in a slightly different twist on polls, cnbc asked voters whether they're voting for or against a presidential candidate. 51% of people who say they're going to vote for hillary clinton say they're casting their vote for mrs. clinton while 48% of the people say they're voting for donald trump say the purpose of their vote is to vote against hillary clinton. donald trump and hillary clinton are back on the campaign trail today. mr. trump is spending the day in ohio. he's holding a campaign rally in springfield and c-span-2 will have live coverage at 1:00 p.m. eastern. hillary clinton is campaigning in north carolina. with first lay by michelle obama to encourage early voting and

c-span has live coverage of their stop in winston salem at 2:00 eastern. our children. they look up to us. what we value. how we treat others. and now they're looking to see what kind of leaders we choose. who we'll entrust our country and their future to. will it be the one respected around the world or the one who frightens our allies and emboldens our enemies? the one with the deep understanding of the challenges we face or the one who is unprepared for them? a steady mand or a loose cannon? common sense and unity? or drama and division? a woman who spent her life helping children and families? or a man who spent his life helping himself? our children are looking to us. what example will we set? what kind of country will we be?

hillary clinton, because we're stronger together. >> i'm hillary clinton and i approve this message. >> far too many families today don't earn what they need and don't have the opportunities they deserve. i believe families deserve quality education for their kids, child care they can trust and afford, equal pay for women and jobs they can really live on. people ask me, what will be different if i'm president. well, kids and families have been the passion of my life and they will be the heart of my presidency. i'm hillary clinton and i approved this message. >> what's at stake in this election? it's not just who goes here. it's who rules here. the supreme court. the justice who guaranteed your right to own a gun is gone. now, the next president's choice breaks the tie. four supreme court justices support your right to own a gun for self defense. four justices would take away

your right. >> the second amendment is outdated. >> the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right. >> what does the second amendment mean to you? >> not the right of an individual to keep a gun next to his bed. >> and hillary says -- >> when it comes to guns, we have just too many guns. >> the supreme court is wrong on the second amendment. >> hillary's made her choice. now you get to make yours. defend freedom. defeat hillary. the nra institute for legislative action is responsible for the content of this advertisement. evan mcmullin is an independent presidential candidate. mindy thin both joining us from salt lake city. thank you for being with us. >> great to be with you. >> thank you. >> evan mcmullin, let me begin with you. how many states are you on the ballot and how many do you qualify for write-in votes and

how do you try to get to 270 electoral votes? >> well, we will appear on the ballot of 11 states. and then we will be registered as a write-in in a number of others that will include the total of ballots where we appear on the ballot, 43 to 45 states by election day. so, the vast majority of americans will be able to cast a vote for us. but the reality is that reaching 270 votes on november 8th is going to be very, very difficult given the fact that we are a three-month presidential campaign and as a result also of related circumstances. but our strategy is different. that is not actually our strategy. our strategy is to win as many states as we can in hopes that if the election is close between hillary clinton and donald trump we could block them both and prevent them also from gaining the majority in the electoral challenge of 270-vote threshold and that case the vote goes to

the house of representatives where we like our choices. >> mindy thin, a state of utah where you are today and has not voted for a democrat since 1964 and with the governor mike pence campaigning there today, it is very much in play. why? >> well, utah's a conservative state and donald trump is no conservative. throughout his entire adult life, he was liberal on abortion, health care, the second amendment. he changed those positions to run as a republican. in the primary here in utah, that rejected donald trump and had concerns about him from the beginning and it's impacting their views on the republican party. more so than republicans, they're conservative. we're the only conservative ticket in this race. we are standing on principle, foundational constitutional principles and that's why they're gravitating towards our campaign. >> evan mcmullin, story in "the new york times" today, deep dwrigss in the gop. a lot of questions what happens

after the election. let me go back to the earlier point. what role to you and your running-mate want to play and where do you see the future of the gop heading? >> we believe that our role as a part of a new conservative movement, the very movement that we're building here as a part of this election. the question is, what role will that movement play? we do leave some possibility. we believe that the republican party may reform after this election. but having both had direct experience with that effort from within the party, we know how difficult it is and believe that these are challenges that the party will face on a generational basis. so, it's very difficult to imagine that the republican party will be able to shake off trumpism after this election. these probables existed before trump entered the race. we knew about them after 2012. the party wasn't able to adapt, however. now that trump had the skez he's had, even if he loses badly in

the general election, the people who are supporting him i think are empowered and will be empowered even after the election so the reality is that we believe this conservative movement may need to take the form of a new political party. it's just simply true that those of us who are constitutional conservatives who believe that all men and women are created equal and we have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and government should be limited and that it only derives power from the people and from no other source, those of us with a fundamentally believe these things can no way support a party down the road of populism and white nationalism which is where donald trump would like to take it so if that's what the republican party will be there's no way for mindy and i to be part of that and we have millions of people across the country supporting us many of whom feel the same way. >> are you saying that we could see a new political party, the republican party divided

basically in half, the creation of a new party? >> yes, i think that is very much a possibility. >> and let me go back to this idea of trumpism, mindy finn, because it is not only donald trump but 13 million voters in the primaries supporting him. he beat out 17 candidates and so there is a base within the gop where the trump message as resonated. what do you say to those voters? >> well, i say that, you know, their frustration, some of it is well founded and been left behind. we have an economy that's transformed due to technology and automation and lost their jobs or facing wage stagnation. the party for too long is more focused on those who write the big checks and not the base and the people voting for them. so that frustration is very real. however, donald trump, while it may be a very loud, bombastic voice, is one that is really just -- is kind of using them for his own political power. he's been a liberal for all of

his adult life and more so than that, tearing the country apart and undermining the democracy demeaning hispanics, african-americans, women, people with disabilities. we are now -- we are a country with legitimate reason to distrust institutions and now we are ripped apart by a man who demeans all those groups and then calls into question whether our democracy is rigged. people are turning in on each other. the republican party is falling apart. there's no body nobody for conservative values. and so, we need to think about the future and that's what we represent is this new generation of leadership who understands the concerns of those same voters that gravitated towards donald trump, who like the fact that he talked directly and plainly and to them. but we have a positive vision and one that can unite the country, not one to tie us apart. >> finally, evan mcmullin, what will the headline after the election? who win it is presidency? who wins the house and the senate? >> hmm, well you are asking me

to do something that's very difficult, of course. i believe that the polls probably reflect the accurate state of the race and that hillary clinton is dominating donald trump very strongly. i would expect, sadly, her to win and be our next president. but, you know, whether it's her or donald trump, i think they're both people who want to grow the size of government and who don't respect our constitution in the way that mindy and i believe it should be. and so that's what i think the outcome will believe at the presidential level. i believe that republicans will likely hold on to the house and the senate is -- that's a less certain. i just don't know. it's hard to predict. i think donald trump is definitely making it much more difficult for republicans to hold on to the senate and to -- for them to hold on to the margin they have had in the house for the last couple of years. >> evan mcmullin, mindy finn independent presidential and

vice presidential candidate on the road. thank you both for being here with us on c-span. we appreciate it. >> thanks for having us. >> thank you. on election day, november 8th, the nation decides our next president and which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race, including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump and their surrogates and follow key house and senate races with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily. tonight, on american history tv, prime time, world war ii programs from our reel america series showing archival films on public affairs. at 8:00 eastern, a 1943 film on the battle of russia followed by a film called "know your ally: britain." 10:10 eastern, films from 1944. the negro soldier and the hidden

war. american history tv in prime time all this week here on c-span3 while congress is on break. c-span brings you more debates this week from key u.s. house, senate and governors races. tonight at 8:00 eastern, live on c-span, ayotte and hassen debate for the new hampshire senate seat. then at 9:00, iowa senate debate. between republican senator chuck grassley and democrat patty judge. and at 10:00, republican congressman john debates democrat deacon for new york's 24th district seat. friday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span, the georgia senate debate between republican senator johnny isaacson, democratic challenger jim barksdale and libertarian alan buckley. just before 9:00, democratic

congressman rick nolan and democrat stuart mills. and at 9:30, a debate for colorado's 6th congressional district between republican representative mike kaufman and democrat morgan carol. and saturday night at 10:00 on c-span, pennsylvania senate debate between republican senator pat toomey and democrat katie mcbeginty followed at 11:00 debate in the new hampshire governor's race. and at midnight on c-span, the north carolina governor's debate between republican governor mckro ri, roy cooper and lon cecil. now until election day, key debates of races on the c-span networks, c-span.org and listen on the c-span radio app. c-span, where history unfolds daily. now, the role of money in politics. including the impact of the 2010 citizens uniteded supreme court ruling. representatives from public

citizen, democracy alliance, demos and the campaign legal center also discuss how millennials can be more engaged in the political process. this hour and ten-minute event was hosted by the american constitution society. >> so what we're going to be talking about today as both attorneys and organizers, folks involved in the field is how millennials are uniquely situated to tackle the issue of money in politics. money in politics has always been a problem, people could argue, in the united states. we've never had a perfect democracy but in the advent of decisions like citizens united and mccutchen, recent supreme court jurisprudence have made it all the more difficult for folks to have an equal voice and an equal vote in our democracy. so we are very lucky to be joined by a dream team of young millennial up and comers in the democracy space. on the far left is brendan fischer, associate council at the campaign legal center. next to him is austin belali,

he is the director of the youth engagement fund for the democracy alliance. right here next to me is allie boldt, counsel at demos. so a couple things programming-wise to start off on. acs has a couple events next month. we are getting attorneys in the area who are able to volunteer their time on election day or a couple days preceding to do something called election protection where we man the phones and try to answer questions from folks around the country in collaboration with the lawyers' committee for civil rights under law on election day to make sure everybody's vote is counted. we also have an event on november 17th, a voting rights training. there's an organization called the voting rights institute, it's part campaign legal center, part american constitution society and part georgetown university, and we'll have a training for how attorneys can help on pro bono basis to make sure that everybody's vote is counted and it will be a legal seminar for that. so today we're going to talk about five big topics.

