Press Release

Americans Now Must Hear from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in Open Hearings.

On Friday, Common Cause joined Prometheus Radio Project, Media Mobilizing Project, Free Press, Office of Communication, Inc. of the United Church of Christ, and National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America in filing a reply brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit challenging the FCC’s elimination or relaxation of several media ownership rules. The rules prohibited a single entity from owning an excessive number of newspaper, radio, and television entities within a local market.

Today, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act. The bill reverses the repeal of net neutrality by the Trump FCC in December 2017 and restores the framework in the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order. Under the 2015 rules, broadband service providers are prohibited from blocking, throttling, or charging special fees to prioritize certain websites and online content. The 2015 framework also gives the FCC adequate authority to investigate unjust and unreasonable behavior by broadband service providers and act as a cop on the beat in an uncompetitive marketplace.

Americans deserve know the full truth and tonight we are taking to the streets to demand it. A four-page whitewash from the Attorney General is not enough. We have a right to know everything that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation uncovered about Russian attacks on our democracy in that nation’s wide-ranging effort to aid Donald Trump in 2016. The vital importance of releasing the full report publicly is hammered home by new reports that members of the special counsel’s team were shocked and frustrated that Attorney General Bill Barr has significantly downplayed their findings which they describe as “alarming and significant.” We need to know because we need to know that our elected representatives are doing what is necessary to safeguard our democracy from ongoing attacks by hostile foreign powers. The full report and underlying documentation must be released to the American people.

Today, Common Cause, along with former elected and appointed Republican officials, filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in Commerce v. New York challenging the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census. The government watchdog also launched the next phase in its “Count Me In 2020 Campaign” for a fair and accurate census. Common Cause called on its 1.12 million members to celebrate April 1, 2019 as a Census Day of Action by fighting for adequate census funding from our federal and state governments and getting involved in grassroots organizations who are dedicated to ensuring that everyone gets counted. Members across the country are calling their representatives in Congress to urge them to support the Census IDEA Act and to fully fund the 2020 census.