armiak, David CMD
agw scholar
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JUL 2025
Insurrectionist and voter suppression advocate Cleta Mitchell formed a new dark money group in 2023 to channel funds to organizations that promote the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and spread misinformation about the threat of widespread noncitizen voting.
Housed in the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the Foundation for Accountability Integrity & Research in Elections Fund (FAIR Elections Fund) brought in $3.9 million between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, and disclosed $2.1 million in expenses, more than three-quarters of which was disbursed in grants to other organizations.
The FAIR Elections Fund has no website as of publication. A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of the group’s first tax filing, recently made public, offers the first internal look into Mitchell’s group since she disclosed leading it in biographies and news reports.
The group’s IRS filing says that it made no payments for salaries or other compensation, while claiming Mitchell is working 50 hours per week for the group. This raises the question of who is paying Mitchell for her work.
Mitchell has worked to manufacture a crisis around noncitizens voting and partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to push for model bills and amendments to state constitutions banning it — despite the fact that evidence of noncitizen voting is scarce. “Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare,” the Brennan Center reported in 2024.
A senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell launched her previous project, the Election Integrity Network (EIN), with the help of the right-wing group, which was founded and led by former U.S. senator and congressman Jim DeMint and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows (also an insurrectionist). In 2023, EIN moved out of the CPI constellation of nonprofits and is now “administered and managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy with Virginia Institute president Lynn Taylor also serving as EIN’s Chairman as Cleta Mitchell retains an active EIN role as its founder,” according to a 2023 booklet obtained by CMD.
EIN’s latest IRS filing shows that as of December 2023 it was still registered at CPI’s office address, with just $213 left in the bank.
Serving on the FAIR Elections Fund board of directors alongside Mitchell, its president, are Vice President Heather Honey, Vice President Daniel Bean, Secretary Don Workman, and Treasurer Pat Corrigan.
Honey, also an executive director at the Election Research Institute, is a close ally of Mitchell who worked with her to sow doubt about the efficacy and trustworthiness of the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which has resulted in many states opting out of this interstate effort to help ensure accurate voter rolls.
A 2024 analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA found that conclusions in Honey’s report on ERIC “are false, often based on out-of-context examples, and… are frequently not backed by the data she presents.”
The IRS filing shows that the FAIR Elections Fund paid $121,284 to Honey’s organization Verity Vote LLC for “consulting.”
Vice President Daniel Bean is an attorney who represented Trump advisor Andy Surabian when he was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Secretary Don Workman is a partner at Baker & Hostetler and was a partner at Foley & Lardner, the Washington-based law firm that Mitchell was forced to resign from after she participated in the infamous post-2020 election phone call in which Trump urged Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to claim victory in that swing state.
Treasurer Pat Corrigan runs Compass Direct LLC, a fundraising company that works for CPI, where his brother Edward is president. Given Corrigan’s role as treasurer, he is likely the one tasked with raising funds for the organization.
$1.6 Million in Grants
The FAIR Elections Fund distributed $1.6 million in grants in 2023-24 to 10 allied groups.
The FDRLST Media Foundation, which publishes the right-wing web magazine The Federalist, received $400,000, the largest grant. In 2020, The Federalist falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal the election in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania during extended vote counting in the days following the presidential election.
The pro-Trump outlet also published a column EIN’s Kerri Toloczko misinforming readers that noncitizen voting is a crisis that needs to be addressed through federal legislation. Since 2019 it has run nine pieces by Mitchell on noncitizen voting, purging voter rolls, and voting by mail.
EIN’s administrator, the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, received the next largest grant of $325,000. The Institute held its fifth Election Integrity Summit on May 16, and holds “infrastructure trainings” twice a month.
The FAIR Elections Fund funneled its third largest grant of $300,000 to the State Freedom Caucus Foundation, the sister organization of the State Freedom Caucus Network (SFCN). CPI incubated SFCN, which Meadows launched in 2021. From the beginning, the group has touted “election integrity” as a priority.
The network has been deployed to ban noncitizens from voting at the federal level as well as at the state level in places like Missouri.
Mitchell also spoke at the 2024 State Freedom Caucus Network Summit, where Wyoming State Freedom Caucus Chair Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R) said she “shared some shocking statistics about American elections and illegal immigration.”
