News Clips

On Thursday, Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said in a release that documents revealed “that the plan to add the citizenship question was hatched by the Republicans’ chief redistricting mastermind to create an electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” She said the documents contradict testimony by administration officials that they sought to add the question to benefit Latino voters.

Common Cause, which first obtained the hard drives, said the revelations on them were a wake-up call to supporters of the American system. “Now that the plan has been revealed, it’s important for all of us — the courts, leaders and the people — to stand up for a democracy that incudes every voice,” said Kathay Feng, the group’s national redistricting director.

“If we miss our opportunity right now, we have to wait another decade to fix the problems,” said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes government reform. “Some of those folks are going to disappear into the shadows.”

“The question is why those corporations would take the direction of a council member as opposed to simply giving out of the kindness of their own hearts,” said Kathay Feng, a representative of Common Cause, which advocates for open government. “It’s clear that there’s an intention to curry favor with an elected official … and that’s fundamentally what the problem is.”

Enough is enough. The American people can see through Trump's game-show style governing that makes high school student government look effective and efficient. The president’s latest attempts to bully, intimidate and obstruct justice are a violation of the oath of office he swore on the steps of the Capitol. There are real opportunities right now for the White House to work with Congress to improve our nation's infrastructure, increase election security and lower prescription drug prices, but it will require the president to work with all members of Congress on issues important to the American people. It is long past time for Trump put the country's interests before his own.

“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.”