Investigating Power
A group of jilted writers, “canceled” professors, and right-wing think tank fellows, some with links to fossil fuel magnate Charles Koch, is planning to start a university dedicated to “truth.”
The Charles Koch Foundation and Charles Koch Institute paid out $149.2 million in grants in 2020 to universities, right-wing policy, litigation, and advocacy groups, and other causes, the latest IRS filings obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy detail.
Spurred by $158 million from one secret donor, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund pumped a record amount of money into right-wing campaigns to remake the Supreme Court, spread election and climate disinformation, and support extremists last year.
The Trump-aligned nonprofit pitches a “Systematic Effort” to “Inspire Our Kids [to] Love America Again” in investor prospectus obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy.
ALEC boasted about its role in promoting and passing laws making it harder to vote, barring schools from teaching about America’s racist past, and protecting employers from COVID-related lawsuits at a May meeting of the right-wing Council for National Policy.
The American Legislative Exchange Council is holding its first post-Trump in-person meeting this week in Salt Lake City, Utah at the five-star Grand America Hotel.
While Trump and other Republicans attacked the 1619 Project in 2020 campaigns, right-wing think tanks and policy groups backed them up. Now GOP state lawmakers want to ban schools from teaching it.
The preferred funding conduits of the Koch political donor network gave out $165 million in grants in 2019, $90 million of which went to right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups, litigation centers, media outlets, extremists, and climate deniers.
Five right-wing funders provided 83 percent of the traceable cash between 2014-2019 for the group’s efforts to crush public employee unions, question climate science, undermine the Affordable Care Act, and privatize schools.
Bankrolled by anti-labor billionaires, the Job Creators Network is using its push for schools to reopen quickly as a wedge issue to attack teachers unions.