The Immigration Accountability Project (IAP) received $150,000 from the FAIR Elections Fund, the IRS filing shows. IAP President Chris Chmielenski collaborated with Mitchell and Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, to work a room of 150 attendees at ALEC’s 2024 Annual Meeting to approve an Only Citizens Vote Coalition model bill banning noncitizen voting, The Guardian reported.
The FAIR Elections Fund, Immigration Accountability Project, and Election Transparency Initiative are all members of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, with Mitchell serving as a “co-convener.”
Also receiving FAIR Elections Fund grants between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 were the Tea Party Patriots Foundation ($100,000); Citizen Outreach Foundation ($89,100); John K MacIver Institute for Public Policy ($75,000); Strong Communities Foundation of AZ ($75,000); Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty ($75,000); and Wisconsin Voter Alliance Corp ($25,000).
In November, Wisconsin voters passed a ballot measure to change one word in the state constitution to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in any local, state, or federal election. The right-wing MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty were proponents of its passage.
Funding is Dark
Despite the new IRS filings, funding information about the FAIR Elections Fund is scarce. The organization is not required to disclose its donors, and a CMD search of the filings only identified a single contribution of $795,000 from CPI, which does not note the original source of the funds. A CMD analysis of CPI’s known funders is available here.
orientation cpi
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/09/13/maga-group-grooms-members-of-congress-and-their-staff-for-america-first-movement/
CPI hit squad:
CPI has also launched a number of spin-offs to further right-wing causes, including the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), America First Legal, Center for Renewing America, American Cornerstone Institute, American Moment, and the State Freedom Caucus Network.
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Staffers Coached in Conservative Oversight
From May 5–6, seven House Republican staffers and three Senate Republican staffers attended an Effective Oversight Training Retreat paid for by AAF and led by CPI, AAF, and the Heritage Foundation—all ostensibly nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organizations.
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Attendees participated in six training sessions, according to an agenda obtained by CMD, including on “how to work with legal experts to leverage research and advance conservative priorities in the courts,” “working with outside groups involved in oversight,” and “how to conduct effect research into Presidential appointees and nominees” to “help congressional staff perform proper oversight.”
The latter session was led by AAF’s founder Tom Jones, who is credited with leading GOP opposition to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmationand for sinking the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin for vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, among others.
AAF runs the website bidennoms.com,which currently features opposition campaigns against Phillip Washington for administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Gigi B. Sohn to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); Kalpana Kotagal to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); and Dilawar Syed for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA).
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Kotagal appears to be a top target of AAF, prompting it to create the separate website kalpanakotagal.com, where she is labeled a “radical leftist” who is “poised to weaponize the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with an anti-American agenda.”
SCREENSHOT FROM WWW.KALPANAKOTAGAL.COM
Kotagal is actually an accomplished employment and civil rights plaintiffs’ litigator, perhaps best known for co-authoring the “Inclusion Rider,” a contract provision in Hollywood designed to increase diversity in casting and production staff.
In addition to staffers from CPI, AAF, and Heritage, others from the right-wing Capital Research Center, the Republican Study Committee, and Compass Legal also led training sessions. CPI launched Compass Legal to take “care of things like legal filings” and help nonprofits “to comply with federal tax law so they can keep their nonprofit status,” according to its 2021 Annual Report.
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/08/05/here-are-five-of-alecs-most-far-right-members/
no lnx
Here are Five of ALEC’s Most Far-Right Members
By ExposedByCMD Editors | August 5th, 2022
ALEC, Democracy, Extremism, Featured Investigations, News
The Center for Media and Democracy revealed on August 3 that 224 ALEC-affiliated legislators belong to far-right Facebook groups, based on “Breaching the Mainstream,” a report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. Five ALEC lawmakers were profiled in the report and are republished here with permission.
STOPPING THE STEAL, SUPPRESSING VOTERS: PHIL STEPHENSON
(R-Texas House of Representatives, District 85)
ALEC member as of 2019.
After the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, far-rightists quickly turned to efforts to delegitimize the results and put Trump back in the White House. “Stop the Steal” became the name for the mobilization. Animated by conspiracy theories, scores of groups with variants of the name popped up on Facebook, attracting hundreds of thousands of activists before the groups were removed from the platform.
