Supreme Court erases limits on political parties’ spending on elections * WorldNetDaily * by Bob Unruh
Supreme Court erases limits on political parties’ spending on elections
By Bob Unruh
In a decision perceived as a victory for the Republican party, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down Federal Election Commission limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president.
The case was pushed by now-Vice President JD Vance.
It was decided on the expected 6-3 division with Democrat-nominated justices opposing the decision.
The high court said the Federal Election Campaign Act restricts a political party’s spending on campaign activities in coordination with candidates.
President Donald Trump called it “A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS and, more importantly, The First Amendment!”
The high court affirmed those limits back in 2001 “as consistent with the First Amendment.”
But that’s changed.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules that putting limits on political party campaign finance expenditures VIOLATE the First Amendment.
BIG WIN for Republicans @NRSC!
The vote is 6-3. pic.twitter.com/b1dg1PSs5A
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 30, 2026
“Petitioners—a group of candidates and political party committees—challenged FECA’s political party coordinated-expenditure limits under the First Amendment, arguing that Colorado II is no longer good law. In light of Colorado II, the en banc U. S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected petitioners’ First Amendment challenge.”
The new ruling is that “FECA’s political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment.”
“At the outset of the litigation, at least one of the plaintiffs—then-candidate for Senate JD Vance—undisputedly had standing. Vice President Vance still maintains an active ‘Statement of Candidacy’ on file with the FEC indicating his intent to run for Senate in 2028, as well as a campaign committee that has raised money for a Senate race, establishing that this dispute is justiciable,” the majority wrote.
“The First Amendment provides that ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.’ This Court has determined that political parties—as well as candidates, private individuals, and outside groups—may make unlimited independent expenditures during political campaigns,” the opinion said referring to its earlier Citizens United decision.
Now, “This case concerns FECA’s limits on spending by political parties in coordination with candidates. FECA limits political-party coordinated expenditures. FECA’s limits impair the party’s traditional forms of communication such as advertisements; preclude parties from amplifying the voice of their adherents; impose additional monetary costs and burdens on political parties; and inflict a ‘stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do,'” the decision said.
Statutory limits on contributions to candidates or parties are subject to “closely drawn” scrutiny, and “to satisfy that standard, a regulation may not be ‘disproportionate’ and must be ‘necessary’ and ‘narrowly tailored’ to its asserted goal,” the justices said.
JUST IN: SCOTUS has ruled in NRSC v. FEC that the FECA limit on the amount of money parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for a federal office VIOLATES the First Amendment.
This will have massive implications for the midterms this November. pic.twitter.com/vTu2mQnTLG
— Ryan Van Slingerland (@real_rvslinger) June 30, 2026
The court using a “rigorous” judicial review, said, “the Court agrees with petitioners that the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits are not proportionate, necessary, and narrowly tailored given the other less-speech-restrictive tools available to the Government to prevent circumvention—in particular, earmarking and disclosure laws.”
“Given the meaningful prophylactic measures available to combat quid pro quo corruption or its appearance, the Court concludes that the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits at issue here are ‘disproportionate’ and are not ‘necessary’ and ‘narrowly tailored’ for the circumvention interest,” they said.
The spending limits had come out of a desire to prevent large donors from avoiding caps on individual contributions to a single candidate by giving money to a party, with the understanding it would go to that candidate.
After President Donald Trump took office for a second term, the Federal Election Commission dropped its defense of the law and joined with Republicans in urging that it be overturned.
Bob Unruh
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is currently a news editor for the WND News Center, and also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.
Elections, Supreme Court
CIA's secret mind-control horrors exposed as new MKUltra claims emerge
A secret CIA program that experimented on unwitting Americans has once again been thrust into the spotlight, with lawmakers hearing chilling allegations of drugging, psychological torture and deadly human experimentation.
Several congressional officials convened on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to hear testimony about Project MKUltra, the notorious Cold War program that sought to develop techniques for interrogation, brainwashing and mind control.
Lawmakers heard claims that the CIA lured Americans into brothels and secretly dosed them with hallucinogens, fed prisoners massive quantities of LSD for weeks and conducted experiments aimed at erasing memories and controlling human behavior.
Witnesses further alleged that some victims died during the experiments and that the true number of casualties may never be known.
Historian Stephen Kinzer told lawmakers under oath: 'MKULTRA conducted the most extreme experiments on human beings that have ever been carried out by a US government agency. 'By any standard, they qualify as medical torture.'
Project MKUltra was launched by the CIA in 1953 amid fears that the Soviet Union and China had developed advanced brainwashing techniques.
Kinzer and investigative journalist Tom O’Neill, the second witness, also warned that the sinister CIA experiments could still be happening in secret decades later.
