The New Chief Campaign Finance Regulator Has a Plan to Make Her Agency Matter for the First Time in Years
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Ellen Weintraub, the sole Democratic commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, just became chairwoman of the agency in January and she’s already trying to shake things up at her “dysfunctional” agency. The FEC chairmanship, which rotates among the commissioners each year, is mostly a ceremonial…
Elizabeth Warren Announces Plan to Reject Big Donors
Larry Burton Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has decided to up the ante with her latest campaign finance pledge: No more fancy fundraising dinners, donor calls, or wooing wealthy donors. The 2020 Democratic candidate announced on Monday that her campaign “will be run on the principle of equal…
Italian Investigators Just Uncovered a Major Russian Election Meddling Plot
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a 2018 news conference with Italy’s prime ministerSergei Chirikov/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. A bombshell investigation published Friday by Italy’s L’Espresso magazine reveals a plot that might sound familiar. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the hard-right Lega Nord party, L’Espresso reports, last year…
Elections Commission Chief Uses the “Nuclear Option” to Rescue the Agency From Gridlock
Joe Raedle/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Fed up with the Federal Election Commission’s gridlock that has given violators of election law a free pass, the agency’s new chair says she won’t allow FEC lawyers to defend the government when the FEC has been sued for not enforcing the law. This drastic…
Former Trump Officials Signed a Pledge to Avoid Lobbying. At Least 33 of Them Have Found a Way Around It.
Carolyn Kaster/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by ProPublica. It’s been more than two years since President Donald Trump, who rallied campaign supporters with calls to “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and their ilk, took office. But despite that campaign promise, Washington influence peddlers continue to move…
10 Years of Privacy Violations, Disinformation, and Friend Requests From Facebook
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. As Facebook assumed its central role in the information landscape, the company quietly made decisions that boosted profits with little regard to the consequences for privacy, politics, and the news industry. When those controversial calls and other travails associated with abuses of the platform gradually…