we're going to talk about what the current legal landscape is, what the u.s. supreme court has given us, how we got there, we're going to talk about what's been possible under the current rules and rubric, we'll talk about looking big picture how millennials have engaged in other progressive movements. what kind of successes millennials have been able to get behind in other areas of the law and policy. then we'll look inward and talk about what the democracy field is good at doing and where it has some deficiencies. how it can be more inclusive and better positioned to lead and especially to have millennials lead the next phase of the movement. finally, we'll end on optimism and talk about what's possible now that we have a supreme court vacancy that could result in a progressive supreme court majority for the first time in 40 some years so we'll be hearing what a new democracy agenda could mean not just for millennials as we grow up in this era but for folks around the country. so let's start off. my name is scott greytak, i'm counsel with a group called free

speech for people. it's a legal organization devoted to taking ideas into action to promote and reclaim our democracy and to go from the defense to the offense in order to get initiatives moving that can help build an inclusive democracy for all. so speaking of a legal landscape and what we're looking at now, i'll turn to our resident attorneys on the panel which is brendan and allie to give us an idea of where we're coming from, where we're at, how we got here. allie, if you want to start us off. >> sure. can you all hear me in the room okay? so first thanks to scott and acs for having this important conversation and great to be up here with these panelists. in terms of the legal landscape, probably the most well known money in politics supreme court decision is citizens united which was decided in 2010. citizens united really unleashed spending by corporations on our elections.

and the reasoning in that decision also paved the way for super pacs which are other vehicles that wealthy interests can use to spend in elections. citizens united really made a lot of people mad and it sparked a lot of great activism around the country that we'll hear more about. but at demos we see the problem in the legal landscape as going back farther to a case called buckley versus vallejo. and that case was decided in 1976. it was after the watergate scandal and around that time the congress had passed a fairly comprehensive package of money in politics reforms and some of the provisions in that package were challenged and were the subject of this buckley litigation. so some of the provisions in that package were upheld and they remain part of our legal landscape today and that includes contribution limits so there are limits on the amounts that individuals can give to a

particular candidate or party. but on the other hand, the buckley court struck down limits on spending and that includes limits on how much individuals individuals can spend of their own money on elections as long as they do so independently of candidates. so we've never really gotten a chance to see how this comprehensive package would have worked together together, but p more problematic is the reasoning that the buckley court gave us in that decision. so the court said that the government has to have an important reason to pass campaign finance reform and it told us that the only reason that's important enough to justify campaign finance reform and limits on big money is to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. the same time the buckley court said that government cannot act to enhance political equality or

level the playing field among candidates. so since the '70s courts have been asking this really narrow question of whether campaign finance reform is necessary to prevent corruption and the effect of this framework is that we haven't really been allowed to address some of the biggest problems that we face in our political system, that includes things like barriers to entry, candidates aren't taken seriously politically unless they can raise a lot of money and that leaves a lot of people out. it also means that we can't talk about the vastly unequal political power and political voice in this country in these cases. we know that elected officials are a lot more responsive to wealthy interests and the donor class and that's a problem for many reasons, not least of which is that the donor class is disproportionately very white, also male, wealthy and frankly there aren't a lot of

millennials in the donor class, either, given that we just don't control that much of the wealth and we're burdened by student debt. i think -- >> great. >> thanks, allie. brendan. >> thanks, allie and thanks for having me here. so one point i want to emphasize is that it's not only the supreme court that's to blame for the broken campaign finance system that we're living in. it also rests in large part with the fec, the federal election commission which is the federal agency charged with administering and enforcing federal election law. six-member commission, enacted after the watergate scandal requires four votes, four affirmative votes to take any action, it requires four votes to promulgate new rules, open an enforcement action, and no more than three members can be part of the same political party, so there's three republican members, two democratic members,

one independent. the problem is not so much that it's a partisan slit, it's not that republicans want to enforce the law against democrats and democrats want to enforce the law against republicans, it's an ideological split and currently the three republican maebs are idealogically opposed to the enforcement of campaign finance laws. so even the laws that exist after citizens united are not currently enforced. so, for example, as allie describes citizens united said that because independent expenditures are independent there's little risk of those expenditures corrupting a candidate and, therefore, spending by independent groups like super pacs can't be limited. but if spending is not independent it does pose a risk of corruption, it's treated under federal law as a contribution to a candidate subject to a $2700 limit. and it falls to the fec to preserve that independence and uphold the laws and regulations

guaranteeing that independence, enforcement laws and regulations defining coordination, but the fec has interpreted the law to allow presidential candidates to appear at fundraisers for super pacs and the fec has declined to enforce even its weak rules on coordinated spending. you have seen both presidential candidates this year edging ever closer to their support of super pacs undermining the idea of any sort of independence. again, citizens united the reasoning rested that independent expenditures are independent and it's the fault of the f echec that we have sin candidate super pacs. they predicted disclosure would limit the opportunities for corruption but dark money, undisclosed political spending has exploded in recent years and that's the fault of the fec, that's the fault of the fec

undermining the disclosure laws by narrowly interpreting it to only apply to up when a nop profit spends on elections they only have to disclose contributions made for the purpose of funding those particular ads. any non-profit can assert that none of the contributions that were made to it were given for the purpose of funding those particular ads, therefore, we have no donor disclosure therefore we have dark money. so the system wouldn't -- the political system, the campaign finance system wouldn't be great after citizens united if the fec enforced the law but it would be a lot better than what we have right now. also looking forward really it's important to keep in mind that a critical element in any campaign finance system, in any campaign finance regime is the administration and enforcement of the law, even if we successfully overturn citizens united, congress nakts new laws, those laws will really not be worth the paper they are written on if they weren't effectively administered and enforced.

so this can seem disconcerting but in some ways this is an opportunity because fixing the fec is a lot easier than overturning citizens united. the commissioners are appointed by the president, the next president could appoint new commissioners that enforce the law. one of the things we have been calling for is for the president to appoint a blue ribbon commission of nonpartisan judges and law enforcement officers and they could come up with a list of potential commissioners and the president could appoint commissioners off of that list and we would see the laws that continue to exist after citizens united effectively enforced. so that's one thing. there's also been bipartisan legislation introduced in congress to reform the fec and make it a more effective agency. that i think is one thing that can happen legislatively or via the executive branch after citizens united which would make a big difference in improving our campaign finance system. but after citizens united

there's still plenty of room for proactive legislation in the realm of disclosure, in the realm of coordination, strengthening coordination rules and also public financing and i think a candidate who will come here later will talk more about that, but you've seen congress a hopeless, they aren't going to pass any legislation on these issues, but you have seen states and cities advancing proactive legislation. south dakota has a ballot initiative currently pending that would improve disclosure, seattle recently enacted an innovative democracy voucher program where every voter gets four $25 vouchers they can give to a candidate of their choice, california has improved its coordination laws. so those are a few things that could still happen even short of overturning citizens united, even short of confirming a new justice on the supreme court. >> so overall it's not good

news, but there's reason for hope. you know, we focus on the first two branches a lot, right, the legislative branch and the executive branch, but a lot of the work that the american constitution society has been focused on is how is our campaign finance system affecting our judges. these are state court judges. so our judges are elected in 39 states across the country, 95% of all cases that are filed in the united states originate in state court. state court judges hit on a ton of major policy issues from the environment to labor, criminal justice voting rights and we will be talking a little later about a report that the american constitution society put out talking about who makes up those state court beverages and are they reflecting the opportunities that they serve. at the same time that super packs have come to dominate legislative election st it's the same story for judicial elections. you have seen more spending across the country than ever before, special interest groups are spending a larger piece than

they ever have before. so let's turn to what has been possible a little bit of bright lining to this. and we will go to austin with the democracy alliance. you know, 78% of americans across the political spectrum oppose citizens united, it's been a good rallying people especially for young people. can you give us a sense of if there is any good news what is that good news and what's been possible? >> thank you for having me. acs, having all of us in the conversation is going to be rich because there are a couple points that were brought up here i think we can have even a bit of debate about even amongst friends, but i will say that it's kind of strange having somebody from the democracy alliance which is a network of wealthy liberal donors talk to you about getting money out of politics. a little paradoxical, but the truth is there is a big difference between liberal donors right now and conservative donors across the country and it's actually a bit of good news to allie's point

