Dear Friends,
Thanks to your support and commitment, we have made significant progress toward the next amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, a Republican from Michigan, has introduced H.J. Res. 191, a constitutional amendment that would restore the ability of voters and our elected representatives to set reasonable rules around money in politics. This is a significant achievement and you can read the details in this Leadership Quarterly.
In addition, in April, American Promise announced that Idaho is now the 25th state to pass a resolution urging Congress to put forth an amendment solution, following right on the heels of Oklahoma and Utah.
I want to acknowledge the hard work of our states team, together with Director of Congressional Affairs Bob Noziglia, in these key milestones.
I’m also excited to report that Fast Company magazine has named American Promise to its 2026 list of World Changing Ideas. This kind of editorial endorsement is hard-won, and incredibly valuable.
Here’s the bottom line: Now is the time for us to accelerate our work. Our state-led strategy is working, and Americans are ready for the amendment solution. In new polling from Pew Research Center, Americans have once again put money in politics as our top national problem, ranking it above immigration, inflation, and even healthcare. And a POLITICO poll found Trump and Harris voters do agree on at least one thing: There is too much money in politics.
Unlimited spending in elections will continue to make headlines over the next 6 months as the midterm elections intensify. Special interests are spending big. Artificial intelligence companies, and aligned groups, have already put or pledged hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms. We’ve also seen a number of expensive primaries — most notably, Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, where $32 million was spent on advertising — which have left voters feeling exhausted and disillusioned.
In addition, the Supreme Court decided National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, striking down a federal law that set limits on party-coordinated expenditures and opening the door to additional spending by national parties. (I wrote about this case, and those that preceded it, in The Preamble and you can read our statement about the Supreme Court’s decision here.)
As we enter the second half of the year, we encourage you to consider re-investing in American Promise. New contributions will allow us to connect with new allies and make a strong public case for the viability of constitutional reform. We would also value introductions to new prospects: If anyone in your network might be interested in joining this historic movement, we would love to be in touch with them.
As always, thank you for your support. If you have questions or ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Anastasia.
Warm regards,
Jeff Clements
CEO of American Promise
P.S. We continue to add talented leaders and strategists to the organization. We are fortunate to have Martha Ehmann Conte joining our Board. She is a veteran brand-strategy executive who has advised many of the world’s leading companies, as well as a wide array of nonprofits. We have also hired Louisa Imperiale as a full-time senior advisor, focused on fundraising. Louisa has held senior roles at Issue One, Common Cause, and the Republican National Committee, and after spending more than a decade witnessing the corrosive influence of money in politics, Louisa wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Supreme Court’s systematic deregulation of campaign finance. Both are outstanding additions to our team. Please join me in extending a warm welcome.
Outstanding news from Capitol Hill: U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, a Republican from Michigan, has introduced in Congress H.J. Res. 191, a constitutional amendment that adopts, almost verbatim, the language of the For Our Freedom Amendment. The amendment is policy-agnostic, which we have always believed to be the most politically viable solution. In a few words, it would re-empower our state and federal lawmakers to set reasonable rules around money in politics and distinguish between humans and “artificial entities,” while protecting free speech.
“Americans are tired of watching billions of dollars flood into our elections while their own voices feel increasingly ignored,” said Rep. Barrett. “Free speech and competitive campaigns are essential to our democracy, but our elections should not be determined by elite megadonors who have never been to Michigan. The Constitutional Campaign Finance Reform Amendment guarantees Congress and the states the authority to give the power in elections back to the people, restore confidence in our elections, and ensure that candidates spend more time serving their constituents than catering to special interests.”
Article V of the Constitution instructs that once introduced in Congress, a constitutional amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate before being sent to the states, where ratification requires approval by three-fourths of the states.
We will need support from both parties, so it’s encouraging that the lead sponsor of this amendment is a Republican. In the coming weeks, we will redouble our outreach on Capitol Hill, working to reach a congressional tipping point. Certainly, nothing is ever guaranteed in D.C., but this is a significant milestone, and evidence that our strategy is working. Rep. Barrett’s introduction is part of his Blueprint for a Better America, which includes a plank on “Making Government Serve the People, Not Special Interests.” The amendment we have been working toward fits squarely in that work.
In other Capitol Hill news: This quarter, we held several events in Washington, D.C., with key partners and networks, including the Business Roundtable, an organization of high-profile CEOs. We also took part in a panel on “Money in Politics, Polarization, and Possible Pathways Forward” with Braver Angels, a national organization focused on bridging the partisan divide. The panel included American Promise alongside money-in-politics experts from Issue One, The Cato Institute, and RepresentUs. These conversations matter. They strengthen the support for our work, create opportunities to exchange ideas, and help ensure that our state-by-state momentum is matched by growing national awareness and support. At both events, the support for our amendment solution was emphatic.
