Concerned Women for Am kch

koch leo xian 2025 amicus

no merri

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DOBBS amicus

BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE FOR CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS

MARIO DIAZ Counsel of Record CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA 1000 N. Payne St. Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 488-7000 mdiaz@cwfa.org

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/texas-suburbs-are-slipping-away-from-the-gop-these-women-for-trump-want-to-win-them-back/

no lnx

Texas’ suburbs are slipping away from the GOP. These women for Trump want to win them back

Written by The Texas Tribune December 23, 2019

An audible groan erupted in the lounge area of Houston’s Gulf Coast Distillers in late October when high-profile Trump campaign operative Mica Mosbacher invoked the idea of a Democratic presidency.

Mosbacher encouraged the audience of roughly 50 GOP women — a group that included a millionaire Texas congressional candidate, the owner of a gun store and a Gov. Greg Abbott political appointee — to turn their grumbling into action.

“It’s not the boy’s club anymore,” she said.

Texas Republicans need women on their side if they’re going to keep the state red in 2020, but recent polls suggest President Donald Trump’s support among women is plummeting. A secret recording of outgoing House Speaker Dennis Bonnen laid bare the GOP’s anxieties about the president: “He’s killing us in urban-suburban districts,” Bonnen told a Republican activist in late June.

Trump’s campaign seems to take the risk seriously. At the October Women for Trump panel discussion, a group of female surrogates — mostly white, some living in D.C. — parachuted into a historically black neighborhood in the heart of Texas’ biggest city to sip drinks and implore Republican women: “We need your help.”

Mosbacher, whose resume includes stints working for GOP fixtures like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and the late John McCain, turned to one of the women next to her to bring the point home.

“What would you tell people who are on the fence about President Trump?” Mosbacher, a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board, asked Women for Trump member Karen Henry.

“It would be hard for me to be nice to ‘em,” Henry, a mother of four and Houston-area business owner, quipped. “But if you want somebody who’s going to stand up to the media, who does what he says he’s going to do … he’s the only person you can vote for.”

Onstage next to Henry was fellow member Melanie Luttrell. “Don’t you want your kids to grow up in the America you grew up in?” she asked the crowd. Many women nodded their heads solemnly in agreement.

The visit to Houston was one of many that Trump campaign surrogates have made in recent months as part of a broader national outreach to suburban women, a voting bloc that will be essential to Trump’s reelection campaign. But a majority of Texas women said in October they would definitely vote for someone besides Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. And 46% of people living in the suburbs said the same thing, according to the poll, compared to 41% who said they would definitely vote for him.

First: Panelists address attendees during a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training hosted by Women for Trump at Gulf Coast Distillers in Houston on Oct. 29, 2019. Last: Women for Trump Advisory Board Member Mica Mosbacher asks a question to panelists during a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training hosted by Women for Trump at Gulf Coast Distillers.

The goal of the Houston gathering was two-fold: energize existing supporters and encourage them to spread the gospel of Trump campaign’s promises — lower taxes, free-market health care, less government regulation, telling off the “fake news” media, and cleaning up “the swamp that is Washington D.C. bureaucracy” — to their friends and neighbors.

“We need every one of you to replicate yourselves,” said Penny Nance, the CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, who also said she is an evangelical Christian.

“Texas has the largest group of new voters,” she continued. “So guess what? We need to get them signed up.”

But beyond the four walls of the Houston distillery, that might be easier said than done. Even Texas’ historically conservative suburbs now appear competitive: A Houston-area congressional seat flipped to Democrats in 2018, and both Harris and Fort Bend Counties are overwhelmingly blue. In the Dallas region, Republicans lost a second congressional seat last year, along with a slate of state House seats and a state Senate one.

For 2020, Democrats are targeting six congressional seats and have their sights set on nearly two dozen seats they hope to flip in the Texas House — most of which are in the suburbs. If the minority party can win nine state House seats next year, they’ll gain control of a chamber in the Texas Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades.

If Trump is going to help win back the seats Texas Republicans lost last year, the effort may hinge on suburban women, their neighbors and friends. But it’s in those suburban enclaves where some experts believe the gender gap is the widest.

“The numbers are pretty clear that the level of support among suburban women for the Republicans and for President Trump has dropped,” said Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser.

“There’s the gender gap and we’re aware of it and we all see it,” he said, noting a summer NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found a huge drop in support for Trump among women. “It’s based on the personality and the behavior of the most prominent figure in the Republican Party.”

