Welcome to the NewsHour. With less than a year until the 2026 midterm elections, it's already

expected to be one of the most expensive campaigns in history. And how that money is being spent

could be changing. At the Supreme Court today, major arguments that could reshape campaign finance

laws. Our Lisa Desjardin is more on the Republican push to remove key spending limits.

The ads have begun. The 2026 battle for Congress and a waterfall of spending are underway.

North Carolina doesn't need another career politician.

John Hustead supported the tariffs that are jacking up prices. Life in Maine, the way it

should be, is harder, thanks to Janet Mills. And all of that could be significantly affected by the

nation's highest court. The case filed in 2022 by the Republican House and Senate campaign committees,

as well as then Senate candidate, J.D. Vance,

sues the Federal Election Commission over current law. That law puts a $7,000 limit on how much

individuals can give a candidate per cycle. But individuals can donate more than a million

dollars to political parties. So the law separates the two.

Parties are limited and how much they can spend directly with the candidates. Those are called

coordinated expenses. Republicans want to remove those limits and be able to send more money

to candidates. Doing so would change decades of campaign law.

So all of these limits, all of these rules, they're all about preventing corruption.

Adav Nodi is the exec director of the campaign legal center and a former lawyer at the FEC.

He says these limits were put in place after the Nixon Watergate scandal, which exposed large secret donations.

There was a widespread bipartisan understanding that while some amount of money is needed to run elections and campaigns, it is best if that be limited, that no undue amount of it from anyone's source, and then it be fully

disclosed to the public.

This century, the Supreme Court has overturned some limits, including in the Citizens

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