which is that traditionally the donor class has been pretty conservative in its views about some of these legislative issues but you have millennials who are inheriting a ton of wealth entering the donor class and unlike their counterparts are spending a lot of their resources figuring out how to get dark money out of our politics. it may seem like a self-defeating thing but many of them know that over the long haul the interest of the 1% and the interest of the 99% in terms of an inclusive economy and a democracy that works for all there is a lot of intersecting there. so that's one silver lining that i think people should think about. and why for the democracy alliance the issue of money and politics is front and center for the community. so there are a ton of movements we have seen over the past few years post citizens united which have been able to tap into the consciousness of a new generation and put a lot of momentum at the legislative and

other strategies that the money and politics folks have been working on for a long time. and there are three principles or cross-cutting kind of strategies or trends that you can see in these movements. movements like occupy wall street which i think at the end of the century you will see almost historians talking about the era before and after occupy wall street. when you think about the consciousness change or movement for black lives or other movements. here are the three things that i think -- three trends that we should be excited about but we should also look at carefully if we're talking about reinvigorating a democracy movement with millennials. the movements that are stepping into this gap and challenging the role of money in politics, they are national movements not local movements and so if you look at the way that our news cycle, for example, c-span is in the room and i'm sure all the millennials at home are watching

right now, but the reality is that local news outlets have left the landscape and so most of the information that young people, millennials, are getting are coming from national news outlets and this is a big deal for the money and politics fight because a lot of the narrative that you all shared was national and that's what these movements have tapped into. that's an advantage for us i think as we look at this. the second kind of trend that's happening amongst millennials that should give us some hope and optimism about getting money out of politics is that millennials aren't gravitating around organizations, per se, but networks. and so in the past you had people were a member of a local union or a church or a civic association that was place based in geographically defined and i think that made it difficult at times to reach scale in a way that you could take on some of those big problems like money and politics and have large leaps of progress but that's no

longer the case because of the internet. now young people in particular are using networks to get to a scale and is able to also mesh together the role of organizations. and then the third trend that's happening that i think is an opportunity for us but some people may see it as a challenge which is that mill feels have been mobilizing post citizens united at the margins and not at the mainstream. that in some ways the dis at faction at this convergence between rising inequality in the country and shrinking political opportunity has led to a radicalization of our generation that cuts across party lines and we have seen it play out in the primaries of course with bernie sanders and his campaign, but i saw some recent polling that showed that if you look at jill stein's support base or hillary clinton's support base across the board millennials are saying they want radical social change.

so at the margins not at the mainstre mainstream. so these three trends together, the national movement, energy, the networks that are emerging and then this kind of radicalization of how people are thinking about their role in democracy are great opportunities that should make us hopeful. the final thing i would say as we think about how do we channel this energy and bring it into the democracy movement is are we building a teddy bear or are we building a grizzly bear because what millennials are saying in all of these movements i mentioned post citizens united is they don't believe that we can take on the problems that we mention in the fec or the supreme court or with the presidency with a teddy bear, with the old incremental solutions with kid gloves on, they think we need a grizzly bear, they think we need to build a movement that's dangerous enough to shake up folks. i think that's the kind of movement we need to support and talk about here today. >> that's wonderful.

so as our fourth panelist joins us we were talking about fair courts. if you take a look at things that have been successful while all around us other areas have sort of been falling apart in the world of campaign finance not a lot of people realize that the u.s. supreme court has had three consecutive positive decisions when it comes to fair and i'm partial courts, the biggest one was a decision caper ton v. massie that said if somebody spends too much money affecting a judicial election that violates the due process clause, that's a constitutional principle that the legislative and executive branch don't have in their operative framework. this applies to the judicial branch. we had a victory a couple years ago, it was the first time chief justice roberts has upheld a restriction on a candidate's ability to raise money, this is about judges going to people and saying can you give me $10,000 i'm running for judge and the state of florida had a restriction on that so they

couldn't do it. the supreme court upheld it. this summer there was a decision about whether or not a judge who oversaw the prosecution of a defendant when that decision came up to him as a member of the pennsylvania supreme court he had to recuse himself from that. so there is good news. i would say it's more holding the line but the fair courts field has seen pos tim outcomes as well. aquene perhaps you can speak to us about local movements that have seen some success or areas where whether it's pushing back on citizens united with resolutions or local organizations how they have been able to respond to the environment that's been created around them and see positively around it. >> sure. i apologize to everyone for being tardy, i was a little confused about where we were holding this event. so my apologies. i'm with public citizen. we are a 45-year-old organization committed to representing people's voices in the halls of congress and the halls of the supreme court and the halls of power. i wanted to briefly comment on my experience working with

peers, organizing to take back and stand up for our democracy. and then drill down a little bit if that's okay. >> absolutely. >> into how that's happening and how it can happen. so folks are pretty frustrated and i'm sure we have talked about that because the game has shifted and we haven't seen as many movements really succeed where people rise up, there is a lot of media coverage and then you actually see congress pass laws to address that outrage. a lot of millennials are feeling like so why movements, how does that work, is that what we need to be doing? and then there's another group of people who i think feel like maybe we just haven't had the right idea and if the right person with the right idea and the right way to market that idea would come forward then we could fix the problem, but i think our perspective and the perspective i think we've seen in movements over the centuries in the united states is that we

have to really shift power. we have to reach people. we have to be willing to get away from our phones and our desks and our beds and wherever we're engaging online and also not to exclude those things but also get out on the streets and talk to people that have power, figure out strategically how to influence those people and if we don't have enough people working face-to-face with others to actually build stronger relationships real face-to-face relationships. so i think part of the reason people are looking at ideas and marketing instead of movements and i think there's a lot of millennials that get movements, but there is a big chunk of folks who said if we had an app poor people in africa might be able to access party. i've heard that from peers. maybe that is not the reason people are lacking access to water. we've given a lot of power to

corporate entities and we have seen an intense attack on government as an institution. democratic government is supposed to represent everyone in this room, it's ours and if it's screwed up and mixed up we have to fix it. but the entities that are gaining power with multi-international corporations. they have corporations that have a profit motive, they are in many different markets at once and they are interested in having more control than government because government sets limitations that might limit their profits. so we're seeing a shift and an attack on government and we are seeing a group of people who are extremists who do not represent most people willing to shut down the government and shut down and break the testimonies that are supposed to protect us, supposed to protect us from outrageous student debt, they are supposed to make education accessible so that we have a country where equal opportunity is a reality not a dream. and so when we break that government from enforcing those laws and providing what we've

set it up to provide the status quo runs the show, right? congress isn't making laws, regulatory agencies aren't doing their job then the corporations that provide our transportation and our food are doing what they're doing, right? they're already in power so they're going to keep the status quo. so i think it's important for millennials to find our own ways of organizing and i think there's so many different ways to communicate and build power through technology, but also to take back our government. it's our government. it's our democracy and it needs to represent everyone's voices and if it's not doing that then we have to reclaim it as ours, we can't put it away somewhere. so how are we building power, the democracy movement is focused on making sure that we get big money out of politics and also we protect voting rights, we need a constitutional amendment that would establish reasonable limits on spending,

we need small donor public financing to replace the public funded elections we currently have. if government is a dinner table and the election set the table, decide what the agenda is, right, who funds the elections, helps right the laws. so we can get money out of politics and make sure that the people are setting the table but if we're taking away people's right to vote then they are not going to get to sit at the table at all and maybe they are on the table depending on the group. so we need both. so how are we doing that? we have had a sweeping movement all over the country, people have gone to their state and city legislatures, they've gone to their county legislatures and said we're tired of big money in politics, we're going to take the action we can take which is pass a local resolution, county resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn citizens united and related cases and 700 cities and towns have done that and 17 states have done that and it's on the ballot in washington state and california.

