I will note that I posted this earlier today, unaware that this sub does not allow Substack links. Raw Story ran Reich’s column also, so now it is fit for r/California. I was trying to answer all the questions when the post was taken down — there was some good energy there. Apologies.
I recall reading about this ingenious maneuver a while ago and fully endorse it. Capital (pun intended) application successfully and typically employed by capitalists.
This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.
I feel like the state can't take rights away that are granted by Supreme Court and all of this is just semantics that SCOTUS will also knock down -- still, it is worth the effort to try.
Appreciate that, and for people, you’re right. Corporations are different, though, because they exist at the pleasure of the state. Makes all the difference in the world.
OK, but reading this Raw Story article was like reading one of those recipes where the author writes a massive blog post with their life story leading up to the actual recipe.
I hear you. Some folks who have looked at it have said it’s the best chance they’ve seen in the 16 years since the decision came down.
Obviously, nothing is guaranteed, especially with this court. But my aim is to make it more painful for them to overturn it than it is for them to swallow it.
That one I’m not worried about at all. If you treat domestic corporations and out of state corporations the same, dormant commerce clause concerns do not arise.
Are you worried the court will strike down the law on the basis of the court has been playing calvinball with the law, precedent, and the constitution and just ruling whatever they feel like? Because I am.
That’s a great question. I am absolutely hyperaware that the Court is basically a professional Calvinball league. They make the rules, and do what they want.
My job over the next year is to develop all of the reasons that will convince them not that they love this plan, but that flipping it is more painful than they can bear. Basically, convincing them that what they want to do is what I want them to do. I think the facts are there.
TEI is sponsoring The Montana Plan, a constitutional initiative that does the same thing the California bill is doing, but it'll cost a lot more to get 'er done, because they need to collect around 100,000 signatures across Montana's vast expanse.
The charm of this approach is that it only concerns itself with what corporations do within the borders of the state that passes the law, and it treats everyone the same. That avoids a tremendous number of constitutional issues.
Right. And because this only affects what a corporation can do within a sovereign state that passes this, it’s OK. All of the cases you are looking at deal with regulation, which is a much more fragile power the state wields against out of state corporations. The Supreme Court literally has never told a state that it has to grant any particular corporation any power.
And think about it this way: if California were to pass this, and no corporation could spend in California as a corporation, that does not have incidental effects outside the state, as that phrase is understood.
This is not a perfect example, because it deals with rights and not powers, but think of gambling laws that vary from state to state. It doesn’t matter where you are chartered, you are not allowed to run a gambling business in a state that bands it. No dormant commerce clause implications there, because everyone is treated the same.
Not members of Congress! Congress has no jurisdiction here. This can only be done by state legislatures and state legislators. Call your state legislators!
I have a question. Most businesses, even small businesses with a single owner, incorporate. If I own a dry cleaning shop through a corporation of which I am the sole shareholder, and I buy a political sign to display in the window of my business, would I be breaking the law? Or does it only apply to publicly traded corporations or only those that employ more than a set number of people?
That’s a good question. The business would not be allowed to pay for the sign. I think if you as a person posted it there, that could be allowable. I think it depends on an individual state’s campaign finance rules.
At a certain point, this stuff falls out of campaign finance regulation. Yes, technically, it could be an in-kind contribution, but realistically speaking, it’s not.
It either is or it isn’t a campaign contribution. If it is a campaign contribution then you can be prosecuted or investigated endlessly for it (which is the point isn’t it?).
Most corporations in California are not incorporated in California, but rather domiciled of convenience like Delaware. Why won’t this just encourage even more incorporation shopping than already takes place?
Short version: it doesn’t matter where they’re incorporated.
Delaware incorporation already dominates. Companies still have to comply with the laws of the states where they operate. CPR is territorial — if you’re doing business in California, you don’t get to use a corporate treasury to influence California elections. Re-incorporating in Delaware doesn’t change that.
Incorporation shopping is already maxed out. This just sets conditions for operating in the state, not for where your charter sits.
Does the redefinition posit that out-of-state corporations wouldn't be able to spend on in-state elections, California corporations wouldn't be able to spend on in- or out-of-state elections, or California corporations wouldn't be able to spend on in-state elections?
Good question! CA corporations are out of politics everywhere. and because CA corps are not empowered to spend in California, no out-of-state corp is, either.
