Six billionaires spent more than $100 million each to elect Trump in 2024. That's more than every Trump candidate committee combined. This isn't an accident. It's the system working exactly as the Supreme Court redesigned it.

The case is Citizens United v. FEC (2010). Decided 5-4. The court ruled that corporations and unions could spend unlimited money on independent political expenditures because money is speech. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority. Justice Stevens, in dissent, called it a 'rejection of the common sense of the American people.'

From the Gilded Age until the 1907 Tillman Act, corporate money owned American politics. From 1907 until 2010, we built a campaign-finance system that — imperfectly — kept the worst of it in check. Citizens United didn't invent the problem. It restored it.

Six donors with $100M each can now drown out every party committee, every union, every grassroots small-donor program. Polling consistently shows that 70-80% of Americans across both parties want this overturned. It hasn't been, because the people who benefit are the people with the power to fix it.

Any candidate, in either party, who will publicly commit to (a) a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, (b) public financing of federal elections, and (c) lobbying reform with real teeth. There aren't many. The ones who do are worth tracking.

On Tuesday, Indiana Republican primary voters defeated state senators whose only offense was refusing to redistrict the state's congressional map mid-cycle to add Trump-friendly seats. The senators wanted to follow normal procedure. That is now a primary-able offense.

Trump backed primary challengers in eight Indiana state senate seats. He won most of them. The challengers' platform was, almost literally, 'we will redraw the map when the president asks us to.' The incumbents' position was 'the legislature decides, not the president.'

The Constitution puts redistricting authority with state legislatures (Article I, Section 4). The reason the Founders did this was to keep the federal executive out of the business of choosing congressmen. Tuesday in Indiana was a clean inversion of that design. The president picked the legislators who will pick his congressmen.

This is what the consolidation of power inside a single faction looks like in practice. Not tanks in the streets. Just a state senator who voted the wrong way getting beaten in a primary, and the next state senator learning the lesson without anyone needing to spell it out. Article I doesn't enforce itself.

How many of the new Indiana senators introduce mid-cycle redistricting bills in the next 90 days. Whether courts intervene. Whether other GOP-controlled state legislatures take the same path. Whether any congressional Republicans publicly object — and what happens to them when they do.