On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a federal anti-bribery law, with the conservative majority saying the restrictions imposed by Congress constitute a violation of candidates’ First Amendment right to free speech.
This case, known as FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate, opens the door for candidates to raise unlimited sums after an election ends in order to repay personal loans to their campaigns. In 2001, Congress capped the amount that can be repaid to candidates using post-election fundraising at $250,000 to prevent wealthy individuals and lobbyists from essentially giving money to lawmakers, including some who profited off the loans by charging their own campaigns interest.
The Supreme Court has a mixed history in its rulings on campaign finance cases. While the court has upheld some of the basic underpinnings of election law, it has also ripped up others. While spending on political campaigns has exploded, advocacy groups have stepped up their efforts to achieve further reforms in the name of fighting corruption.
According to the court tracker Oyez, the Supreme Court has handled nearly 30 cases related to campaign finance since 1957. Here are some of the most influential decisions that have either bolstered the rules or tossed them in the trash.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
In 1971, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, a post-Watergate law putting into place many of the modern regulations governing campaign financing, including contribution limits and reporting requirements.
Five years later, the Supreme Court considered whether the restrictions imposed by FECA violated the First Amendment, issuing a divided ruling.
The justices decided that capping an individual’s contributions to political campaigns and candidates "served the government's interest in safeguarding the integrity of elections” and therefore did not run afoul of the Constitution. However, any limits on spending by campaigns violates the freedoms of speech and association.
The decision served another purpose, dividing political advertising into “express advocacy,” which explicitly endorses or opposes candidates for office, and “issue advocacy,” which addresses issues rather than candidates. The court rules that independent ads that fall into the express advocacy category are subject to federal disclosure requirements, but issue advocacy spending is exempt.
Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC (2000)
The 1976 Buckley decision permitted the government, through the Federal Election Commission, to set caps on donations to federal campaigns. Twenty-four years later, the court addressed donation limits in state campaigns, permitting Missouri to institute a cap of its own.
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)
In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which banned soft money, unregulated donations to political organizations for “party building” activities rather than candidate advocacy.
The Supreme Court upheld BCRA, determining there was a link between large, soft-money donations and corruption, or at least the appearance of corruption.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)
This is the case most often cited by advocates for greater regulation of campaign financing who believe it has opened the floodgates for corruption.
In addition to barring soft money, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prohibited campaigns from running ads mentioning candidates on broadcast, cable and satellite services within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
The FEC, under the guidance of the BCRA, prevented the conservative advocacy nonprofit Citizens United from running an anti-Hillary Clinton movie during the 2008 campaign.
After upholding part of BCRA in 2003, the court struck down this restriction, ruling that the First Amendment allows corporate funding of independent political broadcasts. The justices did leave intact a provision that requires electioneering communication to include disclaimers and disclosure of sponsors.
The Citizens United ruling would be applied to another case that same year. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the caps on individuals’ contribution to super PACs, politically active not-for-profits, unions and other groups that make independent expenditures.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014)
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act faced yet another challenge in 2014. That law set a total limit that individuals may give to candidates, parties and political action committees in each two-year election cycle.
While leaving intact the limits on donations to each campaign, party or committee, the Supreme Court struck down the aggregate limits, saying those caps do not prevent corruption and are unconstitutional.
Wealthy individuals may now donate unlimited sums to political organizations, and the ruling paved the way for the creation of joint fundraising committees, through which campaigns and parties raise money together and split the proceeds.
This ruling opened up opportunities for wealthy donors to give to as many political entities as they want. It also led to the creation of joint fundraising committees — partnerships in which campaigns and party committees collect one large check from each donor and split the proceeds.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.