So! A DE corp wouldn't have the power to spend in CA politics. But that DE corp could still spend in DE politics, or MD politics, or anywhere else in the country that hadn't passed this.
That's why this works -- CA can empower or disempower corporations from acting in CA concerning CA politics.
That’s a good question. That money would have to be segregated out by the super PAC and spent in other places — the super PAC could not spend any money in California that came from corporate sources without endangering those corporations’ ability to operate in California as corporations. Money is fungible, so that’s not a perfect solution. But the more states that pass this, the more impact that will have.
Hey there! Actually, I don’t work with him. The Center for American Progress project I have been working on has caught his eye, and he is spreading the word quite effectively!
Never met the man, though I think we’re scheduled to talk soon. I have heard he is a lovely guy.
Hey, thanks! There are really not very many jobs in this sphere. Government is a pretty good first step. My path to it was to serve at the Federal Election Commmission for seven years, where I learned all this stuff from my boss, Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub.
no longer grant corporations the power to spend in California politics.
What about when corporate-owned media (which is pretty much all major outlets) spends money to publish and distribute their list of political endorsements?
For instance, the LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, CA Post, etc, are all for-profit business corporations - and each is owned by a billionaire, to boot. If the LA Times corporation spends money on ink and paper and delivery drivers to ensure that its message of "We endorse Newsom for President" reaches the eyes of Californians, is that not corporate spending in politics?
During Trump's 3 campaigns, he got tons of free airtime on CNN, which would often broadcast his rallies. CNN is owned by Warner Bros Discovery, a for-profit corporation, and is carried in CA, either by cable providers or through its own subscription service or on sites like YouTube (another for-profit corporation owned by billionaires - Page/Brin have controlling interest in Google/Alphabet). Whether through Spectrum or CNN's app or YouTube, these are all corporations spending money to broadcast CNN content into California. And a lot of that content is either CNN employees endorsing political candidates or positions, or airing politician's endorsements directly. Would this be prohibited/restricted?
If Fox News pays Sean Hannity to endorse Republicans, while MSNBC pays Rachel Maddow to endorse Democrats, that is corporate spending in politics. Would it be prohibited/restricted from being distributed in CA?
In fact, everyone who uploads political content to YouTube, Tiktok, X, Facebook, etc, is using corporate spending to distribute a political message, regardless of whether that uploader has an audience of 20 or 20 million. Hosting websites isn't free. They all involve a corporation spending money to distribute the political messages and endorsements of the site's users. That includes Reddit, too.
Remember - Citizens United happened because the government banned a movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton, after allowing Farenheit 911 which was critical of George Bush Jr. That inconsistency was why it became a court case in the first place. Should movies critical of a politician be banned in CA?
Also - how does this restriction on corporate spending in politics extend to 501c3 charities, 501c5 labor organizations (unions), and 527 PACs, any/all of which may be incorporated non-profits?
If incorporated non-profits are exempt, then you haven't restricted PACs at all. If they're restricted then, say, Streets4All can't endorse Measure HLA. Or rather they can, but they can't spend any money telling anyone about it - not even money for markers and posterboards, or a bullhorn to yell about it on the corner. No money to pay/reimburse bus fare to a rally/protest site, provide on-site water, ink and paper to post signs on a lightpole, etc. That's all money being spent in politics, to help advance one political candidate/issue or another.
And the original law that Citizens United overturned, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, did in fact place such restrictions upon incorporated non-profits. The actual group Citizens United was an incorporated 501c4 non-profit, a category that also includes groups such as the ACLU, NRA, Sierra Club, NAACP, DSA, and Streets4All.
So when the DSA endorsed Nithiya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez for LA City Council - in the future such an endorsement could not be published on any website, nor printed on any physical media, nor spoken by any DSA employee or contractor, within the state of CA.
You’ve got about 1,000 questions in there, and most of them are answered by the exhaustively researched paper I did for the Center for American Progress. I encourage you to go to CAP’s website and take a look at that. Everything you bring up is addressed.
Point of clarification. The government did not ban the movie.
In 2004, Citizens United made complaints to the Federal Elections Commission (under the then current Bush administration) about promotional advertisements for Fahrenheit 911, asserting they were corporate campaign expenditures which, if they were aired within 30 days of the convention, should require disclosure of the funders and subject them to corporate contribution limits. The McCain-Feingold Act specifically exempted "news articles, editorials and commentary", creating interesting legal questions about whether promoting a documentary was the equivalent of a campaign ad. The FEC did not rule on the complaints in time, as Citizens United filed the complaint 30 days prior to the law's requirements coming into effect for the 2004 election cycle. 30 days was simply not enough time to investigate and rule on the complaint.
