Follow the Money
The Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company didn’t just operate in Colonial America — they shaped it, owning land, collecting taxes, and appointing officials while bending the ear of the Crown. The founders knew this history. It’s why, before the ink was dry on the Constitution, they built two guardrails against corruption: The Foreign Emoluments Clause, which bars federal officeholders from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments, and The Domestic Emoluments Clause, which limits what a sitting president may receive beyond his salary.
Two hundred and fifty years later, both provisions are functionally ignored.
Dark money floods campaigns. Billionaires buy elections. Legislators trade on inside information. Corporations spend millions greasing the wheels for government contracts. Supreme Court justices vacation on the yachts of wealthy benefactors. The president’s family pockets billions from foreign business dealings. All of it may be technically legal. None of it is good for democracy.
We are staring into the abyss — and the abyss is lined with cash.
To bulletproof the democratic principles on which this country was founded, the flow of money into politics must be disrupted, curtailed, and in some cases removed. Without that, public trust in government is not recoverable. Here is where the rot is — and what we can do about it.
Campaign Finance: The Price of Access
Running for office is staggeringly expensive — and that cost has consequences. Candidates on both sides spend enormous energy chasing donors, and donors expect returns on their investment. Citizens United (2010) gave that transaction constitutional cover, ruling that independent political spending by corporations, unions, and organizations is protected free speech. The ruling spawned Super PACs and unleashed a flood of “dark money” from nonprofits that disclose nothing about their donors. Outside spending in federal elections ballooned from roughly $750 million in 2008 to over $3 billion by 2020.
The result is a political system in which Elon Musk and Silicon Valley venture capitalists can spend hundreds of millions to shape elections — and the policies that follow. Money means influence. Influence means favorable treatment. That is not a free market of ideas. That is a private market for power.
Lobbying: When Expertise Becomes a Commodity
Lobbying, in theory, serves a legitimate purpose — providing policymakers with specialized knowledge across industry, research, and public interest sectors. In practice, it often functions as a financial pressure campaign. Technology companies alone have spent billions in recent years to influence laws, regulations, and government contracts in their favor.
The problem compounds when legislators and senior officials leave office and immediately become the lobbyists they once regulated — the classic “revolving door.” Their relationships, institutional knowledge, and back-channel access don’t belong to them. They were built on the public’s dime. When those assets are monetized for private clients, the public pays twice.
Congress: Trading on the Public Trust
Members of Congress are restricted from accepting gifts from registered lobbyists. They are not restricted from trading stocks. That gap is not an oversight — it is a standing invitation to profit from privileged government information.
When a senator sits in a classified briefing about a sector of the economy — and then trades in that sector — it is the functional equivalent of insider trading. On Wall Street, that activity is a federal crime. In Congress, it is business as usual. The same standard should apply to both.
The Supreme Court: When Appearances Become Reality
Justice Clarence Thomas accepted private jet travel, yacht vacations, and real estate transactions from a wealthy Republican donor — and did not disclose them on his financial reports for years. Whether any of it was technically illegal is almost beside the point. When a Supreme Court justice accepts lavish gifts from someone with interests before the Court, the institution’s credibility is the casualty.
The Court responded in 2023 by adopting a voluntary Code of Conduct. Voluntary. For the most powerful judicial body in the nation. There is no enforcement mechanism, no independent review, and no penalty for noncompliance. A code of ethics that cannot be enforced is not a safeguard. It is a press release.
The Presidency: Profiting Without Consequence
President Trump has made no effort to separate his financial interests from the office he holds. A recent New York Times investigation found that Trump and his family have accumulated at least $2 billion in assets since returning to office — including $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures that have faced zero federal scrutiny or regulation. The Trump family’s business dealings have also benefited directly from the president’s relationships with foreign leaders in countries critical to U.S. foreign policy.
The Emoluments Clauses were written precisely for this. They are not being enforced. That silence is its own statement about where we are.
What Can Actually Be Done
The problem is large. The solutions exist. What has been missing is the political will to enact them. Here, concretely, is what needs to happen:
1. Overturn Citizens United. Legislation is already on the table. Representative Ro Khanna’s Abolish Super PACs Act would cap individual contributions to Super PACs at $5,000 — a meaningful first step toward dismantling the infrastructure of dark money.
2. Ban Congressional Stock Trading. Members of Congress should not be trading individual stocks while in office. The potential for insider trading is not hypothetical — it is structural. Blind trusts or broad index funds only.
3. Close the Revolving Door. Extend mandatory cooling-off periods before senior officials may lobby their former agencies or congressional colleagues. The same restrictions should apply to senior staff, whose relationships and institutional access are just as valuable — and just as prone to exploitation.
4. Restore and Strengthen Whistleblower Protections. The Trump administration has systematically dismantled the infrastructure that allows federal employees to report wrongdoing — firing inspectors general at 17 agencies, gutting the Office of Special Counsel, defunding whistleblower hotlines, and proposing government-wide NDAs. These protections are not bureaucratic formalities. They are the early warning system for democratic corruption. They must be restored and made legally durable.
5. Establish Enforceable Ethics Standards Across All Branches. Voluntary codes of conduct are not ethics reform — they are the illusion of it. Uniform, enforceable standards across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches should include mandatory gift reporting, independent ethics review, clear recusal guidelines, and real penalties for noncompliance.
6. Mandate Meaningful Financial Disclosure. Disclosures should be comprehensive, publicly accessible, and written in plain language — not buried in dense filings designed to obscure rather than illuminate. Assets, liabilities, outside income, gifts, third-party-funded travel, and significant financial transactions should all be on the record.
7. Invest in Civic Education. Democracy’s last line of defense is an informed citizenry. Current civic education — for both students and adults — is inadequate to meet the moment. People who understand how government works, what their rights are, and how money corrupts the system are far harder to manipulate and far more likely to demand accountability.
None of this will happen on its own.
These reforms require sustained political pressure, engaged voters, and legislators willing to act against the very system that funds their campaigns, which is a high bar. But what’s the alternative? Do nothing and watch money continue to warp the American political system?
The founders built guardrails, but those guardrails have been systematically dismantled. The question at 250 years is not whether or not we can see the problem, but whether we have the fortitude to fix it. As Woodward and Bernstein were told during the Watergate scandal—follow the money.
This article and others can be found on the Orange County Democratic Party Substack page here: https://substack.com/@orangedemsnc.
