"You're seeing that pretty much all the major candidates have problems when it comes to money in politics," Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of Policy & Litigation at Common Cause, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization. "They have some gaps [between] their campaign stump rhetoric and their actual practices trying to run competitive presidential campaigns."

Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for Common Cause, said the Jones-Hofeller emails cast further doubt on the government’s claims.“Why would she use her personal email? Why would she email a partisan operative about a topic that was not under consideration at the Census Bureau?” Feng said. “The new documents eliminate any doubt about the link between the Republican gerrymandering mastermind and the citizenship question.”

The advocacy group Common Cause said in court documents submitted in Raleigh on Thursday that the Hofeller files include new evidence showing how North Carolina Republicans misled a federal court to prolong the life of their map of state legislative districts, which had been ruled unconstitutional.The Republicans told the federal court hearing the map case that they would not be able to draw new legislative districts and hold public hearings on them in time for a proposed special election in late 2017 or early 2018. In fact, Common Cause...

"This is a huge win for voting rights and against voter suppression," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, said in a prepared statement Sunday. "These fights are not over and we continue to be vigilant in watching for attempts to amend pieces of SB 9 onto other bills."

“Americans have the right to know if the president is putting his business empire, or the interests of the public, first,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a group that supports the legislation.

“Tiger Woods is obviously a very talented golfer,” said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, a watchdog group. But Mr. Trump awarding him the Medal of Freedom “shows he’s willing to use any tool of government to benefit his business and political allies.”

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, said her group has received several calls from people expressing a loss of faith in Ms. Pugh. But Ms. Antoine said she is heartened by recent proposals brought by Baltimore City Council members to tighten ethics disclosure rules and make it easier to remove the mayor.“I think we’re on the verge of recovering from all of this,” she said. “We believe the City Council is taking steps to move forward.”

"The citizenship question is a bald-faced attempt to racially rig the census, undercount communities of color and undermine fair representation which our democracy relies upon," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan public interest group.

The release of the returns would let “Americans decide whether the president is making decisions that benefit his businesses at the expense of American taxpayers,” Aaron Scherb of Common Cause, the government watchdog group, has written in USA Today. “If Trump has significant debt to banks and/or individuals in certain countries, some of which might be adversaries of the United States, we must know because his foreign policy decisions might be compromised.”

Aaron Scherb, the legislative director of watchdog organization Common Cause, noted that conservative religious organizations have previously donated large amounts to groups that further their political interests.

"The Religious Right and certain conservative religious groups have significant resources at their disposable. As we detailed in a 2015 report, they often flex their political muscle to further enhance their ability to spend big money in politics to drown out the voices of dissenting views," he told Newsweek.