Investigating Power
Far-right House Republicans and related groups have some pretty tall demands for approving a stopgap budget bill and averting a government shutdown. There’s only one catch: Their demands have nothing to do with the federal budget.
In a remarkable ruling last Thursday, a Minnesota judge summarily dismissed misdemeanor charges against three Anishinaabe water protectors who had protested at a pipeline construction site in an effort to stop the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. “To criminalize their behavior would be the crime,” she concluded.
Join the Center for Media and Democracy, the American Constitution Society, and Common Cause for a conversation on the lurking dangers of a constitutional convention.
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.
Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo, the Christian conservative largely responsible for moving the federal court system to the far right in the past decade, is deploying his powerful network to get a friend and former employee elected as Missouri’s next attorney general.
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.
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.