Media Center

Today, Common Cause urged Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) to force House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) to fully recuse from the committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election after Nunes threatened to “take the investigation over.”

Today, Common Cause urged White House communications director Sean Spicer to return to established norms and allow cameras and live audio feeds at daily White House press briefings.

Today, Common Cause praised the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the Russian government’s cyber attacks on the U.S. election infrastructure and urged the Committee to make recommendations which would safeguard the United States from future attacks.

The fundamental right of every American to vote has been under attack since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County decision. It is more than symbolic that today’s reintroduction of the Voting Rights Advancement Act comes just days before the fourth anniversary of that decision; it is desperately needed to stem the rising tide of voter intimidation and suppression efforts enacted across the country.

The Supreme Court's decision this morning to hear Gill v. Whitford is good news for the millions of Americans currently being denied the right to elect representatives of their choosing thanks to partisan gerrymandering. By upholding the decision of a three-judge federal panel that the Wisconsin State Assembly map legislators approved following the 2010 census is an illegal partisan gerrymander the Court can end the excessive partisan manipulation of district lines across the country. Common Cause v. Rucho, a challenge to North Carolina's congressional map on partisan grounds, is also making its way through the courts and will be heard by a three-judge panel on June 26.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the emergency stay motion filed by public interest groups, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Free Press, Common Cause, Media Alliance, and United Church of Christ, OC, Inc., which sought to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its decision to reinstate the so-called UHF discount. This will allow the FCC to make it easier for the nation’s largest television ownership groups to acquire additional stations, and crowd out diverse and local voices. The groups are represented by the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center. Despite this interim ruling, the Court will hear the appeal later this year.