Charles Koch's network launches $20m campaign backing Trump tax breaks

Source: The Guardian

Mon 27 Jan 2025 07.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 27 Jan 2025 07.03 EST


Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the flagship political arm of the rightwing network formed by the fossil fuels billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David, is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign backing Donald Trump’s plans to extend tax cuts and roll back federal regulations.

A private fundraising letter from AFP to its secretive list of donors, seen by the Guardian, outlines the organization’s strategy for the first six months of the new Trump administration. The eight-page document, made public here for the first time, promises a “herculean undertaking” in which AFP says it will press for renewed and deepened tax cuts and an “unwinding [of] as many of the growth and innovation killing regulations as possible”.

The group, which has played a significant role in shifting the Republican party to the right in recent years, has announced a $20m campaign to extend the tax cuts introduced by Trump during his first presidency that are due to expire at the end of this year. The donor appeal calls for even bolder tax cuts for corporations that would directly benefit Koch Industries, the energy and chemicals giant from which most of AFP’s funding derives.

AFP’s donor pitch, presented as a 2025 “prospectus”, outlines a vast “lobbying and grassroots effort” – replete with digital adverts, phone calls, social media posts, podcasts and on-the-ground door-knocking – to boost core Trump ambitions. As such, it speaks to the oligarchy of “extreme wealth, power and influence” coalescing around Trump, which Joe Biden warned about in his final address from the Oval Office.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/koch-americans-for-prosperity-trump-tax-breaks