Investigating Power
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, was alleged to have violated laws prohibiting contributions more than $400 to legislative candidates by providing access to software including voter information and constituent engagement tracking. The complaint was brought by the liberal Center for Media and Democracy, which made similar ones in other states.
According to tax disclosures first published online by the Center for Media and Democracy, Uihlein’s nonprofit—the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation—poured millions of dollars in 2020 into a sprawling number of groups connected to efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s victory and reimagine election law, as well as other right-wing extremist organizations, including ones designated as hate groups.
Richard “Dick” Uihlein, founder of Uline and one of the country’s top Republican donors, used his family foundation to direct millions to various far-right organizations in 2020, according to the tax filings, which were published by the Center for Media and Democracy.
The Center for Media and Democracy’s research that uncovered $48.7 million funneled in 2020 from DonorsTrust to The 85 Fund, which also has the fictitious alias “Honest Elections Project,” was highlighted in Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s Senate floor speech on dark money and the right to vote.
According to reporting by The Center for Media And Democracy’s Alex Kotch, there are several issues at stake, including “rewrite[ing] the U.S. Constitution to ‘balance the budget,’ limit the powers of the federal government, and enact term limits on political office holders.”
Democracy, Extremism, Media, Trump
The project comes with real money. Turning Point’s 2021 investor prospectus set the budget for its media branch (which handles influencer outreach) at over $7.2 million. The organization has onboarded and trained over 400 creators as brand ambassadors, a number verified on social media and in a Turning Point Quizlet account that was taken down […]
ALEC, Democracy, Economy, Extremism, Koch
“How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID.” That’s the headline to a new report looking at how a right-wing network linked to billionaire Charles Koch has played a key role in fighting public health measures put in place by governments during the pandemic, including mask and vaccine mandates, contact tracing and lockdowns. The […]
The three men appointed to spearhead the operation, Scott W. Atlas, M.D., of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, also known as Trump’s 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, writing […]
ALEC, Climate, Democracy, Environment
In an email obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a top executive for a state-level group that pushed the anti-divestment bill in Texas wrote that “at the ALEC Committee meetings you’ll have the opportunity to push back against woke financial institutions that are colluding against American energy producers.”
In 2016, FPL infamously backed a wildly deceptive campaign that attempted to trick Floridians into voting for Amendment 1, an anti-rooftop solar measure dressed up as pro-solar policy. Investor-owned utilities spent over $20 million pushing a ballot initiative that would have allowed the utilities to add fees to rooftop solar customers, killing the industry. Consultants […]