RESOURCE GUIDE
Funding
IWF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that has been given tax-deductible donations by:
- the billionaire Charles Koch’s carbon, plastics, and chemical fortune
- Big Tobacco and other corporations with IWF shilling for e-cigs without telling the press it is funded by e-cig companies, like Juul, Altria, and Philip Morris, for example, and ,
- right-wing foundations like the Bradley Foundation whose policy agendas seek to constrain women’s freedoms and more.
IWV is a 501(c)(4) non-profit that has been given non-deductible gifts by:
- one of the new front groups created by right-wing operative and Federalist Society vice president Leonard Leo, who is trying to capture the courts in order to reverse crucial legal precedents that protect women’s rights and vital 20th century institutions and policies that helped the people of our nation thrive (at least $4 million)
- the GOP mega-donor Foster Friess and
- other dark money donors it has helped to pass money through to other entities, like Donors Trust in 2014, which has the effect of further obscuring dark money funds being deployed so that IWV can take credit for federal election wins even though it has not registered as a PAC.
This information and other details about IWF/V funders and how it operates as a pay-to-play group or adjunct to GOP leaders and more will be available here.
Leaders
This project also documents how key IWF/V leaders have influenced its activities. Its leadership has included:
- Kellyanne Conway, the Trump lawyer willing to say almost anything no matter how false, whom IWF/V gave its “Woman of Valor” after she claimed lies were just “alternative facts”
- Heather Richardson Higgins, the heir to the fortune of the U.S. drug company that distributed thalidomide and a political operative who ran ads helping GOP candidates who claimed women couldn’t get pregnant from rape and that getting pregnant from rape was a “gift from God” and
- Nancy Pfotenhauer, the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries who led both IWF and the Kochs’ Citizens for a Sound Economy/Americans for Prosperity out of the same offices.
Other information about IWF/V leaders will be available here.
Agenda
IWF/V has pushed many policies and people that hurt women’s futures, as it serves Charles Koch’s anti-regulatory agenda and corporate interests, such as:
- capturing our courts
- helping or lifting up anti-choice candidates and
- opposing an array of public policies that advance women’s rights and interests on issues like:
- Paid Family and Medical Leave
- Equal Pay
- the Violence Against Women Act
- Title IX
- Raising the Minimum Wage
- tobacco
- Common Sense Gun Regulations
- Access to Affordable Care
- Nutrition Labeling
- Tobacco
- Fracking
- Climate Change and more.
IWF uses the line “All issues are women’s issues,” while it actively markets policies that are opposed by most women or peddles opposition to policies most women support. More information about these issues will be available here.