YouSaid · the spoken record

Lawrence Lessig

lines on the record: 61
first: 2026-02-05
most recent: 2026-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Then we have something to fight for. Whether you think we'll succeed or not, I think you should fight for it. And, you know, I understand the argument that there's no hope, there's no reason to be fighting because we can't succeed. But I don't think you're allowed to take that position. If you love your country, like if you love your child, you will do anything you can regardless of the odds. And that's what we should be doing right now, whatever it takes. We've got to find a way to restore or establish a democracy that speaks for the people, not for the tiniest fraction of the 1% who can by elections or can corrupt the system so that it responds to them, whether through threats or through incentive.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we solve this problem, if we can take down the super packs and at least open up the opportunity for other influences to matter,”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think people thought America's empire or America as an ideal would never end. I think if we don't fix these problems, it ends. I think it's ugly. I mean, how does it end? Like, was there a division? Is it like who do we become? But I think that the world that we imagine ourselves contributing to, like the values that I think we imagined standing for have begun to collapse and we don't have a mechanism to pull it back together if we don't solve these core corruptions. Now, I think we should be simple about it. Let's start with the money. Like that is the core. That is the foundational for every thousand hacking at the branches of evil. There's one striking at the root. This is the root. And if you don't find a way to address this, none of the other changes. Voting rights, none of those things are going to matter.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is happening everywhere around the world. And increasingly in the United States, I mean, I don't want to oversell the possibility. It's not something that in the next year or next five years is going to be present enough so people can imagine it or see it. You know, many people polling, they'll say, yeah, I would think a random group of Americans would be better than Congress. And maybe they believe that. But I think people can be easily frightened by the idea of random representatives because when I think of any random guy, right. And of course, there will be idiots, but there will only be 5% idiots. Like 95% will be like decent normal people, 10% idiots or whatever. But the point is, we need to demonstrate it. And if we demonstrated it more and more and more and more people began to see this can actually solve the problem that government can't, I think you're going to see more power being given to them to at least constrain or put guardrails on.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turns out, I mean, maybe you do, but it turns out the ones that have succeeded, you don't have to pay them a terribly large amount. I'm a strong believer that we've got to support them to make sure everybody can participate and they don't lose anything from participating, not like jury pay, but like real pay. But regardless, whatever we have to pay them, if you could begin to address problems like climate change or inequality or tax policy or whatever, that would be worth it. And these bodies surprisingly turn out to be able to do much more, much more effectively than ordinary government. I mean, it feels like a kind of rocky moment when rocky surprises the world that he can at least stay in the ring with Apollo Creed and in Rocky too, he's able to defeat Apollo Creed. And we are Rocky in this story, like a random representative body of citizens sitting down and addressing COVID policy or addressing climate change policy.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. You pick them in a more representative way, then you'll tend towards democracy. And citizen assemblies, if done right, random representative groups of people who are brought together It's a big jury. It's a statistically significant jury. Given information, given a chance to deliberate, can produce solutions that our government can't. I mean, sometimes I think we should just have, call it the government games where we impanel a series of citizen assemblies to address the problems Congress is supposed to address, and we give them two years. And at the end of two years, we say, which of these two institutions actually came up with real solutions to these problems? And I guarantee you, I would get...”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our leaders. And indeed, Aristotle and Montesquieu both said if you have elections, you will tend towards aristocracy. But if you pick leaders in random...”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what we know about people who've seen and experienced citizen assemblies is that they trigger in those people this kind of aha moment. Like it's the first time they're doing anything related to government or politics and they feel like this is something powerful and different. And what it's able to do is to take people who have very different views about the world and get them to come to an understanding and propose solutions that are meaningful, real solutions. And that experience is something that when people see it or have it, they begin to recognize that the world of professional politicians is not the only world we could have. Indeed, one of my favorite books here is a book called Against Elections by Van Raybrook. And he starts the book by saying, you know, we've had thousands of years of history of democracy, but only a couple hundred years where elections have been the sole way in which we pick.