six-fold until the final 2009 dump was 300 km2. It still failed. The geoengineers wanted bigger experiments, but three different UN conferences intervened and have effectively banned ocean fertilization. Sagely, the NAS report now concludes that ocean fertilization "is an immature technology whose high costs and technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits."
NAS also talks about the need for governance but only in the context of the United States. Stratospheric aerosol spraying can be undertaken by one country or a "Coalition of the Willing," even though the impact will be global. For this reason, the United Nations must be in charge.
What about Plan A?
There is much that scientists don't know about planetary systems. The acknowledged gaps in Plan A research have widened from a crevice to a chasm to a canyon. It would be extraordinarily foolhardy for policymakers to advance Plan B before Plan A's research issues are addressed.
It is difficult, for example, to establish Plan A emission targets (or, for that matter, Plan B's levels of stratospheric aerosol spraying) when governments don't disclose their current emissions. China underreported its annual GHG emissions by about 20%, while the USA's recent emission reductions aren't quite what they're fracked up to be. America cut back its emissions to 1992 levels because fracking lowered the demand for coal - but the coal was still burned overseas. The UK's 14% reductions (between 1990 and 2008) in greenhouse gas emissions were erased by its 20% increase in emissions from outsourced manufacturing. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian emissions dropped 10 - 14% but only because farmland was temporarily abandoned.
"Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue."
How can we pursue "climate interventions" and call them scientific if governments don't get the data right?
Governments have also had difficulties keeping track of their biomass, with implications for Plan B's carbon capture and storage strategies. According to a UNEP report, up to 30% of all timber exports are mafia-controlled and 90% of tropical deforestation is due to illegal trade - making biomass calculations problematic. Meanwhile, India overestimated its forest cover by about 10%.
Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand have all flip-flopped on their emission commitments while the UK has cut back its renewable energy support. The EU's carbon credit scheme is a laughingstock. This makes Plan A's emission goals - or the levels of Plan B's stratospheric aerosol interventions - subject to unexpected and dangerous changes.
Plan A and Plan B both need cutting-edge monitoring of planetary systems. However, by 2020, the number of civilian US climate monitoring satellites could drop from 23 to 6 and the number of monitoring instruments from 90 to 20. Monitoring is weakest over the Indian subcontinent and apparently deteriorating throughout the tropics. In 2014, for example, scientists discovered that an important swath of the Brazilian Amazon has been completely missed by satellites. The Economist called this "willful blindness."
Recently, science has uncovered a vast deep-ocean "river"- a bacterial prairie the size of Greece beneath the Humboldt current - and reconsidered the impact of sulphates on cloud formation in polar regions that could significantly alter Plan B proposals for carbon sequestration or solar radiation management.
Money is indeed needed for climate change research. Governments should pony up and scientists should get to work. But the NAS needs to flatly condemn the deployment or hardware testing of dangerous technologies that have consequences for the whole planet."
NAS support for geoengineering research creates a political space that could lead multinational oil companies and their governments off the hook. Precisely at the moment when climate denial is losing steam, it's crucial to prevent it from being replaced with unicorn-like fantasies of magical technologies that allow the status quo to continue.
The study was published as President Donald Trump was blasted for an executive order that one critic said shows he wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station."
For thousands of years, the land areas of the Arctic have served as a "carbon sink," storing potential carbon emissions in the permafrost. But according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change Tuesday, more than 34% of the Arctic is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere, as permafrost melts and the Arctic becomes greener.
"When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%," according to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which led the international team that conducted the research.
The study, which was first reported on by The Guardian, was released the day after President Donald Trump issued multiple presidential actions influencing the United States' ability to confront the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions, including one directly impacting resource extraction in Alaska, a section of which is within the Arctic Circle.
Sue Natali, one of the researchers who worked on the study published in Nature Climate Change, told NPR in December (in reference to similar research) that the Arctic's warming "is not an issue of what party you support."
"This is something that impacts everyone," she said.
As the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for two or more years—holds less carbon, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere that could "considerably exacerbate climate change," according to the study.
"There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It's close to half of the Earth's soil carbon pool. That's much more than there is in the atmosphere. There's a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground," said Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, in an interview with The Guardian.
The dire warning was released on the heels of Trump's executive order titled "Unleashing the Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" that calls for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," as well as for the prioritization of "development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region."
The order also rolls back a number of Biden-era restrictions on drilling and extraction in Alaska, which included protecting areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas leasing.
"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters," said Carole Holley, managing attorney for the Alaska Office of the environmental group Earthjustice, in a statement Monday.
"Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few," she added.
Trump wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station," said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement Monday. "Make no mistake, Trump's rushed and sloppy actions today are an existential threat to these lands and waters, and the communities and wildlife that depend on them."
The U.N. ambassador nominee also shrugged off the Nazi salutes made by Elon Musk on Inauguration Day.
As U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik faced questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday regarding her nomination for a top diplomatic position, the rights group Jewish Voice for Peace Action called on lawmakers to consider her "record of antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, and anti-democracy rhetoric and policy" and block her confirmation.
Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) record was reinforced at the hearing as she was asked about her views on Palestine, expressions of antisemitism in the United States, and far-right Israeli leaders' political agenda, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recalling a meeting he had with the congresswoman after President Donald Trump nominated her to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the meeting, Van Hollen said, Stefanik had expressed support for the idea that Israel has a Biblical right to control the entire West Bank—a position that is held by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but runs counter to the two-state solution that the U.S. government has long supported.
"Is that your view today?" asked Van Hollen, to which Stefanik replied, "Yes."
Van Hollen noted that Stefanik's viewpoint also flies in the face of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and international consensus about the Middle East conflict.
