News Clips

"Trump very well may find a way to spend the money he raised in 2021 in support of a 2024 campaign and get away with it," said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance specialist at Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government reform.

Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, told the Augusta Chronicle in December that the county was "trying to do this undercover precinct consolidation" and several voting groups would begin a canvassing drive to stop the plan. "I think there are bad actors who are wanting to pilot precinct consolidations and takeovers of elections boards in smaller counties," she said.

“The governor of Florida does not have control over all Florida police departments or the FBI. And by proposing this integrity unit, it seems like that’s what he wants: personal, political goon squad,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause. “A police force under the authority of a political individual becomes a political army. That’s similar to, I don’t know, Russia?” Albert said. “In America, we have separation of powers. We have politicians, we have police, we have the judiciary. We have this in place to protect our democracy and to ensure that politicians do not use police as their personal army.”

Kathay Feng, a redistricting expert at Common Cause, said the massive growth in communities of color over the past decade means that their representation should have grown, not shrunk. “It’s a falsehood for political pundits or operatives to say status quo is sufficient,” she said. “You can’t force your 12-year-old to continue wearing the clothes of a 2-year-old. It’s pretending like they haven’t grown.”

“Texas has the weakest, most corruption-prone campaign finance system in the country,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. “It is striking that our top law enforcement official can’t manage to meet our extremely low disclosure requirements.” It’s important for voters to know who is donating to a candidate, Gutierrez said, especially in a state where there’s no cap on contributions. “We really can’t make decisions about whether a public official is acting in our best interest or the interest of some random rich person unless we know who those rich people are giving their money to,” he said.

Congressional action alone cannot solve the problem. A holistic approach to holding platforms accountable also requires regulatory reform, executive action, and corporate accountability. The White House must continue to push relevant federal agencies to use their enforcement, rule-making, and investigatory authorities to go after some of the most harmful business practices of the big tech companies – invasive data collection, inconsistent content moderation, discriminatory uses of algorithms, and more.  The new year represents a tremendous opportunity for Congress to return power to the people and hold big tech accountable.