Dark Money

One measure of the movement’s impact was that starting in 1973, and for successive decades afterward, the public’s trust in government continually sank. If there was a single unified message pushed by those financing the conservative movement, it was that government rather than business was America’s problem. By the early 1980s, the reversal in pub

Citizens United and its progeny did not represent the black-and-white contrast of progressives’ nightmares so much as it clarified gray areas. But this alone was extremely important. By flashing a bright green light, the Supreme Court sent a message to the wealthy and their political operatives that when it came to raising and spending money, they

Charles Lewis, who heads the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University and who founded the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, describes the Triad scandal of 1996 as a “historic” moment in American politics. There had of course been many bigger campaign scandals before then. But Triad was a new model. He said it

At this point, Neera Tanden believes, the president finally understood what he was up against. “I think he came in truly trying to be post-partisan,” she said. “I think it took the debt ceiling fight to make him see that they hated him more than they wanted to succeed. It was an irrational deal, driven by their funders.” Two and a half years into h

By the late 1980s, Fink had supplanted Cato’s Ed Crane as Charles Koch’s main political lieutenant. Unlike Crane, who was interested in libertarian ideas but regarded it as “creepy when you have to deal with politicians,” Fink was fascinated by the nuts and bolts of power. After studying the Kochs’ political problems for six months, he drew up a pr

As a Republican running for office in Kentucky in the 1970s, when it was almost solidly Democratic, he once admitted “a spending edge is the only thing that gives a Republican a chance to compete.” He had once opened a college class by writing on the blackboard the three ingredients that he felt were necessary to build a political party: “Money, mo

After leaving the U.S.S.R., Fred Koch turned to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Hitler became chancellor in 1933, and soon after, his government oversaw and funded massive industrial expansion, including the buildup of Germany’s capacity to manufacture fuel for its growing military ambitions.

“Soft money,” she wrote, was just “hard-earned American dollars that Big Brother has yet to find a way to control. That is all it is, nothing more.” She added, “I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party.” She said, “I have decided, however, to stop takin

The study examined the tax records of more than a hundred nonprofit organizations engaged in challenging the prevailing science on global warming. What it found was, in essence, a corporate lobbying campaign disguised as a tax-exempt, philanthropic endeavor.