John,

2022 is off to a busy start! From accountability for the insurrection and advocating for voting rights legislation to calling for strengthened ethics rules and more, here are some of the things we’ve been up to so far this year:

• While federal law enforcement mounted an aggressive response to nationwide protests for racial justice in summer 2020, when it came to far-right groups ahead of January 6th, they failed to address credible threats that preceded the deadly insurrection. Our new investigation, based on documents we received from our Freedom of Information Act investigation and lawsuits, outlines the many ways federal agencies reacted strongly to largely peaceful racial justice protests and underreacted to the threat white nationalists posed.
• In August 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo changed a long-standing State Department policy restricting partisan political activity by political appointees—just days before he delivered a pre-recorded address to the Republican National Convention while out of the country on official business, which would have violated the policy. We sent a letter to the State Department calling on them to restore the original policy—a key step towards addressing the wrongdoing of the Trump administration and restoring integrity to the State Department.
• CREW has been calling for judicial ethics reform for months in light of reporting by the Wall Street Journal that found that at least 131 federal judges violated the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest in one of the parties. Unfortunately, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently downplayed the crisis, seemingly in an effort to deny the need for reform. We published an analysis of Robert’s argument and renewed our call for reform, including applying the federal criminal conflict of interest statute to the judiciary.
• This week, the Senate has taken up the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which would strengthen voting rights and address a number of critical democracy issues, including cracking down on dark money, making it harder to overturn election results, banning partisan gerrymandering and more. If you haven’t yet emailed your senators, now is the time—make sure they hear from you in support of the bill, and in support of making changes to the filibuster to pass it.

Here at CREW, we’ll be fighting for a stronger democracy for as long as it takes—and we’re glad to have you in the fight with us.

Thank you,

The CREW Team

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