Executive to take leave amid fallout from Lisa LaFlamme's departure from Bell Media

The Canadian Press

The logo for Bell Media, owned by BCE Inc., is displayed on a Toronto building in a handout photo. , The Canadian Press

TORONTO - A Bell Media executive is taking a leave from his job amid the fallout from the ousting of Lisa LaFlamme as anchor of the company's flagship newscast.

An internal Bell Media memo says Michael Melling, vice-president of news, is taking leave effective immediately to spend time with family.

Bell Media, the parent company of CTV News and BNN Bloomberg, has been facing criticism after LaFlamme announced last week in a video on social media that her contract had been terminated.

In the video, the longtime CTV National News anchor said she was blindsided by the company's decision.

Bell Media said terminating LaFlamme's contract after 35 years was a business decision and it wanted to move the chief news anchor role in a “different direction.”

The dismissal raised questions among media observers about whether sexism and ageism played a role in the shakeup.

Bell Media said in its statement it takes allegations of discrimination “very seriously” and is taking steps to initiate a third-party internal workplace review in the newsroom over the coming weeks.

The internal memo Friday said Melling's decision to take leave “reflects our desire to support the newsroom and do what's best to help the team move past the current circumstances.”

In a statement issued Friday night, BCE and Bell Canada President and CEO Mirko Bibic said, “There is certainly no denying that Lisa LaFlamme has made an important contribution to Canadian news for three decades. Since Bell Media’s decision to end her contract, there has been heavy criticism. The narrative has been that Lisa’s age, gender or grey hair played into the decision. I am satisfied that this is not the case and wanted to make sure you heard it from me. While I would like to say more on the Bell Media decision, we are bound by a mutual separation agreement negotiated with Lisa, which we will continue to honour.”

Richard Gray, currently regional general manager of the eastern region, will step in as acting vice-president of news, supported by Karine Moses, senior vice-president of content development and news, the memo said.

Since her departure, Wendy's, Dove and Sports Illustrated have shown their support on social media for LaFlamme, who has been open about not dyeing her grey hair.

Wendy's changed its signature red-headed mascot's hair to grey, while Dove announced it would donate $100,000 to Catalyst, a Canadian organization that helps build better workplaces for women.

Sports Illustrated retweeted its cover that features 74-year-old model Maye Musk.

LaFlamme's departure and her replacement were both announced on Aug. 15, frustrating viewers who felt she should have had a proper sign-off and career retrospective.

Bell Media has said it “regrets” the way in which LaFlamme's departure was handled, as it “may have left viewers with the wrong impression” that her storied career wasn't valued.

LaFlamme said in her video that she found out in June that Bell Media was ending her contract at CTV National News, but kept it under wraps until the details were finalized. Omar Sachedina has been named as her replacement.

At a town-hall meeting with staff last week, Moses said LaFlamme rejected the opportunity to bid farewell on air.

In a recording of the meeting obtained by The Canadian Press, she told employees that LaFlamme wasn't simply ousted from the company.

She “was offered many options to come back and to do many things, which she declined, and I respect that,” Moses said, without offering details on the other job opportunities Bell Media presented to LaFlamme.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2022.

The Republican Party Is Having an Identity Crisis

Mario Parker, Bloomberg News

G DeSantis, governor of Florida, speaks during the 2022 Victory Dinner in Hollywood, Florida, US, on Saturday, July 23, 2022. Governor Ron DeSantis emerged as a top rival to former President Donald Trump in GOP primary contest should Trump decide to run again. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The GOP is now acting like a party in search of itself with less than three months before US elections that once favored Republicans to retake both chambers of Congress and set them up for 2024. 

Should the party fumble, as polls increasingly suggest, August will have been a pivotal month. It began with the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home and the party’s bellicose defense of the former president that belied its pro-law enforcement image. The weaknesses of Senate candidates Trump personally picked became glaring as the cycle moves from the primary season, where the focus is on a small number of party-faithful voters, to the general election, which requires a broader appeal to a varied electorate.   

There are also two high-profile Republicans uncomfortably dominating the spotlight and who put the party’s schisms in full view.One is Liz Cheney, who led the Jan. 6 hearings into Trump’s role inciting a mob to attack the Capitol only to lose the nomination for a third term in a landslide to a pro-Trump candidate. The other is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, gaining momentum as an alternative to the former president, who embodies some of his pugnacity without the baggage.

