News Clips

“We are deeply disappointed in the Court’s decision to approve the T-Mobile-Sprint merger, which will have significant consequences for consumers and competition," said Michael Copps, special advisor to Common Cause and former Democratic FCC chairman. "All of the evidence in this proceeding shows that this merger is inherently illegal under antitrust law. Even evidence presented at the trial revealed the companies’ executives acknowledged prices for wireless service would rise if the merger was approved. The Court’s decision will reduce the wireless market from four to three national carriers, undoubtedly raising prices on wireless customers."

“We are clearly dealing with a very wealthy individual who has the ability to build goodwill among the public, among specific political actors, in a way that will benefit his campaign,” said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “Where things could get tricky or legally problematic is if he starts, or is in fact, using his foundation to build support and goodwill for his campaign. Trump seemingly ran afoul of those laws, hopefully Bloomberg will avoid those violations.”The fact that he is able to appeal to potential voters by spending his vast personal wealth on issues they care about, Ryan said, is “another example” of how billionaires have an advantage in elections.

Paul Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Washington-based watchdog group Common Cause, said if Halle's tweet was instead a private message to an outside group, and the outside group made an ad buy based on the information in the private message, then the Buttigieg campaign and the outside spender's activities would "arguably meet" the "material involvement" standard under the FEC's multi-part test.This would violate federal laws.But in this case, because Halle had tweeted the message publicly instead of sending it as a private message to a super PAC, it's not necessarily covered by the FEC rules."In other words, if a candidate does all of their coordinating with outside groups in public view, there’s no illegal coordination under this FEC regulation," Ryan said. "It’s a pretty big hole in the law."

Voter suppression is voter suppression, whether it’s done by purging the voter rolls, turning people away at the ballot box, or feeding them lies to keep them from showing up in the first place. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is failing in its response to address online voter suppression, as are policymakers, and both must take this threat more seriously.The stakes are higher in the 2020 elections, and we expect to see far more disinformation circulated by foreign governments, dark money groups, and online trolls. Maintaining the authentic civic engagement and discourse that underpins a healthy democracy will require stepping up the fight against these new efforts to suppress the vote.

“While this is the conclusion of one particular process, this is also a moment where President Trump was, for one of the few times in his life, held accountable for his actions,” said Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause and an organizer of the evening demonstration. Littlewood said having hundreds of people standing outside Congress moments after the impeachment vote will send a symbolic message to legislators about the disappointment many Americans feel.“This is our opportunity to say we’re not going to let Trump run roughshod over our democratic process, that even if the GOP gives [him] a pass, we’re not going to,” he said.

Last month, Common Cause — a watchdog group that fights against gerrymandering, voter suppression and the role of money in politics — filed a formal complaint against Sanders and Our Revolution with the Federal Election Commission. ... At the very least, Our Revolution needs to reveal all its donors, along with where they live and and how much they give. Beyond that, Sanders has to answer why he even needs such a group. He has had little problem raising money in the open, the old-fashioned way.The Citizens United case has produced a decade-long string of unintended consequences. It would be highly ironic if one of them is progressivism abandoning its soul in the name of political expedience.