Investigating Power
At last week’s annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a fossil fuel industry consultant teamed up with a right-wing culture warrior to lobby ALEC lawmakers to move legislation that punishes companies embracing sustainable business practices.
One of Leonard Leo’s funding vehicles is once again the top contributor to the Republican Attorneys General Association, according to an analysis of the group’s latest 2023 IRS filing by the Center for Media and Democracy.
Republican state lawmakers, corporate lobbyists, and right-wing operatives are descending on Orlando this week for the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council ready to fight “woke capitalism,” extend a lifeline to big polluters, ban ranked-choice voting, attack bodily autonomy, and consider an array of other model policies.
A review of hundreds of tax filings by the Center for Media and Democracy has uncovered 39%—or $16.4 million—of the $41.7 million ALEC received in contributions between 2017 and 2021.
Even before the Justice Department announced the federal indictment of former President Trump last week, the super PAC for Charles Koch’s political operation, Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), had spent $347,022 in May to discredit his presidential bid in 2024.
A decade-long push by Koch’s political and policy network to get more states to flatten or abolish income taxes is finally beginning to pay off, thanks to billions in federal Covid relief funds flowing to the states.
In 2021, a fleet of 27 organizations controlled by Charles Koch and other Koch Industries executives spent a combined net total of $656.8 million on political and charitable causes.
When the next big disaster unfolds due to deregulation, don’t be fooled. Republicans are deflecting blame by attacking the Biden administration as insufficiently populist, but the seeds of the East Palestine train derailment and Silicon Valley Bank bailout were sown under the Trump deregulatory regime and more broadly by the anti-government ethos of the GOP and its Big Money donors.
A recent legal decision in a case involving Johnson & Johnson (J&J) may ultimately impact the massive profits Koch Industries and its Georgia-Pacific subsidiary have been raking in while sidestepping asbestos liability claims.
Florida’s 2023 legislative session has kicked off with a pair of bills chock full of new labor regulations long sought after by anti-union activists.