Test your constitutional knowledge in a lively game-show format where every question concerns the U.S. Constitution. Together, we'll celebrate Constitution Day, learn a few things, share some laughs, and examine a system in which corporations and corporate elites wield outsized political power.

Bring your friends, your sense of humor, and your best constitutional expertise. No trillionaire status required!

Declare Independence from Corporate Rule – Part 5

Women Declared Their Political Independence—and Changed the Constitution

August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, clearing the final constitutional hurdle needed to prohibit denying citizens the vote on the basis of sex. 

THE ROOT CAUSE

Corporate power is consuming our democracy and corrupting our constitutional republic. This is the movement working to build what comes next. 

The world is running out of time.

The House has passed a staggering $1.15 trillion military authorization bill—and buried inside it is a plan to bind America’s military future even more tightly to Israel’s wars.

The Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act is not just another Pentagon spending bill. It is a blueprint for permanent war—written while weapons corporations and powerful lobbying networks wield far more influence in Washington than the people who will pay the price.

Its message is unmistakable:

The American people can oppose the wars. Congress will fund and expand them anyway.

Forever Chemicals. Forever Corporate Rule

On July 1, the Trump administration abandoned a proposed scientific risk assessment that could have led to stronger protections against spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge on American farmland—even though these “forever chemicals” have poisoned water, contaminated food, killed livestock and been linked to cancer, and have been shown to damage DNA.

Follow the money.

During just the first six months of 2025, 17 corporations and industry groups connected to PFAS spent as much as $60 million lobbying the EPA and $12 million lobbying the Trump White House on PFAS-related issues. These interests included Dow, 3M, DuPont, Chemours, the American Chemistry Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Now protections for farmers, families and our drinking water are being discarded.

This is what corporate rule looks like: corporations manufacture toxic chemicals, spend millions influencing our government and leave ordinary people to carry the medical, emotional and financial consequences.

For my family, those consequences are deeply personal—and they are one reason I choose to work for Move to Amend. Overturning Citizens United alone is not enough. We must dismantle the entire constitutional framework that allows corporate power and concentrated wealth to override human rights, public health and our environment.

Five Constitutional Paths to Democracy Reform: Why the We the People Amendment Is the Most Comprehensive Solution

For more than a century, Americans have struggled with a fundamental question:

Who should govern our democracy—the people or concentrated wealth?

Today, that question has taken on new urgency. Billionaires spend unprecedented sums to influence elections. Corporate lobbyists write legislation. Super PACs dominate campaign fundraising. Artificial intelligence companies are becoming some of the most powerful corporations in history. Meanwhile, Americans across the political spectrum believe the political system is rigged. 

Many agree something must change.

Congress is now considering five proposed constitutional amendments that seek to address money in politics and the influence of powerful interests.

While they all recognize the problem, they offer very different solutions.

Some regulate campaign finance.

Some establish new election rules.

Only one seeks to change the constitutional doctrines that made corporate political power possible in the first place.

From Protest to Power: Building the Movement for Constitutional Change

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how resistance to concentrated economic power helped spark the American Revolution itself. In Part 2, we examined how corporations gradually acquired constitutional rights that appear nowhere in the Constitution and were never intended by its framers. In Part 3, we looked at America's amendment eras and how ordinary people have repeatedly organized to expand democracy and rewrite the rules when the existing system no longer served the public.

That history brings us to the question before us today:

How does constitutional change actually happen?

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how resistance to concentrated economic power helped spark the American Revolution itself. In Part 2, we examined how corporations gradually acquired constitutional rights that were never mentioned in the Constitution and were never intended by its framers.

Together, those histories reveal an important truth: democracy has never been static.

Throughout American history, ordinary people have repeatedly organized to expand political participation, challenge concentrations of power, and push the Constitution closer to its democratic promise.

Constitutional change is not a rare accident.

It is a recurring feature of American democracy

For generations, peace activists—including veterans who’ve seen the reality of war firsthand—have taken to the streets to say “No more.”

