Dark Money, Elections & the Supreme Court — Inside Citizens United | Tiffany Muller

Watch the full episode: YouTube

Episode Summary

What really changed after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision—and why do most Americans believe it broke democracy? Tiffany Muller, President and Executive Director of End Citizens United, reveals how dark money flows through elections and what can be done to restore transparency and accountability.

Key Topics: Citizens United, dark money, Tiffany Muller, campaign finance, Supreme Court, election reform, political transparency, democracy, corruption, money in politics

Conversation

Evan Meyer: 00:02.168 Good morning, everyone. Today we have Tiffany Mueller here on Meyerside Chats. She is the president and executive director of End Citizens United, where she leads national efforts to reduce the influence of big money in politics and strengthen democratic accountability. In this role, she works at the center of campaign finance reform, supporting candidates, advancing policy, and challenging the post-Citizens United system that has reshaped American elections.

Before leading and Citizens United, Mueller built rare end-to-end political experience across local, state, and national politics. She served as an elected city council member on the Topeka City Council, giving her first-hand experience with governance at the level closest to voters. Later, she held senior national roles, including deputy political director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and chief of staff to a member of Congress. Positions that played

placed her inside the strategic, operational, and financial machinery of modern American politics. That combination of elected office and senior political leadership gives her a grounded insider view of how money, power, and incentives actually operate across the system. Tiffany, good morning or afternoon.

Tiffany Muller: 01:18.947 Thanks so much for having me on. It's such a pleasure to be here. And I loved that you were talking about the city council experience and how that's closest to the people. And what it made me think of was all those calls I used to get about potholes on people's streets. it was great. It was great. It's wonderful to be here.

Evan Meyer: 01:36.558 That's amazing. amazing. the things that really people, that people on the everyday experience have to work with.

Tiffany Muller: 01:46.413 That's right. That's right. Those calls would come in at 6.30 a.m. for those wondering.

Evan Meyer: 01:52.942 Yes. Well, why don't we're here today to talk a little bit about or a lot of it about Citizens United and the work that you're doing to overturn that or mitigate that or create a constitutional amendment somehow, whatever the I'd love to learn about the strategy that you're using to to make the difference here. But just to get started, explain a little bit about Citizens United.

what that is and where we are today in terms of the legal and political landscape around.

Tiffany Muller: 02:26.719 Yeah, well, okay. So in case your viewers don't always just sit around reading Supreme Court opinions for fun, Citizens United was a January 2010 Supreme Court ruling that basically did, it took two really terrible ideas and it merged them together. And it said, money equals speech and corporations are people. And so it put like a for sale sign on our democracy.

And what it allowed then is the rise of super PACs and all of this big spending, this unlimited and undisclosed spending to really flood our elections. And what we've seen since then is not just an exponential rise in money in our politics. That is absolutely true. But it has also caused gridlock and dysfunction on every single issue.

that is a pressing priority to the American people. So whether you want Congress to address climate change or gun violence or lowering prescription drug prices or grocery costs or you name it, the gridlock and dysfunction and the inaction on each and every one of those issues can be traced back to the money that is causing that gridlock and that dysfunction.

So what we've seen is that the American people have really lost faith and trust that their elected officials are working for them. They feel like their voice doesn't matter, that they're being drowned out. And you know what? They're not wrong. When you have, you know, the six largest donors in 2024 giving over a billion dollars to influence the election.

Yeah, the everyday American family doesn't have the same kind of voice and power in our democracy. And that's not how it's supposed to be, right? Like our country is literally set up on that the power of our democracy is the people and the voice of the people. And so that is what we are fighting to restore and fighting to, to rebalance those scales a little bit. So, there are, you are right to overturn a Supreme court ruling. need to either.

Tiffany Muller: 04:48.857 have the Supreme Court change their mind, which has happened before, but is always very difficult, or we need a constitutional amendment. That also is really hard, but there's really good progress and good signs toward that. But here's the other thing. There's a whole lot that can be done tomorrow with a simple vote of Congress, and that could be passed to begin to get the money out of politics, that could begin to restore the foundations of our democracy.