"If the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we're going to have to look at the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said the senator. "And it's going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed, which is a view that was not held by the founders of the state of Israel."
Stefanik also refused to answer a direct question from Van Hollen regarding whether Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, saying only that she supports "human rights for all" and pivoting to a call for Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas.
Jenin Younes, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said Stefanik expressed "religious fanaticism, pure and simple" at the confirmation hearing—which was held as Israeli settlers and soldiers ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
"That [Stefanik] will now play a major role with respect to our foreign policy in the region is terrifying," said Younes.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action noted that in addition to supporting "the Israeli government's brutal genocide of Palestinians," Stefanik has also "amplified the antisemitic Great Replacement theory"—which claims the influence and power of white Christian Americans is being deliberately diminished by Jewish Americans and immigration policy.
Despite her support for the debunked conspiracy theory, Stefanik made headlines last year for her accusations against college students, faculty, and administrators over the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that exploded across campuses as Americans spoke out against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza. The congresswoman said the protests were expressions of antisemitism and pushed for the resignation of university leaders who declined to discipline students who spoke out against Israel.
The hearings where Stefanik lambasted college leaders "were part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war activism and dissent on college campuses while forwarding the MAGA culture war campaign against [diversity, equity, and inclusion], critical race theory, and LGBTQ+ rights," said JVP Action.
An exchange between Stefanik and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday also raised questions over Stefanik's views on antisemitism. Murphy asked the nominee about the Nazi salute twice displayed by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—whom the president has named to lead his proposed Department of Government Efficiency—at an event Monday night.
" Elon Musk did not do those salutes," Stefanik asserted.
Murphy countered by reading several comments from right-wing commentators who applauded Musk's "Heil Hitler" salute.
"Over and over again last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual," said Murphy.
JVP Action said Stefanik has "deeply embraced Trump's anti-democratic agenda."
"Her nomination must be blocked," said the group.
"As long as Citizens United remains the law of the land, our democracy will remain broken," said one campaigner.
As President Donald Trump triumphantly returned to the White House thanks in part to a tsunami of campaign cash from oligarchs and corporate interests, democracy defenders on Tuesday marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashed such spending by urging action to overturn the decision.
In a nation where corporations and moneyed interests already wielded disproportionate power and influence over elections, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission reversed campaign finance restrictions dating back to the era of Gilded Age robber barons. The ruling affirmed that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment that government cannot restrict. The decision ushered in the era of super PACs—which can raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns—and secret spending on elections with so-called "dark money."
In his Citizens United dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens asserted that "in a functioning democracy the public must have faith that its representatives owe their positions to the people, not to the corporations with the deepest pockets," and warned that the ruling "will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the states to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process."
"Over the last 15 years, the American people have watched with disgust as both parties welcomed the unfettered sale of our democracy and elections to the highest bidders."
Since then, nearly $20 billion has been spent on U.S. presidential elections and more than $53 billion on congressional races, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Spending on 2024 congressional races was double 2010 levels, while presidential campaign contributions were more than 50% higher in 2024 than in 2008, the last election before Citizens United.
Ultrawealthy megadonors played a critical role in Trump's 2024 victory. Some of them have been rewarded with Cabinet nominations and key appointments in "an administration dominated by billionaires and corporate interests," as Americans for Tax Fairness executive director David Kass described it.
"Fifteen years ago today, the Supreme Court gave billionaires and special interests unprecedented power to rig our democracy with its disastrous Citizens United decision. Yesterday, Donald Trump was sworn in, ushering in the wealthiest administration in American history," Tiffany Muller, president of the advocacy group End Citizens United, said on social media Tuesday. "Citizens United paved the way for Trump II."
Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats, said in a statement that "over the last 15 years, the American people have watched with disgust as both parties welcomed the unfettered sale of our democracy and elections to the highest bidders."
"Citizens United legalized economic inequality as a political tool for the wealthy to exploit," Rojas added. "A decade-and-a-half later, working-class people cannot afford to run for office and everyday voters' voices are drowned out by billionaire-funded super PACs. As long as Citizens United remains the law of the land, our democracy will remain broken."
Justice Democrats noted: "Yesterday, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in what was maybe one of the most openly corporate-sponsored inaugurations in American history. In just one row seated in front of Trump's Cabinet members, four men had the combined wealth of just under $1 trillion."
"Billionaires and corporations are paying their way to gain influence in the Trump administration and they can expect a massive return on their investment, at the expense of everyday people," the group added.
It's no surprise, say critics, that corporate profits and plutocrat wealth have soared to new heights during the Citizens United era.
"Citizens United allowed corporations to buy candidates and elections. Citizens United legalized political bribery. Citizens United let wealth dominate our elections," the consumer watchdog Public Citizen said Tuesday. "Overturn Citizens United."
Positing that "Citizens United turned our democracy into an auction," Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) wrote on social media Tuesday that "our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people—not corporations and billionaire elites. We must #EndCitizensUnited and put the American people back in charge."
Democratic lawmakers have introduced numerous bills, including proposed constitutional amendments, to reverse Citizens United. While Congress has not been able or willing to address the issue, 22 states and the District of Columbia, as well as more than 800 local governments across the country, have passed measures calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling, according to Public Citizen.
"This is a moment to
usher in a new era in the Democratic Party that rejects the growing oligarchy in this country by rejecting the unprecedented level of billionaire and corporate spending that has a stranglehold over both parties," Justice Democrats said on Tuesday. "Now is the moment to tirelessly center working people and expose the big money corruption that Citizens United has brought onto both parties. By rejecting their influence, working-class people may finally have the promise of a party that actually serves them."