May, 15 2012, 02:53pm EDT

End Pay-to-Play Politics Through Transparency, Groups Tell U.S. Senate Committee
Groups Urge Senate to Reject Legislation That Would Cloak Campaign Money from Government Contractors
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee should reject legislation that would prohibit disclosure of campaign contributions and spending by government contractor, Public Citizen and 13 other civic organizations said in letter sent today to the committee.
S. 1100, which was sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), would keep the campaign spending of government contractors in the shadows and runs afoul of the honesty of our elections and the integrity of the government contracting process, the letter said. "Disclosure is the solution, not the problem," it said.
The organizations writing in opposition to S. 1100 include: Campaign Legal Center, Center for Media and Democracy, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Demos, League of Women Voters, MapLight, New Progressive Alliance, Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation, U.S. PIRG and Union of Concerned Scientists.
"If passed, this legislation would prevent disclosure of campaign contributions from businesses seeking government contracts, and create a very dangerous obstacle to reining in pay-to-play abuses in the contracting process," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. "Public officials who award the contracts will know which businesses supported them, but the public will be kept in the dark."
The letter noted: "One of the single most important means to rein in this type of pay-to-play abuse in government contracting is to create a system of full disclosure so that the public also knows which contractors supported which officeholders. This transparency in contractor campaign spending would provide the public with the means to discern when contracts are being awarded based on money rather than merit - and a powerful tool to check pay-to-play abuses in government contracting."
The groups strongly urge the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee to defeat this measure and end pay-to-play politics through transparency.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
NYT Runs Hit Piece on Mamdani Based on Tip From Proponent of 'Race Science'
Reports from multiple outlets show the Times is vastly underselling its source's extreme views on race.
Jul 04, 2025
The New York Times on Thursday published a story questioning New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's past statements about his racial background based on a tip it received from a proponent of "race science."
The Times piece in question focused on Mamdani's college application to Columbia University in which he listed both "Asian" and "Black or African American" as his race.
Although both of Mamdani's parents are of Indian descent, he was born in the African country of Uganda and lived there for the first five years of his life. Mamdani told the Times that he checked the box on the application for "Black or African American" because he considers himself an American who was born in Africa. He emphasized that he does not identify as Black and argued that he found it difficult to express the complexity of his racial background given the options on the application.
However, what is stirring controversy about the Times piece isn't so much its content but the source of its information. The Times acknowledges that the information on Mamdani was culled from a large hack of a Columbia database and that it received a copy of Mamdani's application from "an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X," whom it describes as "an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race."
A report from The Guardian's Jason Wilson published earlier this year shows that the Times is vastly underselling its source's extreme views on race. As Wilson documented, the "Crémieux" cited by the Times is a man named Jordan Lasker, whose writings regularly defend the work of "race scientists" who use I.Q. test results to argue that Black people are mentally inferior to other races.
"Crémieux runs a Substack also featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and I.Q.," Wilson explained. "A prominently featured post there seeks to defend the argument that average national IQs vary by up to 40 points, with countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia at the high end and countries in the global south at the low end, and several African countries purportedly having average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment."
Another report from Talking Points Memo's Hunter Walker found that Lasker has regularly posted about a racial "I.Q. gap" and has even suggested that there are "genetic pathways of crime." On his X account, Lasker has mused about the differences in brain sizes between Black and white Americans and between women and men more generally.
Brandon McEuen, a historian at Wayne State University who specializes in teaching about the history of the eugenics movement, slammed the Times for not only relying on Lasker as its source for the story on Mamdani but also for granting him anonymity.
"The decision to keep Lasker anonymous is ridiculous since his name has already been published in other outlets that don't provide softballs for eugenicists," he wrote on his Bluesky account.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Says Every Republican Who Backed Trump-GOP Budget 'Must Pay a Price at the Ballot Box'
"They do not deserve to be re-elected and they must be defeated," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 04, 2025
As communities across the United States braced for impact after congressional Republicans approved the biggest Medicaid and nutrition assistance cuts in the nation's history, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that every lawmaker who supported the budget legislation "must pay a price at the ballot box" in the 2026 midterms and beyond.
"This bill includes the largest cut ever to Medicaid in order to pay for the largest tax break for billionaires that we have ever seen," Sanders (I-Vt.), who is working to recruit progressive candidates for office, said after the House passed the legislation, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk.
"Make no mistake about it: This bill is a death sentence for working-class and low-income Americans," said Sanders.
While some GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate voiced concerns about the bill's massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs as the measure moved through Congress, the legislation ultimately garnered near-unanimous support from the Republican caucus when it came time for the final votes. Just three out of 53 Republican senators and two out of 220 GOP representatives voted against the completed bill.
Analysts and advocates expect the legislation to inflict major damage across the country, shuttering rural hospitals, stripping health coverage and food aid from millions, raising costs for Medicare recipients, and devastating local economies.
Some of the pain will be concentrated in swing districts currently represented by Republican supporters of the budget package. For example, 64% of Rep. David Valadao's (R-Calif.) constituents in California's 22nd Congressional District rely on Medicaid.
Valadao is one of 10 Republicans targeted by an ad push that the advocacy group Protect Our Care launched following Thursday's vote in the House. The other targeted lawmakers are Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.).
Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, said in a statement that "these Republicans just voted for the largest healthcare cuts in history in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, and we're going to make sure that every single one of their constituents knows it."
"These Republicans betrayed their constituents and working Americans' healthcare for billionaire tax cuts," Woodhouse added, "and we're ready to go from the grassroots to the airwaves until every last one of them is held accountable."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Supreme Court OKs Trump 'Third Country' Deportation of Men Held in Desert Shipping Container
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissent to a previous ruling on the case that the decision exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
Jul 03, 2025
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to send eight men deported from the United States and currently in limbo on a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan, where only one of the deportees is from, under a policy of fast-tracking deportations to third countries.
In an apparent 7-2 unsigned decision, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the high court lifted an order from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocking the deportation of the men—who are originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Korea, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to war-torn South Sudan, one of the world's most dangerous countries.
NEW: The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to send people subject to deportation to countries they have no connection with that are so dangerous the Trump administration advises Americans not to travel there. The case involves eight men the Trump regime wants to send to South Sudan.
[image or embed]
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) July 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained for six weeks at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. They have been nearly constantly shackled and are under constant guard in a shipping container. The container reportedly is equipped with air conditioning.
Neither the United States nor South Sudan has explained what will happen to the men upon their arrival in the East African nation.
Last month, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted Murphy's preliminary injunction, which had enabled migrants to file claims of persecution before their deportation to counties where they have no ties in a highly controversial process called third-country removal.
Dissenting in that ruling, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
The administration then accused Murphy of defying the high court's ruling by insisting that the eight men still could not be sent to South Sudan and asked the justices for the clarification that came with Thursday's decision.
"They're now subject to imminent deportation to war torn South Sudan, a place where they have no ties and where it is possible, if not probable, that they will be arrested and detained upon arrival," Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the men, told Politico Thursday. "This ruling is condoning lawlessness."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular