John,
When billionaires buy elections, democracy dies.
Democracy doesn’t die overnight -- it gets sold off, piece by piece, to the highest bidder.
In the 2024 elections, just 100 billionaire families spent a staggering $2.6 billion to influence the outcome of federal races. That’s more than one out of every six dollars spent across the entire election cycle -- funneling unchecked wealth through super PACs and secretive dark money groups to buy influence, silence opposition, and bend public policy to serve their own interests.
This isn’t democracy. This is a hostile takeover.
And it’s been years in the making. Ever since the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United ruling, billionaires and corporations have been given the legal green light to flood our elections with money, making free speech a luxury only the ultra-wealthy can afford.
Billionaire contributions aren’t just about influence -- they are power. Elon Musk alone poured $278 million into Trump’s reelection campaign and, in return, gained sweeping influence over federal policy, including the gutting of regulatory agencies that once held him accountable. That’s no longer democratic politics. That’s plutocracy, plain and simple.
Tell Congress: If we don’t get billionaire money out of politics now, we won’t have a democracy left to save.
If corporations are “people” and money is “speech,” as the Supreme Court absurdly declared, then it follows that billionaires’ corporations are superhuman entities -- immune to human limitations such as being made out of flesh and blood with a human lifespan and human values such as empathy and compassion.
And billionaires are not just buying ads -- they’re writing themselves out of the tax code, slashing worker protections, attacking voting rights, and threatening the existence of Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile ordinary Americans are being priced out of our own political system. This is the billionaires’ endgame: rule by wealth, not by the will of the people.
Congress must act now. Three urgent steps can begin to restore democracy:
Tax billionaire wealth, including unrealized capital gains—not just workers’ wages
Overturn Citizens United and bring back real campaign finance laws
Ban dark money and restrict corporate influence in our elections
Every year we fail to act, billionaires entrench themselves deeper into power, and everyday Americans lose more of our voice. The longer this goes on, the more impossible it will be to reverse. This is not a drill. With billionaires buying our elections, we have not a democracy, but a ruling oligarchy.
Tell Congress: Stop the billionaire takeover. Get money out of politics, before our democracy is gone for good.
Democracy can’t survive when only the richest voices are heard. Thank you for fighting back -- while we still can.
- DFA AF Team
