March 23, 2026 — American Promise released the following statement from CEO Jeff Clements as ongoing reports detail significant spending by technology, artificial intelligence, and other outside interests in the 2026 midterm elections.
Key points:
- At least $185 million in AI-related spending shaping midterm elections, including recent primaries
- New questions raised about the Supreme Court’s 50-year-old “money as speech” theory
- Broad, bipartisan public support for returning authority over election spending rules to voters and their elected representatives
“At least $185 million in AI-related spending is entering the 2026 midterm elections, including the industry’s recent spending in primary elections in Illinois and Texas, in which they spent tens of millions of dollars. This is not just a test of corporate political power. It is also a test of a 50-year-old constitutional theory,” said Clements.
“In the 1970s, when the Supreme Court first struck down limits on individual political expenditures on the theory that money in elections is a form of speech, it said that ‘restricting spending would necessarily reduce the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.’
“In that decision, Buckley v. Valeo, the Court did not root its opinion in the original text of the First Amendment. Instead, it made an empirical prediction: more spending would mean more — and better — political discourse.
“But what we’ve seen in recent years is not more or better discourse. Far from it. Super PACs formed to influence how AI is regulated have already run millions of dollars in midterm primary ads — including attack ads on hot-button issues like immigration, health care, the economy, and crime — without a single mention of AI, even though AI regulation is the central policy interest behind the spending. The strategy is clear: flood the airwaves with ads that make elections about everything except AI, and cut off an urgently needed policy debate about this technology by ensuring the defeat of foes and the election of friends.
“The Court’s prediction has failed. Instead, by stripping Americans of the ability to decide about election spending rules, the Court has brought an era of less free speech, less information, and less freedom for voters and lawmakers to engage in the debates needed to improve the lives of Americans and the future of the country.
“To be clear, the tech and AI industry behind this spending isn’t doing anything new. This is what political spending looks like under the system the Supreme Court has built; not an expansion of the marketplace of ideas, but a strategic deployment of money to shape electoral outcomes and the public policy that follows, with the real agenda often hidden from the voters being targeted.
“Fifty years ago, the Court made money in politics a constitutional issue, taking the power to set many of these rules out of the hands of voters and their elected representatives, and predicting that protecting spending as speech would enrich our electoral conversations. A half-century later, that prediction has proven wrong, and Americans across party lines want that authority returned to the people and the representatives they elect.
“American Promise is advancing the For Our Freedom Amendment to restore to the American people, through their elected representatives, the authority to decide how money in our elections should work.”
About American Promise:
After a series of Supreme Court decisions opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending, Americans have watched money speak louder than their votes. American Promise is a cross-partisan organization working to pass the For Our Freedom Amendment, to restore the power of Congress and the states to set reasonable limits on campaign spending. With 24 states already signaling support, American Promise is building a national movement to put voters back at the center of our elections.
