Public Citizen

Campaigns

• AT&T and Novartis: Disclose Your Agreements with Trump Attorney Michael Cohen

  AT&T and the giant pharmaceutical corporation Novartis have admitted paying more than $1 million to the shell company controlled by Trump attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen. The payments went to the same shell company Cohen used to make hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. The best-case story for the companies is that they were incredibly stupid and willing to enter into a sleazy deal that failed. The worst-case scenarios raise questions about whether the funds sent to the shell company were outright bribes. There's only one way to find out: They must disclose their legal agreements so we can know what services they hoped to obtain from Cohen's operation, and what services were in fact provided.

  30,727 of 35,000 Signatures

  Created by Public Citizen
• Join President Obama in Calling Out Corporate Tax Dodgers

  Some American corporations are essentially renouncing their citizenship so they can weasel out of paying taxes, even as they benefit from innumerable advantages of doing business, and making record profits, here. This corporate ploy is called “inversion.” A better word might be “evasion.” Inversion is when an American corporation seeks out and merges with a (usually smaller) foreign business, then uses the country where that business is located for tax purposes, thereby avoiding U.S. corporate taxes. President Obama recently spoke out against the practice of Big Business setting up sham headquarters in other countries to dodge their tax obligations here in America: “There are a whole range of benefits that have helped to build companies, create value, create profits. For you to continue to benefit from that entire architecture that helps you thrive, but move your technical address simply to avoid paying taxes, is neither fair, nor is it something that’s going to be good for the country over the long term. … You’re just gaming the system.” Sign the petition today to show President Obama that you support bold action to end the inversion evasion!

  1,139 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Glenn Simpson
• Tell Mitch McConnell: Stop Holding Our Government Hostage To Benefit Your Corporate Puppet Masters

  Under the “leadership” of Mitch McConnell, the U.S. Senate may be driving our country toward another debilitating government shutdown. Far-right forces in Congress are holding government funding hostage unless corporations are allowed to continue keeping all their political spending secret. Conservatives have turned the budget process into a bonanza for corporate lobbyists and right-wing ideologues. We the People deserve a budget devoid of sneaky giveaways to Corporate America. Tell Mitch McConnell to stop threatening another government shutdown just so Big Business can continue undermining our elections.

  381 of 400 Signatures

  Created by Glenn Simpson
• Tell Defense Contractor: Stop Demanding That Tortured Abu Ghraib Prisoners Pay Your Legal Expenses

  In an outlandishly shameless case of adding insult to injury, the American defense contractor CACI is demanding that four Abu Ghraib inmates — who sued the company over allegations that its employees tortured them — pay its legal expenses. The lawsuit was recently dismissed over matters of jurisdiction, without addressing the issue of torture. The former prisoners — who were never charged with a crime — have appealed, but now CACI wants them to pay $15,580 of its legal costs. By the way, CACI’s 2012 revenue of $3.8 billion breaks down to $7,230 per minute. Whatever its true role at Abu Ghraib, how can CACI demand money from innocent torture victims when the company makes enough to cover those expenses — courtesy of the American taxpayers, no less — every two minutes? Tell CACI chairman J. P. London to let it go.

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  Created by Glenn
• Reject Trump's Cruel, Immoral and Un-American Budget

  “Budgets are moral documents. Federal funding should reflect the priorities and the values of the majority of the American people.” Mike Pence, of all people, said that in 2009 — he became Donald Trump’s vice president. But the proposal for next year’s federal budget the Trump just released would slash funding for the agencies that protect our health and safety, our workplaces and wallets, our environment and our economy. Trump’s budget would absolutely destroy many of the programs that help our nation’s poor, elderly and rural citizens while simultaneously perpetuating tens of billions in corporate welfare and subsidies. Here are just a few examples of programs that will simply be GONE under Trump’s proposed budget: - Meals on Wheels — the massively popular and essential program that millions of America’s homebound seniors rely on so they don’t go hungry. - Federal support for the incredibly popular Habitat for Humanity program. - A federal program that helps poor and rural people insulate their homes so they don’t freeze to death. - The agency that funds legal aid programs throughout the country so that poor people who are facing wrongful eviction, custody disputes, child support or domestic violence can get the help they need. - A Treasury Department program that provides loans and other financial services to some of the most distressed communities in our country. And, Trump’s plan jacks up military spending by more than $50 billion, even admitting that “this increase alone exceeds the entire defense budget of most countries.” Sign this petition right now to urge Congress to reject Trump’s cruel, immoral and un-American budget.

