Free Republic

Vice President Mike Pence will be the keynote speaker at pro-mass immigration GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch’s New York political strategy retreat. Pence is expected to speak on public policy at the Koch brothers’ retreat, which will be held on Oct. 12 and 13, according to USA Today. The retreat is also to cultivate Republican candidates for the 2018 midterm elections who are in-line with the Kochs’ open borders agenda. “As a legislator, governor and now vice president, Pence truly understands how good policies can help all Americans improve their lives,” Koch network spokesperson James Davis said in a...

During a segment on CNN, the former Koch brothers executive turned White House staffer Marc Short said that Americans needed to “have a serious conversation” about “what the definition of a wall is,” in regards to the U.S.-Mexico border wall that President Trump promised to build. Short, who led the Never Trump movement inside the pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ organizations, questioned what exactly a border wall would look like under the administration, while also pushing amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded by the Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “I think that what the definition of a...

Billionaire socialist political investor George Soros is behind Black Lives Matter and the attempt to empty the prisons to move America further left, so what are the Koch brothers doing joining them? Soros’ hub of his political web is the group, Open Society, which was hacked and its email traffic spilled into the public domain, showed that its U.S. Programs Board, in October of 2015, approved an expenditure of $650,000 to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been at the epicenter of disruptive riots designed to transform the criminal justice system. And Politico reported that just a few weeks...

Kicking Money Out of Politics: Trump Boots Koch Brother from Golf Course Katie McHugh 2 Jan 20172 President-elect Donald Trump told a critical biographer and guest of billionaire David Koch to leave his West Palm Beach golf course on New Year’s Eve, forcing Koch to leave with him. Trump’s gesture was another slight against the pro-amnesty, pro-“free trade” billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who opposed Trump during the Republican primary season and refused to help him during the general election. It also signals Trump will not necessarily play nice with the GOP political establishment and Beltway right. The Kochs...

The conservative Koch network is promising to spend millions of dollars to defeat the health care overhaul backed by President Donald Trump and top House Republicans. The network’s leading organizations, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, announced late Wednesday the creation of a special fund to support House members who vote against the health care bill. The announcement, which comes on the eve of the House vote, marks the influential conservative network’s most aggressive move against the health care proposal, which is under attack from the right and the left. “The bill as it stands today is ObamaCare 2.0,” said...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Anti-Trump conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch are helping illegal immigrants in the U.S. obtain driver’s licenses, as well as preparing them for citizenship tests. A fluff piece by TIME Magazine spotlights the Koch Brothers’ LIBRE Initiative organization for its work being done to help illegal immigrants while President Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have successfully increased immigration enforcement. “It is chaotic. People are very, very worried about their situation,” says Aguado. “One of the things that has been a positive thing through this stress that people have is that they’re more interested in becoming...

The urgency was easy to find inside the private receptions and closed-door briefings at the Koch brothers' donor retreat in Colorado Springs, where the billionaire conservatives and their chief lieutenants warned this weekend of a rapidly shrinking window to push their agenda through Congress. No agenda items mattered more to the conservative Koch network than the GOP's promise to overhaul the nation's tax code and repeal and replace President Barack Obama's health care law. At the moment, however, both are bogged down by GOP infighting that jeopardizes their fate...... "If we don't get health care, none of us are coming...

Long-time pro-mass immigration billionaires Charles and David Koch became the latest force to pressure congressional Republicans to nullify the end of DACA with a legislative amnesty Thursday. Koch spokespeople said the brothers will throw their weight behind the growing effort to force a two-house GOP majority that has refused to pass either funding for the southern border wall or the RAISE Act, a key nationalist immigration reform, to quickly pass an amnesty for those who were once exempted from federal immigration law under President Barack Obama’s DACA. The Koch amenability to open borders and amnesty is nothing new. In 2013,...

The pro-jobs tax plan being developed by establishment Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, is now being opposed by the Koch brothers’ advocacy group, Americans For Prosperity. The opposition of the Koch-funded group shows a widening clash between the GOP’s donors and Donald Trump’s expanding populist “Buy American, Hire American” coalition. So far, the two groups have clashed over cheap-labor immigration and Trump’s successful candidacy. That clash was garishly demonstrated late December, when Trump publicly booted a friend of David Koch off one of his golf courses, prompting Koch to also leave. Brothers Charles and David Koch opposed Trump during...

Biden told reporters Thursday that he and President Obama did not ask the intelligence community to corroborate the claims because they didn’t take them seriously. “As a matter of fact, the president was like, ‘What does this have anything to do with anything?'” The VP said he didn’t think the unverified information was worth a second glance.