Like the COVID Denial mobilization, Stop the Steal efforts involved a broad swath of the far-right: from long-time Tea Party leaders and establishment groups like Turning Point USA and Women for America First; to nationalist paramilitaries like the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers; to the street brawlers of the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer; to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of Infowars; the anti-vaxxer Freedom Angels; Qanon believers; and white nationalists. “Stop the Steal” efforts moved into the streets and helped pave the way for the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
Several legislators in this report became members of Stop the Steal Facebook groups, but none joined as many as Texas State Representative Phil Stephenson.
In November 2020, Stephenson joined at least 17 different “Stop the Steal” groups, leading in membership in that category among the legislators included in this report.
In addition to engagement with Stop the Steal groups, Phil Stephenson described in August 2021, “It was a momentous day in the Texas House as we passed legislation to protect the integrity of our elections. I was proud to support Senate Bill 1 so we can promote voter access, deter fraud, and restore full faith and confidence in our state’s electoral system.”
As the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law observed, “The legislation restricts nearly every method of voting overwhelmingly used by voters of color in 2020: It limits early voting and ballot drop boxes, curbs how absentee ballots can be distributed and who can vote by mail, and bans drive-thru voting. While the provisions of SB 1 will hinder the ability of all Texans to vote, these new restrictions intentionally and disproportionately impact communities of color.” As a result, the Texas State Conference of the NAACP and the U.S. Justice Department filed lawsuits against the voter suppression law.
In February 2020, Stephenson shed light on another aspect of his politics, posting a video on Facebook that declared, “In the Texas House, Phil has argued for and helped advance the Convention of States and the state legislature’s push for Article V, which calls for a Constitutional Convention.” The video ends with, “I’m Phil Stephenson, and I approve this message.”
As early as 2013, Stephenson has expressed his support for a “LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION WITH SPECIFIC ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED AND VOTED ON,” but that he would “BE WARY OF AN OPEN CONVENTION WITH SO MANY DEMOCRATS WHO WANT TO DO AWAY WITH OUR CONSTITUTION” [Capitals in original]....
also mary b
july 2018
ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas company in the world, will not renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after a split within the corporate lobbying group over how to address climate change, Bloomberg reported earlier today.
Exxon’s exit follows a disagreement over a resolution introduced in December by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that denies climate change, that would have asked the federal government to reconsider its findings that greenhouse gasses are harmful to human health.
The EPA did its spadework and laid out the scientific foundation of the endangerment findings in over 200 pages of technical documentation in 2009. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt failed to reconsider those findings, much to the disappointment of the Koch crowd.
Although large companies like Ford, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and many others have cut ties with ALEC, few have given and supported ALEC as much as Exxon has. Exxon was listed as a “major contributor” to ALEC as far back as 1981 and has given ALEC millions over the years to promote its corporate agenda. Exxon has also consistently served on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board.
Reaction to the Announcement
“This is a major loss for ALEC. It’s not just the financial support that Exxon provides, which has been significant over the years. This also represents a growing split between oil and gas majors that are increasingly concerned about their public image, and groups like ALEC that still regularly promote debates about climate science on their agenda,” saidNick Surgey, co-director of Documented.
“Exxon’s departure should send a strong message to ALEC that it’s extreme agenda and undemocratic, secretive operations have no place in American politics,” said Jay Riestenberg, campaigns & media strategist at Common Cause.
“It’s very significant when a giant of the fossil fuels world thinks that ALEC ‘s denial of the existence of climate change is intolerable. I hope that other responsible corporations that are still members of ALEC will follow suit,” said Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor, who has attended ALEC events and written about its climate denial positions.
With regard to ALEC and the Koch brothers’ hostility to renewable energy and public transportation, Taylor said, “Their positions belong in the dinosaur age. We need to be investing in transit and renewables, and they just keep throwing up road block after road block.”
“Other major oil companies, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, left ALEC years ago. It’s about time ExxonMobil finally did, too,” said Kathy Mulvey, fossil fuel accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a formal statement. “But the company has a lot more to do to set things straight.” Exxon continues to fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, both of which continue to do battle with groups and regulators attempting to address climate change, Mulvey said.
