On November 21, 2019, CfA released new documents shedding light on how officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services intervened to secure federal family planning funds, known as Title X funding, for Obria, an anti-abortion and anti-birth control group based in California.
On November 21, 2019, CfA asked the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, to refer Karan Bhatia, Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at Google, to the U.S. Department of Justice for investigation into whether Mr. Bhatia may have provided false testimony to the committee during a hearing concerning Google’s manipulation of search results.
On November 18, 2019, CfA published court documents revealing that Americans United for Life (AUL), a 48-year old national anti-abortion organization, advised the controversial anti-choice front group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in its release of deceptively edited videos designed to harm Planned Parenthood. According to documents filed in a lawsuit against CMP, AUL provided extensive support to CMP during its deceitful scheme including 300 communications with CMP’s head, David Daleiden.
On November 12, 2019, CfA and Western Values Project, a Montana-based nonprofit conservation group, submitted additional evidence to ethics officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Office of Government Ethics showing U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt continued to work with his former lobbying client, Westlands Water District, through at least July 2017, which is longer than was previously known.
On November 5, 2019, CfA sent letters to Estée Lauder informing the company of an employee’s inappropriate use of the company’s name in her role as the board chair of Obria Medical Clinics of Southern California, an anti-choice religious ministry masquerading as a healthcare group, and requesting that the company discipline the employee accordingly.
On November 4, 2019, CfA called on the Florida Commission on Ethics to investigate whether Florida State Representative David Scott Plakon violated the Florida Constitution and state ethics laws by failing to properly disclose information about his myriad business interests on his personal financial disclosure forms.
On October 9, 2019, CfA released a new report, Google’s Media Takeover, which documents how Google contributed more than half a billion dollars to news and media organizations around the world. In conjunction with the report, CfA also released a comprehensive database that contains information about each of the 1,327 grants Google gave to journalism initiatives. CfA’s report and database represent the most comprehensive effort to catalogue all of Google’s payments to media organizations.
On October 8, 2019, CfA called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate the conservative legal advocacy nonprofit Judicial Crisis Network for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending mass robotexts from a misleading number during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
On October 1, 2019, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued a line-item veto to terminate state funding for Real Alternatives (RA), an anti-abortion nonprofit organization that misused taxpayer dollars and failed to provide promised health services. RA will no longer receive state funding to run the Michigan Parenting and Pregnancy Support Program.
On September 27, 2019, CfA called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate whether the Montana-based anti-public lands nonprofit, Citizens for Balanced Use, violated its nonprofit tax-exempt status by engaging in substantial, unreported lobbying activity.