This past quarter, Idaho officially became the 25th state to formally call on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment. Half of U.S. states now stand united behind our solution, with over 70% of Americans across parties supporting it. We are seeing encouraging trends across our focus states. The effort in Idaho, like Oklahoma and Utah, was spearheaded by a leading conservative in the state legislature, and passed with broad support from Democratic colleagues. In all three states, support has been unanimous or near-unanimous, and the legislatures advanced their resolutions faster than we believed possible. Idaho, notably, was a brand-new focus state for American Promise in 2026. We’re incredibly grateful for our legislative champions across the country.
“Campaigning for a seat … is more challenging than it’s ever been,” said Rep. Brandon Mitchell, co-sponsor in the Idaho House of Representatives in our announcement of Idaho becoming the 25th state to call on Congress to act. “At the root of it is a financial arms race, powered by dark money and big checks written by out-of-state interests that don’t understand Idaho politics, priorities, and values.” Sens. Carl Bjerke and Mark Harris expanded on this point in a forceful op-ed in the Idaho Statesman. (You can read it here.)
Resolutions have passed in the Arizona Senate, Indiana Senate, and Missouri House, and we have others pending in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Planning for our 2027 state-level work has already begun.
This quarter, we welcomed Louisa Imperiale as a senior advisor to our development team.
Louisa is an experienced c-suite executive with a proven record of leadership in fast-paced political, nonprofit, academic, and tech start-up environments. She has held senior roles at Issue One, Common Cause, and the Republican National Committee.
After spending more than a decade leading national fundraising efforts and witnessing the corrosive influence of money in politics, Louisa wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Supreme Court’s deregulation of campaign finance since Watergate, and committed the rest of her career to reducing the influence of money in American politics. She holds a B.A. in nonprofit management, an MBA in strategy, and a Ph.D. in media, technology & democracy.
We have also added Martha Ehmann Conte, an exceptional talent, to our Board of Directors.
Martha spent 20 years as an advertising and brand strategy executive, working with leading global companies, including Procter & Gamble, American Express, Nestlé, Gilead Sciences, BMW, and Hewlett-Packard. She is a known civic leader, working to amplify the voice of the “commonsense majority” in local and national politics. She currently serves as a trustee for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the Exploratorium, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Point Blue Conservation Science, and the Smithsonian.
As we reach the year’s midpoint, we encourage you to consider your plans to invest in American Promise. As the 2026 cycle intensifies, outside spending escalates to new heights, and public frustration with money in politics continues to grow, additional investments would allow us to connect this prominent issue of great public salience with its structural solution. This includes building public understanding of the constitutional amendment process as a viable, historically grounded lever for democratic reform, and making the case that this solution is not only necessary, it’s achievable.
Additionally, we value your connections and willingness to make introductions. If there is anyone in your network who may be interested in supporting a solution to address unlimited money in politics, we would love to meet them.
Please reach out to Liz (lizh@americanpromise.net) to set up a time for introductions or to have a conversation about your giving.
Check out our prospectus and video to see why your support matters and how we can seize this opportunity to make history together.
Please join us this fall for calls with American Promise leadership to hear about our progress and plans, and ask any questions you may have.
Mark your calendars:
We hope to see you there!
Ben and Maggie first connected with American Promise after attending an event in fall 2025, where they were inspired by a community of people with different backgrounds and perspectives coming together around a common goal. Ben has written about the intersection of AI and election spending, arguing that campaign finance reform is necessary as technology continues to evolve. You can read Ben’s essay here.
In a word: “mixed.” There is our state of mind as parents and community members, and then there is our state of mind as global citizens of the world. As far as our daily life goes, we are lucky beyond belief; and while surely we don’t take much credit for whatever good fortune has come our way, we are grateful on a daily basis for our family, friends, community, cats, and so on. And to be clear, we don’t mean this in an obnoxious, Instagram-ish “#blessed” sort of way, but just that we mostly enjoy our daily lives and try not to take it for granted.
On the other hand, when we step back to consider what’s going on in our country, the corrosion of the media environment, the de facto legalization of corruption and, most recently, the rise of an unbridled AI power base with minimal alignment to the needs of global society, we find ourselves deeply, even profoundly, concerned. In this way, our “state of mind” is a jarring split screen, with the lightness and comedy of our household juxtaposed against an increasingly dark and chaotic backdrop, seeping in via algorithms on our phones and doing who knows what to our cortisol levels! What strange times.