So what I know is that we just need the right people in office who actually are committed to making this change happen.

Evan Meyer: 05:26.294 Right, so the major, you would say the major strategy, correct me if I'm wrong, is to get the right people in office who would support this type of legislation at the federal level.

Tiffany Muller: 05:36.501 Right. At the federal level. And we also do some state, races as well. Whether it's, know, governor's races, attorney's general, secretary's of state. And so what we do is we work with candidates and we endorse them and we help them run on these issues. And the reason they need to run on these issues is one, because we are at a crisis point in our democracy, right? We are seeing that day in and day out right now.

what happens when the foundations of our democracy crumble and we don't have the same guardrails that we've had for 250 years. That's number one. But number two, it also happens to be a winning political issue. Voters are sick of the corruption. Voters are sick of a system that is only working for those who can write the biggest check and they are demanding change. So we help candidates run on these issues. We help support them.

We have 4 million members across the country. So we connect our members with those campaigns and candidates. And then we actually help them when they get into office, figure out the right policies to push as well. So, and right now we're running a campaign called the Unrig Washington campaign. It's three really simple things. It is banned stock trading by members of Congress. Cause look, if you are in office, you shouldn't be making money for your personal pocket off of that public service.

Number two, no corporate PAC money. Because look, corporations have a big enough voice in our system. They have a big enough seat at the table. And the American people deserve to know that their elected officials are working only for their benefit, not because some corporate PAC gave them $5,000. And number three, end dark money. One of the big things that we've seen since Citizens United

is a rise in money that we actually don't even know where it's coming from. We know some of it's coming from outside the United States. Some of it is coming from people who don't want to be known. Some of it's coming from foreign governments. So we need to get rid of the dark money to be able to root out corruption.

Evan Meyer: 07:49.006 Sure. So we're talking about dark money and we're talking the Citizens United was around corporations and political campaigns, which is separate than lobbying. Right. But but but the feedback loop between the two is pretty close. Right. Like they're one sort of before you get in and the other sort of after you get in. And one includes writing the legislation and the other doesn't. But but

Tiffany Muller: 08:00.226 Yeah.

Yes.

Evan Meyer: 08:19.148 you know, the relationships there, the meaningfulness is there, and the response to a candidate's phone call, depending on who gave a big amount of money, is probably gonna be picked up quicker when the person gave more money than someone else. for part A of the question, let's jump into like the difference between lobbying and donating to a political campaign in this case, and what you're doing, how it's going to affect that feedback.

Tiffany Muller: 08:33.294 That's right.

Tiffany Muller: 08:49.154 Well, what I like is that you said one of them is writing legislation and the other one isn't. And I wondered which one you meant, because what we know too often is that actually the lobbyists are writing the legislation or writing the amendments or writing the writers that are going into these pieces of legislation. Okay. I just want to make sure. Yeah. I mean, look, here's the thing. Let's take pharma, for example, big pharma, right?

Evan Meyer: 09:01.207 Yes, yes.

That is what I meant. Yes, that is what I meant.

Tiffany Muller: 09:17.774 We know we pay more for prescription drugs than any other developed country in the world. And we know that Big Pharma has 1,500 lobbyists on Capitol Hill on any given day. 1,500. Now there are only 535 members of Congress. So they basically have three lobbyists for every member of Congress. And then on top of that, they spend around $300 million every election cycle.

And it is those lobbyists who often tell the corporations where and who they should spend that money on. Right. And those lobbyists are the ones who are being the face of that corporation. And the corporations are really clear about it. This is in their own written materials. They are making decisions about who to support based on their business interests. Right. So they're basing who they're going to give a check to or

who they're gonna run an independent expenditure for, or who they're gonna dump in a bunch of money for, based on what helps their bottom line and their profit margin. So that typically means either big tax breaks or some subsidies or deregulation, or in Big Pharma's case, not negotiating for prescription drug prices, right? Even though, if you ask Americans across the country,

I think lowering prescription drug prices is supported by about 95 % of people, right? Everyone knows that we're paying too much and everyone knows that the pharmacy companies have way too much power. That's just one example. You can take that and look at it for oil and gas or for private venture capital or Wall Street or right? Like we can look at this on any in any given topic area and see the same kind of thing playing out. Now here's the other piece that you

kind of touched on, but I want to make sure we do touch on. The other problem is, that over the last 30 years, there's been an ever increasing amount of members of Congress going and becoming lobbyists for those for-profit corporations. So back in 19, the late 1970s, only about 3 % of members of Congress went on to become lobbyists when they left Congress. But now it is two thirds of members of Congress.