At the Women for Trump event, the president’s surrogates nonetheless shrugged off the notion that their candidate is lacking for support in the suburbs. When Mosbacher asked how women have succeeded under Trump’s economy, Henry told a story about her Salvadoran housekeeper. The woman, who has a green card, Henry said, had complained during the Obama presidency that Henry was “not paying as much.”

Henry’s answer: Blame the Democrat and his “raising the taxes.”

But Trump’s 2018 tax breaks gave Henry noticeably more disposable income — and as a result, her housekeeper “saw a little raise in her paycheck,” Henry said. (Research shows the tax cuts have primarily benefited the wealthy.)

First: Women for Tump members cheer from their seats during the organization’s holiday celebration featuring a keynote speech from President Donald Trump’s 2020 Senior Campaign Adviser Katrina Pierson at the Holiday Inn Tyler Conference Center in Tyler. Last: President Donald Trump’s 2020 Senior Campaign Adviser Katrina Pierson greets the crowd during a Women for Trump Holiday Celebration at the Holiday Inn Tyler Conference Center in Tyler.

Other panelists said Trump’s appointment of judges who oppose abortion rights to the Supreme Court was enough to sway their friends and acquaintances. They also touted his focus on fighting sex trafficking and a proposed $1 billion one-time investment to increase the supply of child care in underserved populations — all things Mosbacher said appealed to women.

“I’m a policy wonk, and I really, truly believe his policies are working,” said Jacquie Baly, an Abbott appointee to his University Research Initiative advisory board.

Baly, Nance and Mosbacher are just some of the many high-profile Republicans the Trump campaign has deployed to Texas ahead of next year’s election cycle. For a Women for Trump “Holiday Celebration” in Tyler this month, Trump’s senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, who hails from the Dallas suburbs, was the special guest. And when Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. headlined a San Antonio rally earlier this year, his girlfriend and former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle was at his side.

It’s a strategic change from Trump’s 2016 election, which relied primarily on Facebook and a select number of high-profile male campaign surrogates. Since then, the White House has increased the number of women in public-facing roles, and has relied upon a litany of GOP women onto his campaign to speak on his behalf, including Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, social media stars Diamond and Silk and Kellyanne Conway.

Texas Democrats say it’s evidence of Republican fears about the state turning blue. Democrats hope to weaponize Trump’s record — particularly the fallout from his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — against him.

“Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase, ‘alternative facts’ and I think that the president and his team basically relies on alternative facts,” said Mustafa Tameez, a Houston-based Democratic strategist. “While he’s vulnerable and has lost support among women, his supporters will disregard any evidence proving that.”

But the Trump campaign hopes to galvanize a different profile of a suburban woman, one who might have gone unnoticed by pundits and strategists: the silent voter who will turn out for the president in 2020.

Democratic and Republican strategists painted a profile of such a voter: She is a fan of Trump’s brash personality and likes that he behaves more like a businessman than a politician. She probably comes from a higher-income household and is college educated. She also might have a family and has seen her or her husband’s business thrive economically over the last few years.

This woman might not show up to events like the one organized in Houston, and she might live in an area where the president’s message is a tougher sell. But if the campaign can make sure she votes on Nov. 3, 2020, the hope is, they can help prove pollsters wrong.

“There’s a silent majority of people who don’t speak what they really believe and they’ll go to the polls and they’ll vote for Trump because of who he’s running against,” Henry said in an interview.

Democrats concede that it’s this brand of silent supporter that helped springboard Trump to the White House in 2016, something they’re trying to account for ahead of next year.

But what remains to be seen for GOP strategists is whether they can court new voters, a demographic coveted by both parties. Republicans are already trying to correct for this. Earlier this year, a super PAC named Engage Texas launched to register hundreds of thousands of new Texas voters here and convince them to help them keep the state red.

At the Houston event, after Mosbacher concluded the panel discussion and some of the room had emptied, Kayla Hensley, the regional director for the Republican Party of Texas, kicked off a PowerPoint presentation about how women could get out the vote.

Hensley’s message spoke directly to women like Rhonda Velders, who has lived in Nassau Bay for the last 30 years. Velders is the type of woman the campaign is hoping will thrill to its message: She’s a lifelong Republican, a mental health therapist who said she’s seen economic success under Trump’s presidency.

Velders was shaken when she saw her hometown vote blue in 2018 but believes things will turn around next year. “As women, we’re going to rise up, and be able to say, ‘I don’t have to be ashamed of being a woman.’ And frankly, I don’t have to be ashamed that I’m white because I feel like sometimes you’re shamed for being white.”

