In light of the Senate Ethics Committee severely admonishing Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) for ethics violations, Issue One Executive Director Meredith McGehee issued the following statement: “It is a refreshing change of pace to see a rare show of public action from the Senate Ethics Committee, which often feels more like a black hole where allegations go to die. And
Read More
Issue One ReFormers Caucus Co-chair former Amb. Tim Roemer (D-IN) issued the following statement in response to White House Office of Management and Budget Director and former member of Congress Mick Mulvaney’s admission that campaign contributions were a requirement for meetings with his congressional office. “Sadly, we have yet another candid example of the wretched pay-to-play system in Washington, DC. Director Mulvaney
Read More
Update, September 28, 2018: Google has announced its support for the Honest Ads Act. This post will be updated regularly as other major tech groups express support for this piece of legislation. Momentum is gaining for the Honest Ads Act. Last week, two new sponsors—one Republican and one Democrat—signed on to this bill to address the problem of foreign interference in
Read More
A bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate that would save taxpayers nearly $900,000 a year and increase political transparency has won over more sponsors than any other time since it was first introduced in 2003. With Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), John McCain (R-AZ) and Tina Smith (D-MN) recently joining as official cosponsors, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act (S. 298)
Read MoreUpdated June 15, 2018. Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to support the bipartisan, bicameral Honest Ads Act to begin protecting U.S. politics from foreign disinformation campaigns by implementing a disclosure system for paid, online political advertising closely modeled on longstanding Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules for paid advertising on television and radio. The Honest Ads Act (H.R. 4077) list
Read More
Note: This blog post was corrected to reflect an update in the number of suspicious groups in the underlying study.* Today, Issue One and the Campaign Legal Center, in conjunction with University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Young Mie Kim and her team, Project DATA (Digital Ad Tracking & Analysis), published the results of the first peer-reviewed survey of Facebook political ads
Read MoreIssue One is pleased to announce the addition of nine former members of Congress to the ReFormers Caucus: Jason Altmire (D-PA), Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Ben Chandler (D-KY), Sam Coppersmith (D-AZ), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Charles Djou (R-HI), Dan Maffei (D-NY), Jeff Miller (R-FL) and Jon Porter (R-NV). They join the largest bipartisan coalition—now 194 members strong—of former members of Congress, governors
Read MoreAs Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill today and Wednesday about the company’s failures to combat foreign influence and protect user data during the 2016 elections, the bipartisan, bicameral Honest Ads Act has had a prominent place in the conversation. The act—which Issue One helped craft—is the best first step to combat the problem of hidden foreign disinformation
Read More
Today, Issue One and the Campaign Legal Center called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce penalties against Americans for Job Security — one of the top spenders of political “dark money” in recent years — for failing to file three years’ worth of mandatory tax returns. For this, Americans for Job Security could be punished with the loss
Read More