so that's really, really exciting and that happened because people decided to get together face-to-face, think about who has power, how to hold them accountable and build their own power. we are also doing public financing all over the country, theres a campaign in the district of columbia and i'm going to pass around a petition that you can sign if you are in the district and you support changing the way that elections are funded so that we are not -- you know, in the district of columbia the people who fund d.c. government are contractors and people who have construction projects in the district. the biggest donor is fort meyer they are an asphalt company they make all the roads and actually do a pretty good job but there has also been a number of scandals with them where they give $20,000, $25,000 and they are monopoly actually here. so they make a small investment

and they get millions of dollars of our taxpayer money back. if we have a different system once a candidate shows they're serious and get small contributions from residents public funds can match those small contributions. with he reward candidates that are serious and have public support but we also don't have fort meyer and some of the big construction names you see all over the district running all of our elections. they provide 40% of the funding for those candidates. you can bet they're going to be careful. i know i'm probably running low on time. and then the other thing is howard county, south dakota, washington state they all have public financing and transparency bills that are on the ballot. there is a lot moving and it's people driven. i'm not going to take too much more time but we do have a thunderclap. if you seen -- if you sign the petition for d.c. for elections we will also share a thunderclap that literally lists all the

different measures that are on the ballot for democracy on november 8th so you can help spread the word and help us score serious wins for democracy all over the country. >> thank you. perfect. we are talking a little bit about issue intersectional at. minute kneels get different issues, we were cued into the marriage equality movement, the fight for 15, we've been good on maybe recognizing citizens united but a lot of this stuff is dense and difficult to understand campaign finance reform. there are a lot of intricacies even for the attorneys among us. at the other end of the spectrum there is literally a -- where if you get money out of politics there is a financial interest in there. what are some issues that have been able to provide pathways for millennials to get this on their radar to move them from just, you know, maybe outraged into engaged and to get them

plugged in and really put some sweat behind it. austin, do you want to start us off. >> sure. just a couple -- one response i wanted to say is to what's been said so far is i think policy change is really key, but i also think that it can't be seen as the sole end goal of how we evaluate progress and, you know, abraham lincoln has a quote that many of you know where he talks about the shaping of public sentiment as the most important kind of role and when we talk about the role of millennials and how they intersect with these issues a lot of ways they are intersecting with the issue of money and politics is around shifting the narrative of changing public sentiment and it may not end up in a local policy victory but in some ways it's putting the wind at the sales of some of the reformers who are working at the local level. just some examples of that, i think, one is around the issue of transparency.

there has been a lot of discussion post citizens united about disclosure and some of the policy and legal work that needs to be done there, but who could match the explosive energy of the most recent wikileaks that have come out or the panama papers where you see people, young people in particular on the internet demanding radical transparency, these are libertarians, progressives, conservatives who are seeing transparency as an issue that's front and center in how they're thinking about their agency in a democra democracy. our money and politics folks engaging them. the second one is this tactic that i think a lot of the more traditional campaigns are not as comfortable with, but it's really, really important and taking off amongst millennials which is bird dogging. i don't know if people are familiar with that. you follow a candidate around when they're running for office and you do a direct action aimed at that candidate and force them

to respond. one example of this is the fossil fuel movement who has been going after campaign fundraisers from big oil and fossil fuel and doing bird dogging actions against candidates and getting them on record saying, well will you no longer take fossil fuel money in support of your campaign. what it's doing is lifting up the conversation about money and politics but through a fossil fuel divestment lens. the second example of this that i think is key, right now the country is having a national conversation about race in america and color of change which is a nonprofit organization working digitally around issues of race and inclusion organized a campaign to bird dog candidates who were taking private prison money and then getting candidates to go on record and say we do not want private prison money, it lifted up this conversation about money and politics. i think the choice, though, for us is they didn't lead out front

with money and politics as the issue, they led out front with fossil fuel divestment and climate change, they led out front with racial justice and equity, but it's really about money and politics and so i think that's kind of what we have to figure out is how do we find opportunities to bring more folks into the movement with a much deeper and scaled issue frame. >> yeah, we just saw a super pac accepted $150,000 contribution from a private prison company out of florida just a couple days ago supporting donald trump. allie, i want to ask you talking about issue intersection at, folks are aware of the economy, occupy wall street, income inequality has been at the top of the agenda at least for democratic candidates for president during the primary. is there a way we can use this issue to tie in democracy and get votes where engaged? >> yeah, absolutely. i think that the economy and

economic inequality is very much linked with big money and politics. we see the economy that millennials are inheriting is really a web of policies that favor the donor class. we know that the donor class particularly in areas of economic policy tend to have different views than the 99%. just one example here is on the federal minimum wage. we know that general public opinion support is very high for a medical minimum wage in which if you're working full-time at the federal minimum wage you should not live in poverty. i think 80%, something like that of the general public supports that belief. among the donor class the affluent in the united states the support for that level of minimum page at the federal level is much less, it's half of that, and yet, you know, we've seen congress be stagnant on the

federal minimum wage even though we have incredibly high national federal support for increasing the minimum wage. and i think, you know, other areas in our economy are also impacted. think about student debt and the burden of taking on student debt to go to college. something like 78% of the general public think that the federal government should do more to make sure that college is affordable and yet again we've seen congress be really stagnant on these issues. >> anybody else want to weigh in on this issue? >> i think one thing to sort of echo what both austin and allie had said, one thing to emphasize about the way that millennials and other people have approached this issue is that citizens united has come to have symbolic value well beyond the actual -- what the decision actually said.

the decision was about corporate independent expenditures, it allowed corporations to make expenditures in elections independent of candidates. when the decision was issued in 2010 there was growing recognition and acknowledgment about the growing economic inequality in the u.s. and in the world -- in the world as a whole and the broken campaign finance system and the amount of money that flooded into our elections after citizens united really showed this vast economic inequality being transferred into political inequality and citizens united has come to symbolize these much broader issues of inequality and much broader issues about corporate power. and also to echo what allie said, the donor -- the people who have this power, the people who have this power partially as a result of decisions like citizens united are older, they're whiter, they're malar than the -- than the country as

a whole and particularly older, whiter and maler than millennials. it's not a surprise that government is acting -- as a result of economic inequality being transferred into political inequality it's not a surprise that government is acting in the interest of the donor class and not in the interest of the rest of us and particularly not in the interest of millennials. >> so, i mean, given our arguments at the start there are dispositions of this we think we are on the right size of history, right? our issue ties in with a ton of different issues, it's got the moral force behind it, big sweeping values and narratives about economic inequality. this next part let's talk about what's holding the field back. and i want to prime you all with some work that the american constitution society put out last spring. acs put out a national report called gravel gap. what they did for the first time in history is they looked at state courts all across the country and they looked at the racial and gender makeup of

those courts. so i want to prompt you all with just a few numbers. so nationally women of color make up 19% of the u.s. population, state courts it's 8%. men of color it's 19% state courts it's 12%. on the other hand, white men 30% of the population of the united states and a whopping 58% of all state court judges. so they were able to when opportunity falls off along the pipeline going to law school and become a judge but what does this environment say about this field that we feel like we have a lot of the wind at our back and yet the comment makeup of the democracy field isn't that too dissimilar to what the study was able to find. aquene or austin, do you want to jump in on that? >> i think that nonprofits reflects the power structure and the fundamentally racist background of our society as a whole and i think the type of

people who get the education and have the ability to do unpaid internships in particular to access these positions is definitely a huge problem. we have to be able to pay people who are working their way through school, taking on an incredible amount of debt if we want them to gain the skills necessary to do this work professionally. on the other hand, i don't think most movements are only professionally staffed, we should be a tiny minority in terms of the people working on this issue. the washington ballot initiative which is 330,000 signatures that were gathered over a nine-month period, 88% of those by volunteers. so does not need to be staffed but certainly if we want lower income folks of all races to be in this movement there needs to be a funding aspect that's much bigger than what we have right now. >> and i would say in addition to kind of the structural

barriers that you mention and the gavel gap that you mention, there is a trust gap and the trust gap in particular is happening with communities of color. we all know that the preamble of our constitution starts we the people, but yet generation after generation the calling of social movements has been to expand that to include more and more folks because the framers of the institution looked much like unfortunately the structures of today look and so there's always been this psychological distance as a result amongst communities of color and the fundamental institutions of u.s. democracy, including representative civil society organizations. and so this trust gap, this psychological distance it plays itself out as a third party of both our democracy by communities of color where they will see government as a they or

they might even see some of the organizations in the fighting around money and politics as a they. they don't see it as we. so the fundamental question on this is not just more diversity because you could have more diverse voices essentially keeping the system as it is and people still having the psychological distance. we need to move from talking about diversity to equity and how do we build a more inclusive we? one way we do that is starting with trust. that we need to be in conversation with communities of color who may have different theories of change about how it gets done. they may not see inside strategies at the local level being the most productive way to get change. are we open and willing to listen to their voices and be in dialogue with them? if we can close that trust gap with communities of color i think we will get more than diversity, we will really get a more equitable and more influential movement. >> sorks millennials, we get

some shade for, say, voting less frequently than other demographic groups, we are certainly the most indebted and at the same time we are the most educated generation in american history. we are the most racially diverse generation in america. so question to you all: what can we do differently? and if you know of some, say, successful models of reform, other areas that folks have been able to push forward progressive policies under a more inclusive framework and coalition, what have they done to be able to get points on the board? i hope it's not all bleak. >> i will say one quick one because i think it's an outloo i remember that we have talked about a little bit with the donor class but there are successful efforts to organize a base of donors who share the values that we share here. one example of this in the money and politics space is the victory 2021 fund which is where you have donors coming together

who are wealthy individuals and bundling their money to support some of the ballot initiatives and other campaigns that were talked about earlier. so there's success there that, in fact, there is a book that i recommend to folks if you're interested by david callahan called "fortunes of change" and it's an older book, i think it's 2008 or '9 published version, there is an updated copy, but what it goes through is that there's a fundamental demographic shift not just amongst millennials but within the donor class itself, donors in tech, donors in science and research, dee northwest on the west coast or new york city who went to liberal units and they are hearing acs have talks like this one. so to me that gives -- that's an example of one of the strategies we should have is how do we engage directly the donor class particularly millennial donors. >> i would just say on the local

