This is the Kochs’ right-wing coup: Deny voting rights, flood politics with dark money, capture the courts

This is the Kochs’ right-wing coup: Deny voting rights, flood politics with dark money, capture the courts

"The funders bankrolling efforts to undermine voting rights are some of the same people behind the push to preserve and expand the outsized political influence of billionaires and corporations. The right-wing Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, for example, provided funding for the activist who organized the challenge to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court case that gutted a key provision of the law in 2013. The Foundation has paid for billboards in minority communities with the message “Voter Fraud is a Felony,” condemned as voter intimidation, and has awarded grants to organizations with seemingly virtuous names like True the Vote, a group that raises the specter of “voter fraud” to push for more restrictive voting rules. At the same time, the Foundation has also funded groups like the Center for Competitive Politics, which despite the name advocates against limits on big money in politics. Organizations like the Bradley Foundation are taking aim at representative democracy from multiple angles, funding both efforts designed to make it easier for the most powerful among us to buy more influence and to make it harder for the most marginalized among us to vote. Or take a look at the Heritage Foundation, which has received significant funding from the Koch network and has been a major player in the right’s effort to dismantle democracy. When the Senate was considering a constitutional amendment to overturn cases like Citizens United in 2014, the Heritage Foundation was busy pushing myths characterizing the amendment as a way to “silence free speech"."