“We just can’t go into this with no funding," said Micah Sims, a member of Pennsylvania’s 2020 Census Complete Count Commission and executive director of the good-government group Common Cause Pennsylvania. "That would be a terrible situation. We have to avoid an undercount.”

“There’s an optics issue here,” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney with the good-government group Common Cause. “You have a candidate who has sworn off big unlimited money but is closely allied with an organization that is using big unlimited money.”

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group, said the Examiner article raises the possibility of a conflict of interest or self-dealing.

Rockeymoore Cummings “should take steps to disclose possible conflicts with the Johnson Foundation and to disclose the financial records from the nonprofit in question,” Antoine said.

Regardless of whether Rockeymoore Cummings is correct in saying that the Legal and Policy Center was “after her and her husband,” Antoine added,...

“For every person we miss, every community we undercount, and all the groups we ignore, that will have a tremendous impact on the federal program funding, critical data for business owners, and building an improved Pennsylvania,” Micah Sims, a 2020 Census Complete Count commissioner and executive director of the good-government group Common Cause Pennsylvania, said in a statement Monday.

Common Cause on Monday (May 13) filed a petition to deny the deals at the FCC, saying that the 25 TV stations Apollo would own meant putting a lot of broadcast ownership in a private equity firm, something Common Cause's special adviser, former FCC chairman Michael Copps, says has historically not been a public benefit.

"History has shown that the quality of our news and information has significantly diminished under private equity control. These firms typically implement cost cutting strategies that bleed newspapers dry,...

"Congress must move quickly to convene televised public hearings so Americans can hear directly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller," said Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn. "Congress and the American people must learn about the truth about Russia's attacks on the 2016 presidential race."

Former commissioner says there's no democracy without honest news and an open Internet.

“The investigation has already led to 199 criminal charges, 37 indictments or guilty pleas, and five prison sentences,” explains Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn. “Numerous additional investigations of possible criminal conduct uncovered by the Special Counsel have been spun off to other prosecutors. The string of crimes that have already been unearthed and made public is staggering and unprecedented in our nation’s history.”

“The investigation has already led to 199 criminal charges, 37 indictments or guilty pleas, and five prison sentences,” explains Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn. “Numerous additional investigations of possible criminal conduct uncovered by the Special Counsel have been spun off to other prosecutors. The string of crimes that have already been unearthed and made public is staggering and unprecedented in our nation’s history.”

The president's well-documented lies and exaggerations are disturbing and unprecedented, but when he openly ignores and ridicules the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, he puts American lives at risk, diminishes our role in the world, and makes us all less safe.