level i think it is very, very specific, here in the district we have an affordable housing crisis, nobody on the council is very serious, they all care, but we are not seeing the level of serious policy discussion that would change the problem and it's part of the funding system locally. the bleeding edge of gentrification in the district is the most african-american part of the district, it's ward 7 and 8 across the river. so there is a lot of deep work and trust building to do there and thankfully the d.c. fair elections coalition is already a pretty diverse group, d.c. fair budget coalition which represents a lot of the service organizations but also people's organizations in the district has been a partner from the beginning and i think there's continuing work to have as many conversations in community as possible, but i think one

shining example of where we're trying to go in the democracy movement in democracy awakening and democracy spring which happened this past spring. the naacp and sierra club and public citizen and many other groups, demos, came together, we had about 5,000 people here in the district protesting for both voting rights and money and politics. i have to say unfortunately money and politics up to that point has largely been a white grassroots base supported issue. so we've been working very, very hard to mobilize our majority white members to work on voting rights as well as money and politics. so -- but it is a long journey for sure. >> i want to ask there's so many issues in the district, you name a few that are high priority items for communities of color. when you talk about the coalition that's been built here around dem tracy work how is that created and how is that supported and what recourses came to be that this is able to

be something that is 40, 50 organizations behind? do you see any trends in that that perhaps folks around the country can pick up on? >> i think, again, showing up in person. i have gone to probably half dozen african-american churches, i have shown up after service or showed up at service and worked with members of the community that way. i think we have to be willing to go in person and show that you're committed, you're willing to go anywhere in the district where people want to organize and not -- and cross racial lines unfortunately that still exist in our segregated cities. i think that's kwun piece, but also here, i mean, the corruption is so blatant, you know, a billionaire is having the district spend $60 million building him a new practice facility and he was a major donor in this last election, he helped the mayor's coalition and that's not where we want to be spending our money when we have

an affordable housing crisis, jobs programs that have been not been fully funded for our youth to help those who don't have, you know, friends that can get them internships and can afford to do unpaid internships a chance to get some experience and get some work. >> right. so one thing that's been a real highlight for me working in this field is some of the work that demos is doing and allie is here representing demos. so a lot of your programming has been focused on research money and politics and equity through a racial justice lens and putting out research and studies and drilling down and naming names and putting numbers and facts behind how our political system operates and dis en franchises certain communities. talk to us about some of the work you guys have been doing in relation to that. >> well, i think i would recommend everyone checking out our report stacked deck which really talks about the link between big money and politics

and racial injustice in this country. i think it's important to keep in mind that austin talked about the trust gap and we also have a big racial wealth gap in this country because of a history of exclusion of people of color not just from our democracy but from our economy as well. and this matters because the entrenched donor class, hopefully this will be changing but the entrenched donor class is a lot less likely to prioritize the needs of color because they are disproportionately white. so in this context and in the context of the trust gap we know that candidates of color are less likely to run for office in the first place and when they do run they raise less money. i think these are patterns that millennials should seek to interrupt. scott, you have mentioned that we are the most racially diverse generation yet and in terms of

fundraising i think -- i think this is an area where white people have an extra responsibility to show up and support candidates of color and groups led by people of color and in a way that we probably have not historically done and i think white millennials could be leaders on that. another thing that i wanted to mention is what's hauled our inclusive democracy project which is a coalition between demos and grassroots organizations, leaders from grassroots organizations around the country and these grassroots orgs are not democracy organization which aquene mentioned have been traditionally very white, these are orgs working on racial justice, immigrant rights. the purpose of the idp, the inclusive democracy project it sees democracy reforms as a tool for building political power. and structural reforms like

public financing of elections, automatic voter registration, restoring the rights of people to vote who have felony convictions, these are all ways that can facilitate our -- our broader platforms and the changes that we need in this country like racial justice, gender justice, economic justice. members of this idp cohort helped draft the movement for black lives policy platform on political power which i definitely recommend checking out if you haven't yet. >> great. okay. so we're going to move to the last part of it, this is the optimistic brighter day tomorrow portion of our talk. so, you know, the prompt is given that we have the opportunity for the first time in over 40 years to have a progressive majority on the u.s. supreme court that sets so much of the policy that we live under

in campaign finance and voting rights what could be possible with a different orientation and different rules. to cover the fair courts angle quickly, imagine a new jurisprudence where you have such an expansive for the right of someone's free trial where a party in the case gives the judge a few thousand dollars or spends money on an independent expenditure in support or attack of that judge in an election season with an expansive due process mindset you would be able to limit the amount of money folks could put into that which would compromise judicial bias or compromise a judge's ability to be able to remain fair and impartial. let's go to our resident legal experts brendan and allie. talk to us about your vision for a new juris prudence. >> well, maybe i will do two things. first of all, the organizing

strategy, the strategy on the ground is linked to but distinct from the strategy in the courts. i think we are at a -- as everybody has just explained, we are at a real moment where people are engaged with this issue, others overwhelmingly bipartisan support across the political spectrum for campaign finance reform, this overwhelming recognition that citizens united is a problem and people want it overturned and historically the knock against campaign finance reform was that it was something that people cared about but it was not something that people voted about, that the intensity wasn't there, but i think that really is beginning to change, especially among younger people. and as austin said there is this question of building a grizzly bear or a teddy bear, what sort of movement -- what do we want this movement to look like? on the grow under it should be a grizzly bear and to a certain extent the broad public dissatisfaction with our campaign finance system will have some influence on the court

but the -- the appointment of a new justice on the supreme court is an opportunity but we don't -- we don't expect the court to reverse course overnight. even the liberal justice -- i shouldn't say this -- the court as a whole is concerned about its own legitimacy and it's not -- it's unlikely any justices are going to want to entirely reverse themselves. so for the immediate term the opportunities are expanding -- are looking for opportunities within the court's current juris prudence. going back to the buckley decision the campaign finance restrictions can be justified as a means of combating corruption or the appearance of corruption but the appearance of corruption is not a fully developed theory and that could present an opportunity. justice breyer in his dissent to mccutcheon explained how campaign finance laws can actually further first amendment interest, can further

people's -- the public's interest in self-government and getting the court to expand on that and recognize that first amendment -- that campaign finance restrictions can advance first amendment values, move us beyond this balancing test where any campaign finance law is just balanced against the supposed infringement on first amendment rights. and the legal strategy is also distinct from the school desegregation legal strategy, for example, we are not challenging existing laws, we are not trying to not down desegregation laws, we're really trying to defend -- defend good laws. so any successful case will probably result from a challenge to an existing law and any existing law is more likely to be upheld if it's narrowly tailored to a localized record

of localized record of corruption. so those are the general prips that we are looking at and thinking of moving forward as we anticipate the court's jurisprudence changing with this new justice, but, again, that's distinct from what's happening on the ground. at best if we do achieve the new jurisprudence that we're hoping for that's going to create an opening for new legislation, it's going to create an opening for new ballot initiatives and that's where the importance of really having people continually engaged with these issues and organized around these issues and motivated that's where it becomes so important. >> just picking up on that, completely agree with what brendan has said. i think looking at the longer term, for us we see citizens united as a really useful tool to help spark activism and movements on the ground but legally we see it as the tip of

the iceberg of what the court got wrong. so as early as buckley versus valejo the court has really put a lid on our ability to limit big money in politics and we've seen what that looks like in the current system, you know, where wealthy candidates can spend as much money as they want on their own campaigns, wealthy individuals can spend as much as they can to elect their favorite candidates if they do so independently and maybe more importantly a lot of really awesome potential candidates never bother even running for office because they are not taken seriously if they can't raise tons of money. and this is all on top of corporate spending on elections, which was unleashed by citizens united. so i think to us it's important that a new juris prudence allows us to combat all of these problems and not confine us to sort of a clean government or

anti-corruption lens. i think millennials see that the problems of racial and political and economic inequality are deeply connected and it's time for a court to interpret the constitution in a way that doesn't ban us from addressing these problems and that's pretty much what the current doctrine does. you know, and all the while affording heightened privilege and protections to wealthy interests. so we're optimistic that -- we're optimistic that things could get better on the court. >> anybody else want to weigh in? big ideas or strategies with a new democracy juris prudence? >> i think there will be more opportunities for local organizing to challenge a ruling over time and that's exciting. i think that's the kind of serious in the trenches campaigns that maybe millennials are excited about, let's upend the order, let's do something that could actually lead to a

