Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026) 7 KAGAN, J., dissenting And this Court long ago upheld that rule, explaining that it “prevent[s] attempts to circumvent the Act through prearranged or coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions.” Buckley, 424 U. S., at 47. (The majority today does not touch that holding, see ante, at 26, n. 6, but a person attending to this Court’s recent campaign finance decisions might reasonably beware.) Now turn to party-coordinated expenditures, where the rule is somewhat different because the problem is. The majority is right that cooperation between a party and its candidates is a generally fine thing. See ante, at 11. The issue arises when—and only when—the party functions as a funnel through which individuals and non-party groups can finance candidates, because then the party-mediated payments may give rise to the same corruption concerns as the donors’ own payments would. So Congress provided parties with some, but strictly limited, capacity to make expenditures coordinated with their candidates. As the majority describes, the caps range from $65,300 for most House candidates to around $32 million for a presidential candidate. See ante, at 3; §30116(d). In Congress’s view, anything more—and surely a regime with no limits—would introduce too much danger of quid pro quo deals between donors and candidates. To begin to see why Congress was right, it’s essential to take a look under the hood of modern fundraising (something the majority never does). Let’s imagine a candidate— call him John Smith—running for President and seeking to raise as much money as he can.2 Recall that under the —————— 2 Although I use a presidential candidate as an example, everything about the mechanism I am about to describe holds true for House and Senate candidates as well. Candidates for lower office can—and do— take advantage of this same fundraising tool. See Brief for Campaign Legal Center et al. as Amici Curiae 28–29. Of course, fundraising in campaigns for lower offices, as a practical matter, involves smaller dollar amounts than in presidential campaigns. But because a dollar goes further in a campaign for lower office, a donor can also secure a quid pro