Super PACs are political action committees that can receive contributions in unlimited amounts from wealthy individuals and entities to influence elections. This allows them to circumvent individual contribution limits and has made them a powerful tool for billionaires and monied interest groups to pour huge sums of money into campaigns, giving rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption. Super PACs were created by a 2010 federal appeals court decision in a case called SpeechNow.org v. FEC, which ruled that limits on contributions to political action committees engaged in making independent expenditures were unconstitutional. The court based that ruling, which has yet to be reviewed by the US Supreme Court, on the false premise that if independent expenditures do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption, then neither do unlimited contributions to independent expenditure committees. This decision has led to an explosion of super PAC spending in our elections.

This played out in 2024 when this election became the most expensive election in history, with over $2.6 billion spent by super PACs. Elon Musk, the nation’s most high-profile billionaire, wielded a $200 million war chest through his America PAC, largely self-funded, helping elect Donald Trump and ushering in an extraordinary alliance of wealth and political power. Records were broken in the race for New York’s 16th congressional district Democratic primary when it became the most expensive primary in US history, with over $25 million spent and over $14 million spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).