Trump has shown no inclination for passing the torch and his allies used the FBI investigation to encourage him to make a third White House bid, setting up a potential clash between he and his would-be heir apparent. 

This is a defining moment for Republicans who were counting on a strong midterm showing to launch themselves back into the White House in 2024. But the party’s identity crisis is evident in the uneven performances of Senate candidates in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Ohio, among others, that jeopardizes its prospects for a congressional majority. 

“You’ve got a lot of factions within the party,” Robert Blizzard, a Republican strategist, said in an interview. “It looks convoluted. Are we the Trump party? Are we at the point where we’re DeSantis’ party?”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and Democrats are feeling buoyant. In August, they notched wins with legislation on veterans health, bipartisan passage of a bill to boost semiconductor chip manufacturing and a sweeping bill to address climate change and lower prescription drug costs. Biden also oversaw the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and this week fulfilled a campaign promise to forgive student debt. 

An early August defeat of a Kansas referendum to ban abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade added to Democrats’ renewed optimism about the midterms. And Democrat Pat Ryan narrowly beat Republican Marc Molinaro this week in a New York swing district race. 

The Senate is currently deadlocked at 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris wielding the deciding vote. Democrats are now favored to expand their majority in the upper chamber, according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. But Republicans are still favored to win the House, given how those races are decided in carefully gerrymandered districts in favor of the party that controls the state’s legislature.  

The danger for the GOP was made publicly clear when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said last week that “candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome” of the Senate. It was an implicit acknowledgment that in competitive states a Trump-endorsed candidate faces a strong Democrat and could lose. 

It also sparked the latest public war of words between the one-time allies, whose seminal achievement was the reshaping of the Supreme Court. Trump took obvious umbrage with McConnell’s remarks, issuing a statement that said “a new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!”

“If you can’t win as a Republican in this cycle then you have some real issues,” said Terry Sullivan, a strategist who ran US Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

But there is a palpable and vocal base still enthralled with the 76-year-old Trump and want him back. Yale and Harvard Law-educated DeSantis, 43, offers a more methodical take on the Make America Great Again mantra. Cheney, 56, represents a party that might not exist anymore and has been refashioned in Trump’s image. 

Occupying space between DeSantis and Cheney are Republicans trying to win public attention on other issues.That includes Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton presenting themselves as the anti-China hawks; Texas Senator Ted Cruz and his governor, Greg Abbott, focusing on immigration and Florida Senator Rick Scott lining up culture war issues to entice conservative voters.Scott, who has a second job as head of the committee to ensure Republican Senate victories, drew fire from his own party earlier this year for a proposal that would require Congress to reauthorize popular programs like Medicare and Social Security every five years. 

Republicans are increasingly worried that they squandered a winning hand in the form of Biden’s poor approval rating and anger over decades-high inflation and crime. The tide there is already turning too. Biden’s popularity is rebounding, gasoline prices are receding, inflation is showing signs of cooling and unemployment remains low.  

To Republican political consultants like Sullivan, the very fabric of the GOP has changed. By its wholesale adoption of a more populist identity, they sacrificed highly educated, upper-middle-class suburbanites who became the independent voters.

That slice of the population is now up for grabs for both parties, but it’s more challenging for Republicans in places like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania to square the circle.

“It’s a real patch-work,” Sullivan said.

Republican strategist John Thomas said that the GOP’s identity was now fully cemented in Trump’s image with the August FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort. Up to that point Thomas had been working on a pro-Desantis political action committee, with donor commitments in the “mid-seven-figures,” he said.

“That was a pivotal, hinge moment in the Republican party,” Thomas said. “To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man. Right now, no Republican has beaten Trump. Ron has to take it from Trump and right now I just don’t see it.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Conspiracy Theories

How more funding for the I.R.S. became a political firestorm.


By German Lopez

The New York Times
Aug. 26, 2022

You're reading the The Morning newsletter. Make sense of the day’s news and ideas. David Leonhardt and Times journalists guide you through what’s happening — and why it matters. Get it sent to your inbox.

