News Clips

"When the referees themselves don't follow the rules it sends a bad signal that the rules might not really matter," Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, told Insider. "People who are in charge of ethics enforcement should be the No. 1 champions of fully complying with the letter and spirit of the law and all relevant regulations."

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the government reform group Common Cause, called on Mr. Santos to step down and urged the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics and federal prosecutors to investigate.

“It’s cross ideological,” says Aaron Scherb, who keeps an eye on Congress for Common Cause, the good-government watchdog group. “All sorts of crypto players throw their money around, to progressive causes, conservative causes.”

Reasons for these violations range from lawmakers "being sloppy to just not caring about stock disclosure," said Aaron Scherb of nonpartisan government reform group Common Cause.

Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, generally praised the legislation as strong, if imperfect, particularly in its proposed increases in penalties for violating the law. "It would go a long way to give more than just a slap on the wrist to people who don't comply with the STOCK Act, which should really help compliance overall," Scherb said. He also said he's glad the bill strengthens rules for all branches of the government, not just Congress, and that he's not concerned that it includes Supreme Court justices — a provision that some government reformers say will "poison" the bill among Senate Republicans who might otherwise be inclined to support it. "The House shouldn't project what might or might not happen in the Senate," he said.

Recent headlines, from the January 6th Select Committee’s hearings to the Supreme Court rolling back the right to reproductive healthcare, profoundly implicate the freedom that many will celebrate this Independence Day. Opponents of democracy — a system that works best when it empowers people to have an equal say in decisions that affect their futures — have waged a well-coordinated attack on it. Freedom must be fortified, it must be protected at the ballot box, and it must never be taken for granted.