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That are catastrophic to humanity. And I don't think we're there yet. We're not at that point. But it's just about a point about you can't think and”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, I think 1047, or the California regulations were important just to make sure that we knew what was going on inside those companies. I mean, I defended some of the whistleblowers, Daniel Cocatello, who came out and was willing to give up $2 million of his own dollars in order to have the freedom to speak. That open air. He didn't have to do that. Yet OpenAI. And one of the purposes of that bill was to make it so whistleblowers could know and identify problems with what was going on inside those companies. That has nothing to do with open source. What I wrote in Economist about open source was open source is extremely valuable. I think it's become even more important, especially to assure access across the world. But I said that there's going to be a point at which the models become sufficiently powerful that we need to make sure that we can assure that they are not deployed in ways”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not functioning from question one. Yeah, we don't have a functioning Congress, right? So I think this is like the problem of the age. I'm just finishing a book where the first, the metaphor is the Titanic. And it's like, you know, you hit the iceberg and you see the ice on the deck and you're like, okay, we can fix that But then you have a gash in the hull, and it's like, doesn't matter if we fix that, we're going down. Well, the equivalent is like the democracy reform stuff I've been doing for 20 years. We came close to fixing that. We know how to fix it. We could fix all of that stuff. But this engagement-based media is the gash in the hull.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quadratic engagement tax. So taxed on the basis of engagement. So one unit, it's one dollar, two unit, it's four, three units, it's nine. At a certain point, the platform, you'd be like, hey, Lesson, go take a walk. Like you're costing us too much money to be on that platform. My point is that's totally constitutional. And if you did it, you would blow up the business model. And they would have to figure a different way to try to make money, one that wasn't focused on constantly getting us to spend our time enraged based on what we're being fed. But to get something like that requires”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, you know, everybody's focused on the next AI, the future AI, and like scary fears about, you know, runaway AI if we build it. If anybody builds it, everybody dies. And I think those are important problems to focus on. But we need to recognize old AI, the AI that drives social media, is the present threat. And that present threat has turned us into people that can't even hear each other, ignorant people who hate each other, and that that will continue to be deployed and perfected as the AI's algorithms driving your media, your consumption of engagement-based media become ever better at figuring out how to trigger you and get you to do what they want you to do, which is to spend more time focus on the device. The only way to fix that is to blow it up, literally blow it up, well, figuratively, literally, blow it up. And, you know, we could do it legally. So, for example, imagine Congress passed an engagement tax that basically taxed”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back then, exactly right. Exactly right. Same thing. But, you know, we don't have that media ecosystem anymore. Well, it depends on the...”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would implement policies that would address this kind of elite corruption? And I mean, one of the big problems, though, is whether that message gets out, whether that message is reached. I don't remember the great television series scandal, and there's one episode just in 2016 before Trump became Trump, where there's a Trump-like character. And he's like a big populist. And then Carrie Washington catches him on tape, like admitting that all of his base is just, you know, basically hillbillies and he hates all of them. And that leaks. And once that leaks, his support disappears. Well, that's just liberal fantasy. Yes, it is.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it really depends on whether there's a Democrat who can credibly articulate the other side. And the other side is not anti-populist, it's pro-populist. It's a side that says, look, you were right. We do have a system that sucks up to the elite. And look, you know, the Epstein files are just one dimension of it. You can see it everywhere. And we have got to change that corruption. But you thought Donald Trump was going to change that corruption for you. Look what happened. The guy's $4 billion richer because of that corruption, because of that elite. Those tech firms are sucking up to him and giving him everything he wants. Amazon pays $40 million for a documentary about his wife. That is not what you were angry about. That is not what you were fighting for. And so is there a Democrat who can credibly say to that populist base, you pick the wrong horse to fight your fight, but there is a side that would fight your fight.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we first have to admit it's really complicated, especially if we're going to depend on private support. But I think we should not turn away from it just because it's complicated. Yes, we need to draw complicated lines. And that's what my essay was trying to do. Now, I wasn't rewarded for that essay because it created all that trouble. But the point is, we can say that certain kinds of contributors should be treated differently. So Taylor Swift wants to give money to universities, celebrate it, because that money is pure. Like it's wonderful. And if Google wants to give money, you know, I get that people are conflicted about Google, but I also think there'll be clear Google's giving them money. But once you cross the criminal line, then there are two categories. Those you can do anonymously and those you cannot take at all. Epstein, given who he turned out to be, at least as people saw people came to see, should never have accepted any of that money at all.