Polixxy
← Back to bills

S. 3991 · 119th Congress

DISCLOSE Act of 2026

Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI] (D-RI) · Introduced · 46 cosponsors

CommitteeGovernment Operations and Politics
Progress
25%
1
Introduced
A bill is formally introduced by a lawmaker; it is assigned an ID and sent to committee.
2
Committee
A smaller group of lawmakers reviews, debates, and edits the bill before it can advance.
3
Reported
After committee work, the committee releases a report and the bill can go to the full chamber for a vote.
4
Senate Vote
The bill has passed the full Senate.
5
House Vote
The bill has passed the full House of Representatives.
6
Passed Congress
Both the House and Senate have passed the bill; it moves to the President for final approval.
7
Sent to President
The bill has been sent to the President, who may sign it, veto it, or let a ten-day clock decide.
8
Became Law
The bill is now law — by the President's signature, by the ten-day rule when the President declines to sign, or by a two-thirds veto override.

Latest action

Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

· from Congress.gov, as of August 8, 2026

Committees

Rules and Administration Committee

What this stage means

A smaller group of lawmakers reviews, debates, and edits the bill before it can advance.

Why this matters

Committees do the detailed work — they decide if a bill should move forward and shape its content. Most bills die here.

What can happen next

If approved, the committee reports the bill to the full chamber for debate and a vote.

Study this bill

AP Gov
Unit 5 · Political Participation

The constitutional question

Citizens United left one door open on purpose: while independent expenditures cannot be capped, the Court upheld disclosure requirements 8–1 as the constitutional alternative. The DISCLOSE Act — requiring organizations spending over $10,000 in an election cycle to reveal their major donors and banning shell-company laundering of foreign money — walks through that door. The question is whether donor anonymity is corruption's camouflage or association's shield: NAACP v. Alabama (1958) protected member lists from forced disclosure precisely because exposure invited retaliation.

The strongest case for

Every justification Citizens United gave for permitting unlimited independent spending assumed voters would know who was speaking — Kennedy's opinion is explicit — yet 'dark money' routed through 501(c)(4) shells has made the assumption false, with billions spent since 2010 by entities whose donors are legally invisible. Foreign contributions are already criminal, but a prohibition without disclosure is unenforceable: you cannot prosecute what you cannot see. The bill regulates no speech, caps no spending, and silences no one; it attaches a name tag to megaphones. Transparency is the one campaign-finance remedy the current Supreme Court has repeatedly blessed, which makes refusing it a choice about accountability, not the Constitution.

The strongest case against

NAACP v. Alabama is the counter-precedent supporters skip: the Court protected donor anonymity because disclosure regimes are how majorities intimidate dissenters, and in the doxxing era a public registry of everyone who gave $10,000 to an advocacy group is a harassment roadmap — which is why the ACLU itself opposed earlier DISCLOSE versions. The bill's thresholds sweep in issue advocacy far from any campaign, forcing civic organizations to choose between speaking and exposing their supporters. Incumbents write disclosure rules, and the burdens land hardest on new, small, and unpopular causes — the speakers the First Amendment exists for. Anonymous political speech has an American pedigree older than the Constitution: the Federalist Papers were published under a pseudonym.

Foundational documents in play

  • Federalist No. 10

    Madison's cure for faction was visibility across an extended republic — disclosure law is that cure translated into campaign finance.

  • U.S. Constitution

    The First Amendment powers both sides: spending as protected speech, and anonymous association as protected assembly.

Required cases in play

  • Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

    Citizens United struck spending limits but upheld disclosure 8–1, with Kennedy writing that transparency 'enables the electorate to make informed decisions' — this bill is Congress trying to collect on that sentence, sixteen years later.

Organizations supporting

Organizations opposing

This has happened before

The first DISCLOSE Act reached the Senate floor months after Citizens United and died at 59–41 — one vote short of cloture — in September 2010. It has been reintroduced in every Congress since: sixteen years of majority support that cannot become law, the longest-running demonstration in modern politics that the filibuster, not the Constitution, sets campaign-finance policy. Meanwhile the disclosure gap it targets grew from a loophole into the system.

Practice FRQ

SCOTUS Comparison. The DISCLOSE Act of 2026 would require organizations making large election expenditures to disclose major donors. (A) Identify the First Amendment principle common to debates over this bill and Citizens United v. FEC (2010). (B) Explain how the majority reasoning in Citizens United supports the constitutionality of the bill's disclosure requirements. (C) Describe an argument, grounded in freedom of association, that the bill's requirements nonetheless burden First Amendment rights.

Sources: www.congress.gov

Action history

Every recorded action from Congress.gov — 2 total.

  1. Senate

    Introduced in Senate

  2. Senate

    Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.