Senator Ted Cruz has warned that Democrats’ new spending law will create a “shadow army of 87,000 I.R.S. agents.” Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, tied the increase in agents to the F.B.I. search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and warned, “Not a single one of us is safe.” Across social media, conservatives have embraced falsehoods about armed agents, saying that they will target Republicans in particular.

Why are the I.R.S. provisions in the law — $80 billion in additional funding for the agency over the next decade — getting so much attention?

In part, Republicans recognize that the law’s biggest elements, money for climate and health care, are popular. So they’re seeking other ways to criticize the legislation, including through conspiracy theories about the agency, as The Times has reported.

The opposition is also part of an older ideological debate. Republican lawmakers tend to favor lower taxes, particularly for wealthy Americans. They have achieved that by cutting tax rates. But they have also done it by blocking more funding for the I.R.S. — in an effort to stop the agency from aggressively collecting taxes.

“Among Republicans, there’s been a lot of hostility toward the I.R.S. for years,” Alan Rappeport, who covers economic policy for The Times, told me. “The funding has revved that up.”

The agency funding is meant to help it investigate wealthy tax cheats, improve customer service and modernize systems. By empowering the agency to collect the money it’s owed, the changes are projected to raise about $100 billion in net tax revenue over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That money will help pay for the rest of the Democrats’ new law.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what the new funding will do and how it became such a hot topic.

The funding’s goal

Most of us know the I.R.S. from the unpleasant task of filing taxes. The agency processes more than 260 million tax returns and related documents each year, with an annual budget of nearly $14 billion and about 80,000 full-time staff members.

It does much of this work on antiquated systems. A recent Washington Post column depicted a bureaucracy that has not adapted to the computer age and instead has stacks of papers extending into a cafeteria. The agency still uses technology dating back more than a half-century, including devices running a programming language, COBOL, that few coders still know. It typically communicates with taxpayers through snail mail or fax.

Congress has cut the I.R.S.’s budget 20 percent since 2010. That makes it hard for the agency to help Americans file their taxes; it answered fewer than one in 10 calls for help during the 2021 filing season.

The funding shortage also makes it difficult for the agency to collect what the government is owed. The tax gap — the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid — is about 15 percent of all taxes.

The new funding will help address the shortcomings by letting the agency update its systems and hire more people. In total, the I.R.S. plans to recruit 87,000 employees. Many of those new hires will fill jobs left behind by retirees in the coming years, but its work force will expand overall to let it take on more duties in auditing, processing and customer service.

Republicans have cited the planned hires to amplify conspiracy theories about armed I.R.S. agents coming after law-abiding Americans. It’s true that some agents who conduct criminal investigations can be armed, like other law enforcement officials. But only 1 percent of new hires will be in such jobs, which focus on more serious financial crimes, according to the Treasury.

Republicans have also raised concerns that the I.R.S. will use the extra funds to go after conservative groups. The agency did target some right-wing organizations seeking tax-exempt status in the 2010s, but it also used similar tactics against progressive groups.
Against tax cheats

With the additional resources, the I.R.S. does plan to crack down on people and businesses who don’t pay the taxes they owe.

The question is who the agency will focus on. The Biden administration has said it will target rich tax cheats and ordered the agency not to increase audits on people who make less than $400,000 a year or on small businesses. The administration argues that underfunding led the I.R.S. to reduce audits on wealthy taxpayers in particular, so the new money should aim to close that gap.

The agency has good reason to focus on the rich: They account for the largest share of unpaid taxes, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows:

Share of unpaid taxes by income level

Estimates from 2019

Top 1 percent of earners

$163 billion

Top 5 percent of earners

$307 billion

Lowest 20 percent of earners

Less than $6 billion

Note: Total unpaid taxes are around $600 billion.

Source: U.S. Department of Treasury

By The New York Times

But enforcement against wealthy people also tends to be more difficult. The cases are more complex, involving much more money and sophisticated financial instruments. Rich people are also much more likely to hire elite lawyers to fight investigations.

The hurdles of investigating the rich could prompt agents to instead focus on easier targets, like low- or middle-income taxpayers, as Republican lawmakers have warned. And the agency could target some small businesses, because they make up a large portion of the tax gap, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist.