Tiffany Muller (11:36.94) who leave Congress and go and become lobbyists, right? It really is, but it's like they're gonna cash in and get a much bigger paycheck. The corporations are gonna get an insider track to the other members of Congress that they were buds with. It is a revolving door that is just so corrupt. And so, yes, I was talking about money, but we also take on...

Evan Meyer: 11:40.918 It's silly. It's all it really is silly.

Tiffany Muller: 12:03.178 all of those kind of corruption and ethics reforms that are needed. We need to stop the lobbyist to policymaking to money kind of circle that we have going on. And one of the easiest things we can do is just ban members of Congress from becoming a lobbyist. We could also ban lobbyists from being able to give donations, right? And even make it public who they're meeting with and what they're meeting about. Right now, so much of this is done

behind the scenes and so being able to connect donations to meetings would be a big, big transparency help in rooting out that corruption.

Evan Meyer: 12:45.838 Right. Yeah. Well, so just and then I guess because I guess this leads into the second part of that earlier question, which is if the if a lot of the corruption sits at the root of this human nature, pick up the phone call first for the person with the most money. mean, it's sort of business as usual, right? Like if you're a business, you pay more attention to your 80 percent.

Tiffany Muller: 13:00.993 Mm-hmm.

Evan Meyer: 13:11.978 of the revenue that comes from the biggest clients, right? So like you would make sure that business can continue to operate and focus most of your attention on those larger clients. That's pretty normal and well understood in business. It feels like that's human nature. Like this is in a sense a sole proprietor, sometimes sole proprietor business for a politician.

Right. And why would their human nature change when we overturn or change the because we'll call that level one. But at the end there's still going to be like still got to go figure out how to get the most amount of money and do the same things I'm doing from some other way. And how do we shift that sort of human nature behavior.

Tiffany Muller: 13:56.076 Well, I I think you are right. And I think that there has always been the push and pull between lawmakers and them paying too much attention to those who have concentrated wealth and power and those who have concentrated wealth and power trying to get more wealth and power. And the people, right? The people who want their government to be representative of and to them.

So I think that throughout our country's history, this has been a push and pull that we have seen happen. And if you look at like the Gilded Age, probably the last time that we were, where we saw this much corruption, this much concentration in the hands of just a few, these types of monopolies, there was a real backlash against that at some point. The population, the people stood up and said, no more, right?

And it took breaking up monopolies. took labor gaining strength. It took real reforms at the federal level, things like the Tillman Act that kept corporations out of elections for a hundred years. But those things have always been kind of push and pull. I think the difference of right now is we have never seen this kind of pull. The size and scope that we are seeing now is unlike anything we've ever seen before.

And I'll give a couple of examples. In 2008, which is the cycle right before Citizens United, billionaires spent $16 million to influence the election. In 2024, billionaires, just people who are billionaires out there, spent $2.6 billion to influence the election. But I don't think people really understand millions versus billions. I think it's hard for us to grasp.

But to put that in an easier way, so in 2008, if billionaires gave a million dollars a day, it only took them 16 days to hit that. In 2024, if they gave a million dollars a day to hit 2.6 billion, it would take them seven years, seven years of giving a million dollars a day every single day. We are not in just a little bit more money. In California and the cycle before Citizens United, the most expensive

Tiffany Muller: 16:23.629 The most outside spending in a congressional race was 1.9 million, I believe. In 2024, it was $35 million for a congressional race. Right? And so you're seeing these scopes and what it means is that number one, it limits who can run for office. Number two, it limits what folks can do when they get into office. So as soon, when you say you want to run for Congress, the first two things you are asked is how much money can you raise?