challenge to citizens united or buckley or another piece of this puzzle. i also think, though, we have a united states senate that does not respect the institution of the court and the confirmation process and so, you know, we are at a point in general where we kind of held congress in this trust that they would fulfill their duties to make sure that the balance of power remains, that we have a fully staffed, i guess, court, that's probably not the right word for it. and they failed. and is there any punishment for that at all? i mean, the big money in this election is in the senate races and it's real out there, are millennials mobilizing for those senate races? i think so, there's probably a lot more we could do, but until there's political consequences for breaking our government, for breaking our courts, you know, it provides an incentive for them to continue those who don't think that the senate has a duty to confirm whoever the president -- or at least have hearings and to consider

whomever the president nominates, what's to say that's not going to continue and are we mobilized enough to really have a strong voice on that? >> okay. folks, it's time for some q & a. if you have a question we have a microphone we can send around the room and if you would just tell us your name and if you are here on behalf of an organization tell us who you are representing. so floor is open to questions. >> hi, i'm [ inaudible ]. i was just thinking given that this election has exposed that most of the republican base resents the donor class as well, does anybody have any idea

congressional policy that maybe some sort of red/blue coalition in the upcoming congress, you know, with president clinton could take action on campaign finance reform? >> so one problem that i think that as you described and as this election has really demonstrated and as polls demonstrate is that republican voters care about this issue a great deal it's republican politicians who block reformat every turn. and you've seen with some of donald trump's messaging he attacks hillary clinton as corrupt, he says she is beholden to her donors but he has yet to put forward any policy solutions that would address the broken campaign finance system that he has in many ways correctly diagnosed. so in some ways it's a question of whether republican donors -- whether republican voters will

hold their officials to account. i described earlier that there is a bipartisan fec reform bill that possibly with a different congress could have a chance of going somewhere, disclosure is something that is overwhelmingly supported by republican voters as well as democratic voters, that is something that the next congress could address, the question again is whether any republican officials will do what polls show that republican voters actually want. >> i think there has been a proposal in congress, i'm not sure it will move but certainly at the local level there's more room for motion like in south dakota the ballot any testify there is actually a tax credit system for public financing, which a lot of republicans feel really good about. i think there are some challenges with that in terms of people with lower incomes waiting until they get the tax credit back might impede their participation to some extents, but, you know, it's definitely

ground zero for that question of whether we can really get some serious change on the ground with republican support and that is -- like both in south dakota and in washington state, the public financing proposals there are vouchers or credits and they have significant republican support at the grassroots level pushing those. >> all right. next question. >> aaron jordan, alliance for justice. one thing i hadn't thought about, i think brendan made the point, is that basically to get citizens united overturned you need a case, but in this case we are not really worried about the laws on hand, for gay marriage or civil rights it was challenging bad laws, here we are trying to defend halfway decent ones. so why would a conservative

advocacy group take a case to court when it's a lose/lose for them? how would it get overturned? >> interesting. >> that's a great question. >> that's a good question. i don't know. i mean, you've consistently seen conservative legal advocacy groups challenge campaign finance laws when they are enacted and even challenge campaign finance laws that have been on the books for a long time. so i think it's a question you have to ask to a group like center for competitive politics. but it is a good question. >> allie, any thoughts on that? pick your legal brain. >> it's a great question. i would echo everything that brendan said. i think hope that they just simply can't contain themselves. >> it's not a unified structure. these folks aren't always working in such tight quarters. there isn't exactly an

anti-democracy feel to having a comparable event like this somewhere down the street. >> that's public anyway. >> that's right. they wouldn't be filming, put it that way. anybody else? >> hi, jordan mcfail with crew. actually, a brief response to that comment. there are two strategies you could bring a challenge to citizens united, one would be getting a small locality to pass a law that would [ inaudible ] to that case and bring defensive action if and when that is challenged and that would raise the opportunity. the other opportunity the [ inaudible ] provides you can see the fec for failure to act and act in contrary to law and those -- we have brought those kind of actions tried to get the fec to change its activity. there would be a supreme court case and you would be face that go barrier but through that you can get a court to reconsider

its precedent. >> anyone respond to that? >> i would say free speech for people is pursuing both of those avenues right now, we have a complaint pending at the now. we have a complaint pending at the fec that challenges the decision that created super pacs and folks in st. petersburg, florida, are leading an initiative piece of legislation that if passed could provide a challenge to the decision that created super pacs as well as potentially take a shot at citizens united. other questions? we have a few more minutes? >> i'm with people from the american way. wonderful panel, great to see you, fellow millennials doing such great work. my question is in regards to engaging donors in being in the case that we've got billionaires like warren buffett and the facebook founders basically pledging to give the majority of their wealth away. what do you with think it will take for some of that money to

go towards structural democracy reforms where it be overturning citizens united or ending gerrymandering or any number of things that were talked about tonight given the fact that so many of the concerns of not just millennials but the country in general can be traced back to the influence of money in politics? >> i don't know if you can hear me without the microphone, i would say that the short answer is that it's going take time to get folks there. one reason why this is so -- it's going to take some patience is because unfortunately a lot of the tech donors right now who are emerging and are going to far surpass the older money that's happened in the philanthropic landscape, they have not been engaged at the level that they should up to this point around these kinds of bedrock issues.

there's a massive transfer of wealth from baby boomers going to millennials in the ballpark area. so now's the time to take the patient steps to cultivate real relationships with donors, some of whom might be inheriting wealth in this room that we don't know and they're beginning to shape their world view. it's important to get them when they are in spaces like this as young folks and it takes a lot of donor education and there's a statistic around focusing on these donors when they're young and this is that the "new york times" and catalyst did a study that shows political events that happen at the age of 18 are three times as powerful as events that happen at the age of 40 so if you want to change and fix this issue you're addressing, we have to start younger down the pipeline. and there's a network called resource generation that's focused on that, on finding

young high net worth individuals and they do a lot of movement work and have been doing convenings with tech donors in the bay area recently trying to cultivate those relationships so that's the one factor. the second one is direct action and continuing to change public sentiment. when occupy wall street got on the scene back in 2011 and people were saying 99% and 1% that polarizing kind of action for better or worse depending on your perspective did draw a lot of young donors to the side of the 99% where their moral conscience was touched through the heroic actions of the young people in those parks so it's combination of the donor education with a review of relationships that need to be built there and secondly sometimes it will take holding high net worth individual donors

and corporations' feet to the fire about their relationship to our democracy. >> anybody else? thoughts on that? okay we've got time for one more question if it's out there. any last-minute burning questions? okay, well this has been a presentation of the american -- oh, we have one more. sorry. go ahead. >> tim schwartzman, potential future student at gw, i was curious with the lack of diversity on our federal benches, what role do you think that plays? i know you touched on it earlier, but what role do you think that continues to play in our campaign finance laws and do you think it's necessary for us

to change the diversity of our bench in order to change the campaign finance laws. >> that's a great question. there is probably a degree to which they are intertwined or interrelated. certainly the u.s. supreme court's decisions in cases like citizens united was entirely detached from reality. i don't believe that any of the current sitting justices were elected officials, they haven't gone through a campaign, they don't know how a campaign -- really don't know how the campaign finance system operates. their assumptions in that case and in cases like mccutchen were entirely off base and similar to the degree to which the justices are unrepresentative of the country as a whole there's going to be a lack of recognition about how their decisions impact the country as a whole so the

two are very much interrelated. anybody else? >> enough said. okay, folks, this is a product of the american constitution society d.c. lawyer chapter, thank you for coming out. could we have our board members put your hands up if you're in the room? folks these are chapter ambassadors, find them, engage them, buy them a drink at the bar but thank all of you for coming and being here with us, thank you to gw for the space, thank you to c-span for providing coverage of it. you are now all free to sob quietly into your pillows while watching the third presidential debate. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> if you didn't get food, there's plenty left in the room right over there. >> pennsylvania congressman brendan boyle is urging people to vote. he sent out this tweet today. "how many people have already voted in the 2016 election? 5.9 million. check out how and where you can

vote early." congressman chaffetz, meanwhile, says he'll vote for donald trump but he won't endorse or defend him. the utah republican dropped his endorsement after donald trump's comments on women came out, but now the congressman says hillary clinton is worse than mr. trump and so he will volt for the republican nominee. donald trump and hillary clinton are back on the campaign trail today. mr. trump is spending the day in ohio, holding a campaign rally in springfield and c-span 2 will have live coverage at 1:00 p.m. eastern. hillary clinton is campaigning in north carolina with first lady michelle obama to encourage early voting. c-span has live coverage of their stop in winston-salem at 2:00 eastern. tonight on american history tv prime time, world war ii programs from our "reel america" series showing archival films on public affairs.

