Media

Common Cause announced today that Stephen Spaulding will be returning to Common Cause in May as Chief of Strategy and External Relations. He departs the Federal Election Commission (FEC) this week after serving as Special Counsel to FEC Commissioner Ann M. Ravel, an outspoken critic of the agency’s dysfunction.

Today’s revelations that the Pentagon Inspector General is investigating disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and that the White House is stonewalling congressional probes of Flynn’s ties to Russia underscore the need for a nonpartisan independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s announced today that he would attempt to roll back the agency’s Open Internet (“net neutrality”) rules.

President Trump “has presided over the most corrupt first hundred days in the history of the American presidency,” Common Cause asserts in a report released today.

Today, Common Cause filed a complaint with the office of Government Ethics and the U.S. Department of State calling for an investigation into the latter’s publication of an article promoting Mar-a-Lago, which the article refers to as the ‘Winter White House’ owned and operated by President Trump as a private club. The ethics complaint concerns an article the State Department’s ShareAmerica website published profiling the history of the Trump property and describing the Palm Beach club—which doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 after his election—in glowing terms. The article was subsequently circulated by multiple U.S. embassies, including on the website of the U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom and on the Facebook page of the U.S. Embassy in Albania. Federal ethics rules prohibit government employees from endorsing “any product, service or enterprise.”

It is unnecessary and harmful for Chairman Pai to replace the FCC's Diversity Advisory Committee, which for years drew on the expertise of diversity experts to generate valuable and vetted proposals to advance important diversity initiatives. Commission leadership from both parties too-often ignored that committee's proposals. But instead of reconstituting that committee and finally acting on its many extant recommendations, Chairman Pai has chosen to ignore it and create a new committee which will take months or longer to organize, meet, and come up with proposals. Given the Trump Administration’s track record of business friendly appointments, Pai is likely to select committee members who put corporate interests ahead of diversity. Shameful. It is decades beyond time for serious action to help minorities and women in media ownership. Pai's announcement is a serious step backwards.