Today, Common Cause filed complaints with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging reason to believe that solicitations for campaign contributions to former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s Senate campaign distributed by We Build the Wall, Inc. violated multiple campaign finance laws. The email solicitation appears to violate the ban on corporate contributions to a federal candidate and the prohibition on candidates spending “soft money” in connection with their election. The email also lacks the “paid for by” disclaimer required by federal law when candidates solicit political contributions.

Today, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) approved the $26 billion merger of T-Mobile Inc. and Sprint Corporation. As part of the approval, T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed to sell assets to Dish Network including Sprint’s prepaid services, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, and new spectrum licenses. Dish will also have the ability to operate on T-Mobile’s network for a seven-year period while it builds out its own network. The proposed merger is still pending approval by the full Federal Communications Commission. Fourteen state attorneys general have filed suit to block the transaction.

Today, the Select Committee on Intelligence in the United States Senate released its long-awaited report on Russian interference into the 2016 elections in the wake of former special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s warnings yesterday that threats to the nation’s election infrastructure are serious and ongoing. Common Cause hailed the report itself as well as the bipartisan and effective work of the Committee as it addressed the critical and growing threat to our democracy.

The evidence released today by the Department of Justice (DOJ) by order of a judge strongly suggests that Donald Trump violated campaign finance laws in the closing weeks of his presidential run in 2016. Previously we had only Michael Cohen’s word that Trump had committed felony campaign finance violations through his direct involvement in hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, but now we have extensive evidence from the DOJ to back it up. We also learned for the first time that 2016 Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks was also aware and involved in $130,000 payment to Daniels to keep her from revealing an affair she allegedly had with the Trump—implicating her in campaign finance crimes.

Today, Common Cause is launching a new effort to ensure voters’ right to know where presidential candidates stand on practical solutions to the challenges facing our democracy. The Our Democracy 2020 campaign will focus getting every presidential candidate in the Democratic and Republican primaries to respond to a 17-question survey and inject the high priority conversation on the need for democracy reform in the presidential campaign. 

Today, after a week of confusion and contradiction in the Trump Administration, the President announced that he will not pursue a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. To protect a fair and accurate Census, the decision to not add the citizenship question is important.  However, in issuing an executive order to government agencies to hand over citizenship data, President Trump is engaging in an abusive power grab. Attorney General Barr reinforced the Administration’s intent to collect citizenship data for the purposes of reapportionment and redistricting. Using citizenship data to erase millions of people from apportionment and redistricting violates the Constitution.