Trump loyalists hope the results of the 2018 midterms, in which Cruz eked out a win over Democrat Beto O’Rourke, were an anomaly and enough to motivate conservative women to turn out for the GOP next year.

“It’s not rocket science,” Velders said. “But if we’re not careful, we’re going to lose everything we know.”

Pollsters say there’s no magic number for how many women like Velders Republicans need to pursue in order to maintain their stronghold over the state. At the very least, they say, Trump needs to perform with women as well as he did in 2016.

“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” Nance, the CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, said. “It’s now or never, ladies.”

Disclosure: The University of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/20/women-donald-trump-suburbs-houston.

ch & state:

7. Concerned Women for America

Founders: Tim and Beverly LaHaye

2007 Revenue: $10,640,810

Location: Washington, D.C.

Web site: www.cwfa.org

Overview: Founded to oppose feminism, Concerned Women for America (CWA) claims to be “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.” Its mission is to “bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy.”

CWA was formed in 1979 by Tim LaHaye and his wife, Beverly. At the time, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was gaining steam, and conservative activists sought a vehicle to oppose it that would – at least on the surface – be run by women. (Today, three out of five of the organization’s highest-paid positions are held by men.)

Rather than close shop after the ERA failed to pass, CWA moved on to other issues. In the 1980s, its leaders frequently attacked public schools for promoting “secular humanism.” The group also added opposition to abortion and gay rights to its plate. Today, its Web site lists “six core issues”: opposition to same-sex marriage, opposition to legal abortion, promoting vouchers and other forms of tax aid to private schools, opposition to pornography, “religious liberty” issues and national sovereignty. (This latter category includes opposition to the United Nations and demands for a crackdown on illegal immigration.)

Tim LaHaye, now 82, became famous in the 1990s after he coauthored several apocalyptic potboilers about the end of the world called the Left Behind series. The LaHayes live in semi-retirement and no longer run CWA on a daily basis. The group’s Web site lists Beverly LaHaye, 79, as “founder and chairman” of the group, and its current president is Wendy Wright.

Tim LaHaye Quote: “Although the left is determined to turn America into an amoral, socialist state similar to China or Cuba, it is not inevitable. We still have time to turn back the tide to traditional moral and spiritual values and to restore genuine individual freedom. But we must understand how the humanists have gained such mind control that 10 to 15 million of them can literally overpower a nation of more than 270 million people.” (Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium – with David Noebel)

alternet

iowa Republican: Child migrants are ‘highly trained as warriors.’

Not all children are created equal, a Republican official in Iowa argued this week. For instance, child migrants are nothing like American children; they are dangerous threats, and could be “highly trained warriors” who will rise up against us.

The author of this paranoid delusion is Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committeewomanand state director of Concerned Women for America. She made her deranged comments Thursday on her weekly radio show.

Like Fox News’ Andrea Tantaros, this wingnut hangs her theory on a shaky understanding of history, and like Dinesh D’Souza, she's good at making totally specious comparisons.

“We know back in our revolution, we had 12-year-olds fighting in our revolution, and for many of these kids, depending on where they’re coming from, they could be coming from other countries and be highly trained as warriors who will meet up with their group here and actually rise up against us as Americans,” she said.

There was more crazy after that—we're talking biblical crazy. Scott said enticing children to cross the U.S. border violates biblical principles. Her listeners must have been pretty confused about that because the U.S. wasn’t around in biblical times, and the Bible actually entreats people to treat guests and foreigners well. Then again, if they are listening to Scott, "these people" (yep, we did that on purpose) are likely to be confused anyway.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) is the organization founded by Beverly LaHaye, wife of conservative activist Tim LaHaye, in 1979.

CWA seeks to "bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."^[1] Its activities center around six "core issues": family, sanctity of human life, education, pornography, religious liberty, and national soverignty.^[2]

Anyone who donates any dollar amount (even as little as $1.00) to the organization is then counted among the membership. CWA claims to have "over 500,000" members.

In 2001 the CWA initiated the Culture and Family Institute, headed by Robert Knight, which is intended to "focus. . . with particular emphasis on the homosexual activist movement and other forces that threaten to undermine marriage, family and religious freedom." Knight left CWA in 2006 to head the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center.

CWA operates a think tank, the Beverly LaHaye Institute. It also operates a political action committee, Concerned Women PAC, and a legislative action committee, CWALAC.