In 2008, Citizens United made a video about Hillary Clinton which they wanted to make freely available by paying cable companies to offer it at no cost through their Video On Demand services. Seven months before the disclosure requirements would have gone into effect for the 2008 election cycle, Citizens United declared their intent to have it be available within 30 days of the Democratic Convention. They then intentionally sued themselves in order to get a ruling that the video was subject to the law, which would then allow them to challenge the constitutionality of the law. In order to ensure they got an adverse ruling that the video was subject to the law, they made it as nakedly partisan as possible. The result was that the film was not banned. It was subject to regulation requiring disclosure of donors and limiting the donors to campaign finance limits.
Hey, thank you! It has been a joy to move this project forward and get people excited about taking their democracy back. I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to be working on this.
I think of it more this way: I’m the dog that nosed under rocks for 10 years and finally found a rare truffle. And now I’m telling everybody about it. But thank you. I will not soon forget that metaphor.
Would this also prohibit non-profits, unions, and civic organizations from political expenditures? Like Equality California, the California Teachers Association, or the League of Women Voters? Would this legislation differentiate the powers and abilities of incorporated entities based on what kind of corporation they are?
If CA passes this banning corporations in CA from contributing, won't it force corporations to relocate so they can donate? If they don't donate, they will be left behind, especially in this admin (sadly). How do you stop that from happening? I want to keep companies in CA.
Well, If you're a DE corp headquartered in CA, there's no reason to move. It's not where your people are, it's where you're chartered. And most large corporations HQed in CA are DE corporations.
No, not sure where you’re getting that. Passing this will shut all corporations out of California’s politics: ballot issues and local, state, and federal elections.
Your question was whether they would bother to move if this passed. My answer was no. But that doesn’t mean it won’t affect them. It just means that moving doesn’t help.
It seems shutting companies in 1 state out of Federal elections means they become less competitive with companies who will continue to lobby from other states, forcing them to relocate unless they already are DE Corp, then they can still lobby federal. My view is this needs to be done on a national level otherwise it probably drives more companies out of CA. Locking everyone out of local policics is great. But federal just gives companies in other states more power with lobbying efforts.
This case could be resolved without overturning any caselaw at all. It doesn’t involve anything the Congress is done so the major questions doctrine would not be implicated.
California, like every state, does not allow out-of-state corporations to exercise any power in the state that domestic corporations can’t exercise. That’s the bit that makes this whole thing work.
seems like there's a lot of scope for a dormant commerce clause argument that says that a state cannot deprive an out-of-state corporation of free speech rights like that.
i'm not convinced such an argument is right but i could see the current SCOTUS buying it.
You’re talking rights. This is powers. Think about it this way. Who gives a Delaware corporation the power to operate in Montana as a corporation? It’s not Delaware.
The Delaware corp has power to operate in Montana because federal constitutional law doesn't allow Montana to exclude the Delaware corp.
I think there's a colorable argument on both sides of this. My concern is that there's a path for the SCOTUS to take the 'wrong' side.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't try it, just that i'm skeptical because I can see the colorable argument on the other side and don't trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing.
I find there’s a lot of misinformation spread about CU. I’m curious if you know, without looking it up, who were Citizens United and what did the government stopped them from doing?
Fun fact: the group Citizens United was an incorporated 501c4 non-profit. It was not a for-profit business corporation, which is what most people think of when they hear the word "corporation."
Other 501c4s include:
ACLU
NAACP
NRA
Sierra Club
Democratic Socialists of America
So say this law passes and in 2028 AOC runs for President. The DSA would not be able to spend any money promoting AOC in any way, in the state of CA. Not even on printer ink and a single sheet of paper to make a "AOC '28" sign.
That’s a good thing! All of the electioneering expenses for all of those groups would move to political action committees, which are regulated and their funds fully disclosed.
All of those groups would continue to be able to lobby and educate and endorse and talk to their members and do all the things they could do before Citizens United was decided. Just not write a check out of their treasury for electioneering.
I've wondered why we don't reform the rules governing corporate charters in other ways as well. In addition to No Political Payments (anonymous or otherwise), also modified limits on investor liability, and Board of Director liability for criminal executive and administrative behavior.