Still, Biden administration officials insist the agency will not target low- or middle-income taxpayers or small businesses. They say Republicans are trying to stoke fears about the funding.

Related: The I.R.S. is reviewing security at its offices nationwide because of threats that grew out of the spread of misinformation.

REVELATIONS

A Rare Peek Inside the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

The Council for National Policy, a secretive network of powerful conservatives, goes to great lengths to conceal its activities and even its members. But recently uncovered documents reveal the extent of the group’s influence on American politics.

ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW REPUBLIC

Anne Nelson/August 26, 2022

LONG READ

For more than four decades, the Council for National Policy, or CNP, has functioned as the secret hub of the radical right, coordinating the activities of right-wing strategists, donors, media platforms, and activists. Its membership and meetings have long been undisclosed, but over the past two years, a number of them have been brought to light. It has spawned generations of offshoots, which appear, disappear, alter URLs, and change names with astonishing frequency. Now two watchdog organizations have obtained new materials on the group’s current operations.

The Center for Media and Democracy has published the agenda for a recent CNP meeting, held February 22 to 24 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California. In addition, Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project based in Washington, D.C., has obtained the membership roster and most recent 990 tax filings required of nonprofit organizations. Together, the materials shed new light on the CNP’s role in disrupting the democratic process. CNP archives illustrate the extensive planning its members undertook to discredit the 2020 election results, undermine local election officials, and incite the protest on January 6, 2021. The House select committee on January 6 has subpoenaed CNP election expert Cleta Mitchell, and the panel is also examining 29 texts exchanged between then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas (a board member of the CNP’s lobbying arm) in support of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. The Conservative Partnership Institute, which has attracted ample attention for its role in election subversion, is closely tied to the CNP, though few reporters have made the connection. The CPI’s chairman, president and CEO, senior legal partner, and senior director of policy are all prominent members of the CNP (see below), and the CPI has served as a public face for CNP tactics developed behind closed doors.

Until now, the most recent CNP membership roster that was publicly available was dated October 2020. One can observe significant turnover from meeting to meeting, while various core donors and leaders remain constant. Reading the tea leaves, this shift suggests several possibilities. First, the rosters may indicate only the attendees of a particular meeting, while the broader membership might be much larger. Second, the new names on the February 2022 agenda may represent new approaches for the organization’s strategy. Below, I draw attention to some of the more striking developments in CNP’s leadership and membership, in the agenda, and in CNP’s funding.

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The February meeting brought a new slate of officers, including incoming president Thomas Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch. Fitton’s organization specializes in “carpet-bombing” (in the words of The New York Times) the federal government with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. In the past, the CNP presidency has corresponded to the group’s short-term priorities. For example, during the 2016 campaign, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins led a drive to bring fundamentalist support to Donald Trump. In 2020, his successor, financier William Walton, conspired with the Trump campaign to reopen the economy prematurely at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic. As president of Judicial Watch, Fitton has promoted false claims about climate change, voter fraud, Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the Mueller investigation. In October 2020, Trump appointed him to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, where he is slated to serve until 2025. His CNP presidency corresponds with the organization’s full-court press on the legal front, reflected in the agenda items on the federal courts and Roe v. Wade.

The CNP’s new slate also includes Ken Blackwell’s promotion to vice president. Jenny Beth Martin, who publicized and took part in the January 6 protest, was named secretary. The new members of the board of directors include retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a noted Islamophobe and the CNP’s de facto spokesman on military affairs, and Chad Connelly, who was appointed by CNP Gold Circle member Reince Priebus as the first-ever national director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee from 2013 to 2016.

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The Heritage Foundation, a meeting sponsor, has been a core partner of the Council for National Policy from the start, and Heritage president Kevin Roberts is on the CNP board of governors. Roberts was previously the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which received funding from Koch Industries and other fossil fuel interests. Roberts’s series of op-eds for the Washington Examiner represent a virtual roundup of CNP talking points, including attacks on “critical race theory,” Black Lives Matter, and climate policy. The Heritage Foundation was co-founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, in tandem with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC; he would co-found the CNP in 1981. Together, the organizations would serve as a three-legged stool for the right, with Heritage as the think tank; ALEC as a state-level “bill mill”; and the CNP as a coordinating body for donors, media, and activists. Here we see the Heritage Foundation supporting a meeting to facilitate the endless round-robin of tax-exempt political activism on the part of these donors (who also fund the Heritage Foundation).

