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.
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.
After years of criticizing progressives for shareholder activism focused on social justice and environmental concerns, right-wing groups and ideologues are embracing the same strategy themselves.
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.
An oil and gas industry group recently urged the board of directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council—the right-wing corporate bill mill—to reconsider adopting a model policy that would blacklist companies that limit their business with fossil fuels