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Recent Posts
- Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt
- Senator Chris Murphy Charges that Trump “Has Opened a Channel for Bribery”
- Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors
- Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 80-Year Low; IMF Says U.S. Tariffs Now Exceed the Highs During the Great Depression
- Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun
- The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump
- Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday
- Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule
- Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials
- Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
- Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin
- After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired
- Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter
- Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe
- Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
- In Trump 1.0, the State Department Used Taxpayer Money to Publish a Book Elevating Elon Musk to a Superhero; It Was Funded by USAID, the Agency Musk Wants to Quickly Shut Down
- News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Appears to Be Violating a Court Order; It Has Taken Down Hundreds of YouTube Videos that Educate Americans on How to Avoid Being Swindled
- Barron’s Releases Audio of Jamie Dimon Cursing Out His Workers at a Town Hall, as Dimon Plans to Dump Another One Million JPM Shares
- There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE
- Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
- Donald Trump Gives the Greenlight to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to Return to Bribing Foreign Officials
- After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- Former Prosecutor, Now U.S. Senator, Informs Tesla That CEO Musk May Be Violating Federal Law and to “Preserve All Records”
- Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- JPMorgan Chase Charged by Yet Another Internal Whistleblower with Cooking the Books
- We Asked Google’s AI Search Model, Gemini, Questions About the Fed and Wall Street Megabanks: It Got the Answers Dead Wrong
- With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?
- Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades
- It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins
- Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers
- Fossil Fuel Money Played a Role in the Los Angeles Fires and the Push to Install Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- When It Comes to Wealth Retention in Retirement, Concrete May Be the New Gold
- Wall Street Watchdog Warns “Clock Is Ticking on a Coming Catastrophic Financial Crash”
- Wall Street Is Sending the Same Message to Americans on Fossil Fuel Financing that It Sent on Cigarettes: Drop Dead
- In a Six-Week Span, this Dark Pool with a Curious Past Traded 3.7 Billion Shares
- Wall Street’s Lobby Firm Hired Eugene Scalia of Gibson Dunn to Sue the Fed for Jamie Dimon
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Made $561,051 in Compensation in 2024, as Mail Costs Spiked and Delivery Deteriorated
- Fed Chair Jay Powell Sends a Bold Message to Trump and Tanks the Dow by 1123 Points
- The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
- $663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
- Donald Trump to Ring Bell at New York Stock Exchange Today as Hit List Posters Appear in Manhattan Targeting Wall Street CEOs
- Trump Has a Slush Fund to Prop Up the Dollar – Will He Use It to Prop Up Bitcoin Instead?
- A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
- Despite More than 1600 Tech Scientists Signing a Letter Calling Crypto a Sham, Trump Names a Crypto Cheerleader for SEC Chair
- The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage
- Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, Has Businesses Financially Intertwined with Trump
- Donald Trump Is at Risk of Getting Named in a Fossil Fuels Conspiracy Lawsuit
- Trump Is Having Difficulty Getting a Lawyer to Accept the Nomination for SEC Chair: Here’s Why
Search Results for: koch
Trump’s Nominees Are Being Hand-Picked to Enact a Dangerous Platform the Koch Brothers Made Public 44 Years Ago

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2024 ~ Tens of millions of Americans rise each morning and pray they are awakening from a bad dream about the President-elect’s plans to put a plethora of outrageously unfit people in charge of critical federal agencies that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we feed our children, our ability to obtain healthcare, social security for the elderly, response to disasters and so forth. What few Americans understand is that this plan is very real, dead serious, and was hatched 44 years ago by two fossil fuel billionaire brothers – Charles and David Koch. The plan was publicly released as the Libertarian Platform when David Koch ran for Vice President of the United States in 1980. David Koch died in 2019, leaving his brother, Charles, who turned 89 this month, to relentlessly push to install the platform, notwithstanding that … Continue reading
The Debate Disaster and the Supreme Court’s “Chevron” Repeal Have a Money Trail Leading to Charles Koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2024 ~ It took the New York Times Editorial Board less than 24 hours to assess the political landscape after the disastrous presidential debate last Thursday evening and call for President Joe Biden “to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.” The Times called President Biden’s view that he is the only candidate that can beat Donald Trump “a reckless gamble.” But the New York Times is itself engaging in a reckless gamble with its unmoored bet that the Democratic Party would be able to amicably transition to a different presidential candidate who could win over the American people in the short span of four months left before the election. The Times is also gambling that this major disruption within the Democratic Party would not negatively impact down-ballot races and end up costing Democrats both the White House and control … Continue reading
Crypto Tries to Recreate the Koch Money Machine to Pack Congress with Shills

Editor’s Note: For watchdog Better Markets’ detailed analysis of crypto’s “track record of lawlessness, deception, fraud, and investor losses,” see here. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2024 ~ As meticulously chronicled by Jane Mayer and numerous others, the billionaire owners of fossil fuels giant Koch Industries — Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch – spent decades building the tentacles of what became known as the Kochtopus. It was, and remains, a sprawling network of Super Pacs, nonprofits, dark money groups, activist groups and think tanks deployed to push an anti-regulatory agenda in Congress – particularly when it comes to fossil fuels and climate change. Koch’s latest addition is an Orwellian voter-mining database and its dangerous appendages. Crypto billionaires appear to have studied the Koch playbook carefully and are now rapidly rolling out a strikingly similar network. As we reported on Tuesday, a handful of crypto billionaires … Continue reading
Charles Koch’s Money Is Being Used in Elections in Ways Only Orwell Could Have Imagined

