News Clips

"Americans expect and deserve a fair and impartial Supreme Court and we need transparency in order to identify potential conflicts and to restore public trust in our nation’s highest court,” Common Cause co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro said earlier this week, before the latest revelation. "The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly proven itself incapable of policing itself without a code of ethics."

Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, which has long been critical of Trump’s allegations of election rigging, noted that all the investigations of the former president began well before he started running for president again. “Nobody is above the law, including former presidents, and running for president cannot and must not serve as a shield for wrongful conduct,” Scherb said.

“We saw that it has a lot more restrictions on third-party voter registration organizations," said Amy Keith, program director for Common Cause Florida, an organization that works to ensure fair and free elections. "When you put more rules, when you put more fines, you restrict their work." "When you restrict a small community organization, and you put more of a burden on them, they don't have the ability to comply," Keith said.

“Attorney General Morrisey should know better,” Aaron Scherb, senior legislative affairs director at Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group, said in a phone interview. Common Cause filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission against Trump in 2018 alleging a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels, was an unreported in-kind contribution to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign committee in violation of federal law. “[T]he former president deserves the same treatment as any American,” Scherb said. Scherb argued that some Republican elected officials attacking Trump’s indictment are pandering for his support with their eyes on higher office.

We got it right in Texas when we inscribed in our Constitution that “all political power is inherent in the people.” But politicians in power today are not living up to that ideal. Texas is the fourth-most difficult state to vote in by one analysis and 41st in the nation when it comes to voter turnout. We had 9.6 million registered Texas voters sit out the last election — more than the entire population of states such as New Jersey or Virginia.

Common Cause’s senior director of legislative affairs, Aaron Scherb, said it would be reasonable for U.S. lawmakers to have Thomas testify as to “why he didn’t put any of these trips on his personal financial-disclosure forms.” Scherb said that move could come from the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin. Durbin said on Thursday that his committee “will act” to respond to the ProPublica report. Scherb also described the lack of disclosure by Thomas as “extremely serious.” “Having a billionaire Republican donor wining and dining a Supreme Court justice through use of a private jet, luxury stays at his vacation retreat — not just one or two times but over the course of 20 years — and not have [the] Supreme Court justice disclose any of this, as he’s required to on personal financial-disclosure forms, is a huge scandal,” the Common Cause expert said.