Billions in federal taxpayer dollars have in fact been directed to the mostly unregulated charter school industry over the past 20 years, according to watchdog groups such as the Center for Media and Democracy, with the supposed goal of leveling the playing field for students from marginalized communities.
Research Cited
How ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ Sold Access to Bogus COVID-19 Treatments—and Left Patients in the Lurch
The emergence of AFLD was a coordinated political effort months in the making. The group was the brainchild of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive network of conservative activists. During a May 11 call of CNP members that was leaked to the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group, members complained that Trump was being […]
Freedom of Speech According to the Gospel of Koch
What he failed to disclose to readers is that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which conducted the survey in cooperation with a fellow traveller organisation called RealClearEducation (RCE), is a proponent of the oxymoronic “intellectual diversity movement” whose goal is to “dismantle the so-called liberal bias” in US academia, according to Sourcewatch, […]
Rightwing lobbies and dark money funders backing assaults on voting rights
In late July, Alec hosted a two-and-a-half-day “exclusive” meeting in Salt Lake City before Alec’s annual conference for an elite group of state legislators who are Alec members. They discussed ways to revise voting laws and compared notes about what’s been achieved already, according to an Alec email disclosed by the Center for Media and […]
ALEC and the FEC: Did right-wing organization violate campaign law and its own tax-exempt status?
According to the complaint filed by the Center for Media and Democracy, one of ALEC’s arch-foes, it distributed election campaign software worth between $2,376 and $5,760 to an unknown number of state legislators as a benefit of their membership. The estimate Is based on the manufacturer’s pricing structure to non-ALEC members.
What does it cost to be sued by WILL?
While local governments need to dip into their annual budgets and spend through their insurance deductibles to defend themselves, WILL is funded by the Bradley Foundation, a right wing, nonprofit grant funder organization based in Milwaukee, as highlighted in research from the Center for Media and Democracy and a recent in-depth story in the New […]
A brazen scheme? ALEC software giveaway to GOP lawmakers violated FL campaign-finance laws
The alleged gifts from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed last week in Salt Lake City, amount to illegal in-kind campaign contributions, according to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Common Cause, and the Alliance for a Better Utah.
Protest repression and the new public/private Federalism
I imagine the people who fund ALEC would have preferred the organization to stay quietly under the radar, but given its strategy of diffusing policies through state legislatures, this has proven impossible. An anti-ALEC “hit squad,” ALEC Exposed, tries to document ALEC’s every move.
The organized takeover of Wisconsin courts
Earlier this year, the Center for Media and Democracy reported on a new rightwing legal center called American Juris Link that is “actively working to track and support right-wing legal challenges to upend COVID-19 health restrictions, fight workers’ rights to unionize, and coordinate legal strategies” The group was “incubated by the State Policy Network” — […]
Watchdog group files campaign finance complaint against Michigan lawmakers
The software from ALEC, a conservative legislative and policy organization, is billed as a tool to assist with constituent services but amounts to a voter contact platform that is worth thousands of dollars and linked to the Republican National Committee’s voter database, the complaint said.