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Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 election as governor of Virginia was a major win for the GOP. CNP partners played a significant role in fomenting the “critical race theory” controversy that disrupted school boards and swayed white female suburban voters. In this panel, CNP member Chris Wilson offers his expertise in research, analytics, and psychographics. Wilson had brought Cambridge Analytica in to work on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He appears along with Chad Connelly, a new CNP board member (see above). This general session of the CNP analyses the Virginia victory, followed by an action session with a repeat appearance by Connelly and Wilson called “From Virginia to the Mid-Terms” to “chart the course to success nationwide in November”. Several CNP partners, among them the Leadership Institute and the Family Research Council, have been holding national training sessions on school board activism; Turning Point USA, run by CNP member Charlie Kirk, placed Alexandria, Chesapeake, Loudon County, and other Virginia public schools on its School Board Watchlist.

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This panel features new board member retired Lt. Gen. William Gerald “Jerry” Boykin, former head of the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) and current executive vice president of the Family Research Council, a core partner of the organization (see above). A born-again Christian, Boykin has sparked past controversies with anti-Muslim remarks. He is a frequent guest on Fox News, as well as the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch and other right-wing media outlets. In April and May 2021, Boykin joined several hundred retired high-ranking officers as a signatory to letters supporting Trump’s false claims of election fraud. He continues to serve as a critical link between Christian fundamentalists and the military elite.

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Although David Barton hasn’t shown up on CNP rosters so far, the organization takes his revisionist history of the United States as gospel. Barton, who holds a degree in religious education from Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University, has published a long list of books claiming that the U.S. was founded as—and remains—a “Christian nation.” His arguments are used to justify the CNP’s drive for theocracy, which posits that the fundamentalists’ direct line to God entitles them to lord over the rest of us, on matters ranging from abortion to guns. But these eternal verities are established by disregarding the historical research of the past century. For example, Barton has falsely claimed that the Constitution—a secular document that makes no mention of Christianity—is studded with biblical quotations. He presents Christopher Columbus as a savior to the native peoples of the Caribbean (Columbus actually kidnapped and enslaved them), and he overlooks the explorer’s introduction of African slavery to the Americas. Barton’s publisher had to recall his book on Thomas Jefferson based on its errors (after it had already made the New York Times bestseller list)

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Ken Blackwell serves alongside Ginni (Mrs. Clarence) Thomas on the board of CNP Action, the CNP’s lobbying arm, which has taken a keen interest in election mechanics. Blackwell tirelessly manipulated state-level elections in his native Ohio for over two decades. In 2000, he oversaw the electoral process as Ohio’s secretary of state—at the same time he chaired the Bush-Cheney campaign committee. The Brennan Center found “he issued a series of decisions that both restricted access to voting … and invited criticism for the appearance and substance of partisanship.” He currently serves as the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance. As of 2022, he has been promoted to chairman of CNP Action.

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Alan Sears, Marjorie Dannenfelser, and Kelly Shackelford, the speakers for the first panel, have led the charge on the CNP’s assault on abortion rights. Sears is the founder of Alliance Defending Freedom; Shackelford, until recently the chairman of CNP Action, heads the Texas-based First Liberty Institute, which specializes in litigation on behalf of Christian fundamentalists seeking to expand their claim to the public sphere. CNP Gold Circle member Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (until recently the Susan B. Anthony List), an astroturf organization that coordinates state-level anti-abortion strategies and conducts deep canvassing in key races. Here, the three tee up for the Supreme Court case in which a majority of justices are apparently gunning to overturn Roe v. Wade. The second panel presents Dannenfelser along with experts on “messaging, state legislation, and more.”