  1,985 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Glenn Simpson
• Tell Trump to postpone Monday's Summit with Putin

  The Mueller probe just indicted 12 Russians for hacking during the 2016 election cycle. As Jake Tapper pointed out on Twitter, this is in addition to the 79 criminal charges already filed against 20 individuals and 3 companies, including Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort who is currently in jail for obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Trump and the White House cannot go forward with private meetings with Putin while the intelligence community has so clearly indicated that Russia is a threat to our democracy. Please sign the petition before it's too late.

  1,581 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Courtney Fuller
• Will Hillary Clinton Help Jam the Revolving Door between Wall Street and Federal Agencies that Re...

  It’s known as the “revolving door.” Many government officials responsible for overseeing Wall Street are — wait for it — former Wall Street executives. It turns out the Big Banks even give big bonuses to executives who go slumming in government. Of course, these ex-executives often seem more interested in staying cozy with their former employers (who they’ll probably go back to work for anyway) than enforcing the law. Meanwhile, regulators who didn’t come from Wall Street in the first place are constantly wooed by the prospect of lucrative job offers to leave public service and go to work for the financial institutions they’re supposed to be keeping an eye on. Thankfully, a bill recently introduced in Congress — the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act — would jam the revolving door between Wall Street and federal regulators. This commonsense package of ethics reforms would: - Prevent new agency officials from taking official actions that directly benefit their former employers. - Prohibit Wall Street firms from offering “golden parachutes” to executives who take government positions. - Restrict former regulators from lobbying for two years. - Require departing bank examiners to wait at least two years before taking a job with any bank they oversaw. Senator Elizabeth Warren noted that the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act is “a bill any presidential candidate should be able to cheer for.” And, in fact, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have both already endorsed the measure. Hillary Clinton should make it clear that she supports this much-needed legislation, too.

  11,934 of 15,000 Signatures

  Created by Glenn
• Don't Let Big Business Hijack Criminal Justice Reform

  A basic, centuries-old tenet of our justice system is that ignorance of the law is no defense. But Corporate America's puppets in Congress are trying to sneak language into much-needed criminal justice reform legislation so that executives can get away with breaking the law. CEOs would be able to evade prosecution by claiming they didn't know what the law required of them. As if it's not obvious they shouldn’t sell defective products or rip people off. It's great that Congress, in a bipartisan push, is at last tackling ineffective and discriminatory law enforcement policies that have thrown vast numbers of people in prison for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses — at last taking steps to address the crisis of over-criminalization and over-incarceration. But corporate crime inflicts a horrific toll on our society. And there are far too FEW — not too many — corporate criminal prosecutions. Tell Congress: Reject any attempt to create an "ignorance of the law" defense that makes it harder to prosecute corporate crime.

  347 of 400 Signatures

  Created by Glenn
• John Bolton is Out, Wilbur Ross Should Be the Next to Go

  Wilbur Ross never should have been confirmed. He has huge conflicts of interest. He falls asleep in meetings. He authorized the unconscionable effort to include a citizenship question on the census — designed to deter recent immigrants from responding. And he now ordered officials to lie or be fired. Wilbur Ross has got to go.

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  Created by Courtney Fuller
• Stop Unethical Medical Experiments on Premature Babies

  Between 2005 and 2009 — at 23 hospitals throughout the country run by prominent universities including Yale, Stanford, Brown and Duke — 1,316 premature infants were the subjects of a government-funded clinical trial where some received more oxygen than others. The parents of these helpless research subjects were never informed that some newborns would be at increased risk of blindness, lung injury, brain damage or even death. Add your name to our petition demanding that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius take immediate steps to address this grievous ethical breakdown.

  113 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Glenn Simpson