Can you take two years off of your job to just do this full time? Because that's completely normal, right? And then when you get there, if you're lucky enough to get there, instead of figuring out what committees you're gonna be on or what policy you wanna enact first or what your district needs, you're told to go raise money for 30 hours a week, which means you're missing committee hearings, you're missing meetings with constituents, you're not right in the legislation, because.

The lobbyists are writing it. You are doing nothing but on a phone asking for money for your reelection. That is not how our system is supposed to work. So would it fix everything? No, you're right. But would it shift that power back to the people? Yes. And there are things we can do. Like we could do small dollar donor matching like that. I mean, you all have that in multiple places.

You can do that and actually begin to shift who elected officials are responsive to and force them to actually get out and meet their constituents and hear what their problems are. So as just one example. That was a long answer.

Evan Meyer: 18:01.868 Yeah, well, it's a huge, it's very important. And what's interesting is that from the polls, at least the polls that I've found, 70 to 80 % of people support this on almost every poll. Like, it's not a very polarized issue. Now, I guess how you would fix it, like most issues, it's not about whether people agree on the principle, it tends to be whether they agree on the approach of fixing it.

Tiffany Muller: 18:14.944 Yeah. yeah.

Evan Meyer: 18:32.138 is where a lot of times people, things get hung up. So where do you think things are getting, if it's only 70 to 80%, that's really good. But why do you think 20 % of people are supporting it? By the way, it wouldn't be Meyerside Chats if I didn't ask that question. The purpose of it. But why are they supporting it? And do you think that's a relationship to why the Supreme Court made that decision in the first place? Right?

Tiffany Muller: 18:57.932 Mm.

Evan Meyer: 19:00.078 And the goal of this question, guess, is to understand what the motivations of people are who still support it so that we can get to a wholehearted yes that people feel comfortable with,

Tiffany Muller (19:11.98) Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are, let's start with the first part, which is, um, you are absolutely correct. What we see across the country is Democrats, Republicans, independents, all feel like there's too much money in our politics. Um, and all feel like it needs to be addressed, right? And they are all sick of the corruption. They all feel like that needs to be addressed as well. And to your point, I mean, this is 75, 80 % of folks who are supporting these changes.

And when we ask them about very specific policy changes, including disclosure and transparency, stock trading ban, overturning Citizens United, strengthening the Federal Elections Commission, we keep those kind of 80 % support across the board. Now, again, these are not partisanized issues with the electorate. Where it gets partisan is on Capitol Hill, right?

These didn't used to be partisan issues. The changes that we've had in the past, both the initial kind of campaign finance rules that we had in place, or even the most recent bill that passed, the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, those were all bipartisan issues and were led by both Republicans and Democrats. And so in the past, that was true. Like it was supported by both.

Okay. So why did the Supreme Court decide what the Supreme Court decided? Well, they looked at this idea of free speech very broadly, that free speech includes the right to spend money to say what you want to say. And they really argued that having more money to have more speech wouldn't corrupt the system, right?

And that they also said that there would still be limits on what you could give a candidate. You would just have to go spend independently other money if you want to support a candidate. And therefore, because you weren't giving it directly to the candidate, it couldn't be corrupting. I think that is the beyond naive about the way our politics work. If you were running for office and I wanted to support you, I could give you, let's say, you know, the $3,300 max.

Tiffany Muller: 21:34.444 But then if I went and spent a million dollars in a super PAC to support you, even if you didn't tell me exactly what to say, we both know that you would be answering my call, right? When I called. At least with the way the system is now. So we can show that there is way more coordination happening than the Supreme Court said that there would be. These are not independent efforts.

And then number two, they said that there would be complete transparency. So we would be able to actually see where this money was coming from. And that has also been shown not to be true. So here's what others say, like the Institute of Free Speech, they're like, it is speech and we shouldn't have any restrictions on speech whatsoever. I think the problem is, that I don't think ever, I think most Americans don't think money equals speech. I think they think speech is speech, right? And yes, we,

should have the right to speak out and to use our voices, but my voice shouldn't be drowned out just because you have more money.

