lobbying

April 24, 2020 - A decade after the BP oil spill set off an environmental health disaster in communities across the Gulf Coast, the company and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry continue to inflict pain on vulnerable populations across the South — and they're now implicated in raising the death rate from the novel coronavirus in African-American communities across Louisiana.

March 13, 2020 - A skilled nursing facility that's part of the Tennessee-based Life Care Centers of America chain, which is owned by billionaire GOP donor Forrest Preston, is at the center of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in the Seattle area. Stories have emerged of gross mismanagement of the outbreak at the facility, whose corporate owner has also recently been in trouble for Medicare fraud and worker discrimination.

January 10, 2020 - In a sales pitch to the Pentagon over a decade ago, the Virginia-based military contractor imagined a hypothetical war with Iran by 2020. With its dream edging closer to reality following the recent Trump-ordered killing of Iranian military leaders, Northrop Grumman — which has received billions of dollars' worth of government contracts despite a record of fraud — saw a dramatic jump in its stock price.

December 6, 2019 - An industry lobby fronting as a pro-consumer group is undertaking a public advocacy campaign for a proposed pipeline stretching from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. The Consumer Energy Alliance was created by an oil industry lobbyist who now chairs the N.C. Republican Party — and its members include major gas companies as well as Dominion Energy, the pipeline's lead partner.

November 8, 2019 - Facing criticism that's hurting stock prices, private prison companies have banded together to create a new industry advocacy group called the Day 1 Alliance. Its spokesperson previously led a Virginia super PAC that targeted career EPA employees who criticized President Trump and NOAA employees who supported progressive Democrats.

August 15, 2019 - Though the National Rifle Association faces numerous investigations into alleged wrongdoing, one of its lobbyists bragged just weeks before the El Paso massacre that 2019 was a "highly successful" year for it in Texas — and that's not the only state where the gun rights group has continued to flex its political muscle.

June 5, 2019 - The Republican-led Georgia ethics commission is investigating the campaign of 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and several groups that focused on mobilizing minority voters. The probe has sparked accusations that the GOP-led commission is inappropriately engaged in partisan politics — and that's neither a new concern for Georgia nor limited to the state.