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Bhattacharya, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor, was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter that argued against Covid-19 lockdowns and other public health measures. It was produced at the American Institute for Economic Research, which has received funding from Koch foundations. The CNP has been supporting an extensive Covid disinformation campaign over the past two years, attacking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony Fauci, discouraging vaccination, and promoting the fake “cures” of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

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At first glance, the CNP and its lobbying arm, CNP Action, appear to be relatively modest operations. The Council for National Policy’s 990 tax form for 2019, the most recent available, reports a total revenue of about $3.3 million, based on $2.36 million in contributions and $884,000 in program services. CNP Action’s 990 from 2020 reported a total revenue of $121,232, made up of about $88,000 in contributions and $33,200 in program services. But the two organizations’ principal function is to serve as coordinating bodies for their partner organizations, and thus they leverage electoral and legal operations in the hundreds of millions.

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The CNP’s 990 from 2019 states that its purpose is “to provide information about policy alternatives” as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization. Under this status, granted by the IRS, the CNP, according to the IRS Code, is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” However, records from recent meetings, accessed by the Center for Media and Democracy, reveal voter-suppression efforts that clearly favor Republican candidates over Democrats. At a May 2019 meeting, Ginni Thomas led a session outlining media and electoral strategies to “protect President Trump.”

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The CNP’s 2020 financial statement shows relatively modest gross receipts that emphasize its role as a coordinator for donors and partner organizations and a wielder of influence, rather than an activist body itself. Past CNP documents indicated that members paid between $1,000 and $5,000 in fees, which accounted for a substantial portion of the budget.

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The CNP is not required to reveal its donors, but some have listed their contributions on their tax filings. These include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, headed by CNP board of governors member Richard Graber ($75,000 in 2019); Shackelford’s First Liberty Institute ($37,000 in 2019); and the National Christian Charitable Foundation ($52,600 in 2019). The National Christian Charitable Foundation is a dark money, donor-advised fund, and the sixth-largest charity in the nation. Its donors include various parties connected to the CNP, including the DeVos family of Michigan, the Anschutz fossil fuels dynasty, and the family of the late financier Foster Friess.

While CNP directors are unsalaried, they are often handsomely compensated by the partner organizations themselves. Judicial Watch, for example, paid CNP president Tom Fitton $382,215 in 2019, while Jerry Boykin earned $178,840 as executive vice president of the Family Research Council in 2020 (the most recent years for which filings are available).

The Heritage Foundation offers a recent example of how the round-robin funding works. Heritage is listed as one of the sponsors of the 2022 CNP meeting. It has also received major funding from the Bradley Foundation, the DeVos Family, and Donors Trust, all founded or run by leading members of the CNP. On June 1, the Heritage Foundation announced its inaugural Innovation Prize to “financially support organizations providing innovative solutions to the most pressing issues facing America.” The $100,000 awards went to the Alliance Defending Freedom, headed by CNP board of governors member Michael Farris; the Independent Women’s Forum, headed by CNP Gold Circle member Heather Higgins; and the State Financial Officers Foundation, which organizes state treasurers and auditors in the interest of private enterprise. Its board of directors includes longtime CNP member Lisa Nelson, CEO of ALEC.

Additional donors were named for the CNP’s fortieth anniversary celebration, including Paige Patterson, who was recently named in a report commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention as one of the senior church leaders who “protected or even supported abuses” in the denomination’s ongoing sexual abuse scandals.

Notable New members, 2020–2022:


The biggest development in the CNP membership is the addition of two dozen medical professionals. Two of the physicians, Simone Gold and James Todaro, have been active in the America’s Frontline Doctors campaign, orchestrated by the CNP and the 2020 Trump campaign, to downplay the Covid-19 crisis, discourage vaccinations, and peddle the bogus “cures” of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Gold and her associates operated a lucrative online prescription service as she awaited sentencing for her illegal incursion into the Capitol during the January 6 riot. Another addition of note is Seymour H. Fein, M.D., who heads CNF Pharma, a pharmaceutical firm based in New City, New York.

CSPAN/YOUTUBE

J. Christian Adams (new), president, Public Interest Legal Foundation
Adams is an associate of Cleta Mitchell, the CNP attorney who guided efforts to subvert the 2020 election, at the Public Interest Legal Foundation: Adams is president and general counsel, Mitchell is chair, and John Eastman, who drafted Trump’s failed plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election, is a director. In late 2021, Adams, Trump’s appointee to the Civil Rights Commission, successfully nominated Mitchell to the Advisory Board of the Election Advisory Commission, despite widespread protest.