Evan Meyer (22:38.22) Yeah, it's hard. I'm struggling to find the connection of because I know that's the number one argument that they put forth is the freedom of speech. Of course, like everyone's favorite argument. So like I'm just struggling to make the connection of why they would think a corporation equals the in a sense.

the same type of voice, like it feels a little bit sleight of handy and misleading. And then to call it Citizens United, which I know is the nonprofit before, is why, right, and it was an anti-Hillary movie or whatever that was there, right? So like, so, but still, like it feels, and I'm, why would they even label it Citizens United if it is really helping corporations? And,

Tiffany Muller: 23:02.848 Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Muller: 23:11.478 That's right.

Evan Meyer (23:24.68) How are they tying this so closely to the definition of the vote of a person? Like a quay? I'm struggling to get that.

Tiffany Muller: 23:30.079 Right.

Tiffany Muller: 23:33.388 Yeah, you and me and most others as well. I mean, there are some real flaws in the Supreme Court case, but I think that there was also at some point a decision. Look, I think the Roberts court is going to be known for two things. I think it's going to be known for the undermining of our democracy through decisions like Citizens United, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the gerrymandering cases, the immunity case.

and then overturning Roe with the Dobbs decision. what's interesting is like those two things are actually linked. So the Citizens United case came about because of a consultant who had been working with National Right to Life to overturn Roe V. Wade and realized that campaign finance laws were getting in his way.

And so he made this decades long push to actually overturn campaign finance laws. And I think on a, on a really just political level, folks like Mitch McConnell decided that they would win the big money race, that they had more big money donors on the Republican side than Democrats had on the Democratic side. And so this arms race, they would win it and it would help them win more races. Right. I think it was purely a.

sadly, an electoral judgment of what would help them win more races. And I think they decided the big money would. And that shouldn't have mattered to the court. But the problem is, is there's a big dark money network run by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society that has spent billions of dollars to both install conservative justices on the court and also then to, you know, apply them afterwards with

vacations and luxury vacations and conferences and meals and everything else. And it's one of the reasons why we need real Supreme Court reform. Right now, there's no ethics for the Supreme Court. There's no gift ban for Supreme Court justices. We are seeing these scandals play out time and time again. And there's a lot we could be doing to actually like restore faith and trust in the court as well, which appears to become a captured agency.

Evan Meyer: 25:55.436 Yeah, you know, it's interesting. The line between what is considered political or your job or where these lines are drawn are very challenging and they're often philosophical conversations. I try to see the nuance in some of these things, but sometimes it's just, it's challenging to see that.

certain things don't make sense to people. Like, and I'll give you an example. know like in California, you can have a person, say a chief of staff, spend their working hours working for an elected official. And then at five o'clock, they can now be their campaign manager.

Tiffany Muller: 26:45.032 It's personal time.

Evan Meyer: 26:47.726 Like, I mean, so, I mean, you see where this is going. It's like, you know that that can't, you're not separating those meetings that you have. You're not separating your relationships, your phone calls, those conversations. It's, so even, and this is just something that happens at the state level in California. It's just the way it goes. You turn off, let me pick up my other phone for the same guy. Off the books, which the taxpayer won't pay for that conversation.

Tiffany Muller: 26:58.154 Right.

Tiffany Muller: 27:17.917 Right, right, right.

Evan Meyer: 27:18.542 Right, they'll pay for the one at 455, but they're not gonna pay for the one at 505. Hold on, it's 459. Let me hang up and call you from my other phone so I can use campaign dollars instead of taxpayer dollars and raise money, right? Like, I watched that happen so, like, enough where this is an inherent issue and that's not just with elected officials in California, I imagine. I mean, did you see that kind of stuff when you were in, working in Congress or, so.

Tiffany Muller: 27:27.595 Right.

Tiffany Muller: 27:44.906 Yeah.

Evan Meyer: 27:47.746 to the Supreme Court conversation. What do we need to do here to make these lines clearer?

Tiffany Muller: 27:48.124 Absolutely.

Tiffany Muller: 27:51.925 Yeah.

