Kneecapping Citizens United State by State
Corporate power reset bills were filed in more than a dozen legislatures just this year. It might even be happening in your state.
You’ve probably heard about the Hawaii law to take on the seemingly unstoppable power of dark money via Citizens United, but did you know it’s happening all over the country? Corporate power reset bills were filed in more than a dozen legislatures just this year.
It might even be happening in your state.
After Hawaii’s Governor signed bills limiting corporate donations on May 14, 2026, which were the first-in-the-nation legislation to kneecap Citizens United, corporations are now deemed “artificial persons” in Hawaii and they do NOT possess a constitutional right to make political donations or expenditures on elections and ballot initiatives.
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The law asserts that because governments grant corporate powers, Hawaii can decline to grant corporations the power to spend on elections.
This is exactly right, and it is how our government is supposed to work. The lawmakers we pay with our tax dollars are not supposed to work to protect big business while stealing from us, but that is what a lot of them do currently.
A quick look at the damage data centers are causing to The People around this country is all we need to know about how our government is functioning right now, as data centers are pushing off the high-priced market energy costs onto everyday consumers, with residential ratepayers in some data center hotspots seeing their bills jump significantly even as the noise and water pollution destroy their living environment.
But there are plans to take this on state by state being implemented all over the country right now in different stages. Hawaii just passed the law and Montana is up next.
During the Center for American Progress 2026 Ideas Conference, Senior Fellow for Democracy Policy at CAP Todd Moore explained their plan to amend state corporate statutes, removing corporate political spending powers.
Moore noted that ever since the 2010 law, we’ve all been told “there are only two ways to stop corporate and dark money in politics: either amend the US Constitution or wait generations for a new Supreme Court,” but “Turns out there’s another way.”
“The corporate power reset is a new legal legislative strategy developed by the Center for American Progress. Instead of trying to ban or restrict the corporate political spending that Citizens United opened up, this plan focuses on the legal powers granted to corporations by states.”
Let us all note that Moore is using conservatives’ state’s rights argument to protect the people. If conservatives really were upholding federalism rather than the radicalized tyrannical government they are pushing to enable, they would be all for this plan to let states dictate the powers that corporations have, because states create corporations.