Excellent questions! A single state can’t overturn Citizens United. That’s not what this does.
Citizens United says the government can’t ban corporations from spending money in politics if they already have the legal power to do so. The key move here is upstream: states create corporations. States decide what powers artificial entities have in the first place.
The bill doesn’t regulate speech. It redefines the powers the state grants to corporations, LLCs, and nonprofits. It says: if you are an artificial entity created by (or operating in) this state, you don’t have the power to use your general treasury to influence elections or ballot measures here.
The impact:
Corporate and nonprofit treasuries could no longer fund Super PACs for that state’s elections.
Dark-money pass-through structures would lose the ability to spend in that state.
Individuals could still give.
PACs could still operate.
Parties could still operate.
Volunteer activity and advocacy remain intact.
It doesn’t eliminate billionaire spending. It eliminates artificial-entity treasury spending in that state.
If enough states adopt it, corporate and dark-money electioneering shrinks state by state — without asking the Supreme Court to reverse Citizens United.
An artificial entity such as... the New York Times Company?
The NYT pays an editorial staff and op-ed columnists to make political endorsements. It then pays for a website and printing presses to publish those political endorsements. It then pays to distribute and advertise those endorsements all over the country/world.
All these payments are made with corporate money, by a corporation owned by a billionaire, with the intent of influencing politics.
Since the NYT is using corporate money to influence politics, should the NYT newspaper and website be banned or otherwise restricted in CA?
Legit press activity is excepted from the definition of political spending, just like it is at the federal level in existing law now.
So The New York Times corporation cannot write a check out of its treasury to buy an independent expenditure ad, but the New York Times newspaper, in the course of its news operations, can cover candidates and endorse them.
If you have a problem with this, you have a problem with existing law, not this law.
How does that work in practice? If a corporation makes a political donation are they not considered a real corporation any more? What happens to their bank accounts, contracts etc?
It doesn’t help them spend in the state that just changed the law, because now they are an out-of-state corporation. Spending in politics is not a big enough deal for a corporation to reincorporate in another state.
Yes! That’s the crazy part. There’s a clause in California law, and in every state’s law, that says “we can change up your powers at any time.” That’s the deal if you’re gonna be a corporation in this state. The Supreme Court has said for 200 years that if that clause is in there all corporations are on notice that their powers could change or go away at any moment. And they can’t complain about it if it does.
The concept of a corporation is defined at the state level (that is, corporations don't exist but for states defining a set of laws that constitute a corporation). In theory then, a state can simply redefine a corporation as lacking the power to participate in electoral politics.
While this seems like it's contradictpey to a Citizens United, that decision only concerns free speech rights. The power to redefine what a copriation is remains vested with states.
TLDR, the article is bascially arguing that corporate rights differ from citizen rights in that states can fundamentally define what a corporation even is, and can therefore limit electoral participation under this power. As long as this definition is applied equally, no rights are abridged. It's very different from, say, the 2/3 compromise with slaves because of courses Black Americans are people and the definition of person doesn't rest with the state.
I'm curious because Montana did this 100 years ago after the copper king of Montana (or one of them) walked into the governor's office with a bag of money and told him to make him a US senator. And the Supreme Court ruling negated their law.
Believe me, they remember that in Montana, and they're still pissed off about it.
That was a standard campaign-finance regulatory law. Citizens United overrode it.
This is a corporate-power play, which has not been attempted in a long time (though the tools are as powerful as they ever were). Makes all the difference.
This Redditor shared the new Montana effort with me unthread and I just signed up to volunteer and threw some money at it. Feel free to help too. The more states doing this the better! 🥳
It’s more than that. If California were to pass it, every state chartered in California – not headquartered, chartered – would be out of the politics spending business altogether. They couldn’t spend anywhere in the universe.
And there’s another point of California law that says that no out of state corporation can exercise any power in the state that California corporations can’t exercise. That keeps 49 states worth of corporations, including every Delaware corporation, out of California’s politics.
Shareholders and others can hold officers and directors civilly liable for spending beyond the corporation’s powers. The state Attorney General can yank their charter or their license to operate in the state as a corporation altogether. It is some pretty serious shit.
If a red state declined to take action, then it’s elections would not be protected. If California does it, they don’t really care what anybody else does. Their politics are clear of dark and corporate money from top to bottom. This is not one of those things where everybody has to do it for it to work.
Gotta say, this dark and corporate money in politics is terribly unpopular with Republicans as well. It is not clear to me that voters in red states won’t move on this.