Well, I mean, yes, I saw it a ton in Congress and on the Hill. And yeah, mean, people aren't supposed to do campaign business in the halls of Congress. So instead they just walk outside, right? As long as you're outside, totally fine. So yeah, there's some tightening up there that can be done. Look, I think that one of the problems we have is that right now the Supreme Court is policing itself.

Right? Every other justice and judge in this country is held to a strict ethics code that is actually enforceable and enforceable by an outside agency or, or governing body. Except for the Supreme court. The Supreme court says that they are going to set their own ethics and that they are going to police themselves. So you don't need to worry about whether or not they have a conflict of interest. They have it all covered.

And even if you point out a conflict of interest to them, they don't have to necessarily recuse themselves. They get to make the call on whether or not they recuse themselves. So look, one of the things that can be done tomorrow is institute an ethics code with recusal and transparency and gift ban as well, and actually have it enforceable by an outside agency. That's one of the things I also think honestly, we need term limits on the court.

a lifetime appointment. We have seen what is happening with that. And if we had it to where it was, where we knew that every president was going to get the opportunity to appoint two justices, we start to take some of the vitriol, hopefully, out of that. But ethics, recusal, transparency, term limits are a good place to start with reforming the Supreme Court.

Evan Meyer: 29:54.456 Cool, that's sort of, guess my next question leads into the plan, the strategic plan that you have, because this could take a decade or two decades depending on which strategy you pick, right? And whether you can win those battles, each battle to get to the fight. Yes, we did it, mission accomplished. What does mission accomplished look like here? How long do you think that's gonna take? I guess,

Tiffany Muller: 30:07.178 Yeah.

Evan Meyer: 30:21.826 What do you think the steps are to do that in a way that we can do it within?

Tiffany Muller: 30:28.138 One year. All right. All right. All right. right. All right. Give me four. Give me four. What's in one year? I like that. I like that. I actually think that's the right way to look at it because we have to be we have to have both a long term vision and plan. Right. And be building a movement that can sustain that long term vision and plan while also having short term successes. Right. And what what are those?

Evan Meyer (30:28.43) Four years? Four? What's in one year? Well, what's in one? Yeah, that's what saying. What's in one year? Yeah.

Evan Meyer: 30:54.178 Yes, exactly.

Tiffany Muller: 30:55.836 And so look, the first step toward this is we have to win in November 2026. We need to win back the house and, you know, knock on wood, hopefully try to win back the Senate as well. Because one, we need to put a check on all the brazen corruption that we are seeing out of this administration. We need to have investigations and oversight. I mean, we are seeing a plundering of our government.

unlike anything we've ever seen before. The most recent analysis by the New York Times, which was obviously conservative, said that Donald Trump had personally profited at least $1.4 billion from his first year in office. That is mind boggling, right? And he's not the only one. You see people around him also being able to cash in. And so...

There needs to be investigations. There needs to be oversight. And the other thing that taking back either or both branches of government would allow us to do is begin to actually pass some of these reforms out of one of them. So in 2018, we took back the house with a wave of reformers. In 2019, HR1 in the house, which is the number one agenda item for whichever party is in control of the house.

was a comprehensive democracy reform bill. It was voting rights. It was taking on the money in politics. It was ethics reform. It was anti-jerrymandering. And it would have actually addressed a lot of the problems we are seeing right now. And it passed the House and it died in the Senate, Mitch McConnell's Senate, and we had to go win the Senate. And we did. In 2020, we won the Senate and we won the White House. And so we had an opportunity to actually get this passed.

And, you know, we passed it five times through the House and it fell just short of being able to change the filibuster in the Senate. But I think what we are, where we're at now is a similar moment where we have a similar moment and an even more urgent moment. What we are seeing with our democracy right now is even more critical than what we saw in 2018. And I think the commitment.