Exxon Used ALEC to Promote Climate Change Denial for Decades
In October 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause filed additional evidence for their 2012 IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC detailing how Exxon had pumped $1.7 million into the front group “to promote the oil giant’s climate denial policies and legislative agenda, in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”
ALEC claims to spend zero dollars on lobbying but the complaint showed that Exxon had deliberately used ALEC over two decades as its lobbying arm to advance its position on cap-and-trade policies, the Keystone Pipeline, the Obama Clean Power Plan, and fracking.
CMD brought this concern to the attention of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in January 2017 when ExxonMobil’s former CEO, Rex Tillerson, was nominated to be President Trump’s Secretary of State.
“For years, Exxon used ALEC as a key asset in a fossil fuel industry campaign to sow uncertainty about climate science, undermine international climate treaties and block legislation to reduce emissions,” said Arn Pearson, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who drafted the 2016 IRS complaint. “And New York and other states have been investigating Exxon for its role in hiding evidence of its climate impact from shareholders and the public. So it is ironic that ALEC’s anti-science stance has apparently become too extreme even for Exxon.”
Exxon did not respond to CMD requests for comment.
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2021/08/13747/alec%E2%80%99s-annual-meeting-queues-fights-over-federal-powers-fossil-fuels-big-tech
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its first post-Trump in-person meeting this week in Salt Lake City, Utah at the five-star Grand America Hotel.
While Trump is no longer in office, ALEC members still wearing their MAGA hats can participate in Trump-themed trainings such as, "Achieving and Using Political Power: How You Implement an America First Agenda," and "Writing the History of the Future: Messaging Strategies to Reclaim States' Power & American Exceptionalism."
The Annual Meeting kicked off on Monday with an "exclusive, invitation-only academy" for state lawmakers with the dark money voter suppression group the Honest Elections Project, where ALEC politicians were "to discuss the implementation of new election legislation" with three secretaries of state, among other "fun and educational" events, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported.
The Annual Meeting will provide a platform for a number of high-profile Trump loyalists. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry (R), U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R), Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz, and ALEC's favorite economists Stephen Moore and Art Laffer are all scheduled to speak.
Rewriting our nation's founding document, protecting the interests of fossil fuels, fighting President Biden, regulating Big Tech, weakening unions, and undermining public education are all on the agenda.
Special Program to Work on Radical Rewrite of U.S. Constitution
ALEC is extending its conference well into the evening on Friday this year to hold an "interactive academy" on rewriting the U.S. Constitution. Attendees will "learn how an Article V amendments convention will actually play out," and "cast their ballots to decide which ideas to pursue," an invite obtained by CMD details.
One of the goals of the tutorial appears to be to convince lawmakers that a runaway convention can be prevented, despite expert opinions that this is impossible.
"Once you have the convention, it is subject to nobody's control," Georgetown University Law Professor David Super told the AP. "It makes its own agenda. It makes its own voting rules that decides how long it lasts and how far it goes."
At the 2020 Annual Meeting, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) detailed a legal strategy to force a convention to rewrite the nation's founding document even though at the time only 28 of 34 states needed had resolutions calling for one pending.
Former State Rep. Ken Ivory (R-UT) will moderate the event, whileU.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell,Prof. Robert Natelson, David Biddulph, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, and Dr. Barry Poulson will present.
ALEC is already pushing constitutional convention calls for a balanced budget amendment and sweeping new limits on federal powers, but meeting attendees will also have the opportunity to consider a newly proposed convention call for a package of tax and fiscal reforms, including "abolishing the existing Internal Revenue Code," called the Application Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to Propose an Amendment to Require Fiscal Limitations and Accountability for the Legislative and Executive Branches of the National Government.
The model application also seeks to combine the states that pass it with other balanced budget amendment convention calls in an attempt to reach the 34 states needed to convene a constitutional convention.
Protecting Fossil Fuel Interests and Other Climate Harming Measures
ALEC politicians will once again consider model bills to protect fossil fuel interests and polluters.
Meeting attendees will debate a number of policies framed around ending "energy discrimination."The radical Energy Discrimination Elimination Act would punish financial institutions and other companies that cease to do business with fossil fuel companies by barring the state from investing in them and denying them state business. The policy also includes an anti-boycott measure which prohibits government contractors from boycotting energy companies, even asking for "written verification" from companies stating that they "will not boycott energy companies during the term of the contract."