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I thought, holy shit, he thinks that I'm being paid by Google. And then I thought, well, of course he thinks I'm being paid by Google because most of my colleagues who would be coming to testify are actually testifying because they're being paid. Some of them acknowledge that, but not everybody acknowledges that. And that's part of the work that we were doing in the lab was to say this is wrong. Like if you're going to be giving, and I have a disclosure statement on my website to say this, if you're going to be giving advice about policy, you cannot be taking money from the people who are interested in that policy. You cannot be in a position where you depend on them. And if you are, you shouldn't be talking about it. We should be able to craft policy recommendations that are distinct from private dependent. I get it, but you know.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just because they're not kind, right? They also steer research in ways that have no necessary relationship to what's the direction it should go. So I think we've lost an enormous amount because we've handed over those decisions to smaller groups of people who can make them for reasons that are unrelated to what actually benefits. But I think that the point is the institution needs to think about is how do we preserve a reason for people to trust us? And if people think that the reason you're doing what you're doing is you're trying to suck up to your donor, they won't trust you. They won't trust what you say. And I don't blame them. I was once testifying in the days when I was doing work around the internet, testifying about network neutrality. And I got a text from Senator Senunu who said to me, I can't believe you're up here shilling for Google.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, you know, the first point is it's a terrible thing that we depend in all sorts of contexts”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Earlier in the essay was describing the conversations Joey and I had. And what I was saying was suffering abuse obviously it fundamentally affects your judgment on everything. And I at that stage it was coming to the place where I was thinking I was overdoing it. Like I was seeing abusers everywhere. I was completely condemning all sorts of things I didn't really have sure wasn't really sure. And so when Joey asked me this and I said to him like are you sure that he has not, you know, what people worry about and whether are you sure that he is not perpetrating this kind of abuse with minors? And Joey said, from what I can see, that's true. You know, the stupidity was I thought to myself, okay, you're going to react against this. And that's just your abuse speaking.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Milken's a good example. But Epstein is different. Because if you are a victim of sex abuse, and as I said in that essay, I averted to John Hyluman article about me talking about the fact that I spent three years in a school being abused when I was 12, 11, 12, and 13 abused in a school as a child. So I feel this viscerally, this issue is visceral for me. And so what I said was in the context of that, even if it's anonymous, even if anonymous, you should not take money from somebody like that because, you know, if you're somebody who has been abused like this and you discover that the building you're in is funded by an abuser, that is a wrong. That is a harm that nobody should minimize. And so it was kind of bizarre to me how hard it was to kind of make that distinction because I”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can quote it exactly. It was a mistake to take this money. Epstein's money, even if it was anonymous. Now, that's different, I think, from, for example, taking money from a tax cheat. So if a tax cheat gets out of jail and he says, I want to give $50 million to MIT, MIT can take that money, just shouldn't launder the reputation of the tax cheat. But what I said in the essay was an example.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly right. But I want to be very clear about something because you came close to saying it exactly right, but I want to make sure that it's perfectly clear. I mean, what I said in that essay was that if you take money from a person like Epstein,”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I wrote that essay because I was furious about the scapegoating that was going on. I mean, I also wrote an essay attacking Harvard because Harvard, you know, scapegoated Martin Novak, who's not a friend. I mean, I've never met Martin before. By writing a report that makes it seem like he did everything. And the actual man behind the scenes, Larry Summers, never appeared anywhere in that account. And so I wrote that in 2021. Well, let's out now. Go ahead. Yeah, that's all no. Right. But the point is, in my view, the real problem are these institutions put these people into a position where they do this and then they hide and they say that we have nothing to do with it.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ben, what are you talking about? He pardoned everybody. And it was clear to both of us that we all were living in our own little bubble. Absolutely. And the only way to solve that is to launch a practice. I mean, it's not necessarily starting a podcast, but launch a practice of reaching across and trying to find a way to rebuild something of a common ground when the business model of media is committed to finding a way to break that common ground, to turn us into ignorant people who hate each other.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that right? Yeah. So I went back there to kind of talk to them because I said the values I feel like we grew up with, I don't understand how you can support this man. And one of my friends, who was a kind of high school sports star, so way above my coolness level, he and I started a podcast where we were trying to engage to kind of find, see why we don't agree or don't see the things in the same way. And it's been enormously enlightening. I mean, my favorite moment was like when he said we were talking about the J6 pardons and he said, well, Larry, you know, at least he didn't pardon everybody, only pardon the nonviolent people. And I said.