Issue One ReFormers Caucus Co-chair and former Congressman Zach Wamp (R-TN) was interviewed by Fox News’ Eric Shawn this past weekend on “America’s News HQ” about the recent threat made by North Korea on the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The segment also highlighted our “Don’t Mess With US” project, which launched in 2019 in an effort to stop foreign
Read More“Now, 21st century soldiers of a different sort sit in dark rooms in far corners of the world, seeking to disrupt our elections, trying to sow division through digital warfare and disinformation campaigns. All with one goal: to weaken democracy and true self-government here and around the world.” This week’s episode of Issue One’s “Swamp Stories” podcast covers how,
Read MoreThis op-ed originally appeared in Morning Consult. America is under attack. Hostile foreign governments are spending millions of dollars to spread propaganda, hack our elections and manipulate our politics. This fact is getting lost among the snarky tweets and political posturing following Twitter’s decision to stop running all political ads and Facebook’s inadequate policies guiding its paid political advertising. The truth is
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Spending on digital political ads continues to grow as the 2020 election heats up. The top spenders – including President Donald Trump – are laser-focused on microtargeting potential donors and voters through paid advertising on the largest online platforms. But Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and Twitter each have different policies about what makes an ad “political”, who can run the ads,
Read MoreIssue One’s latest report, “Digital Disaster: The failures of Facebook, Google, and Twitter’s political ad transparency policies,” reveals how piecemeal, voluntary approaches by the largest social media platforms to stop disinformation campaigns fail to protect our political system from foreign interference. As the report shows clearly, the companies’ political ad transparency policies are a mess, and they do not measure
Read MoreToday, Republican and Democratic former Defense Secretaries Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Admiral James Loy, and 90 other former members of Congress, governors, and Cabinet secretaries from both parties, called on the U.S. Senate to support a suite of bipartisan bills that would defend America’s elections against foreign interference. They are members of Issue One’s
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This week’s bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian foreign interference in the 2016 election is the latest and most definitive case for new legislation that would help improve transparency for online political ads as a way to bolster election security. “The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 requires political advertisements on television, radio, and satellite to disclose the sponsor
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Election security experts were optimistic of Capitol Hill’s efforts to prevent foreign interference and harden U.S. election infrastructure ahead of November 2020 but called for more action at a staff briefing today. The panel was hosted and moderated by Issue One CEO Nick Penniman as part of our “Don’t Mess With US” project. “Election security is the greatest crisis facing our
Read MoreThis week, Arizona Republican Senator Martha McSally co-sponsored the DETER Act (S. 1060), one of the bills in the suite of legislative proposals Issue One’s “Don’t Mess With US” project highlights as necessary to stop foreign attacks on our political system. In July, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — lead sponsors of the DETER Act —
Read MoreThis week, Reps. Bill Posey (R-FL) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) joined in co-sponsoring the Honest Ads Act, the best first step to secure our elections by preventing paid, foreign disinformation campaigns on the largest online platforms. This brings the total number of sponsors in the House and Senate to 39 — 19 Republicans and 20 Democrats. “The Honest Ads Act
Read MoreCongress needs to act immediately to provide states with the emergency federal funding they need to run safe, secure and credible elections in November. The previous federal funding was an important down payment, but reports from state and local election officials indicate substantially more federal emergency assistance is needed as soon as possible. Issue One and many others are working to convince Senators to vote in July for more funding so that our November elections are safe, secure, and fair.