This model, as well as the Affordable, Abundant, Reliable Electricity Act, which seeks to protect all energy producers in the name of maintaining a reliable electrical grid, are being lobbied for by Randy Eminger, executive director of the Energy Policy Network, an email obtained by CMD details.
An advocate for "clean coal," Eminger describes his mission at Energy Policy Network as, "to support the continued use of coal-fueled power," in the email, and notes that "four other comrades from the industry" will be at the ALEC conference as well.
In keeping with ALEC's climate-denial history and pay-to-play work for fossil fuel giants, ALEC lawmakers will also vote on resolutions to oppose any government action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and oppose any restrictions on the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity.
Indeed, ALEC is even proposing a model bill, the Safeguarding Greenhouse Gas Regulatory Authority Act, to bar any state agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions or entering into any regional compact without "specific legislative authorization.”
The Resolution Urging States to Establish**Electric Vehicle** Charging Stations as a Competitive Market Free From Utility Commission Regulation urges state utility commissions to forbid "regulated utilities from using electric customer funds to build its own fleet of electric charging stations," thereby removing crucial funds to expand the infrastructure a larger fleet of electric cars will need in the future. This will have the intended consequence of forcing people to continue driving gas-guzzling vehicles for longer than necessary.
ALEC is also introducing another preemption model bill around plastics, the Act to Establish Statewide Uniformity for Essential Plastic Regulations. Spun as a policy to ensure "essential" plastic products are available, the proposed bill would bar municipalities from banning or taxing plastic food wrappers and plastic water bottles. The measure follows a 2015 American City County Exchange (an ALEC offshoot) resolution that calls on local government not to regulate many single-use products,including, "reusable bags, disposable bags, boxes, cups, and bottles that are made of cloth, paper, plastic, extruded polystyrene, or similar materials."
Regulating Big Tech?
Despite claiming to be for free markets, and in a move to satisfy the MAGA crowd at ALEC, a resolution and a number of discussions will take place at the meeting on regulating Big Tech.
The Resolution in Support of State Governments Upholding Free Speech on the Internet follows along the same line of Trump's suit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google over their supposed censoring and violation of his First Amendment rights. The resolution states, "American Legislative Exchange Council members support state legislatures protecting free speech on the Internet and implementing targeted, effective measures to prevent any public or private entity from censoring, blocking, or restricting free speech on the Internet or social media platforms for any reason other than sexual obscenity or excessive violence."
Workshops titled, "Tech Talk: Content Moderation on Social Media Platforms," and "Taxing Tech: Will State Regulation Harm Consumers and Raise Prices?" are scheduled, as well as larger discussions titled, "Should Big Tech Be Regulated?" and "Free Markets or Government Regulation of Big Tech?"
Prohibiting Public Sector Union Collective Bargaining
ALEC has fought long and hard to decimate unions, so it no surprise that it is asking members to consider the Fair and Accountable Public Sector Authority Act. In what can only be understood as a massive attack on working people and the wages, benefits, and workplace conditions obtained through collective bargaining, ALEC's model bill prohibits public employers from recognizing unions and from collective bargaining with unions.
The model bill goes further than ALEC's :{Comprehensive :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Public Employee Freedom :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Act:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:, which would prohibit public employers from requiring workers in a bargaining unit to join the union or pay dues, and allow individual workers to bargain independently with their employer.
Taking the Culture War to Public Schools
Yesterday, CMD reported on ALEC's role in the promoting state legislation designed to restrict what can be taught about history and race in the public schools.
At the meeting this week, ALEC politicians will debate the American Civics and History Act. In the name of promoting civics, the bill would force public schools to make all social science teaching materials available online; require "state or local Board[s] of Education to approve instructional materials prior to first use"; require public school students to take courses on U.S. history, civics, and state government; and make high school students take a civics test similar to the one used for new citizens.
The model also states that "No public school shall direct or otherwise compel a teacher or student to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any belief relating to a current event or currently controversial issue," and "controversial issue" is vaguely defined to encompass just about anything.
Meeting attendees will also tackle topics including "Free Speech in Higher Education," "Parental Rights and Curriculum Transparency," and "Alternative Teacher Certification."
