Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Thursday, November 05, 2026

Montana voters became the first in the nation Tuesday to sign off on an ambitious plan for banishing political dark money, putting the state on a collision course with the landmark Citizens United ruling.

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Montana -- yes, deep red Montana -- voted OVERWHELMINGLY last night to neuter Citizens United. No Supreme Court ruling or constitutional amendment needed. Here's how the plan works -- and how you could replicate it where you live. www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1fP ...

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-- Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 6:39 PM · Nov 4, 2026

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More: Although Montana's measure was the first to reach voters directly, the state is the second overall to try the maneuver " after Hawaii, where the governor signed similar legislation in May. Rather than directly restricting political spending, both versions would remove that power from the state corporate statutes that authorize companies, trade associations, and other "artificial persons" to operate in the first place.

Supporters say the strategy is crafted to avoid clashing with the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, which held that corporate election spending is protected by the First Amendment. But business groups, GOP politicians, and other opponents insist it will crash into the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine, which prevents states from hinging the exercise of one right on the surrender of another.

#1 | Posted by qcp at 2026-11-04 02:58 PM | Reply

Nice!

It's a start, anyway.

#2 | Posted by Corky at 2026-11-04 03:29 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

Yes we can!

#3 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-11-04 03:41 PM | Reply

#3

Yes We Can Obama Song by will.i.am

www.youtube.com

#4 | Posted by Corky at 2026-11-04 03:47 PM | Reply

Good for Montana. Montana isn't as backwards politically as most think it is, we have a family cabin there and we've had it for 90 years. Beautiful state, and for the most part, kind people..

#5 | Posted by a_monson at 2026-11-04 08:28 PM | Reply

We got a new House district in MT, and my district (western Montana) went Dem. I am very pleased about this.

Kind of a long story, but we could of gave our Senate seat to in an independent (who is pretty popular) instead of an R, but the D refused to drop out. The I was endorsed by the State Dems and the DNC refused to support the D. It's no wonder, because the D is a loon.

Anyway, a step in the right direction for us as a state.

#6 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-11-05 11:43 AM | Reply

#5 | Posted by a_monson

Glad you have a good experience.

MT culture is traditionally a "live and let live" libertarian mindset. Be independent, be courteous, be helpful, and mind your own business.

Hopefully we can get back to that.

#7 | Posted by horstngraben at 2026-11-05 11:51 AM | Reply

@#5 ... Good for Montana. ...

I agree.

Now let's hope more states follow Montana's path ...

#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-11-05 12:28 PM | Reply

I doubt the SCrOTUS will let it live.

It's going to end up taking an amendment (or court packing) to fix this mess any time soon.

#9 | Posted by DarkVader at 2026-11-05 06:05 PM | Reply

The 1A is very pesky.

#10 | Posted by BellRinger at 2026-11-06 03:20 PM | Reply

__________
Supporters say the strategy is crafted to avoid clashing with the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, which held that corporate election spending is protected by the First Amendment.

Citizens United is usually one of the things that Dems, for some reason, keep blaming when they lose general or an issue elections, just as "media" and "SOROS!!" and some other predictable things the Reps blame on their losses - because it's easier than examining, let alone admitting, the actual reasons for bad elections results.

With or without CU, "money = free political speech" has been the fact of political life before, and even more so in the digital information age, which slightly predates the CU decision in 2010.

The days of knocking on doors for GOTV, that mostly benefited the unions, have been going away in most (at least, non-rural) locales - you can't stop people from becoming "influencers" and "sharing" their opinions on ex-Twitter, YT, TT, and multitude of blogs and boards, from which the information (and misinformation) flows.

In fact, misinformation/disinformation campaigns by the bad actors, like Russia (Operation Overload aka Matryoshka / Storm-1679, Storm-1516 etc.), Qatar, Iran, would be a lot more difficult to counter without CU, as those expenditures are not bound by any laws.

www.wired.com - A Pro-Russia Disinformation Campaign Is Using Free AI Tools to Fuel a 'Content Explosion' -
Consumer-grade AI tools have supercharged Russian-aligned disinformation as pictures, videos, QR codes, and fake websites have proliferated.
- 2025-07-01

www.sgdsn.gouv.fr - Matryoshka - Operation Overload - Storm-1679 - A pro-Russian campaign targeting media and fact-checking community

In the last several elections (2026, 2024, 2020, 2016) the side with the substantial money advantage lost or didn't do as well as could be explained by the dollars spent - the decisive factors were the [exceptionally poor] quality of the candidates (Hillary Clinton, Biden-2020/2024, Harris-2024) and their campaigns.

Harris had $1B, the expenditure of which still seems unexplained, even after a 1-year "post-mortem", Trump and RNC had $500+M in the bank while DNC was broke, Musk spent $500M or so on several campaigns, including TX... and the results of that were dismal.

So the excess of money isn't at all the guarantor of victory... in fact, most of this money is poorly spent - watching 300 stupid commercials in the course of campaign (as opposed to 200, 100?) doesn't usually change people's opinion when they usually make one after a few early "infomercials" or actually read about candidate and props in more details, or discuss them on boards.
__________

#11 | Posted by CutiePie at 2026-11-08 08:09 AM | Reply

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