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koch brothers
Republicans Caught Copy-Pasting Koch-Funded Group's Letter Demanding Medicaid Cuts
"You'd be hard pressed to find a more shameless example of congressional Republicans taking their cues from special interests at the cost of the American people than Chip Roy copying and pasting a letter directly from... special interests."
May 03, 2025
A letter that a group of 20 far-right House Republicans released earlier this week as part of a campaign in support of slashing Medicaid appears to have been authored by the head of a research institute with ties to the Koch network.
Politico reported Friday that "digital metadata embedded in a PDF copy" of the letter that was circulated inside the House of Representatives "lists the author as Brian Blase, president of Paragon Health Institute."
InfluenceWatch notes that in 2021, Paragon received a nearly $2 million donation from Stand Together, "a right-libertarian funding organization that acts as the umbrella organization for the political network that is largely funded by right-leaning businessman and political donor Charles Koch."
Paragon recently urged federal policymakers to require states to conduct more frequent eligibility checks for Medicaid recipients in a purported effort to root out improper payments. Health policy advocates say such a change would make it more difficult for eligible enrollees to keep their Medicaid coverage.
The letter signed by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and other House Republicans aligns with Paragon's objectives, claiming that "political abuse" of Medicaid "is helping to bankrupt the federal government" and calling for "structural Medicaid reform" in the party's forthcoming reconciliation package.
Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement that "you'd be hard pressed to find a more shameless example of congressional Republicans taking their cues from special interests at the cost of the American people than Chip Roy copying and pasting a letter directly from... special interests."
"This remarkably blatant kowtowing to conservative billionaires is a sad reflection of the congressional Republicans' willingness to make devastating cuts to Americans' healthcare to pay for lower taxes for the richest," said Carrk.
The letter was released as congressional Republicans grappled internally with how and how much to cut Medicaid as they seek to offset the massive projected costs of another round of tax breaks for the rich.
Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said he would not accept more than $500 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade. Cuts of that magnitude would still be the largest in the program's history and would strip health coverage from tens of millions of people.
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Where We’ll Be When the Fire Strikes
If the world continues on its current trends, it will mean species suicide. It’s imperative that we take the blinders off and face these crises openly and honestly.
Apr 08, 2025
On U.S. President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords again, halted leasing and permitting for offshore wind energy projects, and signed executive orders promoting fossil fuel development. The previous Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations. It seems likely he’ll now continue this process with even more vehemence.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in 2018, which found that “global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” A 1.5°C rise in temperature will render the Earth virtually uninhabitable.
We are already somewhere between 0.8°C and 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels and trending in the wrong direction. 2024 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 2023, the previous record holder.
Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres (writing with co-author Tom Rivett-Carnac) once predicted how the world might look in 2050:
In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy, and depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You can no longer simply walk out your front door and breathe fresh air. Instead, before opening doors or windows in the morning, you check your phone to see what the air quality will be. Everything might look fine—sunny and clear—but you know better. When storms and heatwaves overlap and cluster, the air pollution and intensified surface ozone levels can make it dangerous to go outside without a specially designed face mask (which only some can afford).
Current government policy is to accelerate this threat.
Partisan rhetoric can give the impression that scientists are divided on this issue. The debate around climate change is usually a debate about whether climate change exists. Not what to do about it.
According to a 2021 study by Cornell University, there’s 99.9% agreement among scientists that climate change is caused by humans. You won’t find that level of consensus among scientists about gravity.
The right wing knows this perfectly well. Donald Trump, for instance, applied for a permit in 2016 to build a coastal protection wall to prevent erosion due to rising seas levels at one of his seaside golf courses. The permit application explicitly mentioned global warming.
There used to be a right-wing opposition to climate change. In the early 2000s, Newt Gingrich was proposing measures to deal with climate change. Then, the fossil fuel industry came in and essentially remade the Republican Party in their image.
A famous study from 2013 by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University documented how David and Charles Koch, through their think tank Americans for Prosperity, got members of Congress to sign a pledge to vote against virtually any climate legislation which would regulate businesses. In 2013, more than 400 current officeholders had signed this pledge.
This was a major turning point in the fight against climate change. From 2003 to 2021, the number of Republicans who believed global warming was caused by human activity dropped from 65% to 32%.
