About: Lee Fang
Bio: Lee Fang is a reporter for The Intercept. He has a longstanding interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money. He was the first to uncover and detail the role of the billionaire Koch brothers in financing the Tea Party movement. His interviews and research on the Koch brothers have been featured on HBO’s “The Newsroom,” the documentaries “Merchants of Doubt” and “Citizen Koch,” as well as in multiple media outlets. He was an investigative blogger for ThinkProgress (2009-2011) and then a fellow at the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute and contributing writer for The Nation. In 2012, he co-founded RepublicReport.org, a blog to cover political corruption that syndicates content with TheNation.com, Salon, National Memo, BillMoyers.com, TruthOut, and other media outlets. His work has been published by VICE, The Baffler, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, NPR, In These Times, and The Huffington Post. His first book, “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right,” published by The New Press, explores how the conservative right rebuilt the Republican Party and its political clout in the aftermath of President Obama’s 2008 election victory. He is based in San Francisco.
Senator Vitter Report Claims Cancer Prevention, Wildlife Nonprofits Are Part of Nefarious Cabal
Louisiana Senator David Vitter made headlines with conservative websites in the last few days by releasing a report called Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA. Below the lengthy title is a report that claims breathlessly that environmental and public health foundations are part of
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Comcast Affiliated News Outlet Censored My Article About Net Neutrality Lobbying
In a move that smacks of censorship, Republic Report has discovered that a telecom industry-affiliated lobbying group successfully persuaded an African American news website to remove an article that reported critically on the groups advocating against Net Neutrality. The order to delete the article came from the website’s parent company, a business partner to Comcast. Last Friday,
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Disgraced Coal Baron Don Blankenship Rebrands As A Libertarian Activist
Among visitors to Freedom Fest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas, you might miss the aging Don Blankenship amid other middle aged attendees and a swarm of college students in three piece suits. Blankenship, wearing a bowling shirt and tan slacks, moves from panel to panel carrying a tote bag filled with free schwag — of
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Leading Civil Rights Groups Just Sold Out on Net Neutrality
Last Friday, just before the Federal Communication Commission closed its comment period for its upcoming rule on “network neutrality,” a massive coalition of Asian, Latino and Black civil rights group filed letters arguing that regulators should lay off of Internet Service Providers regarding Title II reclassification and accept FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s original plan. In other words, something
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No Coordination? GOP Super PAC Tied to WV Candidate Alex Mooney
When the Supreme Court opened the doors to unlimited corporate influence in campaigns with the Citizens United ruling, there was a small caveat in the ruling to prevent corruption: groups raising outside funds could not legally “coordinate” with candidates. Candidates begging for unlimited donations, would, after all, constitute corruption. As recent history has shown, these
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U.S. Senator Welcomes Climate Deniers to Help GOP Capture Congress
If Republicans win control of the U.S. Senate this year, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a lawmaker famous for his belief that the entire body of climate science research is a “hoax,” will take control of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which oversees matters relating to pollution and environmental problems. So it should
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LNG Exports and Agency Capture: Regulators and Industry Swap Spots
Expanded natural gas exports have wide repercussions, ranging from increased costs to American consumers to greater incentives for drilling companies to use controversial fracking methods for extracting their product. As numerous reports have shown, the gas boom means more methane, a greenhouse gas that is exacerbating our climate crisis, in the atmosphere. But the discussion
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Responding to ‘Risky Business’ Report, CNBC Seeks Op-Ed on ‘Global Warming Being a Hoax’
How badly does cable news network CNBC want to deny the existence of global warming? For a network with an embarrassing history of fudging the science around climate change, one CNBC booker apears to have made a big mistake. Responding to the groundbreaking report “Risky Business,” a bipartisan project that compiled the many ways global
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