Research Cited

Joe Manchin, who is holding up crucial climate change initiatives in Biden’s reconciliation bill, collects $500,000 a year from coal stocks dividends: report

Source: Business Insider | Published: 10/1/2021

As The Guardian reported in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy in July, Manchin himself founded a private coal brokerage in 1998 called “Enersystems.” Though currently run by his son, Manchin still owns as much as a $5 million stake in the company, raking in $500,000 of income from it in 2020 alone. […]

Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is a coal baron

Climate, Democracy, Environment

Source: The Guardian | Published: 9/30/2021

Financial records detailed by reporter Alex Kotch for the Center for Media and Democracy and published in the Guardian show that Manchin makes roughly half a million dollars a year in dividends from millions of dollars of coal company stock he owns. The stock is held in Enersystems, Inc, a company Manchin started in 1988 […]

Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals

Democracy, Extremism

Source: The Guardian | Published: 9/30/2021

An earlier, redacted version of the list was published along with reporting by the Center for Media and Democracy in late 2020. DDOSecret’s publication restored personal information, which allowed further reporting and verification of the list’s contents.

One of the most secretive and powerful groups in GOP politics just had its cellphone numbers leaked. Here’s what its members said about Trump 2024 when we started calling.

Democracy, Extremism, Trump

Source: Business Insider | Published: 9/24/2021

Several CNP members have been linked to a movement that sought to limit coronavirus-mitigation measures. In summer 2020, the Trump campaign and several NPC members, including Jenny Beth Martin, the cofounder and CEO of Tea Party Patriots, coordinated with a new anti-lockdown group called America’s Frontline Doctors, according to a call leaked by the liberal […]

Democrats Must Pass Voting Rights Protections, But They Can’t Codify a Lie

Democracy, Trump

Source: Time | Published: 9/20/2021

Shortly after the 2020 election, as Trump pushed The Big Lie from the White House, von Spakovsky joined one of Trump’s lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell on a Council for National Policy panel to reportedly plan how Republicans should work to subvert the will of more than 81 million […]

Utah Senate president says Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell ‘doesn’t really understand’ what happened with critical race theory push

ALEC, Democracy, Education, Extremism

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune | Published: 9/8/2021

In the video, recorded at the Council for National Policy’s 40th Anniversary Meeting in May and posted on Twitter and YouTube, Adams, R-Layton, responded to a question about how state legislatures are handling corporate blowback from laws targeting cultural issues like abortion and transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports. He said someone had texted him […]

Stuart Adams or Donovan Mitchell … who you gonna hear and trust when it comes to race in Utah?

ALEC, Education, Extremism

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune | Published: 9/8/2021

“We have work to do to try to educate ’em. … Let’s get after him and let’s go tell him what we’re doing because I don’t really think he understands …”

Donovan Mitchell didn’t ‘understand’ Utah’s critical race theory resolution, Utah Senate president says

Democracy, Education, Extremism

Source: DeseretNews | Published: 9/8/2021

In the video, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, can be seen participating on a panel with other conservative leaders from across the nation in May, a day after the Utah Legislature called its own “extraordinary session” to pass a pair of nonbinding resolutions urging the State School Board to ban what lawmakers considered “harmful” critical […]

Senate President Stuart Adams blames Donovan Mitchell for blowback on attempted Critical Race Theory ban

ALEC, Education, Extremism

Source: KSL News Radio | Published: 9/8/2021

President Adams was responding to a question about how Utah is handling corporate push back on social justice issues like abortion and transgender bills. Speaking of bills on those topics that ran in the 2021 legislative session, Adams said, “We tried to do something similar to Florida and Mississippi. It made it through the House, […]

Bill Mill-ennialism: Arkansas’ End Times Politics May Be Coming to a State Near You

ALEC, Democracy, Extremism

Source: Religion Dispatches | Published: 9/7/2021

According to a report by David Armiak of the Center for Media and Democracy, the venerable rightwing business-focused bill mill American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) provided a forum to NACL at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas in December 2019. There, Rapert claims to have secured nine state chairs. He says that NACL is modeled […]