 Well, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has voted to make our already broken campaign finance system much much worse So they struck down a campaign finance regulation that prohibits candidates from using campaign funds to pay back their personal loans Yeah, now this entire case was spearheaded by Ted Cruz He purposefully violated this law in an effort to challenge its constitutionality and we are learning today that that effort has paid off as Huffpost explains Senator Ted Cruz can now hit up donors to help pay himself back for the $555,000 he loaned to his campaigns in 2012 and 2018 Cruz won the ability to recoup his loans with political donor money after the court ruled that a 2002 campaign finance law creates an unconstitutional burden on freedom of speech that law prohibits candidates from raising up to $250,000 in post-election contributions to repay loans made during a federal political campaign Yeah, so this institution as far as I'm concerned has no legitimacy This is the institution that claims that corporations are people money is speech But yet women can't have control over their own bodies because that's not enumerated in the Constitution The founders didn't explicitly say that abortion is in the Constitution Therefore, you don't have that right but these corporations they can contribute unlimited sums of money to politicians I Mean what a joke now to be fair. This isn't anything new if you've been paying attention They're building upon already bad precedent that has functionally broken our democracy So it started in the late 70s with Buckley v. Vallejo where the court struck down limits on campaign expenditures arguing that it violated the First Amendment and then in 2010 They opened the floodgates with Citizens United where the court held that limits on individual political contributions violated freedom of speech and In 2014 with McCutcheon. They did away with the last remaining restrictions on campaign Donations striking down limits on political contributions over a two-year period. So what this is going to do is make our already corrupt system Exponentially worse. It's already the case that you don't really have a voice in our supposed democracy Unless you have a lot of money, but it's just gonna get worse. Nothing will change It just will get much much worse now. I want to pinpoint the dissent written by Elena Kagan. So Justice Elena Kagan basically penned a scathing dissent explaining exactly what I'm telling you that this is permitting Corruption essentially that's exactly what this is going to do and the conservative majority is allowing this to happen They're green lighting quid pro quos. How is this acceptable? So she writes political contributions that will line a candidate's own pockets given after his election to take office pose a special danger of corruption Kagan argued pointing to the issue of recouping personal loans The candidate has a more than usual interest in obtaining the money to replenish his personal finances And is now in a position to give something in return The donors well understand his situation and are eager to take advantage of it in short Everyone's incentives are stacked to enhance the risk of dirty dealing post-election donors can be confident Their money will enrich a candidate personally Kagan wrote and those donors have of course learned which candidate won when they give money To repay the victors loan they know not merely hope He will be in a position to perform official favors the recipe for quid pro quo corruption is thus in place a Donation to enhance the candidates own wealth the quid made when he has become able to use the power of public office to The donor's advantage the quote the politician is happy the donors are happy The only loser is the public it inevitably suffers from government corruption She continued in allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained today's decision can only bring this country's political system And to further disrepute and she's absolutely correct our democracy at this point is broken it is incapable of performing the most basic functions for its people and it's not just because of campaign finance laws being too Relaxed to be clear because there's also institutions that just favor Republicans the Electoral College, you know gerrymandering but It's getting worse and it's going to continue to get worse and I always talk about this study But in 2014 Princeton University released a study by doctors Gilan's and Page And they found that when you look at policy outcomes normal Americans have a statistically insignificant impact on what gets passed But economic elites and special interests they actually do dictate what becomes law and They're not trying to say that the correlation specifically is because of Citizens United But what they're saying is that we have a democracy that doesn't represent the people it only represents wealthy people So in this instance if the people can no longer affect change that democracy begins to break down It can no longer survive So what Elena Kagan is saying here is you're opening the floodgates even more and there's going to be a breaking point You're now enabling quid pro quo's in an absurd way like this decision is insane But yet you're just allowing this to happen building on already bad precedent that's going to ruin democracy But yet simultaneously and she's not saying this I am they are Overturning 50-year precedent when it comes to women's reproductive health and they're probably soon going to get rid of other Rights that aren't specifically enumerated in the Constitution marriage equality the right to be gay in this country Contraception so it's gonna get worse and this institution is killing democracy and as they continue to do this Their legitimacy will decrease and there's going to be more outcries from the public and you know I don't blame them the protests will continue because this is not okay This is not acceptable But this is exactly what you can expect when you have far-right extremists on the Supreme Court when they shouldn't even be there because Their seats were stolen from Barack Obama right remember that when Obama nominated Merrick Garland Mitch McConnell didn't even offer him a hearing They kept that seat open until Trump came into power and then they felt that seat And then they claimed you know we can't do this We can't fill seats during an election year that people have to make their voices heard But in 2020 Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and then they replaced her a week before the election So there's no standards like we talk about court packing conservatives have already packed the Supreme Court So yet Democrats are too afraid to talk about court packing. It's already been packed The Supreme Court has been ruined. It will be extreme for a generation only if we're lucky So this is what we have to look forward to more insane decisions like this that will continue to destroy American democracy Do you enjoy watching independent news shows like the humanist report the rational national and the majority report? But oftentimes YouTube doesn't deliver our videos to your subscription box. Well, I've got a solution for you It's called the opt-out app available right now in the iOS app store coming soon to Android Opt-out is an app made by and for progressives where they take all of the most popular independent news shows and they put them in One convenient location you'll find all your favorites on there like the humanist report the rational national the majority report And the app is updated multiple times per day So your news feed is constantly up to date if you enjoy watching independent media This is the app to get downloaded today