Don McGahn’s WSJ oped:

As with most campaign-finance reform measures, the Udall Amendment’s goal is to get money out of politics. It seeks to accomplish this by allowing Congress to regulate and limit how “candidates and others” raise and spend money.

Yet free speech is toothless without money—especially when it concerns elections and public policy. It is necessary to print campaign mailers, organize phone banks, air television and radio ads, build websites and pay for a thousand other things.

By giving legislators authority to regulate the money that finances this speech, politicians would only succeed in making it harder for Americans to make their voices heard in the political process. The American Civil Liberties Union argued in a 2014 letter to Congress that the Udall Amendment would “lead directly to government censorship of political speech.” The ACLU also warned that it would “fundamentally ‘break’ the constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations.”