Press Release

Paul Manafort’s plea deal will surely tempt President Trump to consider pardoning his associates, or firing senior Justice Department officials or Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or take other steps to sabotage the investigation of the Russian attack on the 2016 presidential race. Congress must stand ready to take decisive action if President Trump abuses the power of his office by obstructing justice. Such blatant obstruction by the President must be a line in the sand that, if crossed, will trigger immediate Congressional action. The Republican majority in Congress must put their country before their party.

A three-judge federal district court panel in North Carolina today issued its stay order in the partisan gerrymandering case Common Cause v. Rucho, ordering attorneys for the North Carolina Legislators who drew the maps to comply with the conditions requested by the Common Cause plaintiffs. Those conditions require the defendants to file their Jurisdictional Statement with the Supreme Court by October 1, 2018, and to seek no requests for extension of time while their appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.

With Election Day now less than two months away, Common Cause released its 2018 Democracy Scorecard to chart the positions of every Member of Congress on issues vital to the health of our democracy. The reforms in question range from legislation to create a small donor matching fund system and increased disclosure requirements for outside political groups to bills to curb gerrymandering and strengthen the protections in the Voting Rights Act.

Today, Common Cause called on Congress to uphold its oversight responsibilities and immediately investigate the alarming accounts of President Trump’s “reckless” and “erratic behavior” since taking office that were made by a “senior official in the Trump administration” in an op-ed published anonymously in The New York Times last week. In a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Common Cause urged immediate hearings on the disturbing reports of a President run amok and a nation being run behind his back by unelected senior officials.

Americans deserve the whole record of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, not the whitewashed version the Senate Judiciary Committee’s majority has released. As this week’s extraordinary events in the Committee have made clear, this is the least transparent Supreme Court nomination process in our lifetime. Millions of pages of Judge Kavanaugh’s records have been withheld from the Senate and from the public. Many that are in the Judiciary Committee’s possession are still marked “committee confidential,” even though making them public will provide important information to the American people, as questioning by Senators Feinstein, Leahy, Klobuchar, Hirono, Booker, and Harris have made clear. Though the nominee may not recall many of his actions, the records have shown a very different story in some instances. Moreover, in response to probing questions by Sen. Blumenthal, Judge Kavanaugh refused to commit to recusing from cases involving President Trump’s potential criminal and civil liability that may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Common Cause, joined by the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, filed a brief in Common Cause v. Rucho today concluding that a new congressional map in North Carolina should be implemented after the 2018 elections. With 67 days to go before the 2018 general election and a primary already conducted, Common Cause argued that new districts would generate election administration challenges that would cause confusion and lower voter turnout. The trial court ruled on Monday that North Carolina’s congressional map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and is determining the appropriate remedy. The North Carolina General Assembly is likely to appeal the court’s ruling striking down the map directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could hear the case in the next term.