Since the citizens united ruling it effectively removed limits on outside spending and allowed so-called dark money to expand. It’s known as dark money because of political nonprofits don’t need to disclose their donors or mention how much money they spend on ads. With the appearance of philanthropy dark money had flooded our political system, epically through 501c4s, they manage to stay anonymous in last-minute table-turning elections. 501c4s is an Internal Revenue Code section hat, in theory, is designed to promote, well, social welfare causes, however, it ends up being more abused for political gain. On March 23, 2016, Judicial crisis network released a video, that destroyed Merrick Garland’s chance at a neck to neck election, last minute so that a few swing-vote senators rejected him. If Merrick Garland had made to the Supreme Court there would have been no five-four conservative majority, which would have caused a very different world than the world we live in today. Judicial crisis network is a nonprofit funded almost entirely anonymous mega-philanthropist; so 501c4s has become a weapon for the wealthy in so-called philanthropy causing more threats to democracy.