Contents [hide]

Personnel[1]

Beverly LaHaye - founder and chairman
Wendy Wright - president
Janice Shaw Crouse - senior fellow, Beverly LaHaye Institute

Former personnel

Matt Barber - policy director for cultural issues, now with Liberty University Law School and Liberty Counsel

Contact Information

Concerned Women for America

1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100

Washington, D.C. 20005

Phone: (202) 488-7000

FAX: (202) 488-0806

Website: http://www.cwfa.org

Funding

The organization received $1.5 million from the Center to Protect Patient Rights. ^[3]

Bill and Berniece Grewcock Foundation^[4]

Articles and Resources

References

↑ About CWA, Concerned Women for America, accessed March 11, 2008.
↑ "Our Core IssuesConcerned Women for America, accessed March 11, 2008.
↑ Novak, Viveca. Center to Protect Patient Rights Gave Millions in 2011 to Outside Spenders in Election Accessed 12/17/2012.
↑ Profile: Concerned Women for America, Media Transparency, accessed March 11, 2008.

External links

Concerned Women for America, People for the American Way, accessed March 12, 2008.
Steven Gardiner, "Concerned Women for America: A Case Study", Feminism and Women's Studies, August 28, 2006.
Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics, Oxford University Press, June 2008. ISBN 0195331818 ISBN 978-0195331813

Categories:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Concerned_Women_for_America

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/12/nonprofit-funneled-money-to-kochs-voter-database-effort-other-conservative-groups.html?utm_source=CRP+Mail+List&utm_campaign=ad4bb1ae38-Newsletter_12_21_2012&utm_medium=email

Themis was a daughter of Heaven and Earth, the goddess of divine law and order in Greek mythology.

More prosaically, Themis is also the name of a voter database project spearheaded by David and Charles Koch, the conservative billionaires of Koch Industries, early in the 2010 midterm election cycle. The idea was to reach GOP and libertarian voters more systematically and efficiently, to catch up with the voter microtargeting strategies Democrats had been developing over several years.

And even more matter-of-fact are the names of some of the entities that have funded the conservative endeavor -- a collection of organizations that would be at home in a bowl of alphabet soup. Their existence has not been reported previously.

The heart of this network is TC4, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization founded in 2009. According to its first tax filing, covering the period Aug. 28, 2009 through June 30, 2010, TC4 -- which had one trustee and a single key employee -- made a grant of $2.5 million to Themis Trust.

That wasn't all. TC4 sent Themis more contributions, though they were disguised. In its most recent IRS Form 990 tax return, which covers the 12 months ending midway through 2011, TC4 lists a grant of $2.5 million to something called STN LLC and one of $1.8 million to DAS MGR LLC. Both are affiliates -- or in the formal jargon of tax law, "disregarded entities" -- of Themis.

But it appears that TC4 wasn't just about funneling money to the Themis project. Over the less than two years covered by tax forms filed by TC4, the organization gave large grants to other conservative 501(c)(4) groups that worked to help Republicans in the 2010 and 2012 elections, including the 60 Plus Association, Concerned Women for America, Citizens Against Government Waste and American Commitment.

Other groups that received millions of dollars are parts of better-known groups, but legally distinguished from them. And still other organizations have proven ciphers thus far. In total, according to IRS forms filed thus far by the group, TC4 has given away more than $36.5 million.

The existence of TC4 and its role in sending funds to other, politically active nonprofits has been hidden until now in part because 501(c)(4) groups -- which all of the recipients of TC4's grants are -- are not required to disclose the names of their donors, a fact that OpenSecrets Blog has covered extensively in its Shadow Money Trail series. Nonprofits must list only those to whom they give grants, making it hard to connect the dots when the starting point is the recipient organization.

Nondisclosing groups -- those that don't identify their donors, almost all of them 501(c)(4)s -- played a huge role in the 2012 elections, accounting for more than $311 million in outside spending that was reported to the Federal Election Commission. (More was spent that fell outside reporting requirements.)

The groups aren't supposed to be primarily involved in politics. But so many of them have been so active on this front since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that the IRS should be conducting audits, said Marcus Owens, a Washington tax lawyer who formerly headed the Exempt Organizations division of the federal agency.

Many of the groups, in his view, "most certainly would merit investigation," Owens said -- including TC4.

Bare-bones info

Exactly what part TC4 may have played in funding groups between mid-2011 and this year's election is currently unknown, because the IRS doesn't require nonprofits to file their 990s until many months after the end of their fiscal years. TC4's return showing any grants it gave in late 2011 and early 2012 won't be available until the spring of 2013. And documents showing its activity running up to Nov. 6 will remain out of public view until the following spring, 2014.