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, what are we willing to do? You know, I'll sign up for anything. This is a constitutional crisis. And we're so used to being able to engage in politics sort of, you know, sitting on our couch and like tweeting. You know, it might be that we need to get off our couch and like get into a context where we can begin to engage with other Americans. Now, I think the critical thing from my perspective is to find a way to talk across to other people. I did something before the last election I've never done, which is I went to a high school reunion. I grew up in the kind of Kentucky part of Pennsylvania. So I knew that most of my friends were going to vote for Trump. And I couldn't understand.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're about to do something, a series of cases that will eventually draw Sand in the line and force Trump to abide by the Constitution and that they've been waiting until he's weak enough to be able to do that. And I hope he's right. I don't see the evidence yet that that's what they're going to do. But if they do that, then that might be enough to staunch this effort in the States to basically terrify them into yielding power to the president so he can muck up the 2026 in midterm elections.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Best strategy. Well, you know, ultimately, all we've got left right now on the field is the court's willingness to step up. I mean, you know, the framers never thought that would be the solution. The framers thought separated powers would mean Congress would be the first line of defense against authoritarian president. Well, of course, our Congress is pathetic. It's not doing anything. So then the second line of defense would be the people. But again, gerrymandering basically means that even the people don't have power enough to address this kind of threat. So the third line of defense, all that we've got left are the courts. And the problem is this court has so far been hesitant to draw clear lines that force him to behave, to live up to the legal standards. Now, you know, I bet with my colleague Jack Goldsmith, who he and I spend enormous amount of time talking through this. He thinks”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He has a practical ability to hurt them. And this is the pattern we've seen with him again and again. It's this extortionist kind of mog boss-like pattern. It's like he knows if he sets the price of extortion low enough, enough to hurt, but not too much to make it so nobody would give into it, he can always win. That's what he did with nine law firms who cave to him, even though the legal basis he was asserting had zero basis in the law. That's what he did to media organizations, CBS, ABC, Amazon, Meta, all of these companies that basically realized even though he had no basis for his claims were going to cave into him because it's cheaper than fighting. That attitude encourages the extortionist. And we see the consequence of it. And so, you know, when you ask, what's ultimately going to stop it?”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they're election officials so that he can effectively exercise control over the election process. And that's wrong on two fronts. Number one, the presumption of our constitution is that election systems are run locally. And the only exception to that is if Congress passes a law to make exceptions to that, and that law only governs federal elections. It doesn't govern state elections. And so Trump is number one believing that he has the right to control how states run their election systems and that he has that right even if Congress has enacted. So, for example, in Colorado, he punished the state of Colorado by saying, I'm going to take the Space Force headquarters and move it to Alabama. Why? Because you have mail-in voting. Now, first of all, the idiocy of criticizing mail-in voting as a form of like corruption is just beyond measure. But the point is he has no power as the president to”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll play by your rules, right? But you can still be arguing and you should be arguing to change the rules to the right rules and the right rules would end this gerrymandering. The biggest reason for that is, you know, the political system is supposed to be responsive to what the people care about. But even if there's an overwhelming victory for the Democrats, it won't actually be that significant because so many of the...”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Congress can address federal gerrymanders. So the bill that almost passed, the part of the For the People Act, would have ended gerrymandering. There wouldn't have been any this game at the federal level. There still would be state gerrymandering because the Supreme Court has said that the Constitution does not block partisan gerrymandering. And the real question is whether the next Congress will be kind of exhausted by the games that went on in this election cycle and pulled back from it. And I think that what we need is people on both sides to begin to stake the principled position gerrymandering is terrible and we should end it. Now, I think that given that principle, it doesn't follow that you can't play the game so long as the rules are the way the rules are, just like, you know, I set up a super pack a decade ago to try to end super packs. And the point was we're going to do what we can under the existing rules to change the rules.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, this is a disaster that is, again, without any basis in the Constitution because we have an express constitutional amendment that is giving to Congress the power to address this problem both in the voting context and in the 14th Amendment equality context. And instead of yielding to the decision of our framers to say Congress gets to make these laws, you have a court that increasingly arrogates to itself the power to second guess Congress's judgment. And again, by what right? Why do they get to do that? So it is an incredible step backwards, not justified by anything other than a political preference of those who happen to be in the majority right now. And I would think that at a certain point they would have the humility to recognize that whether they agree with the objective of equal freedom to vote or not, they don't have a concept.