GAGE SKIDMORE:CC BU SA 2.0

Lawson Bader, president, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund
DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund are linked dark money, donor-advised funds. DonorsTrust had revenues of nearly $202,800,000 in 2018. Donors Capital Fund’s revenues peaked in 2016, at over $71 million. Major donors include the Koch brothers and CNP affiliates the Bradley Foundation and the DeVos family. Recipients include the National Rifle Association, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and ALEC—all run by members of the CNP

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GAGE SKIDMORE:CC BU SA 2.0

Larry T. Beasley, CEO, The Washington Times
In 2015, Beasley was appointed to the board of directors of the American Conservative Union by chairman Matt Schlapp, later a leading election denier.

EWTN NEWS NIGHTLY/YOUTUBE

Rachel A. Bovard, senior director of policy, Conservative Partnership Institute
The Conservative Partnership Institute has held statewide voter-suppression summits in key battleground states through its Election Integrity Network, chaired by Cleta Mitchell. The CPI is chaired by former U.S. senator and longtime CNP member Jim DeMint. Its president and CEO is CNP member Ed Corrigan, and its senior legal fellow is the CNP’s Cleta Mitchell. In January 2021, DeMint hired Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and in July—a week after the House voted to establish the January 6 commission—Trump’s Save America PAC contributed $1 million to the organization.

Georgia Representative Barry Loudermilk
In 2019, Loudermilk compared Trump’s first impeachment to Christ’s crucifixion. A dogged election denier, Loudermilk has admitted to leading a tour of the Capitol on January 5, 2021

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TRISTAN WHEELOCK/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Cory Mills, Republican nominee for Congress, Florida, 7th district (Orlando)
Mills, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, has released an online ad based on PACEM Solutions, a company he founded and chairs, which produces “riot control munitions for law enforcement.” His ad, for which he has scheduled a “six-figure” television buy in Orlando, shows video footage of police using tear gas against “Hillary Clinton protesters,” “Black Lives Matter protesters,” and others. On August 23, Mills won the GOP primary, and according to Politico he is favored in the November general election due to a “controversial new congressional map championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.” Politico predicts that the new map could raise the Republican margin in the state from 16-11 to 20-8 in the next Congress.

C-SPAN/YOUTUBE

Carrie Campbell Severino, president, Judicial Crisis Network
Severino has long been featured as a legal expert on CNP-linked media, such as Tony Perkins’s Washington Watch broadcast. A former clerk for Clarence Thomas, Severino convened a “war room” of Catholic and CNP organizations after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to defend Trump’s ability to appoint a justice in advance of the November election.

STEPHEN LAM/GETTY IMAGES

William S. Simon, retired CEO and president, Walmart U.S. (2010–2014)
Simon stepped down as CEO of Walmart’s domestic operations following a period of slow sales. He currently serves as a senior adviser for the investment firm KKR.

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Kenneth Starr
Starr is best remembered for heading the Whitewater investigation of members of the Clinton administration. As a member of the CNP, Starr joins Donna Rice, who generated a scandal that put an end to former Senator Gary Hart’s presidential campaign in 1987.

The Council for National Policy’s core membership has been remarkably stable over the last 40 years, and founding members like Richard Viguerie and Morton Blackwell still play an active role. But there’s also a rotating cast of other characters, which appears to be pegged to the political climate of the moment. The February 2022 roster highlights two initiatives in particular: The first is the deadly Covid disinformation campaign, spearheaded by new member Simone Gold. She and her associates have been making millions of dollars from online prescriptions for bogus Covid cures and undermining vaccination and public health policies.

The second initiative has introduced new members to reinforce existing relationships. Lawson Bader cements the long-standing tie to the Koch Network, which has been a major force in the Donors Trust dark-money operation. Carrie Severino has long been a public voice for the campaigns to attack abortion and LGBT rights through the courts, which are now reaching fruition. Rachel Bovard enjoyed the rare privilege of joining the board of directors of CNP Action in her first year of membership. This indicates the emphasis the CNP places on the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is headed and run by leading members of the CNP and recently employed former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Finally, the CNP has long made a practice of hedging its bets. The Conservative Partnership Institute was recently cited in an Axios report as a prime architect for “Trump 2025,” Trump’s plans for demolishing the federal government should he win a second term. However, Mike Pence became a “dues-paying member” of the CNP this year as well, and there can be little doubt that there are active conversations with Ron DeSantis. The CNP’s leaders have made it clear that their objective is not the personality, it’s the outcome.

