Investigating Power
IWF and IWV are carefully branded as independent nonprofits supporting women, regardless of their policy positions, which include opposing Title IX, employer and tax-funded paid leave, and the Violence Against Women’s Act. “Being branded as neutral, but actually having people who know know that you’re actually conservative puts us in a unique position,” Higgins told donors […]
Bradley Files, Democracy, Koch, SPN, Trump
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the judiciary committee, used his allotted time during Monday’s hearing to lay out this case. Basing his presentation on research from the Center for Media and Democracy, Whitehouse showed that a common set of billionaire donors, shielded by an identity-scrubbing funding organization, administers a three-pronged assault on the judiciary to further their […]
Bradley Files, Democracy, Koch, SPN, Trump
Citing the work of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Whitehouse pointed to an email in which a Bradley grant officer conferred with Leonard Leo, then a top official at the Federalist Society, about how the foundation could fund “two Supreme Court amicus projects” in 2014. Leo directed him to the Judicial Education […]
It’s unclear if the similarities were coordinated. Such legislative templates are a feature of the conservative corporate coalition known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which brings together corporate lobbyists and state lawmakers to draft, vote on, and circulate favorable legislation. That legislation infamously included the justifiable-homicide “Stand Your Ground” laws that drew national […]
In April, CNP Action, the lobbying arm of the CNP, began a series of weekly conference calls to discuss Covid strategy. On May 11—as U.S. Covid deaths reached 74,270—one of the calls was intercepted and published by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Associated Press.
ALEC, Climate, Economy, Environment, Trump
A verbatim record of Winberg’s comments to lawmakers on ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture task force was provided to Grist by the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit government watchdog group that tracks ALEC’s initiatives.
Arn Pearson, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, also warned that a so-called runaway convention could be called to consider one subject but then decide to make other big constitutional changes. Republicans control 60 percent of the state legislative chambers, potentially giving them a numerical advantage in selecting who […]
ALEC, Climate, Democracy, Environment, Koch
Following the May call, the civil justice task force convened an emergency meeting to finalize the suggested legislation, according to David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy. “The fact that they met in an emergency meeting and passed it shows that this was a very, very important issue to them,” Armiak […]
Climate, Democracy, Economy, Environment, SPN
In 2016, Florida voters were close to being tricked by the state’s monopoly utilities into voting for an amendment on the state ballot that would have fortified the utilities’ monopolies and locked out rooftop solar companies. Days before the election, Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald/Tampa Times reported on audio obtained by EPI and […]
ALEC, Bradley Files, Democracy, Economy, Koch, Wisconsin
According to David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy, writing in Common Dreams, the real agenda of the Coalition was to attack government interventions and push for rapid reopening despite the enactment of stay-at-home orders by many states after coronavirus cases skyrocketed. Neither public health and safety was their priority.