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be saying no to them When you're not actually standing on anything that the Constitution ever articulated, it's just your own made up theory about money is speech and blah, blah, blah, that turns out to produce this zone where there can't be regulation. That's the argument against them.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never, never. That was never the resolution of we the people in 1787 in 1868. There was never a point where we said that. And so the real question for these activist judges is who the hell are you to be blocking Democratic legislatures and in Maine's case, the largest number of Main voters to vote for anything in the history of Maine, more than any candidate, more than any initiative? Who the hell are you?”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the strongest case that they've got is kind of like the question I just addressed. Why don't we just wipe all this away and let transparency rule? And the argument, so that's the argument that just let's step back and just have no regulation here at all. But the reason that's really troubling is that the whole idea of democracy is that the democratic representatives get to enact laws unless the Constitution clearly says they can't. And when you say that the democratic legislatures are not allowed to address corruption, you've got to answer the question, when in our past did we the people in some supermajority way say yes, we do not allow corruption to be addressed. Corruption must be constitutionally protected inside of our democracy? And the answer is...”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was taking from these super packs or getting from these super packs. But if you could eliminate that from the system, you would give them the freedom to be able to be who they actually want to be as opposed to who the money says they must be. And so there's a chance if we get this right and get this through the first circuit quick enough that we could fix this problem by the next presidential election, but not by 2026.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we just filed the last briefs in the First Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday. And so now the court will decide when it will hear arguments. Hopefully they'll hear arguments this spring. If they hear arguments this spring and decide the case by the summer, that means we could be in the Supreme Court in the next term, which would be critically important because if we're in the Supreme Court the next term and the court goes with us depending on how they write that opinion, that could end super PACs by 2028, which means the next presidential election won't be with a last where super PACs were dominating what both parties were able to talk about. You know, many people look at Kamala Harris and they say, Kamala Harris failed to address issues that ordinary people cared about. But I feel kind of sorry for her because the reason she couldn't is that her campaign was so tied down with the extraordinary amount of money.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, super packs effectively now are the system that he's talking about. I mean, now he says, well, the advantage of just getting rid of everything and requiring transparency is we at least know who it is. And again, I'm saying I don't think we're getting anything from that. That's not going to shame most of them. So the point is we'd still have a system where it's a tiny few who are able to leverage their power to control federal legislation. I would love a system where we have many, many more people who are contributing or are part of getting money inside of the system because then if money matters, it's mattering in a democratic way. Small D democratic way. It's what we all want. The problem right now is that when it's the super PEC money, it's what the tiniest fraction of a 1% want. And it turns out the richest, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, don't want what average Americans want.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, not the rich more than the poor, explicitly. Not the rich more than the poor. Well, we've created a system where it's the rich more than the poor that our politicians are dependent on. And so is it surprising that they are just unable to do anything that addresses problems the vast majority of Americans want to see addressed”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's great to see you again. Yeah, no, that would be a disaster, a total disaster. Because, first of all, people imagine that transparency solves everything. Transparency solves nothing, nothing. What it does is convince people that it is a corrupt system. I mean, look, we don't know precisely who the dark money comes from, but we know that dark money is in the system in order to buy results, which it does. So the point is the transparency would convince us of the problem. And what we know when we eliminate caps on contributions is that the number of relevant contributors increasingly shrinks. So you have a smaller, smaller number of people who are calling the shots. Right now, I think it's like 300 families that basically control what happens in our government. I mean, it's banana republic design. And so that's certainly not what the framers intended. Jet Madison promised us a house of representatives at least that would be, quote, dependent.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's not clear that they were changing precedent in the kind of weird ways they've developed the interpretation of corruption statutes. But the point is they would have to change precedent. If they were to say that a state cannot regulate where everybody's acknowledging there's a risk of corruption, I mean, that's been the basic principle for 50 years. When Buckley said you can regulate contributions because we can see the risk of corruption there, but you can't regulate independent spending because that is not coordinated. And that non-coordinated speech, therefore, has no interest in regulation because if it's not coordinated, there can't be any quid pro quo and quid pro quo is the only basis this court has recognized for limiting that speech.”