at 8:00 eastern, a 1943 film on the battle of russia followed by a film called "know your ally, britain." at 10:10 eastern, some films from 1944 "the negro soldier" and "the hidden way." american history tv in prime time all this week on c-span 3 while congress is on break. this weekend on american history tv on c-span 3, saturday morning from 9:00 eastern till just afternoon -- >> the britiif the british empis commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say this was their finest hour. >> we're live for the 33rd international churchill conference in washington, d.c. focusing on the former british prime minister's friends and contemporaries. speakers include british historian andrew roberts, author of "masters and commanders, how four titans won the for what the

west, 1941 to 1945." and later on saturday at 7:00, texas general land office commissioner george p. bush, state senator jose hen thhojose musician phil collins talk about the aloe in austin. >> the memories i have of my impressions at that time were that this group of people were going and they knew they were going to die but they went. but there was something very noble and very roman i cmantiro. i've learned that it wasn't quite as black and white and that's one of the things that would be good at this day in age that we put it into context. >> then sunday evening at 6:00, on american artifacts -- >> macarthur is up front. he would often lead attacks carrying nothing but that riding crop that you see in his left

hand. and men looked at this and realized if the colonel -- and later the brigadier -- can take it, well, i can take it, too. >> we visit the macarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia, to learn about the early life of douglas macarthur who commanded allied forces in the pacific during world war ii. and at 8:00. >> the great leaders serve as conscience in chief with the highest level of integrity, with their moral compass locked on true north so we can always count on them to do the right thing when times get tough or when no one is looking. >> author talmadge boston explains his 10 commandments for presidential leadership, what they are and provides examples of presidential who excelled at each one. for our complete american history tv schedule, go to cspan.org. national intelligence director claidirect director james clapper says the russian government is

responsible for hacking the e-mails of american citizens, institutions and political organizations. but he says hacking the november 8, 2016 vote count would be difficult. mr. clapper spoke at an event hosted by the intelligence and national security alliance. this is 45 minutes. is. good morning, everybody. i'm the president of the intelligence and national security alliance. we're going to get started. the -- i think we have 30 or 40 people still working their way through security outside and we think the director of national intelligence is close so we wanted to make sure that he

would be here by the time we get through these preliminary remarks and can talk to us about the things we came here to hear about. so on behalf of insa and our - co-host, the business executives for international security, bens, i'm pleased to welcome you to the congressional autoor the yum at the capitol visitor's center. i would like to welcome any audience joining us virtually via tv. we appreciate c-span and other media out lets airing what we thought would be a thought provoking discussion on steps our public and private sectors can take together to protect the nation. insa and bens are pleased to prevent the program, navigating an environment and how greater collaboration can disrupt a decentralized terrorist threat and we're pleased and honored to have jim clap we are us to

deliver the opening keynote. director clapper -- and i hope you folks will pass on we're saying nice things here. >> thank you for being here and for your almost five decades of service to our nation. i don't think many people fully appreciate all that you have done to protect our nation and how precious your time. is we are deeply touched by your generosity in being here this morning to discuss the extraordinarily important and complex topic of gathering and developing the intelligence to protect our nation at home. you've been an outstanding champion of intelligence integration and information throughout your tenure, particularly with regard to protecting the homeland. we could not have a better more credible speaker to help set the stage for today's discussion which will touch upon the evolving threats to our domestic security and the importance of continuing to strengthen

effective intelligence sharing and cooperation between federal agencies, their state, local, tribal, and territorial partners and the private sector operators of our nation's critical infrastructure. thank you, director clapper, and we look forward to your remarks. the complex evolving threat environment and related topics discussed today will not only were an intention for the next administration but also the next congress which makes being here at the capital visitor's center so appropriate. we thank house homeland security chairman michael mccaul and his staff for helping ena asa and b secure this venue. he could not be here today but i wanted to express our appreciationship shi appreciation. i'd like that thank the former deputy national security advisor for combatting terrorism in the white house who will be moderating our panel discussion following director clapper's

remarks. moderating a panel discussion with domestic security leaders from the public and private sector a bit later on. juan, we are so pleased to have you leading this important discussion, thanks for being here. putting together such a great lineup of topics and speakers is a team effort and i cannot say enough about our teammate in today's event, bens. it has been a pleasure to work the general and his team at bens on the development of this event. they have been colleagues and partners in every sense of the words and i thank them for their dedication and professionalism. as nonprofit public/private organizations, ensa and bens share a similar vision, a close partnership between the private sector and government can greatly enhance our national security through the application of private sector access, innovation and expertise. as like-minded as we are on so many topics, we have not had the

chance to collaborate previously but i speak for tisch long, our chairman, and all of us at ensa when i say we hope to work together again in the future. with that, it's my pleasure to welcome to the podium former chief of staff of the army general nordy schwartz, president and ceo of bens to introduce director clapper. [ applause ] >> i'll make one modest direction that it was the air force, by the way. [ laughter ] nothing parochial in that, of course. chuck, thank you so much. good morning to you all and thank you so much for attending today's program and before i begin, like chuck, i'd like also to thank house committee and

homeland security for hosting this event this morning and chairman mccaul and ranking member benny thompson for their very significant hospitality. for those of you who may not know, i am norty schwartz, president and ceo of a non-partisan and nonprofit organization called business executives for international security and for nearly four decades, bens has been one of the premier conduits through witch senior private sector leaders can lend their experience and expertise in support of government partners and the challenges that they face. and through the committed work of our members, bens has established itself as a trust t partner that works through the unique public/private interaction to apply best business practices to some of the nation's most pressing national security challenges.

we're honored to partner with ensa to convene such an esteemed lineup of law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence practitioners to discuss a timely and ever important subject to our nation's security. today america is confronted with a complex threat environment. as the threat to our nation continues to evolve, physical attacks to our communities have become an unfortunate reality. sign security is also an increasingly important component of the nation's security. they can compromise our critical infrastructure, they can steel intellectual property and as we all know and has been recently reported, cyber vulnerabilities in our election systems can be a security risk as well.

confronted, ladies and gentlemen, with this array of challenges, our public and private sector leaders must work together to continuously improve the ability to navigate this complex threat environment. continuous improvement is a core private-seconder best practice. it is founded on the notion that improvement is not a fixed point in time or even a state of being. there is no finish line to cross to achieve improvement, rather improvement must be pursued as a continuous and sustained effort. it's a dynamic learning process that requires active leadership in a committed work force and threats to our nation will continue to change. the measure of our success will be our ability to continuously improve in light of this fact and to get ahead of these threats. for bens, today's program is an

extension of our focus on how the private sector can contribute to our nation's security. in 2007, in response to the devastation wrought by hurricane katrina p o katrina, our members set out to examine how the considerable resources and the capabilities of the private sector could be integrated into disaster response efforts. by building more responsive public/private part herships, our government can deliver goods and services to areas affected by natural disasters in a quicker and more efficient manner. from there, bens shifted its focus to our nation's ability to remain agile in the face of an evolving terrorist threat. four liz leaders, four of our members from new york city were deeply affected by the horrific events of 9/11. they were committed to doing

their part to help ensure our nation was best positioned to defend against the ever-changing domestic terrorist threat our work focused on how to improve coordination, management, and information sharing between security agencies at all levels of government and building upon these past efforts we are proud to continue our focus on public and private partnerships. such an approach could be organized around strong horizontal partnerships between public and private stakeholders from the federal level on down to the state and local communities and as we all know strong partnership cans provide greater visibility and to each partner's information needs, improve the ability of stakeholders to coordinate their activities and ensure rapid, locally directed responses to perceived threats. just as our nation strives for

continuous improvement against a changing threat landscape, today's event is not the finish line. today is a continuation of our efforts and ensa's efforts of a national conversation on these important issues. to further this conversation, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker today, the director of national intelligence, claim clapper. i have a strong sense of pride when given the opportunity to work with individuals who are committed to work with public service and embody what it means to be a public servant. director clapper and i go back a few years. he is among the handful who represent the best our nation has to offer and we should all feel fortunate that he chose to use his talents to protect and

serve our nation throughout his illustrious career. while it may never be a career of fame and fortune the. a of auk says he has achieved over the years is indeed legend. in jim's over 50 years of experience in the sbefs and intelligence community provides invaluable expertise and insight and as the fourth director of national intelligence, he's led the intelligence community since 2010 as the principal intelligence advisor to the president. since his unanimously confirmation by the senate as dni, he has provided by incredible stability to the role and the leadership throughout the intelligence community. and as the top intelligence officer of our nation, we look forward to his assessment of the threat environment today. so without further delay, please welcome -- join me in welcoming our honored guest, director jim

clapper. [ applause ] well, thanks, norty for the very gracious and generous introduction. i almost feel like maybe i should quit while i'm ahead here. and i -- while i'm at it, i want to acknowledge your continued distinguished service after very illustrious career in the air force culminating in a great run as chief of staff and in the current position with bens continues to serve the nation and its citizens. over the past few years during my tenure as dni, we had a very

public conversation about our work, the work of the intelligence community and how we should conduct it and what i believe has been lost in the public debate about how we conduct intelligence is why we even do it in the first place. why does any nation state conduct intelligence? i spent a little time giving that some thought myself and i think in the end we conduct intelligence at its most pace i can level to reduce uncertainty for our decision makers. it would be great if we could eliminate that uncertainty, we're rarely able to do that but at least reduce the amount of uncertainty that decision makers have. and those can be the president in the oval office or it can be a war fighter, if i can stretch the metaphor, in an old fox hole. we can't lum nate uncertainty