In many ways, TC4 appears to function like the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) -- another large tax-exempt group that has few programs of its own and practically no staff, but through which millions of dollars flow to conservative, politically active nonprofits.

In its first tax form, covering the period Aug. 28, 2009 until June 30, 2010, TC4 listed just two individuals as working for the group: Michael Hartz, a Chicago lawyer who is TC4's unpaid trustee, and Gretchen Hamel, who is identified as the "Program Leader" and was paid about $52,000. TC4's stated purpose was, "[g]rant making, research, analyze, report on, make publicly available matters useful and beneficial to the community, which focus on the advancement of free markets, liberty and individual freedoms."

By the time of TC4's second, most recent filing, covering the 12 months ending June 30, 2011, Hartz's name is the only one listed (other than that of a tax preparer).

Despite the Chicago connection, and its Indianapolis accountant, the address given for TC4 on tax forms is that of a UPS mailbox in Alexandria, Va. OpenSecrets Blog left repeated messages for Hartz, but he did not return the calls.

TC4 and CPPR's ties that bind

TC4 reported about $46 million in revenue in its first two years, mostly in year one. The funds that came almost entirely from investment income, rather than from contributions and grants as was the case with CPPR. Most of its grant-making came in the second year, when it used money it had banked to provide funds to 13 organizations, a big increase from the previous year when it made only two grants. During the two years, nearly $37 million went out the door in grants. In fact, in its second 990, the group told the IRS that "during the current fiscal year, TC4 ceased all non-grant making programs and focused solely on the grant making activities centered around the same initiatives."

In spite of the technical differences in their funding streams, though, TC4 and CPPR together gave grants to some of the same politically active nonprofits -- five of them received a total of $33.1 million from the two major donor groups, according to 990s the pair have filed.

Concerned Women for America, 60 Plus Association and American Commitment are all easily recognizable conservative groups. That's not true of another organization that received $892,000 from TC4. Incorporated in Delaware in 2010, PRDIST LLC is actually a subsidiary -- or another "disregarded entity" -- of Americans for Prosperity, the 501(c)(4) co-founded by David Koch. AFP let loose more than $35 million in outside spending in the 2012 election, nearly all of which was used to attack President Barack Obama.

And another multimillion-dollar grantee of both TCR and CPPR also has a complicated structure. POFN LLC, another Delaware corporation formed close to the same time as PRDIST LLC, received more than $8 million from the groups. It turns out to be a subsidiary of a nonprofit called SGC4 Trust, of which Gretchen Hamel -- the only employee TC4 has yet listed on its tax forms -- is the sole trustee.

SGC4 Trust, according to tax documents, does business under the name Public Notice -- a group of which Hamel is the executive director. A project of Public Notice is called Bankrupting America, which highlights government spending and regulation as the cause of the nation's fiscal woes.

Hamel did not respond to multiple messages left by OpenSecrets Blog.

Below is a table showing organizations that received money from both CPPR and TC4 Trust from 2009 until the end of 2010 (in TC4's case, mid-2011). The total comes to more than $41 million.

TC4's grantees in its second year, in addition to the groups already named, were Eleventh Edition LLC; Freedom Club; the Center for Shared Services; TRGN LLC; and Generation Opportunity. Little or no public information exists for some of those organizations.

In its first year, other than Themis, TC4 gave money to just one other organization -- an LLC that, like many of its other grantees, has a name that is a jumble of letters. However, the name is smudged on the scanned copy of the 990 that OpenSecrets Blog has seen, though there are indications it may be connected to American Commitment.

Disregarded, but not forgotten

"Disregarded entities" could be considered something like subsidiaries or affiliates of their parent organizations. They are not required to file separate federal tax returns. But in other ways they are treated as legally separate from the parent, and are sometimes used to protect the parent company from liability.

And, perhaps more importantly in this case, disregarded entities can give grants under their own names to other groups, and the recipients need only list those disregarded entities -- not their parent organizations -- as donors.

That helps provide an additional layer of anonymity to any person or organization concerned, for whatever reason, about being identified as a donor.

The usefulness of these layers of cloaks to those fighting disclosure was apparent recently when the California Fair Political Practices Commission ordered an Arizona 501(c)(4) group, Americans for Responsible Leadership, to name its donors. Under court order, it did so, but little was unmasked. The group got its money from CPPR, which had received it from Americans for Job Security; both are also 501(c) organizations, and whoever or whatever was the original source of the funds remained hidden. The frustrated state agency called it a plain case of "money laundering."