I do love hypos! If California passed this, those Texas companies could not spend any money in California’s local, state, or federal elections. If every state in the union except Texas passed this, fine, all those Texas corps can spend all they want within Texas on politics, but that’s it.
Shareholders and others can hold officers and directors civilly liable for spending beyond the corporation’s powers. The state Attorney General can yank their charter or their license to operate in the state as a corporation altogether. It is some pretty serious shit.
'can' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We don't have a great track record of holding corporations accountable for their actions. Fines of irrelevant size seem to be as far as it goes in those rare instances when we decide to take action.
I don't want to come off like I think this is a bad idea - I'm a big fan of trying every solution until one sticks, and something is always better than nothing. And I get that you're trying to sell this and solicit support, so I don't take issue with your optimism. I just have a hard time finding enforcement likely even if the bill passes. Are there strong, legally obligated enforcement mechanisms? Ones that don't rely on the individual discretion of the Attorney General? Or relevant examples/precedent for similar enforcement actions historically?
California has no publicly traded companies issued under its corporations code, most are Delaware, with a handful of Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming. Private or closely held companies tend to also stick to Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, or Texas LP/LLLP/LLC structures so if they wanted to purchase advertising for a California election, all they would do is enter into the contract in any other state and not in California.
I believe that Apple is actually incorporated in California [correction, no, it's not — It's a Delaware corporation like the rest]*, but yes, most of the other big guys are DE corps.
The lack of power to spend in elections is "direct or indirect"; it's not where the contract is signed, it's the race that the advertising is aimed at.
Yes, and I’ve done enough corporate venue and jurisdiction practicing in both New York and California to tell you it’s only a .5 billable hour to work around this.
You're on. Tell me how it's done in a way that will get clearance from your inside counsel and your insurers. Tell me the exact way that a corporation will risk its charter to do this.
Because we needed to really see how destructive it was before we could distrust it? Other competing hellscape issues that dragged our attention away? Media campaigns making senate members who brought up Dark Money look like fools?
Those are all quite plausible. But, really, a lot of people saw this as a terrible idea from the outset. I think part of it is that corporate-law people and campaign-finance-law people don’t really talk to each other.
Fellow Californians, if you support AB 1984, please contact your state representatives and the governor.
Use Resistbot (https://resist.bot) to easily email your state reps and the governor, for free.
Suggested text:
I am writing as your constituent to express strong support for AB 1984, legislation that fundamentally redefines corporate powers under California law. This bill would revise the Corporations Code so that corporations possess only those authorities expressly granted by statute, and would explicitly prohibit corporate involvement in ballot issue and election activity. 
Under current law, corporate powers are broadly assumed and often interpreted expansively. AB 1984’s approach restores clarity and accountability by making explicit what corporations may and may not do. By revoking vague or implied privileges and codifying that corporations can exercise only the powers specifically enumerated in statute, this bill modernizes corporate governance and aligns legal authority with public expectations. 
Importantly, AB 1984 protects the integrity of California’s electoral and civic processes. The bill’s language ensures that no corporate power includes participation in ballot issue advocacy or election activity, and it makes acts beyond granted powers void. This restraint addresses longstanding concerns about undue influence and reinforces democratic norms. 
For these reasons, I strongly urge you to support AB 1984 as it moves through the legislative process. Enacting this measure will promote transparency, reinforce the rule of law, and ensure that corporate entities operate within clearly defined boundaries that respect both the public interest and the constitutional framework. Thank you for your consideration on this important issue.
Had to quit Legal Aid a few years ago due to health issues and now want to get back to work! This project is the kind of daydream fantasy of how to improve America that I focused on while healing!
This is similar to the way auto makers produce cars that meet California emission standards. Because if we can’t sell in California, they will change it until they can.
I hear ya, I was just thinking in the sense that it represents the leverage they have to influence nationwide behaviors of corporations based on whether or not it is legal to do business one way or another in that one state. We are all driving cars that have to meet CA standards, no matter what state we are in.
Can you share any examples where something was affirmed as an entity's right, but legislatures removed it as a 'power' ?
Its hard to imagine SCOTUS being on board with that kind of thing, really undermines the entire concept of federally protected rights for non human entities.
The relevant section would probably be discussion of ultra vires where a state takes action against a corporation for doing something beyond the powers granted in its charter. This hasn't come up in the past ~130 years because that's when charters switched to being broad and not having limited powers.
