Credits For more information about the anti-ESG campaign and the groups behind it, check out the work of these tireless research organizations: Center for Media and Democracy, especially its website sfofexposed.org, as well as its many articles on the State Financial Officers Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Republican Attorneys General Association, […]
Research Cited
Dark Money’s Behind The Debt Ceiling Plan To Punish The Poor
Uihlein’s foundation has contributed nearly $18 million to the FGA since 2014, according to data from the Center for Media and Democracy. Other major donors to the FGA have included the billionaire Scaife family, heirs to the Mellon aluminum and banking fortune, and DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund — or pass-through vehicle — long known as conservatives’ “dark money […]
Doctors Who Spread Medical Misinformation Should Lose Their Licenses. Why Don’t They?
Today’s misinformation doctors are often associated with larger right-wing moneyed efforts, as reported in December 2022 by the Center for Media and Democracy’s Walker Bragman: Throughout the pandemic, a number of doctors and other medical experts have leveraged their credentials to promote misinformation and build large social media followings, styling themselves as bold whistleblowers challenging a tyrannical […]
Secretly Funded Climate Obstruction Keeps the Fossil Fuel Fires Burning
SourceWatch outlines the organization’s strong ties to Koch-funded entities such as the Virginia-based State Policy Network — a group of free-market think tanks that support the work of many of the most vocal organizations when it comes to promoting climate change skepticism, including the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation — and the American Legislative Exchange […]
Who Is Leonard Leo’s Mysterious Dark Money King?
RAGA coordinates Republican attorneys general in pro-corporate, anti-progressive legal action. Those include 19 attorneys general who are pressuring investors like BlackRock to abandon environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investments aimed at curtailing climate pollution.
“Women’s Bill of Rights” created by secretive group that opposes women’s rights
The Center for Media and Democracy reports that “no fewer than half of the Independent Women’s Forum’s full-time staff previously worked directly for Koch-controlled groups or for entities that received Koch funding.” IWF’s current chairman, Higgins, is a longtime Koch operative. She was previously the director and secretary at the Koch-affiliated Center to Protect Patient Rights, and […]
How conservatives have moved to undermine federal authority
Rick Santorum, a former GOP senator, can allegedly be heard pushing for a convention in audio obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive government watchdog. Two-thirds of U.S. states — 34 of them — would need to approve a convention, and Santorum reportedly pushed for red states to join him in the effort.
Hillsdale College: From 1990s Sex Scandal to Setting Educational Standards for Christ Nationalists
The three men appointed to spearhead the operation, Scott W. Atlas, M.D., of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, also known as Trump’s COVID guy, Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., of the Brownstone Institute, “are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures,” according to Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch, […]
Citing Neo-Nazi Plots Against The Grid, States Pass Laws Meant To Thwart Climate Protests
If legislators really “wanted to keep people’s lights on, they’d be more focused on making our energy infrastructure cleaner and modernizing the grid,” said Connor Gibson, an independent researcher who is tracking the influence of anti-protest legislation with the watchdog Center for Media and Democracy.
Whales versus wind turbines: truth or fiction?
Fact: Much of the anti-turbine disinformation is supported by “dark money” that is connected to conservative anti-environmental organizations. Two of those, Protect our Coast New Jersey and Save Our Beach View, purport to be grassroots organizations but are actually funded by the Ocean Legal Defense Fund, which is controlled by the Caesar Rodney Institute. That […]