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
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Today marks the day that Theodore Roosevelt would have turned 159 years old. If he were still alive, the Republican from New York who served as our 26th president would likely be dismayed at the role corporations are playing in elections today. 110 years ago, in 1907, Roosevelt signed into law an anti-corruption measure known as the Tillman Act. This
Read MoreMEDIA CONTACTS: William Gray, Issue One, wgray@issueone.org; O: 202-204-8553 Corey Goldstone, Campaign Legal Center, cgoldstone@campaignlegalcenter.org, O: 202-856-7912 *** Today, Issue One and Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed six complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against two Atlanta-based television stations in the aftermath of the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which was the most expensive U.S. House election
Read MoreAmerica First Policies, the nonprofit run by former Trump staffers and dedicated to supporting the president’s policies, has attracted a lot of news coverage over the past few weeks, between its avid participation in the Georgia special election and its ads targeting Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) for not supporting the Senate health care bill. But even veteran reporters have been
Read MoreCo-authored by Daniel Hensel This year, residents of Georgia’s 6th Congressional District were bombarded with a seemingly never-ending cascade of political advertisements. But figuring out who was really behind this $60 million spending spree is nothing short of a Herculean task. Our disclosure laws are outdated. While the sponsors of ads must be disclosed, the names of politically active groups
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Today, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined three so-called “dark money” organizations for violating campaign finance laws by failing disclose the source of funds used for political spending and advertisements. The three groups — the 60 Plus Association, the American Future Fund and Americans for Job Security — are each a part of the Koch brothers’ network of interest groups
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Is it just us, or is dark money getting even darker? On Tuesday, the House passed H.R. 5053, the Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act. The bill forbids the IRS from requiring tax-exempt organizations to disclose their contributors in annual reports. It was painted by its sponsor, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), as a way to prevent the IRS
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“What we need is a real debate between candidates right now about exactly what they would do to fix this problem.” Executive Director Nick Penniman talked with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and answered calls from viewers around the country about why voters need to demand real solutions from candidates for elected office—whether state representative, member of Congress or the next president.
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In a shocking move Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill that would further hinder the IRS from overseeing politically-active nonprofits, or 501(c) “social welfare” groups that are the most active in spending so-called “dark money.” This would “open the door for secret, unaccountable money from foreign governments, corporations and individuals,” into federal elections, according to a
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Voters are finally beginning to learn who is funding political campaigns in their states. According to a recent poll conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures, thirty-eight states are considering new disclosure laws that would require dark money organizations to disclose donors, including one proposed in Arkansas by Representative Clarke Tucker. Dark money groups have become highly influential in
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