koch brothers

October 15, 2014 - Baker Mitchell is a politically connected North Carolina businessman who celebrates the power of the free market. Every year, millions of public education dollars flow through Mitchell's chain of four nonprofit charter schools to for-profit companies he controls.

October 3, 2014 - North Carolina election officials are investigating a mailer sent by a conservative advocacy group funded by Art Pope and the Koch brothers that contained misinformation about voter registration. Facing South has identified at least three other states where people also received inaccurate mailings from the group -- and one of those efforts involved an attempt to strike people from voter rolls.

August 14, 2014 - The 60 Plus Association shelled out $11 million in independent expenditures in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles but didn't account for the spending in reports to the IRS. The nonprofit, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and the oil and gas industry, is spending heavily to defeat Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina in her race against Republican state House Speaker Thom Tillis.

August 1, 2014 - Republican governors' and legislatures' refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is leading to hospital closures, job losses and even deaths -- especially in rural Southern communities. But some conservative individuals and groups are calling on GOP leaders to reconsider their stance.

July 31, 2014 - This week's Environmental Protection Agency hearings on the proposed plan to clean up carbon pollution from power plants offered a ringside seat to the political fight that's pitting those with a financial interest in the high-carbon economy against those whose top priority is the well-being of future generations.

July 24, 2014 - State Senator Chris McDaniel's still-contested narrow loss to incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi's Republican runoff last month exposed a divide with the Republican Party possibly as wide as the divide that ultimately split the one-party Democratic South in the 1890s between the "Bourbon" establishment and the rebellious "Populists."

June 4, 2014 - A new conservative advocacy group called Carolina Rising says a falling unemployment rate is good news for North Carolina's economy. But economists warn of ominous developments behind the numbers, including people dropping out of the workforce and a shift toward low-wage jobs. Meanwhile, state lawmakers are considering new cuts to unemployment benefits.

May 2, 2014 - Frustrated with the weakness of U.S. labor laws, the United Auto Workers is appealing to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the U.S. State Department to ensure a fair union election at the giant Nissan plant in Canton, MS.

April 24, 2014 - Institute for Southern Studies Executive Director Chris Kromm appeared on MSNBC's "All in With Chris Hayes" to discuss the money and politics behind the anti-science stances of the Republicans hoping to face off against Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan this November.

March 18, 2014 - Obscure limited liability companies have ultimate say over the Koch network's nonprofits, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars to advance conservative causes.