I'm taking advantage of Public Citizen's Creative Common License in order share extensive highlights of their report. I will be following this post with another one that lists all the references used in here, I hope it encourages you to check out the full report. The following speaks for itself, so without further ado.
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HOW THE KOCH BROTHERS’ AGENDA HAS INFILTRATED THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Public Citizen
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Donald Trump and the Koch brothers had a rocky relationship during the 2016 presidential campaign, despite the Kochs’ status as Republican mega-donors and kingmakers. Now, as the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration approaches, political operatives and policy experts who have worked at numerous Koch-funded organizations have fanned out through the Trump Administration, taking jobs influencing education, energy, the environment, health care and taxes — all in service of a hard-right anti-government agenda.
A Public Citizen review of the Koch brothers’ connections to the Trump administration and their policy agenda in Washington, D.C. finds:
* 44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.
* The bulk of Koch allies are in the White House, with 21 officials working there or nominated for White House jobs.
* Koch allies are also staffing jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, Energy Department and the Treasury Department. The positions they are advocating overlap with the Kochs’ economic interests, in weakening regulatory enforcement, lowering corporate taxes, loosening environmental regulations and opening up public land to oil and gas extraction.
* The Kochs have already achieved the majority of goals contained in “Roadmap to Repeal” — a policy document1 published in January 2017 by Freedom Partners, a Koch group.
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