Investigating Power
The financial supporters for the Courage Tour are not yet clear, but Wallnau’s media channels have attracted a broad range of donors. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s David Armiak, these include, unsurprisingly, Mike Lindell’s MyPillow (another partner in the Courage Tour) and the conservative Christian dark money groups, the Capstone Legacy Foundation […]
Campaign Finance, Democracy, Elections, Koch
David Armiak, research director and investigative journalist at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), notes in an interview that, increasingly, brand new nonprofits “that haven’t filed any IRS disclosure yet” are formed and start running issue ads or targeting candidates just weeks before voters go to the polls. Such pop-up groups—usually super PACs or […]
The Center for Media and Democracy’s research informed this report and is cited throughout.
The American Legislative Exchange Council proposed a piece of legislation dubbed the “Marriage Contract Act,” which would have eliminated no-fault divorce. [Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC Exposed, 2/13/17]
Rightwing criticism of community schools goes beyond Moms for Liberty. “In short, ‘community schooling’ represents educrats’ wet dream: a world in which American children become wards of the government through their schools,” opined a contributor at The Federalist, a publication funded by conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein and DonorsTrust. The latter is “an ‘associate’ member of the State […]
“NumbersUSA has a history of promoting hate,” said David Armiak, research director of the left-leaning watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, which tracks rightwing influence in politics.
ALEC, Climate, Economy, Environment
“Kill the story,” Exxon media relations manager Alan Jeffers told Reuters’ Houston bureau chief in a 2016 email, responding to a request for comment on a Center for Media and Democracy press release accusing the American Legislative Exchange Council of abusing its nonprofit status by lobbying against climate action on behalf of Exxon.
ALEC, Climate, Economy, Environment
“Kill the story.” That’s what Alan Jeffers, a media relations manager at ExxonMobil, told the Houston bureau chief of Reuters in October 2016, about a year after InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and Columbia Journalism School began publishing reports revealing ExxonMobil’s decades-long campaign to deny climate science. The Reuters bureau chief had forwarded Jeffers […]
The Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog organization, calls SPN “the tip of the spear of a far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” Indeed, the SPN is financed by Donors Trust—a private foundation bankrolling libertarian organizations that has been described as the “dark money ATM of the conservative […]
Climate, Economy, Environment, RAGA, SFOF
Research from The Center for Media and Democracy is cited numerous times throughout this report.