News

Reform Groups Urge Senate to Enact DISCLOSE Act to Close Gaping Disclosure Loopholes Used to Hide Donors from Voters

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Our organizations strongly support the DISCLOSE Act of 2014 introduced today by Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) with 49 cosponsors. Our organizations include Americans for Campaign Reform, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Demos, the League of Women Voters, People For the American […]

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RNC Legal Challenge to Political Party Soft Money Ban Filed Today Has Already Been Rejected Twice by Supreme Court

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Statement by Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer The RNC filed a lawsuit today in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. challenging for the third time the ban on national parties raising and spending unlimited contributions, or soft money. They have lost this same argument twice before in the Supreme Court. The RNC lost this argument […]

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Anatomy of a Supreme Court Opinion

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How Chief Justice Roberts Dissembled, Obfuscated and Misled in his McCutcheon Opinion to Radically Change the Court’s “Corruption” Standard and Legalize the Use of Contributions to Buy Government Influence and Results By Fred Wertheimer — President, Democracy 21   In a Supreme Court decision last month dealing with affirmative action, Chief Justice Roberts responded to […]

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Watchdog Groups Again Call on IRS to Deny Crossroads GPS Tax-Exempt Status as 501(c)(4) Group

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Groups Send FEC General Counsel’s Report to IRS Finding  Major Purpose of Crossroads was Federal Campaign Activity  Democracy 21, joined by the Campaign Legal Center, again urged the IRS to deny the application filed by Crossroads GPS for tax exempt status as a section 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization. According to the letter from the watchdog […]

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Watchdog Groups Challenge House Ways and Means Committee Letter Claiming IRS Pursuit of Crossroads GPS was Improper

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Statement of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer and Campaign Legal Center Executive Director J. Gerald Hebert Yesterday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp sent a letter to the Justice Department stating that former IRS official Lois Lerner may have violated criminal statutes and asking the Department to act on the findings within the […]

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Fred Wertheimer – “Did Chief Justice Roberts Dissemble or did the Chief Justice Have no Idea What He Was Talking About?”

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In the recently decided McCutcheon case, Chief Justice Roberts in his opinion breezily dismissed examples submitted in briefs by Democracy 21 and others of what would happen if the Supreme Court struck down the limits on the total contributions an individual could give to federal candidates and political parties. The examples before the Supreme Court […]

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Fred Wertheimer for SCOTUSblog on McCutcheon & the Supreme Court

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Symposium: The Supreme Court and the McCutcheon decision The Supreme Court majority in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission has continued on its step-by-step path to destroy the nation’s campaign finance laws. The Court in McCutcheon overturned forty years of national policy and thirty-eight years of judicial precedent to strike down the overall limits on the total contributions an individual […]

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Fred Wertheimer “The Consequences of Today’s Disastrous Decision by the Supreme Court Majority in the McCutcheon Case”

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The Supreme Court today struck down the overall limits on the total amounts that an individual could give to party committees and to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle. With its decision, the Court overturned 40 years of national policy and 38 years of judicial precedent. The Court today held that the overall contribution […]

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Fred Wertheimer Statement on McCutcheon vs FEC

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Supreme Court Continued Today on its March to Destroy the Nation’s Campaign Finance Laws Enacted to Prevent Corruption The Supreme Court in the McCutcheon decision today overturned 40 years of national policy and 38 years of judicial precedent to strike down the overall limits on the total contributions from an individual to federal candidates and […]

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Fred Wertheimer in Huffington Post: “A Response to the Koch Brothers Claim of Entitlement to Anonymous Political Giving”

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By: Fred Wertheimer March 28, 2014 An online column by Tom Edsall on the New York Times website (March 18), entitled “In Defense of Anonymous Political Giving,” presents the arguments made by the Koch brothers to justify keeping “anonymous” the untold millions of dollars they are giving to groups to spend on campaign ads and […]

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