Koch is the billionaire CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, which operates in multiple sectors of the fossil fuel industry. His Stand Together Trust contributed $5 million in 2022 to SPN-affiliated think tanks and millions more to SPN associates like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Cato Institute, according to the Center for Media & Democracy.
Research Cited
Trump-allied election groups burned through millions with no evidence of widespread fraud
But the group’s tax records, provided to CNBC by Dave Armiak, a research director at the Center for Media and Democracy, show that Mitchell’s group entered 2023 with very little money left that could be used for those goals. The Election Integrity Network raised just over $753,000 and spent about $746,000 in 2022, which left […]
Warn Voters About the Radicalism Beyond Trump
That endorsement is likely to drive even more cash to add to the over $70 million in IRS-traceable contributions that groups solely focused on convening such a gathering have garnered from 2012 to 2022, in findings of the Center for Media and Democracy. That figure does not include contributions to ALEC, which has promoted the convention since […]
Who’s Behind the Push for States to Codify a Weaponized Definition of Antisemitism?
In 2021, ALEC hosted two panels related to Israel during its “States and Nation Policy Summit” in San Diego, California, one of which was billed as a workshop for legislators on “how to recognize antisemitism in all its modern devastation.” CMD was able to obtain audio of the panel, which included Elise Steinberg of the […]
EXPLAINER: Is there “pink slime” in your local news?
In 2020, DonorsTrust, a libertarian nonprofit, gave Metric Media Foundation $1.27 million “for general operations,” according to the Tow Center. A 2019 analysis of their IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy found that DonorsTrust and a sister organization, Donors Capital Fund, had pumped at least $90 million into “right-wing causes.”
Report alleges company manipulated state police to arrest protestors: ‘What they’re doing is selling their police department’
Nonprofit online magazine Grist, in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy, published data last February showing that Canadian energy company Enbridge spent almost $6 million on police and sheriff’s services, as well as emergency response, during the Line 3 project in Minnesota. The state’s public utilities commission, which gave approval for Line 3 […]
State Group Funds National Attack on DEI
According to SourceWatch, which monitors funding by right-wing foundations, the Searle foundation’s federal tax forms show it has been a regular funder to the Claremont Institute, giving $150,000 in 2022, $180,000 in 2021, $130,000 in 2020 and $130,000 in 2019.
How Fossil Fuels Found Their Influencers
In 2011, The Washington Post reported that Edelman helped API cast “REAL PEOPLE not Actors” in an Energy Citizens TV commercial highlighting “American Made Energy.” The following year, API kicked off “Vote 4 Energy,” the next chapter of Energy Citizens, which featured “supposedly average people looking into the camera and saying ‘I vote… for American domestic energy’ and promoting […]
How a Koch-linked group stalled a bipartisan Ohio energy efficiency bill at the last minute
Americans for Prosperity is a political advocacy group founded by David and Charles Koch. The Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group, classifies it as an “astroturf,” or pseudo grassroots organization, which represents the interests of Koch Industries.
The Legislature’s con-con con job
The Center for Media and Democracy reports that a recent ALEC conference in Arizona advocated for a rewrite of the Constitution, our nation’s foundational document, for the first time in American history. The citizens’ lobby Common Cause calls the nationwide movement for a convention “the most serious threat to our democracy, flying almost completely under […]