Money isn’t leaving politics any time soon

Remember the Supreme Court case we talked about last week, Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate? Yeah, we’re doing a deep dive on it today.

At the heart of the case is an obscure campaign finance rule that limits the amount of post-election day contributions that can be used to recoup personal loans a candidate makes to their campaign. It was intended to crack down on corruption. But the court sided with Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and said the law is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

“It’s another decision in a series that has kind of chipped away at decades-old safeguards, that have limited the corrupting influence of money in politics,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which filed an amicus brief in support of the campaign finance law.

On the show today, Weiner talks about what this means for the midterm elections, the future of campaign finance and this court’s approach to the First Amendment.

Then, sales of new homes fell to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. We’ll explain why this is exactly what we’d expect to be happening in the economy right now.

Plus, if you’ve forgotten some of the faces you’ve met over Zoom during the last two years, you’re not alone. Listeners have a name for that phenomenon. We’ll also get smart about lifetime warranties and bear spray!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

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