China and Taiwan
Following ALEC's presentation of its International Pioneer Award to Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen at the 2020 States & Nation Policy Summit in December, it is again wading into the politics around China and Taiwan.
ALEC members will debate the Resolution to Prioritize Strengthening the U.S.-Taiwan Partnership to Enhance Global Supply Chain Security and Resilience with a goal of enhancing "global supply chain security for both sovereign democracies," and hear from Taiwanese Ambassador H.E. Bi-khim Hsiao.
Discussions regarding Taiwan's neighbor, China, strike a different tone. Attendees will participate in discussions titled, "US-China Relations: BFF (Friends) or BFF (Foes)," "The Future of China's Rise and What It Means to American Democracy," or "Chinese Influence Operations at the Sub-National Level: Spotting and Stopping Malign Influence in Your Backyard." In addition, there is a workshop on "Will China Overtake the US Economically?"
Fighting the Biden Agenda
ALEC is putting forth a number of proposed measures aimed at blocking the President's agenda and queuing up a 10thAmendment legal battle between federal and state government powers.
The radical Executive Order Review Process Act would establish a state mechanism to review Presidential executive orders to determine if they are unconstitutional. If a state attorney general decides one is, all state agencies and local governments would be barred from implementing or enforcing the executive order if it relates to "a pandemic or other public health emergency; the regulation of natural resources; the regulation of the agriculture industry; the regulation of land use; or the regulation of the financial sector through the imposition of environmental, social, or governance standards."
The bill appears to be a product of ALEC's new Functional Federalism Working Group. The working group's leader, former Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, in a late February meeting "floated three potential ways for state lawmakers to present a united front against the Biden agenda: nullification, or passing state legislation to invalidate federal actions that states believe are unconstitutional; the initiation of a constitutional convention that would pass amendments giving states more power; and the passage of non-binding resolutions reaffirming the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which declares that powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states, in state legislatures," Grist reported
ALEC is also targeting Biden's aid to the states as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which made available $350 billion in state and local recovery funds. ALEC's Statement of Principles on ARPA Aid to State Governments and Resolution Urging Congress to Let States Cut Taxes both recommend how the money should be spent.
Dinner with Christian Right Activists
ALEC usually provides a venue at its meeting for allies to reach its legislative members, and this meeting is no different.
On Thursday, the Christian Right Family Research Councilis holding a "Values Action Dinner" at the hotel to promote anti-trans legislation in the states "to save adolescents from experimentation."
The legislation is likely based on Arkansas's SAVE Adolescents from Experimentation Act (SAFE Act), which was enacted in April after a veto override and bans gender-affirming medical treatments and hormone therapies for transgender youth. The bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Robin Lundstrom, will be a featured speaker at the dinner. Following a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the SAFE Act was temporarily blocked by a federal judge last week.
Other Christian Right groups ALEC has provided space for at its meetings in the past include: Alliance Defending Freedom, National Association of Christian Lawmakers, and the National Pro-Life Women's Caucus, a project of Susan B. Anthony List.
Other new model policies to be introduced at the annual meeting include:
- Association Health Insurance Standard Model Act
- Associate Physician Act
- Confidential Reporting Act
- Hospital and Nursing Home Visitation Act
- **Hydrogen Tax Incentives Act**
- Niche-Beauty Services Opportunity Act
- **Pharmacy and Pharmacy Patient Protection Act**
- Resolution in Support of a Criminal Justice Ombudsman Program
- Resolution on Environmental and Economic Stewardship
- **Resolution Supporting the Preservation of the Existing Nuclear Fleet** and Deployment of Advanced Nuclear Technologies
- Resolution Urging Congress and POTUS to Evacuate and Protect Interpreters, their Families, and Other Afghan Nationals Who Assisted US and NATO Forces Before US Withdrawal from Afghanistan
- Safe Compounding Act
- **Safeguard the Right-to-Try Cutting-Edge Medicine Act**
David Armiak is research director with the Center for Media and Democracy. David joined CMD in 2015, has conducted extensive investigations on dark money, corporate corruption, and right-wing networks, and is responsible for filing and analyzing hundreds of public records requests every year. David has a strong research interest in social movements and political power, and has delivered many talks on the subject.