Anne Nelson @anelsona
Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. She has taught at Columbia University for over 20 years and is currently a research scholar at Columbia’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

No, Student Debt Relief Won’t Stoke Inflation

Here’s why.

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  TOM PHILPOTT

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It's simple: without all that debt, you won't be able to afford things.Mother Jones illustration; Getty

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On Wednesday, President Biden announced his much-anticipated plan to lighten the $1.6 trillion student debt burden that hangs over 45 million borrowers. Under Biden’s executive order, people making less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples) will see their debt load cut by $10,000. For borrowers who received Pell Grants—a program designed to make college accessible to people from low-income families—the relief rises to $20,000. According to critics ranging from Obama-era economic gurus to right-wing politicians, the move will add more fuel to a crisis already ravaging the economy: inflation, which already stands at a 32-year high. 

The argument goes like this. By slashing people’s college debt, Biden is putting more money in their pockets, which they’ll then spend, driving up prices. “It’s going to raise prices on everything from clothing to gasoline to furniture to housing because there’s more money being spent versus being saved in the form of paying down your debt,” fretted Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group promoting fiscal austerity, in an interview with Vox. Larry Summers, formerly a top economic adviser to presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, echoed that claim.

Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who also served under Obama, came in even hotter.

Their complaints echoed those of GOP power players like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

They’re very likely all wrong. 

When you hear about $10,000 in debt relief, you might imagine millions of people suddenly having fat stacks of cash at their disposal, ready to go on a spending spree. Gasoline! Fire! Inflation! But that’s not how the Biden move works. The average amount of student debt stands at about $37,667 per borrower. According to the student debt calculator SmartAsset, the monthly payment on that amount would be about $393. Shaving $10,000 off leads to a payment of $289, giving a hypothetical borrower about $100 extra per month—a nice bonus, but hardly fuel for a spending rampage. 

And as the New York Times notes, debtors who opted for income-based repayment “generally won’t see their payments change—even if a portion of their debt is canceled. That’s because they make payments based on their discretionary income and household size.”

As a result, Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues in The Atlantic,  the “actual amount of annual debt payments that would be reduced now, during this present inflationary episode, will probably run to tens of billions of dollars, not hundreds of billions.” In the $23 trillion US economy, that’s just not enough new spending to move the needle on inflation. (Ask the pros: In 2016, economists at the St. Louis Fed found “almost no effect of government spending on inflation”—in fact, their data showed that a 10 percent jump in federal spending drove inflation slightly downward.) 

Stiglitz points to another factor that will eliminate the already minor effects of that extra cash jingling around people’s pockets: no one is currently paying back college debt. President Trump placed a moratorium on student loan payments during the pandemic—a measure Biden has upheld. On Wednesday, the same day it rolled out the debt-relief package, the administration also announced that it would lift Trump’s moratorium at the end of this year. When payments resume in 2023, even with a chunk of debt wiped out, debtors will be spending more to pay down student loans than they have been for the past two years, meaning zero inflationary pressure. Indeed, the “net effect will be to reduce inflation,” Stiglitz writes, although he acknowledges that the numbers are too small to have much impact either way. 

Despite the shrieks from prominent inflation hawks, Stiglitz’s view is hardly outside the mainstream. Indeed, multiple Wall Street economists agree. “The end of the payment pause and the resumption of monthly payments,“ Goldman Sachs’ investment team recently told investors, “looks likely to more than fully offset the small boost to consumption from the debt relief program,” per Vox. 

Mark Zandi, chief economist at credit-rating agency Moody’s, put the case like this:

In the end, the idea that student debt relief will fuel runaway inflation, much like the notion that it’s a boon to wealthy elites, is a right-wing fantasy.  (My colleague Mike Mechanic debunked the latter notion here.) It’s fascinating to see Democratic Party-aligned bigfoots like Summers and Furman playing along.