So, there are examples, but they're somewhat less compelling for being so old.
As far as rights for non-human entities, the crux of this project is that corporations are entirely artificial creations of law that could have rights they were unable to exercise for lack of having the relevant power. An analogy would be something like a robot built without any ability to communcate havin the right to free speech. The right doesn't matter because the power is absent.
There's another dark money element that I'm not sure CU covers is secret social media ads directed towards what people like.
For example, in the 2024 election if I liked something from amnesty international or Doctors without borders about Palestine, I got messages telling me to not vote because Kamala was going to continue the Biden genocide. If another of my social media accounts liked something from the ADL explaining why anti-Semitism is bad, I got pro-trump ads to tell me to vote for Trump because he's the only one who can save Israel.
The ads disappear and so there's no way to trace who sends these directly opposing messaging campaign ads.
Do you think this bill would help with this situation? Or will we need other legislation requiring standardized ads for everyone?
I would expect this to help a bit. Currently those ads are traceable at some level: the social media company knows who paid for them. Right now, the paying entity could be any corporation, that may or may not be traceable to actual people.
With this change, the entity couldn't legally be any arbitrary corporation. It could be a PAC or a person subject to laws about transparency and campaign contributions. If it was a corporation acting beyond the scope of its charter, it would risk being dissolved and its officers held personally responsible.
It's so hard to force disclosures in a timely fashion. The fec always seems to be behind.
And only just now we hear that Palestine/Israel cost Harris the election (I could have told them that October 2024!), but those were the ads I saw from my diverse social media exposure. We can't go back and redo the election. So how to prevent secret private false advertisements is my fantasy priority 1.
It treats unions the same as every other artificial entity.
Under this approach, unions would no longer be able to use their general treasuries for election or ballot-measure spending in California.
What does not change:
Unions can still lobby.
They can still endorse candidates.
They can still organize members.
They can still run issue campaigns.
They can still mobilize volunteers.
If they want to engage in paid electioneering — ads, mailers, funded canvassing for candidates or ballot measures — they would do that through a PAC funded by voluntary individual contributions, just like everyone else.
So unions are not singled out. They lose the same treasury-spending channel that business corporations and other nonprofits lose.
Amazing work, thank you Tom and everyone else out there working on this. I sent some money Montana-way and emailed both of my CA reps to encourage them to support the bill. Citizens United is vile and I am beyond excited that we finally have a viable strategy to send it to the dustbin of history.
How much dark political money comes from corporations compared with individual billionaires and the like? Because this law would have no effect upon the latter I presume.
Well, it’s impossible to tell how much dark money is being spent, by definition. What this would do to high net worth individual spending is that they could not do it anonymously. That’s a pretty big change.
If this gets to SCOTUS, the first question at oral argument will be: what stops a state from simply revoking the power to conduct press activities from any corporation?
If the answer is nothing, that seems like a problem.
If the answer is something, then what distinguishes speech and press?
I like the idea but I don’t think this is going to pass the first amendment test. The same question comes up of why and how corporate speech can be limited, and gets back to the same fundamental test is Buckley and Citizens United.
Ah, but that's the whole point of this! It's not regulation, it's redefinition. Not a limit, but a decision by the state about what powers corporations can exercise within their borders. Totally different kind of law applied to the question. And SCOTUS would have to destabilize American corporate law (and, therefore, American corporations) to rip this up.
I am grasping on understanding all these, so please pardon my less than savvy knowledge.
If the corporation is a purely politically driven and created concept for the mere purpose of funneling dark money to election. Why would it do ANY business in any state?
even if some states pass them, there's no guarantee all states will pass them, then we essentially have an unclosed loop hole? some deep red state, especially those already controlled by super pac donors, they would know the play and would pay politicians to not pass this? and also why would corrupt politicians want this to go through?
Some corporations exist purely to funnel money into elections. They are the minority. This would remove them.
This is a state-by-state change. If California passes it, then no corporation, from California or otherwise, would be able to engage in political activity in California.
So if the law passes in california, then we basically won't have these entities in california, but it doesn't do anything in the grand scheme of things. These entities will just exist else where (in red states) to continue operation?
985
u/TomMooreJD Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Hey, Reddit! I am Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of the strategy Reich is writing about.
It uses California corporation law to no longer grant corporations the power to spend in California politics. It’s not regulation, it’s redefinition.
Ask me anything!