Investigating Power
Representatives from the firearms industry and free-market think tanks are criss-crossing the country advocating for legislation that severely curtails—and often outright prohibits—state governments from considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making decisions about investments and contracts.
Several Republican candidates jockeying to take on Trump in next year’s presidential primary have seized on the Right’s culture wars and defense of big oil. And they’re not alone.
One in every four members of the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF)—the group of Republican state treasurers, auditors, and other financial officers on the frontlines of the campaign against “woke capitalism”—has been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Center for Media and Democracy has found.
In his keynote address at The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks—a longtime investment banker prior to being appointed state treasurer in 2021—proclaimed key similarities between Hitler’s drive to create a uniform Aryan society and the desire of “global elites” to implement uniform investment practices.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is launching a new website, SFOFExposed.org, to expose the State Financial Officers Foundation’s role in legitimizing the latest front in the Right’s culture wars.
Koch Industries and its funding vehicles funnel millions to groups that are decrying “woke capitalism” and attacking the investment giant BlackRock for its leading role in ESG investing. Yet that hasn’t stopped the company’s subsidiaries from partnering with BlackRock to invest in technology startups.
The American Legislative Exchange Council has expanded its private sector board of directors—or what it calls its “Private Enterprise Advisory Council”—to include operatives in the right-wing’s fight against “woke capitalism.”
At last week’s States and Nation Policy Summit, the American Legislative Exchange Council doubled down on its latest strategy of protecting the fossil fuel industry by blacklisting “woke” companies that embrace climate protection goals.
The American Legislative Exchange Council meets this week in Washington, D.C., for its annual States and Nation Policy Summit at the four-star Grand Hyatt Washington, where rewriting the U.S. Constitution, “woke” capitalism, and protecting hate speech and misinformation are at the top of the agenda.
DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, the favorite donor conduits of the Koch political network, distributed $123 million in grants in 2021 to right-wing advocacy groups, litigation centers, media outlets, climate deniers, extremists, pro-gun groups, and other tax-exempt organizations that make up America’s right-wing infrastructure, the latest tax filings from both groups detail.