Tiffany Muller: 33:17.162 to getting done some of these reforms is even more clear and is even more strong. so short term, win the House, then we have to win the Senate, and we have to get some of these reforms passed at the federal level. Simultaneously, we can be working on things at the state levels. We've seen states pass things like comprehensive voting rights legislation. We've seen states pass transparency and disclosure. We've seen states pass...

pretty broad anti-corruption efforts. We need to expand that out and have some of those wins at the state level, because that's going to help spur the federal level. And then we need to be building a movement that is really about actually reforming the court and passing a constitutional amendment if we need to. to me, in four years, we should have passed comprehensive democracy reform on the federal level and in many states across the country.

Evan Meyer: 34:15.734 Okay, great. I love that. Great plan. I like it. Done.

Tiffany Muller: 34:18.566 Like it! Good! Done! And then I'm gonna go just retire to the beach.

Evan Meyer (34:24.11) Well, okay, so a couple things. One, Leslie Crutchfield, I don't know if you know who that is, she wrote a book called How Change Happens. And it sounds like there's a lot of overlap there. It's a book that I've enjoyed. Yeah, she's great. She's at Duke running their head of, she was a past guest here. So shout out to Leslie, because that reminded me of her.

Tiffany Muller: 34:34.687 I love it.

Tiffany Muller: 34:44.412 All right, I'm gonna read it. I always need a good new book recommendation too, so thank you.

Evan Meyer: 34:50.114 good book, yeah, and how to do those sorts of things. So it sounds like you're following even that without reading it, which is cool. So I guess the question that comes to mind on this is if it because it does sound like it's a get the the Democrats into office initiative, right?

Tiffany Muller: 35:10.088 Yeah, sadly right now, we would love if that was not the case, but sadly right now, we have not seen any movement on the Republican side to grab ahold of these, including something as simple as restoring the Voting Rights Act, right? We can't even get a co-sponsor on that. So sadly right now, these issues are partisan, but I am all for any Republican who would like to work on it together. We are all ears.

Evan Meyer (35:25.72) Yeah.

Evan Meyer (35:34.67) Yeah, I mean, I guess and I guess that's why it's like it would be easier if it was not a one sided thing where we didn't have to think of it like that in order for you to succeed. It requires a bit this bigger thing where the Democrats take hold and and make and you're there essentially, I guess, pledging that they'll vote on this when they get an office. The people you're supporting, right? It's essentially a pledge.

Tiffany Muller: 35:44.233 It will be.

Tiffany Muller: 36:01.992 Right. Right. And they see the power of it with the voters, right? It's not because they feel beholden to In Citizens United. We love partnering with them and working with them, but it's really about being responsive to the voters and what the voters are saying that they want. Look, I do think that there is a possibility that things could get bad enough under this administration.

that you do see some Republicans starting to say, no, no, no more. I'm, I'm ready to like change the whole system and reform the system. I think that would be great. I think it would really power these efforts and help, help really boost them. So I think it's a possibility that we can't completely write off.

Evan Meyer (36:50.06) Yeah, I'm just wondering if it increases the chance of things happening sooner if there was a push towards Republicans joining a common ground that we can all stand behind, right? And then it almost doesn't matter if all the Democrats are in office that need to do this, right?

Tiffany Muller: 36:56.489 Yeah.

Yeah, I'm

Tiffany Muller: 37:05.768 That's right. That's right. That would be wonderful. I mean, we have given every opportunity for Republicans to sit down at the table and say what they would support. Right now they have been pushing to get rid of the few guardrails we have left on the books. But yes, you are absolutely right. It sure would be great.

Evan Meyer: 37:26.914 Wow. Okay, well, I wish that it becomes an easier, more common ground approach. I do. Yeah, right, exactly. And okay, well, anything else that you want to share to tell people of how to find you, how to support?

Tiffany Muller: 37:34.556 Me too, me too, from your lips.

Tiffany Muller: 37:50.184 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, we are a people-powered organization and we're going up against all these big moneyed interests. And we really feel like the only thing more powerful than the money in our politics is the people in our politics and that through our continued collective efforts that we can really create change. So please join us. are at insitizensunited.org. Check us out.

Follow us on all the socials. We'd love to have you as part of it. And, you know, we are constantly traveling around the country and doing town halls and other things to get these issues out there more. And we hope to see you at one of them.

