One of the largest right-wing foundations in the U.S. is planning to award a significant sum of money to a prominent opponent of public health efforts to combat the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. Last week, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced that it is awarding Stanford University Professor Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist known for his opposition to pandemic lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates, with its 2024 Bradley Prize, a $250,000 award. Previous winners of the prize include former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo ..read more

On April 12, the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) hosted a School Board Summit outside of Milwaukee for the state’s school board members and candidates. The Noah Webster Educational Foundation (NWEF), a Christian education nonprofit based in Virginia that has held at least one similar summit there, co-hosted the event, which reportedly attracted “over one hundred attendees, including school board members and administrators from districts around the state.”  In addition to “training” attendees, the conference took on culture war issues central to the far ..read more

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) brought in $5.3 million in contributions in the first three months of 2024, as its latest Federal Elections Commission (FEC) disclosure examined by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) shows. The amount raised is almost a million more than RAGA raised in the first quarter of 2020, the last major election cycle. A $1 million contribution from The Concord Fund made Leonard Leo’s nonprofit funding vehicle (formerly registered as the Judicial Crisis Network) the top donor to RAGA, bringing the total it has donated to the Republican attor ..read more

GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein provided his Restoration PAC with $3.1 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing released today. The owner of ULINE, a shipping and packaging company, gave $2.4 million to the PAC directly and funneled another $742,503 through his Restoration of America and Fair Courts America groups. These three funding vehicles — along with the Voter Reference Foundation, a subsidiary of Restoration Action — are run by GOP operative Doug Truax and pumped with Uihlein cash. The $3.1 million Restoration PAC raised in ..read more

In March 2023, a group of House Republicans launched a new Anti-Woke Caucus to “root out all far-left political programs from the federal government” — including those focused on ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in both hiring and workplace practices. The group wants to “protect taxpayer’s [sic] from being forced to fund woke and divisive ideologies.” Republican Rep. Jim Banks (IN-3) chairs the caucus, which has 26 members, half of whom are also members of the far-right, obstructionist House Freedom Caucus. The major difference between the two special interest groups is that the ..read more

State lawmakers seeking to dismantle unions and implement anti-worker laws have just been handed a new state-by-state roadmap by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-funded bill mill popular with Republican legislators. Although ALEC claims that its proffered labor reforms are designed to protect “worker freedom and flexibility,” its attacks on workers over the past 50 years have made it harder for them to organize, harder for local governments to support decent-paying jobs, and easier on big business.  Those attacks, bankrolled by Koch Industries and right-wing ..read more

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is helping the for-profit bail industry push legislation in four states to restrict or outright eliminate charitable bail funds, which provide those unable to afford bail with enough cash to avoid being imprisoned while awaiting their day in court. Led by the American Bail Coalition (ABC), the commercial bail industry sees the growth of charitable bail funds as a threat. The national trade group, which opposes bail reform efforts across the country, is also one of ALEC’s key corporate members. Last fall, ABC provided platinum-level sponsorship o ..read more

After spending more than $31 million on Nikki Haley’s unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination, billionaire industrialist Charles Koch’s super PAC is now backing 26 Republican candidates running for the U.S. House and Senate this year. Almost half of these candidates have served in the military, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) finds. Although this is a factor Republican voters tend to favor, according to the Pew Research Center, only 21% of candidates who ran for governor or Congress in 2022 had any military experience and only 82 of the 435 current members of the House ar ..read more

A legislator affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) who served as a fake elector from Arizona during the 2020 presidential election is proposing legislation that state lawmakers — not voters — should get the final say on choosing Arizona’s presidential electors. The bill’s sponsor, state Senator Anthony Kern (R-27), is currently under investigation by Arizona’s Attorney General for falsely certifying that then-President Trump had won the state’s Electoral College votes in 2020 instead of Joe Biden. Kern won his bid for state senator in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement an ..read more

Last year, when the Missouri General Assembly failed to pass legislation to discourage investments in companies, funds, and banks that promote environmental, social, or governance (ESG) goals, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft took the matter in his own hands and did so by administrative edict. Ashcroft is now using his efforts to curtail ESG investing in his bid for the GOP nomination for governor, which will be determined through the Republican primary on August 6. Most efforts to rein in these so-called “woke” investments are made through legislation in red states, often led by state financia ..read more