Opinion | Ketanji Brown Jackson and ‘Darkish Cash’

So with no small delight, Republicans spent the week highlighting the extent to which Decide Jackson’s nomination was pushed by covert left-wing entrance teams funded by a lot greater checks with the goal of influencing the excessive court docket. The explanation Mr. Whitehouse is such an skilled on “darkish cash” is that his facet has used it longer, and does to this point greater and higher. With the Jackson nomination exposing this reality, perhaps Washington can lastly have a extra sincere debate about what’s actually at stake: free speech.

The time period “darkish cash” got here into existence solely 12 years in the past, when the left-leaning Daylight Basis used it within the wake of the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling in Residents United v. Federal Election Fee. Either side had lengthy had nonprofits, and each had lengthy understood the significance of making use of First Modification protections to donors. But the left resented that Residents United opened a path for a rising conservative nonprofit motion to compete extra straight within the political area. President Obama launched a marketing campaign towards “shadowy” right-wing teams and donors, inspiring the Inner Income Service’s scandalous concentrating on and intimidation of conservative nonprofits.

The slurs towards conservatives deflected from the left’s personal “darkish cash” operation—which dwarfs something on the suitable, together with in Supreme Courtroom fights. The left pioneered this activism in 1987, when a “darkish cash” outfit often known as Folks for the American Method spent $1.5 million on assault advertisements towards

Robert Bork.

The left’s new high-court energy participant is Demand Justice, whose mark on the Jackson nomination is something however secret. Demand Justice spearheaded campaigns towards

Donald Trump’s

judicial nominees, together with vicious assaults on Justice

Brett Kavanaugh.

It issued “grades” of Senate Democrats, ranking their efforts to halt Trump appointments, and is a number one advocate of court-packing. It led the stress marketing campaign on Justice

Stephen Breyer

to retire, even hiring a billboard truck studying “Breyer, retire” to circle the Supreme Courtroom.

Demand Justice in 2019 issued a “shortlist” of acceptable liberal picks to the Supreme Courtroom, and this month it invested $1 million in an advert marketing campaign for Decide Jackson. Not that Demand Justice wanted advertisements to train sway. White Home press secretary

Jen Psaki

is a former communications guide to the group. Senior White Home counsel

Paige Herwig

—assigned to shepherd the Biden decide—was deputy counsel at Demand Justice. And the group’s govt director,

Brian Fallon,

is a former communications director for Senate Majority Chief

Chuck Schumer.

Demand Justice was a venture of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which the Atlantic calls the “indeniable heavyweight of Democratic darkish cash.” Mr. Whitehouse likes to accuse the Federalist Society of accumulating $400 million in “darkish” donations over 4 years. The Sixteen Thirty Fund doled out $410 million in “darkish” funding in 2020 alone.

The fund was itself seeded by an array of dark-money outfits; operates alongside a dark-money sister nonprofit (New Enterprise Fund) that makes grants to dark-money left-wing causes; and is managed by Arabella Advisers, which oversees a community of dark-money liberal nonprofits. Mr. Whitehouse would wish the remainder of his life to untangle this net if he truthfully cared about revealing darkish cash.

He doesn’t, as this week amusingly uncovered. The senator furiously tried and did not revert consideration again to “proper wing” {dollars}, at one level contorting himself right into a protection of liberal darkish cash. The Jackson hearings made clear the one factor Mr. Whitehouse and his media partisans care about is profitable. Their purpose is to muzzle the suitable, utilizing “disclosure” to unleash liberal mobs that can intimidate conservative donors into submission. Barring new disclosure guidelines (which liberal nonprofits oppose), he’ll use the dark-money concern to color opponents as sneaky and corrupt. That will get more durable now, even because the media spent the week portraying GOP senators as hypocrites.

Republicans would have been smarter this week to have accomplished extra than simply level out the “darkish cash” actuality. This was an opportunity to face up without cost speech. Either side exercised it through the Trump nominations; either side are exercising it now. It may be ugly, however it’s basic to American political debate, and neither facet has a monopoly. Or a minimum of not as long as Mr. Whitehouse fails to promote his partisan “darkish cash” agenda.

Write to kim@wsj.com.