JANESVILLE, WI — House Speaker Paul Ryan received a standing ovation from wealthy donors after denouncing the views of Republican voters, who are skeptical of so-called “free trade” deals. Speaking at a lavish retreat for 400 donors hosted by a network helmed by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, Paul Ryan suggested it was incumbent upon the Party to “repudiate” the views of Republican voters, who do not support Ryan and his donors’ trade agenda. Ryan reportedly assured donors that he will work to “win some of these fights” and advance their agenda on trade — presumably meaning that Ryan...

The Texas senator and Republican presidential campaigner Ted Cruz on Saturday told a Koch brothers-sponsored gathering he would have a busy agenda on his first day in the White House. Speaking to activists at the annual summit of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) in Columbus, Ohio, Cruz said if elected he would rescind “every single illegal and unconstitutional executive order” signed by President Barack Obama, begin investigating the women’s health organisation Planned Parenthood, “rip to shreds” the Iranian nuclear deal and order all federal agencies to end the religious persecution of Christians. Cruz – who on Friday night in Iowa was...

Democratic strategist James Carville slammed “tool of the Koch Brothers” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), saying he “just feeds the New York Times stuff, and they put it in the paper. Just like the neocons fed the New York Times a bunch of bunk they put on the front page of the paper, basically helped start a war” on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” Carville said of the Clinton email scandal, “my question is, will this rise to the level of scandal as the white house christmas card list back in the ’90s that had 140 hours...

Carly Fiorina has emerged as the Republican candidate of the moment in conservative fundraising circles, drawing the notice of the billionaire Koch brothers and other wealthy donors who could instantly remake her shoestring presidential campaign. Fiorina's show-stealing performance in a Republican presidential debate last month, and her subsequent surge in the polls, has prompted industrialists Charles and David Koch to take a “serious look” at the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, according to three sources close to the brothers. She has now moved to the short list of candidates the Kochs may support with their reported $1 billion war chest, the...

After shunning the GOP for decades, Charles and David Koch tried to take it over. And then the Donald came to town… The Republican Party’s ongoing civil war involves lots of fireworks and sub-plots, but the overarching fight is between two visions and three billionaires. Charles and David Koch are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to take over the GOP and push America towards libertarianism. Donald Trump joined the Republican Party to run for President and push the country in the opposite direction, toward populist nationalism. Tragically, the Koch brothers’ mistakes are steadily handing victory to the Donald. Many...

Billionaire philanthropist and Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch blasted the hypocrisy of pot criminalization’s disproportionate enforcement in an October interview on CBS This Morning. In the interview, which can be seen in the above-embedded video, Koch said, “Some poor kid in the inner city smokes a joint, goes to prison, ruins his life, where we have a president who is more privileged, who smoked a joint, becomes president. We have a candidate who admits smoking a joint — he’s running for president. Now, where is the justice in that?”

Charles Koch is "disappointed" with the line-up of Republican candidates in the 2016 cycle, and is surprised by the lack of influence he and his brother have wielded so far. In an interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, said he'll eventually support a candidate who he agrees with on some things with, but that it's hard to get excited. He said a list presented to all the candidates about the Kochs' political arm's priorities "doesn't seem to faze them much. You'd think we could have more influence." "It is hard for me to get a high...

~~~~This is how they'll gut American democracy: Scott Walker and the Kochs want to [expletive] America as bad as they did Wisconsin~~~ The third week in December brought two startling stories highlighting the ongoing Dixiefication of the Midwest, a key ingredient in how the GOP, with its aging white male demographic base, is nonetheless strategically outmaneuvering the Democratic Party on multiple fronts. They are sharp reminders of how our politics are being reshaped in state legislatures and on the ground-and how inattentive to basics the Democrats have become since the demise of the 50-state strategy.The story from Wisconsin concerns the...

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families. The book, "Dark Money," by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through the activism and money of a handful of rich donors: among them Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune, and Harry and Lynde Bradley, brothers who became wealthy in part from military contracts but poured millions into anti-government philanthropy. Continue reading the...

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. – Donald Trump is so fiercely opposed by the Koch brothers network that some donors believe the powerful group will intervene to stop the billionaire if it looks like he could win the Republican presidential nomination. "They are always very hesitant to get involved in a primary, but I think if they were going to do it, this would be the time because they just hate the guy,” said a donor who attended the Koch network’s winter retreat, held over the weekend at a luxury resort on the edge of Coachella Valley. Both officials and donors within...