And yet, the wars continue.

Because opposing war is not enough
if we don’t dismantle the system that drives it.

In this powerful reflection, Mike Ferner challenges all of us to confront a deeper truth:

We’ve become experts at fighting fires.
But what would it take to stop them from being set?

This Earth Day, we're not just confronting a climate crisis, we're confronting a political one. At the very moment our communities need stronger safeguards for clean air, safe water, and a livable future, environmental protections are being stripped back, regulatory agencies are being hollowed out, and the industries driving pollution are being rewarded. Fossil fuel interests poured roughly $219 million into the 2024 U.S. election cycle, helping shape an administration and Congress more willing to serve oil, gas, and extraction companies than the public.

Thank you again for being part of No Kings Day 3.

Across the country — in big cities and small towns alike — people stepped into the streets, into public squares, into community spaces… and into something bigger than themselves.

Strangers became allies.
Conversations turned into clarity.
And a shared feeling rippled through it all:

We are not alone — and we are not powerless.

Now the question is: how do we turn that moment into momentum?

How did corporations gain constitutional rights in the first place?

It was never voted on..
There was no national debate.
No constitutional amendment.

Yet today, corporations can claim constitutional protections and spend unlimited money in elections.

How did that happen?

Understanding the answer reveals how power in America has evolved.

While communities face rising energy bills, climate disasters, unaffordable healthcare and shrinking public budgets, oil and gas corporations are thriving — propped up by tens of billions in federal subsidies.

How much public money are they receiving?

That depends on how you count.

Conservative estimates of direct federal subsidies — including tax breaks, discounted leasing rates, royalty reductions, and industry-specific deductions — place fossil fuel support at roughly $30–35 billion per year, a sharp increase from prior years after additional subsidies and favorable provisions were expanded in 2025

But broader analyses that include state and local incentives, indirect supports, and systemic advantages put the number far higher — often cited around $80 billion annually or more.

And if you include the true societal costs — public health impacts, climate damage, environmental cleanup, and military expenditures tied to securing global oil supply — economists estimate the effective public cost climbs into the hundreds of billions per year.

Lives have already been lost — American service members and civilians in the region — while military operations move forward at accelerating speed.

This conflict is unfolding inside a political system shaped by Gulf sovereign wealth, multi-billion-dollar arms deals, expanded U.S. military aid to Israel, defense industry lobbying, and tens of millions in election spending.

The State of the Union was presented as a celebration of “strength” and “prosperity.”

But for millions of people struggling to pay rent, afford groceries, survive medical debt, or keep their farms and small businesses afloat, it sounded like something else entirely:

A victory speech for corporate America — and one filled with multiple false or misleading claims about the economy, jobs, inflation, immigration, and key policy outcomes, according to independent fact-checkers.

1776 Was Only the Beginning

Series Introduction 

Two hundred fifty years ago, the Boston Tea Party was not just a protest over tea—it was a rebellion against corporate rule. 

The British East India Company was granted special privileges by the Crown, allowed to undercut local merchants, and shielded by a distant government that ignored the will of the people. Colonists recognized what we still face today: when corporations are given political power, democracy erodes.

Move to Amend carries forward that unfinished revolution, working to end the legal doctrines that grant corporations constitutional rights and treat money as free speech. Just as the patriots dumped tea to oppose governance shaped by corporate monopoly, we organize today to build what democracy has always promised — a system where We the People, not corporate entities, decide the direction of our democracy.

Every generation has been forced to ask the same question in its own time: who governs — concentrated power, or the people?

As the country approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Move to Amend is launching a new series, Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule, to explore that question in the present moment.

In the months ahead, we will look at how corporations gained constitutional rights, why so many of today’s crises share a common root, and how constitutional change has historically expanded democracy when existing systems no longer served the public good.

This series is not about looking backward. It is about understanding the work that remains unfinished — and the role each generation plays in carrying democracy forward.