Ben: I am truly ashamed to admit how many (or really, how few) actual books I read per year, so I will exercise my Fifth Amendment rights on that front. I do listen to a lot of podcasts, and recently enjoyed “Fela Kuti: Fear No Man,” a podcast about, you guessed it, Fela Kuti, the Nigerian father of Afrobeat music, political rabble-rouser, and complicated, highly imperfect man and father. It covers a lot of ground, including an absolutely fantastic episode about his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who managed to organize one of the few truly successful and scaled-out anti-colonialist / anti-corruption protest movements in Nigeria, as well as several episodes that illustrate how Fela was able to effect change by speaking obvious-but-illicit truths very loudly. Something to think about in a world beset by a new wave of authoritarian leaders…
Maggie: I’m reading more to escape than to learn at the moment, and am lucky to be part of a fantastic book club that reads new (and sometimes not-so-new!), interesting fiction all the time. The series “On the Calculation of Volume” by the Danish author Solvej Balle is a recent favorite; I also loved “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar. My current go-to podcast is “Fashion Neurosis” from Bella Freud, great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud; I particularly loved the interview with the poet and author Ocean Vuong.
Ben: I’ll go with the living and historical pairing of Gary Shteyngart and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), respectively. They’re both charming, funny, self-effacing writers who see some important aspect of the world for what it is and write about it in ways that help the rest of us see it, too. I would recommend listening to Gary Shteyngart’s recent interview with Ezra Klein (whom I admit drives me a little crazy sometimes, but please bear with him!) as he assesses what’s going on in our society and the importance of seeking pleasure amid the contemporary drumbeat of optimization and zero-sum competitions. He’ll also make you feel okay again about enjoying a Negroni while making a new friend, no matter what your smartwatch tells you!
Maggie: Living: Dolores Huerta, the organizer, farm-worker rights advocate, and feminist. At 96, she is still such an inspiring force. Historical: Does my grandmother count? She died in 2003 and was a huge part of my life into adulthood. Like so many women, she devoted her entire life to family and community; also like so many women, she had extraordinary gifts that weren’t fully explored or appreciated. Her passion was playing piano, and she was a prodigious talent. Her bluesy boogie-woogie music was the background to my childhood, and I love to think about how free and un-self-conscious she was when she played. She was always interested in politics and valued civility and reasonableness so highly — I often wonder what she would have thought of where we are today.
Ben: We actually started by digging into seemingly unrelated topics we also happen to care about — social and labor issues, climate change, AI regulation, and others — but quickly realized that meaningful progress in any of those areas require very expensive battles against deep-pocketed PACs and the powerful politicians they help to elect.
When we first learned about American Promise, we loved the mission, but worried it might be infeasible. It was only after attending a few events and talking with other supporters that we understood just how broad the support is for what American Promise is doing. I remember attending an American Promise talk, flanked by a left-wing law professor on one side and by an old-school Reagan Republican on the other, and somehow we were all completely aligned on this one singular issue! It was really refreshing.
In any case, we support American Promise because our society needs to “Make Corruption Illegal Again” before we can expect our government to faithfully represent We/Us The People. It’s the rare organization where the vision is clear, the goal is ambitious yet attainable, the leadership is phenomenal, and the timing is perfect. We really are truly very excited about it!
American Promise CEO Jeff Clements’’ “Money in Politics Is Not the Supreme Court’s to Decide” was featured in Sharon McMahon’s newsletter, The Preamble, where he outlined how we got to this point in the problem of unchecked money in politics and how a constitutional amendment is the necessary solution.
“Half of U.S. States Are Now in Revolt Over Money in Politics,” Independent Voter News declared in its coverage of Idaho becoming the 25th state to call on Congress to advance the amendment solution. The article highlighted American Promise’s state-first strategy, noting that the organization is “laying the groundwork by first getting support from the states.”
We released two new episodes of our For Our Freedom Podcast. Jeff sat down with Oklahoma state Sen. Brent Howard to talk about how dark money is impacting his state, and Ohio state Rep. Tex Fischer to discuss Ohio’s recent efforts to prohibit foreign spending in elections and how states are “laboratories of democracies.”
American Promise has now published its 2025 Annual Report. Thanks to the work we undertook in 2025, and your continued support, we entered 2026 in a solid position. Read more in the 2025 Annual Report.
American Promise continues to expand how we engage supporters through video, podcast, and digital content. One example is our recently launched new episodes of Beyond the Headlines, a series that helps connect breaking news and current events to the growing movement for a constitutional amendment that empowers citizens, not money, in our political system.
Through these efforts, we’re reaching new audiences, creating more opportunities for civic engagement, and providing supporters with short, timely, shareable social media content that helps advance the conversation in communities across the country.
If you haven’t done so, please contact Liz Harvey at lizh@americanpromise.net to learn how you can make a commitment to invest in American Promise’s growth and expansion in new states and in Washington. It’s a great opportunity to make history in the next few years!
Contact our Director of Donor Relations Carolina Hojaij at carolinah@americanpromise.net to learn how you can become an American Promise Ambassador. Our Ambassadors are funders and allies dedicated to expanding our network and introducing others to the American Promise movement.
Join our grassroots volunteers by contacting Director of Mobilization Mike Monetta at mikem@americanpromise.net. Opportunities include everything from talking with neighbors and colleagues to writing letters to the editor and gathering pledges from elected officials.
