S2E30: Citizens United, Part 2: The Money Trail, Borderless Wealth, and Bordered Voters

CivilDiscourse101 · Jul 29, 2026 · 1h 12m

Part Two of our Citizens United deep dive. Jesse walks Joe through how Mitch McConnell engineered the post-2010 dark money architecture: the PAC network, the disclosure rules that disclose nothing, and a mother-in-law’s estate gift that still doesn’t add up. We track the number that matters most: $340 million in outside spending in 2008 to $1.9 billion in dark money by 2024. Then we look at what has actually worked elsewhere: Seattle’s democracy vouchers, New York’s matching funds, and the countries that capped this decades ago. Bipartisan support. Zero legislative action. You’ll see why. So…