Good Monday Morning, everyone.
Progressives have spent years railing against Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found corporations, unions and others could spend unlimited sums to influence elections.
If you’ve ever seen attack ads on TV, paid for by independent expenditure groups, as has been the case in Boston during this year’s mayoral campaign, that’s the legacy of Citizens United.
And U.S Rep. Jim McGovern wants it to end.
Last week, the Central Massachusetts lawmaker reintroduced a proposed constitutional amendment that would reset the clock on the high court’s ruling by, among other things, banning corporations from spending money to influence federal elections.
The legislation, dubbed the “Free and Fair Elections Amendment,” comes as advocates warn against what they describe as the “unprecedented mixing of private wealth with political power.”
“Since Citizens United, more than $77 billion has poured into U.S. elections, rigging our democratic system to benefit the well-off and well-connected,” McGovern, D-2nd District, said in a statement. “That’s not democracy — that’s an auction. It’s government of, by and for billionaires and big corporations, not the people.”
He’s not the only one raising the red flag.
In the decade-plus since Citizens United, wealthy donors to both parties have been rewarded with policy wins and plush ambassadorships, according to an analysis by The Brennan Center for Justice.
As it’s currently written, McGovern’s amendment also would:
“Limit individual contributions and expenditures in federal races to $1,000 in total,”
“Require Congress to create a public campaign financing system for federal candidates — or withhold congressional pay until it does,” and
“Affirm the right of states to set their own contribution and spending limits for state and local elections.”
Free Speech For People, an advocacy group pushing for the constitutional change, developed the language of the proposed constitutional amendment.
It’s also pressing for reform to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a new impeachment of President Donald Trump, among other causes.
“In the wake of a presidential election in which the world’s wealthiest man profoundly and perhaps decisively influenced the result — by spending almost $300 million in support of Donald Trump’s campaign, $44 billion to purchase the world’s largest social media platform and turn it into a de facto arm of the Trump campaign, and millions more in multiple $1 million bribes to individual voters — getting big money out of our elections has never been more urgent,” Ben Clements, the group’s chairperson and senior legal adviser, said in a statement.
The group praised McGovern for “continuing to courageously fight for a democracy of and for the people, rather than an oligarchy for the corporations and the mega-wealthy.”
As Democrats look to retake the U.S. House in 2026 and shave GOP margins in the U.S. Senate, they haven’t been shy about banking on that anti-oligarch message.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have filled arenas on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
Ocasio-Cortez’s travel expenses have come under scrutiny as a result.
McGovern also has been the beneficiary of some of that populist rage on the left. In February, he touted the overflow crowd that showed up for a “Coffee with your Congressman” session.
“To fix our broken system, Congress must get big money out of politics and restore democratic power to the ballot box where it belongs,” McGovern said.
Fentanyl test strip bill advances
A bill that would provide legal protections for people who administer fentanyl test strips is among those that the state Senate has teed up for a vote as soon as this week.
The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Stone Creem, D-Norfolk/Middlesex, was one of three bills the Senate Ways and Means Committee sent to the floor on Thursday.
The remaining bills would expand an abuse registry to protect day habilitation participants with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and shift insurance responsibility for rental cars in an effort to lower costs, State House News Service reported.
As it’s currently written, Creem’s bill builds on an existing state law that laid out criminal and civil liability protections for “people who, in good faith, provide or utilize fentanyl test strips or other drug testing equipment,” according to a Ways and Means Committee analysis.
The bill would also shield people who distribute the tests from professional discipline. That expansion “ensures that first responders and other municipal workers can safely utilize this life-saving equipment,” the Ways and Means Committee noted in its analysis of the bill.
The state Department of Public Health distributed nearly 400,000 fentanyl test strips in 2024, and the lethal drug was present in 88.6% of opioid-related overdose deaths in 2024, according to that same analysis.
MIT prof gets Trump admin post
Sriprakash Kothari, the Gordon Y. Billard professor of accounting and finance at MIT Sloan School of Management, could soon have a new title: assistant secretary of the treasury.
The Trump administration included Kothari’s name in a battery of nominations it sent to the U.S. Senate earlier this month.
Kothari is at least the second Bay Stater to nab a post in the Republican White House.
Last year, President Donald Trump appointed Kevin A. Hassatt, a Greenfield native, to head the National Economic Council. Hassatt was serving as a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution when the call came from Washington.
Monday numbers
It’s a busy time for officials at the state’s health insurance marketplace, who are now notifying tens of thousands of people statewide that they will, or could, lose coverage thanks to the domestic policy mega-bill that Trump signed into law in July.
Those same workers also are preparing contingency plans if lawmakers on Capitol Hill extend tax credits that could head off rising premiums, our friends at State House News Service report.
That flurry of action comes even as a new poll peels back public sentiment on access to health care in the Bay State. And to put it mildly, people are sweating it.
A third of respondents (33%) to last week’s MassINC/CommonWealth Beacon poll said they’d had to skip or delay treatment because of rising costs. A quarter of the poll’s 1,000 respondents also said they had to skip or delay care for a dependent.
And a fifth of state residents said they had to wait more than two months for an appointment with a primary care provider, and 16% had to wait that long to see a specialist, according to the poll.
The poll, conducted from Aug. 11 to Aug. 18, had a margin of error of 3.5%.
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They said it
“All students should be taught about 9/11 and its aftermath, which is a tragic and important piece of both our state and our nation’s history.”
— On the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Gov. Maura Healey announced that she’d told the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and its Board of Elementary and Secondary Education “to work together to ensure that [9/11 education] is fully incorporated into school curriculum frameworks.”
Turned up to 11
Rising Irish singer/songwriter CMAT plays the iconic Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Wednesday, Sept. 17 (tickets and more info here). The Guardian said the artist, born Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, crafts songs that are “mournful yet accessible, emotionally literate and cleverly crafted, but, crucially, with a huge sense of humour.” From her LP “Crazymad, For Me,’ here’s ”Stay for Something.”
Your Monday long read
There was a lot of talk last week about the fissures in our society that were once again laid bare by the shooting death of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. And inevitably, there were musings about a looming civil war, a battle between blue and red America.
Writing for The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance has just one message for those doomsayers: Quit it.
“Most Americans do not want civil war. Anyone who is declaring it should stop,” the piece, titled “Strawberries in Winter,” offers.
Here’s the germane part:
“Wouldn’t most Americans, if faced with the prospect of killing their neighbors and destroying the country from within, probably still choose peace? She told me that she wished people would stop and think: ‘Do you really want us to be in a bloody civil war for 10 or 15 years? You’re going to see your grandkids get killed. Do you really want that?’”
“Perhaps, she suggested, America’s salvation would come from widespread attachment to the mundane comforts and prosperity that accompanies prolonged periods of relative peace. Americans ‘don’t like it when they can’t get strawberries in the winter,’ she went on. ‘This idea of revolution. Really? Is that really what you want?’ Societies that dissolve into civil war are ‘not having a good time,’ she said. ‘It’s not fun.’”
That’s it for this morning. As always, you can send any tips, comments and questions to me at jmicek@masslive.com. Have a good week, friends.