According to the U.N., between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change. As ecological catastrophes become more and more common and large areas of the globe become uninhabitable, there’s going to be greater mass migration to the First World than we’ve ever seen. The instruments of separation (walls, cages, border patrols) have already been erected, but they won’t be able to stop it. People will find a way.
Failure to curb the use of fossil fuels and halt carbon emissions will mean crop shortages, heatwaves, droughts and floods, even more devastating hurricanes, rising sea levels, and wildfires. There is growing concern among experts that thawing permafrost could release viruses which have been dormant for thousands of years, potentially causing pandemics worse than Covid-19.
Are we in the final century of human civilization? It’s very possible. This is the generation that will decide whether humankind continues. If the world continues on its current trends, it will mean species suicide. It’s imperative that we take the blinders off and face these crises openly and honestly. By the time they become too severe to ignore, it will be too late to do anything.
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Trump Allies Launch $20 Million Effort to Convince Working Class to Back Tax Scam 2.0
"Don't be fooled: What this Koch-backed group is really only after is protecting tax cuts for wealthy people like me," said the chair of the Patriotic Millionaires.
Jan 13, 2025
A right-wing advocacy group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers announced Monday the launch of a $20 million campaign to promote an extension of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the rich and large corporations.
But in a 60-second ad that debuted over the weekend, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) characterizes the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a boon to "hardworking Americans" and small businesses—and warns that allowing provisions of the law to expire at the end of this year as scheduled would be disastrous for the working class.
"This year, Congress is facing a countdown to a crisis that threatens family budgets nationwide," Ross Connolly, AFP's regional state director, said in a statement Monday. "We are proud to partner with the incoming Trump administration to protect prosperity and ensure that Congress acts."
AFP is a 501(c)(4) organization that describes itself as a "grassroots" movement despite being launched by Charles Koch and his late brother, David—two of the most notorious right-wing billionaire in U.S. politics.
The group said its new 50-state campaign represents "the largest effort by a conservative organization" to support President-elect Donald Trump's legislative agenda as he prepares to take office next week. The campaign, according to AFP, will include "over 1,000 meetings" at congressional offices, "in-district events" with activists and lawmakers, and "roundtables with job creators."
The campaign aims to "reach millions of voters on the phone and at their doorsteps," AFP said.
"The Trump tax giveaways passed in 2017 did not help working-class Americans. In fact, the top 1% of corporations received almost all of the benefits."
AFP's description of the impacts of the 2017 tax law flies in the face of resounding evidence showing that wealthy Americans—not ordinary workers—were the chief beneficiaries and are poised to reap most of the rewards once again if Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress extend the measure's soon-to-expire provisions.
"Americans for Prosperity is spending $20 million on a new ad campaign that champions the 2017 Trump tax law as a win for working families," Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, told Common Dreams. "But don't be fooled: What this Koch-backed group is really only after is protecting tax cuts for wealthy people like me."
"I'm in favor of tax relief for working people, but not yet another huge and unnecessary windfall for America's rich," Pearl added. "If Congress wants to help working families, they should make tax rates on labor income the same as tax rates on profits made by investors."
AFP is one of a number of right-wing, corporate-tied organizations pushing for an extension of the Trump tax cuts, which Republicans are planning to fund by slashing Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other key programs.
The progressive watchdog group Accountable.US noted in a recent analysis that one of the groups pushing for an extension of the 2017 law is Advancing American Freedom, an organization "run by corporate consultants, lobbyists, lawyers, and executives, including former Trump administration officials who were directly responsible for the TCJA."
Accountable also observes that Club for Growth, a group funded by wealthy conservatives, "has pushed a deeper corporate tax cut plan as an 'opening salvo' in the current tax debate."
"The billionaire funders of the group's action arm have benefited enormously from the TCJA, saving hundreds of millions of dollars from a single obscure tax break for pass-through entities," the watchdog added.
In response to AFP's new nationwide campaign, Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk told Common Dreams that "a glitzy ad campaign from a far-right organization won't change the fact that the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress are paying for giveaways to billionaires, wealthy tax cheats, and price-gouging corporations by cutting critical services for working families, like Medicaid and SNAP."
"The Trump tax giveaways passed in 2017 did not help working-class Americans," said Carrk. "In fact, the top 1% of corporations received almost all of the benefits."
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