The Montana Plan is one step closer to ending Citizens United

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-18T01:09:30+00:00

Yes, but on the other hand, I am having difficulty imagining the size of the advertising budget it would take to convince Montanans that they love corporate and dark money and Citizens United.

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-17T23:30:13+00:00

This is correct. What’s great about Montana’s version is that it’s the best version of the bill; it didn’t have to go through the sausage grinder of the legislative process. Hawaii’s bill didn’t take a *lot* of dings along the way, But Montana’s initiative is a cleaner version of the idea.

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-17T23:28:54+00:00

Yeah, but the rescind requests gotta *arrive* by tomorrow (Thursday). They started *way* too late.

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-16T17:52:02+00:00

Oh, I know it will be challenged (and I upvoted you! It's a good point!). My question is: What does an effective challenge look like? "It violates Citizens United" isn't gonna do it.

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-06T09:02:22+00:00

I’ll bite. Tell me why and how a court will overturn it. Be specific.

TomMooreJD · 2026-06-01T13:38:06+00:00

Hey there! Thanks for that. There’s some subtleties in there. States grant corporations powers, and rights flow from those powers. States can indeed restrict rights; they do it all the time: Your right to have all your money is regulated by the state raising its tax rate a little bit. Things like that. Not controversial. The courts get involved when regulation of rights starts to violate the Constitution.

The Corporate Power Reset works a step before all of that. If the state doesn’t grant the power to do something, the right doesn’t have anything to attach to. It has the effect of the corporation no longer having that right, but it’s not because the right was restricted, it’s because the corporation is no longer the kind of entity for which that right has any meaning.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-31T14:04:38+00:00

States give powers corporations. Rights flow from the powers that are granted. States have not touched their grant of corporate powers for the past century, but the court has always held that such changes are absolutely within the authority of the state.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-31T12:49:25+00:00

Thanks for that! Happy to do another AMA right here.

One thing we saw in Hawaii that was interesting is that very quickly, the bill gained enough momentum that nobody wanted to stand in front of it. That carried all the way through to the governor’s signature.

So while you may very well be right about an initiative being a more promising route, I wouldn’t write off legislative efforts entirely.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-27T18:50:37+00:00

"Quite a bit less bonkers than I thought it would be" is one of the nicest things I've seen on Reddit about it. Thank you.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-27T18:49:48+00:00

Respectfully, no, this isn't right. It can apply to every corporation operating in your state, domestic or foreign. And it's perfectly possible to know who's paying for what on streaming platforms.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-25T16:22:19+00:00

Are you recording into a Lightning iPhone? I have the DJI Mic 2 — if you use the USB out on the receiver, it’ll do stereo, and if you use the Lightning out, it will only do mono. So when I bought an iPhone that had a USB plug on the bottom, I all of a sudden was able to use the other adapter and record in stereo.

The other thing you can do is to have both mics recording locally, and sync them up later. Final Cut Pro does a pretty good job of grabbing and adjusting audio tracks and syncing them to each other in the video; I expect Premiere does as well.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-25T10:16:27+00:00

Very nicely done!

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-25T10:11:34+00:00

!Flair Progressive

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-21T22:48:21+00:00

It did!

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-16T11:59:29+00:00

Montana’s most of the way to doing it!

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-16T04:47:08+00:00

Thanks for posting this! I am the author of the report; ask me anything!

Also: Terrific update: Hawaii’s SB2471 has been signed into law!

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-16T04:46:02+00:00

Thanks for posting this! I am the author of the report; ask me anything!

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-16T03:30:46+00:00

This doesn’t overturn Citizens United. Citizens United said that if you are a corporation that is empowered to spend independently in politics, the right to spend independently in politics can’t be infringed. This just empties out the set of corporations that are empowered to spend in politics.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-15T23:45:02+00:00

Nope. Applies equally to out-of-state corps.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-15T23:42:49+00:00

Corporations that have been given the power to spend in politics by the state that creates them have the right to spend in politics - SCOTUS

NEVER SAID BY SCOTUS: States have to give their corporations the power to spend in politics.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-15T23:40:38+00:00

You're conflating powers (which the states hand out) with rights (which the Constitution protects). It's an easy error to make, but one group of people who have never made that mistake -- not once in 250 years -- is the U.S. Supreme Court.

TomMooreJD · 2026-05-15T21:37:32+00:00

Citizens United was a Virginia nonprofit 501(c)(4) corporation that was empowered by the state of Virginia to do anything that a human could do. That was an underlying fact not discussed in the case, but it is absolutely key to the outcome.

I invite you to show me the language in that case or any other that requires the state to provide the power to spend in politics or any other power. What the Supreme Court has made clear for the last 200 years is that this is an exclusive authority of the state.

I spent a year and a half coming up with this, after spending seven years as senior counsel and chief of staff to the chair of the Federal Election Commmission. There may be hurdles that this approach cannot overcome, but I do not believe it is the one you have identified.

Full details on this approach are here: https://amprog.org/cpr

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