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 4, 2024 ~ On August 31, 2018 we broke the news that the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, led by billionaire Charles Koch, had purchased i360 – an Orwellian political operation made all the more dangerous by the fact that it was affiliated with a billionaire who had been creating and funding political front groups for decades to push an anti-regulatory agenda and call it “liberty.” We wrote at the time: “Quietly, and without any corporate press release on such an unusual acquisition, Koch Industries has purchased i360, a vast voter database and data harvesting operation. According to i360’s website, it has ‘1800 unique data points’ on 290 million American consumers as well as detailed information on 199 million voters from all 50 states. It brags that its data ‘shows you everything you need to know including the demographic and psychographic breakdown of your … Continue reading
There’s a Trump Era/Charles Koch Big Law Firm Behind the Supreme Court Case that Hopes to Gut the Federal Agency that Fights for the Little Guy

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 28, 2023 ~ Next Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could have far reaching effects on the legislative ability of Congress to have flexibility in how it funds regulatory agencies, as well as place in jeopardy the survival of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a government watchdog for the little guy, elderly, young, poor and unsophisticated against goliaths on Wall Street and other financial predators. The case arrives at the Supreme Court as a result of a decision handed down in October by a three-judge panel at the right-wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. All three judges on the panel (Don Willett, Kurt Engelhardt, and Cory Wilson) were appointed by former President Donald Trump. The 5th Circuit effectively ruled that the CFPB’s funding system, legislated by Congress, was unconstitutional. The shadow of Trump and the invisible … Continue reading
Meet Marc Short, the Former Koch Exec Who Has Now Testified Before a Grand Jury Investigating the January 6 Attack

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2022 ~ Mainstream media has been abuzz over the past two days that Marc Short, the Chief of Staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified under subpoena before a grand jury convened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has now broadened its investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to the masterminds. But is that really the headline? We think the real headline is that Marc Short was previously an executive at the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries, a private company run by billionaire Charles Koch who has been setting up political front groups for four decades. Short went on to become President of a Koch-related dark money group called Freedom Partners from 2011 to 2016. Freedom Partners plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into political operations in an effort to put fossil fuel friendly pawns in Congress … Continue reading
The Supreme Court’s EPA Decision Is One More Win for Charles Koch’s Dystopian America

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2022 ~ Imagine a country that allows a private fossil fuels conglomerate (or its billionaire boss, Charles Koch, the 17th richest person in the world according to Forbes) to get away with the following: Meet secretly with big political donors twice a year to plot a coordinated strategy to put their chosen people in public office; Meet at his private club with a sitting Supreme Court justice who will then rule on key legislation that benefits his interests; Fund an organization that then sluices money to the wife of the Supreme Court Justice; Run a highly sophisticated voter registration database, data mining and get-out-the-vote operation called i360, in order to pack Congress with people who will pursue an antiregulatory agenda; Install dozens of its lawyers and operatives into the highest offices of the federal government; Run a sprawling, opaque trading operation that could … Continue reading
The Glue that Connects Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Ginni Thomas, and the Guy Who Was Air-Dropped into the DOJ, Is Charles Koch’s Money

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2022 ~ In September 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice filed racketeering charges against the major tobacco companies and two of their front groups. The court filings in that case carefully pieced together a half century of conspiratorial conduct and lies that gravely harmed the health of the American people, while lining the pockets of the tobacco industry, its lawyers and its paid shills. The January 6 Select House Committee has that same, once-in-a-lifetime power in its hands. But that window of opportunity will close soon. The January 6 Committee can connect all the dots of the attempted coup leading to the doorstep of Charles Koch and expose his four decades of establishing front groups to shill for the fossil fuels industry and anti-climate change groups, or it can present a false and narrow view that this was all about the ego and … Continue reading
The Money Trail to the Ginni Thomas Emails to Overturn Biden’s Election Leads to Charles Koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2022 ~ The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard. A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through … Continue reading
President of Koch-Funded Group Says “Ukraine Doesn’t Matter to America’s Security…” as Koch Says It Will Keep Running Businesses in Russia

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 18, 2022 ~ On March 8, Wall Street On Parade reported that despite announcements by British Petroleum (BP), Shell and ExxonMobil that they were cutting business ties to Russia in response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, another oil conglomerate, Koch Industries, remained silent. Koch Industries is the privately-owned cash cow that has fueled the infamous “Koch Brothers” creepy intrusions into every nook and cranny of American politics, using labyrinthine layers of well-financed front groups. The oldest brother, Charles Koch, whose personal wealth is estimated at $53 billion according to Forbes, remains at the helm of Koch Industries and a sprawling political power base. David Koch died in 2019. Koch front groups also played a pivotal role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin’s admirer, Donald Trump, in the White House. See: … Continue reading