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“People get it. On the right and the left, they get it. And I think that the point is like, if it's recognized as not a partisan issue, but just a thing where people are just so disgusted with this money, what's in it for the court? And on the other hand, if the court ruled in our favor, the country would be like, whoa, this is amazing. They are coming down with a decision that 80% of us agree with. And they can do it without ever confessing any error in their earlier decision. So I just don't think see what the upside for them is, whereas the downside, like that they would be seen as just furthering what everybody now perceives as this grotesque system of corruption would just be catastrophic, I think, for that institution.”
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“What's in it for them? Because if they were to go against us, they would have to change the law to even further reduce the ability to police a thing which everybody must recognize is now a huge problem within our government. I mean, you know, our initiative was passed with 75% of the vote in Maine. You know, a very purple state.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially when it's targeting a kind of corruption, the framers were really focused on, which is this what I've called dependence corruption, this creating these improper dependencies inside of the court. So that means you've got, I think, an opportunity to get a significant number of these justices on our side. If we win in the First Circuit, we will definitely be in the Supreme Court. And in the Supreme Court, I feel like this is almost a gift to the Supreme Court because we're able to say to the Supreme Court, look, you don't have to reverse citizens united. In fact, you can say citizens united is correct. And it's under the logic of Citizens United. Right.”
2026-02-05 · On with Kara Swisher · How to Knock Out Super PACs with Lawrence Lessig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Corruption, but nonetheless she crafted some whole new theory of the First Amendment that said, even though there's a risk of corruption, you still can't regulate contributions to super PACs. So that's the most extreme opinion ever in the history of the federal courts because never has the Supreme Court or any lower court said if there's a risk of corruption, there's nothing you can do about it. So on the core theory, the core theory for analyzing this, we think we win. But the second theory that we've been pushing is the idea that if these originalists on the court, primarily the conservatives, really want to be serious about their originalism, then under the original meaning of the First Amendment, there should be no doubt that a state or Congress has the power to control the size of contributions to a committee. That's plainly the sort of thing that the framers would never have imagined courts stepping in to regulate.”
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“Right, so the case basically is testing whether Maine has the ability to limit the size of contributions, not the spending, but the size of contributions to independent political action committees. And that's been attacked by two super PACs, backed by Leonard Leo, the most important super PAC Macher on the right. And so we intervened, equal citizens intervene in the state of Maine is defending the initiative as well. Our lawyer, Neil Catial, has taken on the case because he's convinced we have a clear shot at winning and we have a clear shot at winning under two separate theories. So one theory is the theory of Citizens United, which says, you can regulate, but if and only if, there's a risk of quid pro quo corruption. And in our case, what the district court said, unlike every other lower court before, our district court said, hey, look, there's a risk of quitting corruption.”
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“From New Jersey, who was indicted, and the indictment was he promised favors in exchange for a contribution to his super PAC. So there was quid pro quo corruption involving a super PAC. The very thing the DC circuits had could not happen. And indeed, his lawyers had the Hutzpah to file a motion to dismiss the indictment saying the thing you've accused us of, the DC circuit says, can't happen. So we must be innocent. And of course, the court ignored it. But the point was that revealed the mistake. And since about that time, a bunch of people have been trying to find a way to get the court to consider this because speech now, the case that created Super PACs, was not appealed to the Supreme Court. So the court is narrow.”
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