for any decision maker, certainly not all the time but we certainly can provide insight and analysis to help their understanding and to make uncertainty at least manageable so that our national security decision makers can make educated choices. with an understanding of the risk involved and how to gauge it so that we and our friends and allies operate on a shared understanding of the facts and the situation. that's why starting after the party conventions and the official nominations we've briefed each of the presidential and vice presidential candidates to help reduce uncertainty for our next president so that when he or she steps into the oval, she he or she will have as good an understanding of our complex and

uncertain world as we can provide. hopefully we'll wake up in 20 days knowing who our next president will be. and when i say "we" i mean the world. i've been taken aback by the intense interest in this campaign. people everywhere hang on every worth of the candidates and, by the way, some try to do more than just listen in. two weeks ago, dhs secretary jeh johnson and i released a joint statement saying that the recent compromises of e-mails are directed by the russian government and the e-mails released on sites like dcleaks.com and wikileaks and the gusifer persona are consistent with russian efforts. going after u.s. political

organizations is a new aggressive spin on the political cycle. regardless, this election will happen on november 8 and also, by the way, we assess it would be very difficult for someone, anyone, to alter actual ballot counts or election results with a cyber intrusion, particularly since voting machines aren't connected to the internet. then on january 20, 92 days but who's counting, we'll have a new president. and the u.s. intelligence community will be heavily involved in making sure that person is informed about our world and hopefully is ready to make decisions as we can help with. president johnson once said a president's hardest task is not to do what is right but to know what is right. and having closely worked with and for our current president i can absolutely attest that's

still true. knowing what is right is the president's hardest task. the ic cannot make that decision for him. we wouldn't want to. and when it comes to national security it's our job to give him the intelligence he needs as objectively as we possibly can to enable him to manage that risk and then ultimately to decide what's right. so our work means a great deal to the person we call intelligence customer number one because at the end of the day -- and i've been told this analogy is hokey, but it rings true to me, it's up to the president, congress, and other leaders to decide which way to steer the ship, how fast to go, how many deck chairs to set out, and how to arrange them. we'll be down the engine room shoveling intelligence coal and trying to keep the ship running. so this morning i plan to come in and tell war stories,

reminisce with norty a bit and then get off stage, but today's theme shifted a bit to talking about how we should do things differently, maybe so instead of telling some of my stories i want to talk about the story of the intelligence community and talk a bit about how change happens in this great city. you know, washington as you all know is a particularly interesting place these days. it's a place where friends come and go and enemies accumulate. it's a place where if you want a friend, buy a dog, great harry truman line. washington is a place where people think differently and where we find it hard to learn from our mistakes. ancient tribal wisdom says when you're riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. well, here in washington we often try other strategies that are somewhat less successful.

such as we'll buy a stronger whip for the dead horse. we'll change riders, we'll say things like "this is the way we've always ridden this horse." we'll appoint a committee to study the horse. we'll lower standards so more dead horses can be included. we'll appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse, we'll hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse, we harness several dead horses together to increase speed, we attempt to mount multiple dead horses in hopes one of them will spring to life, we provide additional funding and training to increase the dead horse's performance, we'll do a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance, we declare since the dead horse doesn't have to be fed it's less costly, carries low overhead and therefore contributes more to the mission than live horses. [ laughter ] and last but not least, my favorite, we'll promote the dead horse to a supervisory position. [ laughter ] all to say we appreciate outside perspectives from people who

have the intellectual integrity and courage to recognize that dead horses don't go anywhere. i've been using that bit for going on six years and it's intended humorously but there's a lot of truth to it. it's also deceptive because sometimes it looks like we're doing nothing but flogging dead horses and get nothing where with intelligence reform when really we're making progress. although lots of times it feels like we're dragging those multiple dead horses behind us i can look back on the 53 years or so in this business and to the era when i first started, there wasn't such a thing as an intelligence community. most people here probably remember back before 9/11 when intelligence community -- air quotes -- was a phrase you only uttered with tongue in cheek. in june of 2004, the 9/11

commission released its report on the terrorist attacks and i know most everyone here has read the 9/11 mission report but it's worth reading again when you get a chance it opens with people going to work in new york and arlington and with mohamed atta and his terrorist cell getting on a plane in portland, maine. it tells what happened that day, how we responded and analyzes the missed opportunities that we had to perhaps keep the terrorist attacks from happening. the commissioner graphically describes the summer before the attacks with the phrase "the system was blinking red." i'll read a passage i think nails the problem that we had in intelligence. the commissioners wrote "the agencies cooperated some of the time, but even such cooperation as there was is not the same as joint action. when agencies cooperate, one defines the problem and seeks

help with it. when they act jointly, the problem and options for actions are defined differently from the start. individuals from different backgrounds come together and analyze a case and plan how to manage it of course, intelligence integration, which has been my shtick, my mantra for the past six years that i've been dni is a prerequisite to reaching the 9/11 commission's goal that we act jointly in the summer and fall of 2004, the 9/11 commission report weighed heavily on discussions on the state of the u.s. intelligence community. and along with the fact that nearly a year and a half after the fall of baghdad people were asking why we still hadn't found any weapons of mass destruction in iraq which we were sure were there. so with that backdrop, congress, working with the white house and the executive departments began to sort through what statutory changes the ic needed so in

december, 2004, much to the great credit of senators lieberman and collins, congress passed the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act and the president signed it into law on the 17th of december, 2004. now, to be sure, irtpa -- and no one know this is better than i -- like all major legislation, is seriously flawed. actually, it overachieves at being flawed. but it codified intelligence reforms and established in statute the office of the dni which stood up in april, 2005. so for the past decade or so the ic is -- has charted the course of integration with the 9/11 commission report as the compass and irtpa as the map, if you will. i think we've come a long way since then, meeting almost all the recommendations of the 9/11 commission.

at least what we could within the authorities that are granted under that law. now, it's taken us some time, and this is an evolving process, always seeking, i think, to improve along the lines of what norty said. so we're still shaping, still molding what intelligence integration is all about. 12 years ago, as congress was debating irtpa, there was a lot of hand wringing that a dni would first make a big land grab and second try to make all the agencies look just the same but the dni's job, at least as i perceive it -- and i really think in some ways is more important than my job as the president's senior intelligence advisor -- by the way, not the exclusive advisor is to get each

of the agencies to know what their strengths are and what the strengths of the other agencies are so we can take advantage of each of those strengths and orchestrate them. work together to meet our incredibly hard and incredibly important national security mission. so that's why i've kind of stuck with the theme, that's my story, i'm sticking to it, of intelligence integration for the past six plus years. it's my hope integration will become so ingrained in the culture of the ic that when my successor comes on, he or she won't have to talk about integration, it will just be the automatic default. that's been kind of the ic story of the past 15 years or so. intelligence reform has happened bit by bit, enabled by changes to the law and driven by the amazing intelligence

professionals who got up on the morning of september 12 and went to work to figure out what went wrong and how to keep it from ever happening again and, of course, by the patriotic men and women who have joined us since then. it's occurred to me recently that we have ic employees who are six or seven years old when we were attacked on 9/11. so there are people working with me today that have only a vague memory of that day. so that brings me to the topic of discussion for later today, changes we might think about going forward, particularly relating to cyber and the domestic terrorism threat. taken all together, there's an incredibly complex array of threats out there particularly in the cyber domain. criminals, activists, collectives like anonymous are all thrown in together with aggressors like north korea and

iran and with the russians and chine chinese who are more sophisticated and could do real damage if they were so inclined. and with terrorist groups who continue to experiment with hacking. each of these actors has different capabilities and different octaves when they conduct operations in cyberspace and all of them operate on the very same internet. sometimes all this makes me long for the halcion days of the cold war when the world essentially had two large mutually exclusive telecommunications networks -- one essentially dominated by the united states and the other and our allies and the other of course dominated by the soviet union and their allies. so we could be ranbly sure that if we were listening to someone on the soviet-dominated network that person was probably not going to be a u.s. citizen.

today, of course, that's not the case and it makes our work exponentially harder. and when it comes to groups like isis, daesh, the real problem suspect their cyber hacking capability it's how the internet enables them to recruit and inspire people all over the world and we can monitor and maybe even infiltrate terrorist groups but it's very difficult to expunge the internet of the ideology and their toxic ideas. preventing the spread of dangerous ideas just wasn't a consideration as the internet grew up and became functional and knowing what's going on inside the heads of people who read extremist propaganda would require, franalkly, talents beyd that of our great intelligence analysts, it's more like clairvoyance. and when it comes to protecting

the nation we also need to factor in protecting civil liberties and privacy of americans. i've witnessed a lot of teeth nashing about people committing acts of terror when the fbi previously investigated and cleared and i think the fbi director jim comey precisely described the problem with his analogy that we aren't expected to just find a needle in a haystack but are also held to account for guessing which pieces of hey may later become needles and we cannot continuously monitor americans who have done no wrong. that's not who we are. so domestic security, particularly in the ct realm is a difficult problem. and better integration of our intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security communities is critical to our national security. and that, too, is a work in progress. that, too, will continue to