Evan Meyer (38:31.22) Awesome. Yeah. And you know what? I'm going to open back up quickly. What I realized in my conversations is that most people I don't think can name more than one Supreme Court case.

Tiffany Muller: 38:44.297 wow. Is that true?

Evan Meyer: 38:45.806 Do you know a lot of people? I mean, which one do you think I'm thinking of?

Tiffany Muller: 38:49.031 Yes.

Tiffany Muller: 38:52.649 I know, I feel like most people would probably name Brown v. Board.

Evan Meyer: 38:57.208 wow, I would say Roe v. Wade.

Tiffany Muller: 38:59.235 Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board. Yeah. Like there wouldn't be, I guess that could be right. yeah. I really do fall on that nerd spectrum where I'm like, Ooh, which one should we talk about?

Evan Meyer: 39:02.506 Interesting.

Evan Meyer: 39:15.916 Yeah, yeah, and part of why I do this is because I think people need to understand some of the things that I don't think are so obvious, right? There's a lot of hate in politics. There's a lot of judgment. There's a lot of all these people are evil and I'm right and you're, you know, those people are miserable, abominable people. And it's like, and they hate those people instead of sometimes hating the things that they should understand more like Citizens United. Like what is Citizens? You do the research to understand how that affects

Tiffany Muller: 39:24.529 Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany Muller: 39:33.586 Yeah.

Evan Meyer: 39:45.454 the judgment of a lot of these people in office and what that means. And I decided to say the same thing with like, learn who your city council members are. Learn what a county supervisor does. I don't know if most people know what a county supervisor is.

Tiffany Muller: 39:57.021 That's right. Yeah.

Uh, probably not. And, um, you are absolutely right that the, the, there is your members of Congress or your U S senators, or even your governors are more disconnected from you than your city council members, your county, um, members, your, uh, state reps there in your state legislature. Um, get, get involved to go to the meetings, uh, give them a call, uh, attend. Yeah. We used to have.

People attend every single city council meeting and just stay up to date on what was happening in Topeka, Kansas. So I know that those exist everywhere.

Evan Meyer: 40:38.998 Right. Well, you're a perfect person to say you got involved at the local. You had a vision, guess, many when you were when you were starting to Pica City Council. Right.

Tiffany Muller (40:46.47) I tend to.

Tiffany Muller: 40:50.313 So it really does feel like another lifetime ago. And I often am like, wow, I was really young, which is true. But I cared about the future of the city and I cared about the residents and I got involved. I was able to make a difference. I'm really proud of that. it has helped me believe in what change is possible throughout my entire career.

Evan Meyer: 41:08.973 Yeah.

Evan Meyer: 41:16.162 Yeah, and it takes how long and how much effort and passion you've put into your work over these years so that you can be in the position now to understand it well enough and potentially really change something that's very important. And I think a lot of times, so first of all, respect. You know, it takes a lot to do that. And I hope...

people can see that it's not just hating something and re-sharing it on social media that makes the world better. It takes people like yourself that care enough about something and who have the knowledge and have gotten involved long enough to make real change, not just, you know, F this guy and F that guy. I mean, that stuff just doesn't help. It just makes people more angry. you know, thank you for all of your work and...

and effort in standing for what you believe in.

Tiffany Muller: 42:12.958 Well, thank you. Thank you for everything that you're doing to educate people on so many important issues and build a community. I really do think that the more that folks are doing things together and are actually working on addressing problems together, the more inspiring and more hopeful that they will feel and actually the more success that we will have. you know, definitely vote. Everyone needs to vote. Make sure your friends and family are voting, but,

the more you can do in community with someone, the better. And I've been saying all year that, you know, courage is contagious and you don't know when, you know, showing up to something or going to a town hall or whatever will inspire the person next to you to show up next time and to keep coming back. And so it really is about all of us being in it together.

Evan Meyer: 43:05.464 Perfect last words here. Thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation very much and see you next time.

Tiffany Muller: 43:10.633 And thank you.

Tiffany Muller: 43:14.739 Look forward to coming back.

Evan Meyer: 43:16.929 All right. All right. Here we go.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity while preserving the authentic flow of conversation.