The Koch connections

Links between many of the grantor and grantee groups and the Kochs are numerous and multilayered. For instance, Hamel, who ran TC4 in its first year and then became head of Public Notice, which received money from both of the larger groups, was a presenter at the 2010 edition of the brothers' annual gathering of conservative donors and groups.

Also at that meeting with Hamel -- a former Bush administration spokeswoman and frequent guest on Fox News -- were Sean Noble and Heather Higgins, two of the original board members of CPPR. Yet another of the original CPPR board members, Eric Novack, was a senior fellow at the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity.

American Commitment, which also received money from the two large donor groups, was originally headed by CPPR president Noble. Later, Phil Kerpen took over; Kerpen is on the board of Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, which also was sent checks from the two major groups. The 60 Plus Association, the largest recipient of funds from TC4 and CPPR together and a big outside spender in 2010 ($7.1 million) and 2012 (4.4 million), is frequently reported to be on the receiving end of Koch money.

As for Themis, its 2010 revenue was $7.7 million, tax documents show. The three grants from TC4 total $6.8 million, almost all of its income. According to *The Guardian* newspaper, the Kochs set up Themis "with $2.5m of their seed money," which could correspond with TC4's first, $2.5 million grant to Themis. The organization's data work played a role in helping Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker beat back a recall attempt earlier this year, *Politico*reported, noting that Koch strategists discussed investing as much as $20 million in Themis. Its unknown whether the additional funds materialized, in part because the 990s that might provide clues have not been filed yet.

Themis' tax documents list a Paul W. Brooks as the sole trustee, which is the same name as that of a former Koch Industries senior vice president. Messages left for him were not returned. The group's chief operating officer, Ben Pratt, is a former Koch Industries executive, as well.

Groups that are granted 501(c)(4) tax status by the IRS are supposed to be focused on "social welfare" causes; politics can't take up more than half their resources, as the rules have been interpreted over the years. Perhaps to reassure regulators that it is hewing to the law, TC4's most recent 990 contains a statement that reads, "Each grant recipient is required to sign a grant agreement, which among other things...provides that the grant funds shall not be used for political activity."

But tax attorney Owens is skeptical that the statement is a lock against all such activity by grantees. "My reaction is that we're not able to see the actual grant agreements. We don't know whether they require the recipients to report back" how they used the money, "or what the agreements provide if there is a violation of the terms. And we don't know how they define 'political.'"

And the language may not keep organizations from using money received from TC4 to give to still other politically active nonprofits, for instance -- which groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS don't appear to consider political spending.

There are still a number of mysteries about where how all the money in the TC4 and CPPR networks moves around, and at whose behest.

But if it's not already perfectly clear that all the secrecy is no accident, a Salvador Dali quote on the personal blog of Themis COO and former Koch Industries executive Ben Pratt sums it up nicely: "The secret of my influence has always been that it has remained a secret."

rationalwiki

The Concerned Women for America (CWA or CWfA) are a group of right wing radicals opposed to anything that is too sympathetic toward, or even remotely related to, homosexuality. Sounding like a parody of the Junior Anti-Sex League in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, their pronouncements complain about a "sex-saturated culture."

Founded by Beverly LaHaye (widow of Left Behind author Tim LaHaye), they have openly attacked freedom of choice, Muslims and pretty much anyone who isn't American, Christian, male, and heterosexual. ^[1]

Good, good… Let the hate flow through you

CWA has displayed opposition to almost all women's rights, including equal pay, abortion, and maternity leave (unless you're leaving the workforce forever to go be a homemaker, of course), earning it the derogatory title "Ladies against Women" in feminist circles.^[note ^1]

They have stated that publicly funded HIV screening and publicly funded STD treatment are objectionable programs. ^[2]

Another one of their favorite issues is pushing religion and pseudoscience in public schools, including school prayer and Intelligent Design.

Their anti-gay myth-spreading, such as equating homosexuality with pedophilia and downplaying the number of homophobic hate crimes, has resulted in their being labelled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[3]

It is feared that there are at least 250,000 of them.

External links

Notes

:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Not to be confused with the parody group of the same name, Ladies Against Women Ladies Against Women

References

stub

Categories:

===

Concerned Women for Am kch

Personnel[1]

Former personnel

Contact Information

Funding

Articles and Resources

References

Related SourceWatch Articles

External links

Good, good… Let the hate flow through you

See also

External links

Notes

References

Attachments