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Betsy DeVos Ethics Report Reveals Ties to Student Debt Collection Firm Public education advocates are demanding another hearing on Trump nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, after her dismal performance in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee (HELP) January 17th and after the late release of her ethics report on January 20th. The report, available here, details some 102 companies that might pose a conflict of interest for DeVos and sheds new light on the nominee's investments and ethics. While most Secretaries of Education have an extensive resume as school administrators or as educators, DeVos has neither. DeVos is married to the billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, Dick DeVos. Together they have spent millions advancing a radical school privatization agenda, including taxpayer vouchers for private and religious schools. Read the rest of this item here. Trump Picks a Fight with the Facts on His First Full Day Sean Spicer For those who hoped the Trump administration would become more "presidential" after the pomp and ceremony of the swearing-in, the Trump team cleared up any confusion by peddling outright lies from the White House podium. On January 21, the day after his swearing in, Trump traveled to Langley, Virginia. The mission? To mend fences with the CIA. A secondary mission? To give the press something else to report on than the millions of women in pink "pussyhats" gathering in cities and towns across America. Trump had a lot of mending to do. He had repeatedly slammed U.S. intelligence agencies, casting aspersions on their finding that Russia was behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee, and comparing intelligence chiefs to "Nazi Germany" when a memo containing allegations that the Russians might be in a position to blackmail Trump hit the media. Read the rest of this item here. Reform Groups Slam Trump COS for Threatening Federal Ethics Director Reince Priebus Image:Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0 The Center for Media and Democracy joined a bipartisan list of democracy reform groups and ethics experts today in a letter calling out Donald Trump's incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for threats he made against the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on Sunday. Just days after OGE Director Walter Schaub called Trump's plan for handling his business empire conflicts "wholly inadequate," Priebus went on ABC's "This Week" to say, "The head of the government ethics ought to be careful because that person is becoming extremely political." Priebus then proceeded to make factually incorrect accusations against Schaub for being political and attacked his competence. The implications were clear: Speak up for the clean government and the rule of law at your own risk. Read the rest of this item here. Pruitt Helped Block Garland Confirmation to Supreme Court, then Fundraised from Polluters that Benefited Scott Pruitt Image: Gage Skidmore CC BY SA 2.0 Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President-elect Trump's choice to be the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), coordinated an effort by Republican state attorneys general to oppose the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Pruitt then used this effort as a basis to request financial support for his federal Political Action Committee (PAC), called Oklahoma Strong. In a March 2015 email that he sent to supporters of Oklahoma Strong, Pruitt boasted of his effort to block Garland's confirmation. Read the rest of this item here. Tallahassee Mayor Defends Local Democracy from the Gun Lobby Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum Local democracy is going on trial in Florida January 10. That's when opening arguments in the lawsuit being brought by the gun lobby against Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum will be heard by Florida's First District Court of Appeals. The trial is also a test of the state's super-preemption law – laws created to intimidate local, and often more progressive, lawmakers from passing and enforcing ordinances that reflect the values and needs of their communities. Read the rest of this item here.

Recent Articles from PRWatch.org

Scott Pruitt: Trump's Pick for EPA Scott Pruitt is President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since 2010, he has been the Attorney General of Oklahoma, having previously served in the Oklahoma State Senate from 1999 to 2006. Pruitt was the subject of a Pulitzer prize winning New York Times investigation in 2014 ("Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General") which described "the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation's top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda". He describes himself as "a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." Many fossil fuel funded groups responded to Pruitt's nomination with delight. Read the rest of this item here. Seema Verma: Trump's Pick for Medicaid and Medicare Cashes In on "Reform" While Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he will not cut Social Security Medicare or Medicaid, he plans to put opponents of these programs in key positions in his administration. Congressman Tom Price, Trump's pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is a leading proponent of changes to Medicare. One of his top officers will be the CEO of a company that has been cashing in on the Medicaid "reform" schemes she has designed for states. Read the rest of this item here.

Popular SourceWatch Articles

SourceWatch's home page is the top landing page in this website. Here are some of the other hot pages: our portal on Outsourcing America Exposed, our article on the Existing U.S. Coal Plants, our article on ALEC Corporations, our article on Koch Industries, our article on Monsanto, and our article on Fracking and water pollution. Get breaking news on these and other issues here, "Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @PRwatch and @ALECexposed."

Exposed by CMD

Marc Short: Koch Dark-Money Operative Is Trump's Liaison to Congress Marc Short When the history of Donald Trump's administration is written, people may point to the appointment of a Koch Brothers' operative to a little-known White House position as a turning point in Trump's evolution from unorthodox Republican candidate to doctrinaire corporate politician. Think of it as a merger, or an acquisition. His administration hires suggest that Trump, who ran a heterodox and intermittently populist (if consistently bigoted) campaign, has been joining forces with the more established corporate extremism of the Republican Party establishment. Consider Marc Short's appointment as Director of Legislative Affairs. According to the White House website, the Office of Legislative Affairs "serves as the President's primary liaison to the United States Congress, and is responsible for advancing the President's legislative agenda on Capitol Hill." Read the rest of this item here. The DeVos Legacy: Crumbling Schools, Poisoned Water Betsy DeVos Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, wants America to believe she's all about giving parents the right to choose what's best for their children. But her radical policies and politics have left a legacy of crumbling schools and poisoned water in her home state of Michigan that parents neither asked for nor wanted. Billionaire DeVos—who has no relevant education experience and never attended public school—won the nomination by virtue of her family being one of the largest soft money contributors to the Republican National Committee and the dominant political force in Michigan, where Trump's razor-thin margin helped him clinch his Electoral College victory. Read the rest of this item here.