Kinzer said: 'There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb [the then-CIA boss] could not have imagined.'
Lawmakers heard claims that the CIA lured Americans into brothels and secretly dosed them with hallucinogens, fed prisoners massive quantities of LSD for weeks and conducted experiments aimed at erasing memories and controlling human behavior
Read More
EXCLUSIVE My dad was a government scientist working on a secret mind-control program... then the CIA murdered him. Here's the gruesome evidence I believe proves it
Gottlieb believed that to implant a new mind into someone, researchers first had to destroy the one that already existed.
Subjects included criminals, mental patients, drug addicts, Army soldiers and ordinary citizens who were given drugs without their knowledge.
The testimonies also raised fresh questions about whether the program achieved far more than the government has admitted and whether a modern version of MKUltra could still exist today.
'The American people deserve the complete record,' Kinzer told lawmakers.
'The victims and their families deserve acknowledgment, accountability, and justice.'
The hearing laid bare the staggering scope of the operation.
According to congressional testimony, MKUltra consisted of at least 149 subprojects, operated across more than 80 institutions and involved 185 non-government researchers.
The CIA secretly funded hospitals and research facilities so unwitting patients could be used as experimental subjects.
Stephen Kinzer (Left) and Tom O’Neill testified at a House Oversight hearing on MKUltra on June 30, 2026
Witnesses said Americans were subjected to LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and psychological torture without their knowledge or consent.
One of the most notorious examples was Operation Midnight Climax.
The CIA set up safe houses and brothels where unsuspecting men were lured in by prostitutes, secretly dosed with hallucinogens and observed through one-way mirrors.
Kinzer testified that there was 'not even the pretense of scientific experimentation.'
He said the operation appeared to have become an opportunity for agency officials to indulge themselves while conducting unauthorized experiments on Americans.
Even more disturbing were allegations surrounding psychiatrist Dr Louis Jolyon West, whom investigative journalist Tom O'Neill said worked closely with Gottlieb.
After combing through hundreds of boxes of West's papers, O'Neill discovered correspondence that he described as a blueprint for MKUltra's true objectives.
According to the documents, West proposed using LSD and hypnosis to induce 'trance states,' 'confusions,' 'amnesias' and other 'specific mental disorders' in unwilling subjects who would remember nothing afterward.
Pictured is Dr Frank Olson with his wife Alice and their children (L-R) Eric, Lisa and Nils
'These experiments, needless to say, must eventually be put to test in practical trials in the field,' O'Neill testified.
The ultimate goal, O'Neill claimed, was to learn how to extract information, implant false information and alter an individual's beliefs and loyalties.
'In other words, to completely switch their allegiance from one group or leader to another,' he said.
One of the most explosive claims involved a 1956 report in which West allegedly wrote that he had learned how to replace 'true memories' with false ones.
O'Neil said under oath: 'It has been found to be feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual and, through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place, but that a different (fictional) event actually did occur.'
He called it the 'Holy Grail' of MKUltra, saying: 'The secret to taking possession of a person's mind and controlling their behavior.'
The hearing also revisited some of the program's darkest alleged abuses.
Kinzer described a case involving a group of African American inmates in a federal prison in Kentucky who were reportedly fed double, triple and quadruple doses of LSD every day for 77 days.
A memorandum dated December 2, 1953 provided details about Olson's death and included illegible Xeroxed copy of the death certificate
'We have no idea what happened to them,' he told lawmakers.
Another major focus was the death of Dr Frank Olson, a scientist who worked on CIA biological weapons programs and secretly participated in MKUltra.
Olson died in 1953 after plunging from a New York City hotel window, a death officially ruled a suicide.
But Kinzer told Congress that he believes Olson was murdered because he intended to expose the government's biological weapons activities and reveal what he knew about lethal MKUltra experiments.
'The Frank Olson case, that was a murder,' testified O’Neill. 'I don't believe that was a suicide.'
'The motivation was [that] he was going to be a whistleblower and announce that the US government was using biological weapons in the Korean War and was also going to share what he knew about MKUltra experiments, including lethal experiments.'
Witnesses also claimed that people were 'experimented to death' at a CIA safe house in Germany and suggested that the true number of victims may never be known.
The secrecy surrounding MKUltra was compounded when then-CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of the program's records in 1973.
Thousands of documents were shredded or burned, leaving only a fraction of the operation's history intact. Yet Kinzer warned that the story may not be over.
Although Gottlieb eventually concluded that mind control had failed, Kinzer said advances in artificial intelligence, cyber technology and neuroscience have dramatically changed the landscape.
'Covert agencies may have access now to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not even have imagined,' he testified.
'Whether it is still true that mind control is impossible is uncertain.'