Featured SourceWatch Article

SourceWatch.org is an interactive wiki website that depends on readers like you to improve content. If you want to help us grow SourceWatch with well documented research and become a volunteer editor, click here for more information. Excerpts from longer SourceWatch article: Mike Pompeo CIA Director Mike Pompeo Michael Richard Pompeo is the director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and former Representative of Kansas's 4th Congressional District, where the global headquarters of Koch Industries is located. While serving as a Congressman, the Huffington Post described the Tea Party Republican as "the Koch brothers' point man in the House." Koch Industries and its employees was Pompeo's largest contributor in each of his campaigns. Pompeo was tapped by President Donald Trump to be the Director of the CIA on November 18, 2016. He was confirmed by the Senate 66-32 on January 23, 2017 and sworn in that night. Koch Industries Is Pompeo's Top Campaign Contributor Representative Pompeo's largest contributor in his each of his Congressional campaign's was Koch Industries and its employees, totaling $375,100 since 2010. Read the entire SourceWatch page on Mike Pompeo. References

Editors' Pick

Breaking Good News: Truth-Telling Gets an Oscar Nod The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated Ava DuVernay's film "The 13th" for an Oscar. Her film is a magnificent, heart-wrenching, shocking, and inspiring meditation on the American criminal justice system and racial discrimination from the Civil War to the modern day. And it includes CMD's research. At their best, documentaries have the power to galvanize movements, and "The 13th" is documentary filmmaking at its finest. The more exposure "The 13th" receives, the more people will learn the truth. Read the rest of this item here.

Featured Video
ALEC and Criminal Justice Reform; RAGA and Oil Companies
October 3, 2016 - Democracy Now! Amy Goodman talks with Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, about the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the expansion of the U.S. prison system. ALEC has worked with states to write legislation promoting the privatization of prisons in addition to pushing for harsher, longer sentences. Amy also asks Graves about the connection between oil and gas companies and the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA).

Koch Exposed

Follow the Money! The Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of ALEC Exposed, brings you this unique wiki resource on the billionaire industrialists and the power and influence of the Koch cadre and Koch cash. Read about Koch Funding Vehicles: Koch Family Foundations Koch Network Freedom Partners Knowledge and Progress Fund American Encore DonorsTrust Donors Capital TC4 Trust Visit Koch Exposed for more.

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We Track Corporations and PR Spin

The Center for Media and Democracy publishes SourceWatch to track corporations. We provide well-documented information about corporate public relations (PR) campaigns, including corporate front groups, people who "front" corporate campaigns, and PR operations. Dating back to when tobacco companies deployed doctors to try to prevent labeling of cancer-causing cigarettes, many corporations use the "tobacco playbook" to hide behind neutral-looking "experts" as well as think tanks or non-profits in their efforts to influence or distort public policy to protect their bottom line or agenda--often a narrow agenda at odds with the broader public interest. This specialized encyclopedia watches those sources and provides detailed information about corporations and special interests, using the collaborative "wiki" platform, like Wikipedia. CMD relies on concerned citizens like you to keep this research online. You can contribute here. Please visit SourceWatch's sister websites EXPOSEDbyCMD, to find our investigations and original documents we release, PRWatch, to read our original reporting, and ALECexposed, to see our award-winning investigation of a corporate front group where corporate lobbyists actually vote as equals with elected legislators on "model" legislation to change our rights. Also, please check out the in-depth research from around the world by our partner projects within SourceWatch: CoalSwarm and FrackSwarm. You can also use the sign up box below to get breaking news about our breakthrough investigations. — Lisa Graves, Executive Director

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"As a journalist frequently on the receiving end of various PR campaigns, some of them based on disinformation, others front groups for undisclosed interests, [CMD's SourceWatch] is an invaluable resource." —Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire "Thanks for all your help. There's no way I could have done my piece on big PR and global warming without CMD [the Center for Media and Democracy] and your fabulous websites." —Zoe Cormier, journalist, Canada "The troublemakers at the Center for Media and Democracy, for example, point to dozens of examples of "greenwashing," which they defined as the "unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government or even a non-government organization to sell a product, a policy" or rehabilitate an image. In the center's view, many enterprises labeled green don't deserve the name. —Jack Shafer, "Green Is the New Yellow: On the excesses of 'green' journalism," Slate. "The dearth of information on the [U.S.] government [lobbying] disclosure forms about the other business-backed coalitions comes in stark contrast to the data about them culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents and posted by SourceWatch, a website that tracks advocacy groups." —Jeanne Cummings, 'New disclosure reports lack clarity," Politico. "The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have done incredible work documenting fake grassroots ("astroturf") groups. Here, they're helping protect the rights of all Americans to exercise their right to vote. They are completely non-partisan. These guys are the real deal." —Craig Newmark, Craig's List

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