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The car-rental giant Enterprise has capitulated to liberal pressure groups and withdrawn from a network of lawmakers, researchers, and business leaders that advocates limited government and free markets.

The decision by Enterprise Holdings Inc. to leave the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, follows a monthlong campaign conducted online and in social media by labor, environmental, and other left-leaning groups.

Referring to that pressure, Enterprise spokeswoman Laura Bryant told The Guardian newspaper Wednesday that “we have been carefully listening to those customers and partners who have expressed sincere concern about our ALEC membership.”

“In fact, after thoughtful consideration, we have decided to resign our membership,” Bryant said.

In an email Thursday afternoon to The Daily Signal, ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling said:

I think the most important thing here is to recognize that it isn’t so much of a capitulation on the part of Enterprise. They stood strong. They did good and fought the good fight. The reality is there is a sustained and large-scale campaign by the progressive outrage machine to silence the speech of companies, organizations, and individuals with whom they do not agree.

Enterprise worked with ALEC specifically on eliminating discriminatory excise taxes levied on rental car customers. That’s good for ALL people, including …read more

Attacks on the rental-car giant Enterprise over social media demonstrate how liberal pressure groups, labeling opponents as “climate change deniers,” coordinate efforts to bully companies to agree with them or face condemnation orchestrated by the groups.

In the name of preventing global warming, labor and affiliated groups planted a negative story about Enterprise in a liberal, U.K.-based newspaper.

They then distributed that article to fuel outrage through online petitions, Twitter, and other social media, a review of events by The Daily Signal reveals.

Their goal: to force Enterprise Holdings Inc. to back away from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a network of lawmakers, researchers, and business leaders that advances free market policies through state legislatures.

Its opponents on the left accuse ALEC of fighting initiatives to thwart climate change, or global warming, among other elements of the liberal agenda.

One petition, organized by MoveOn.org, calls on Enterprise Holdings to “live up to your own values of [energy] sustainability” by steering clear of ALEC.

So far, the Missouri-based parent of Enterprise Rent-a-Car and related businesses has not done so.

In an Aug. 30 post on its Facebook page, Enterprise Rent-A-Car wrote that it continues to support sustainable energy projects while working with ALEC, among …read more

Are you concerned about the plight of international refugees? Would you like to see the U.S. government take decisive, constructive action on behalf of displaced persons across the globe who have been forced to flee their homes?

If so, you’re invited to “stand up against the voices of intolerance” this Sunday in Washington, D.C., where you can join forces with other concerned Americans.

But if you do participate, policy analysts who have examined the refugee crisis want you to know they have good reason to believe the rally is a highly politicized event organized for the purpose of lobbying the Obama administration and Congress to allow more refugees into the U.S.—including those from war-torn Syria and Iraq who may have ties to terrorism.

A major contributor to causes on the left, the Tides Foundation, is collecting contributions for the rally.

President Barack Obama said he would boost the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. to 10,000 for the fiscal year beginning last October and ending this Sept. 30. As of June, about 2,800 Syrians had resettled in America, according to Pew Research Center.

But after a slow start, the administration is poised to meet or surpass its goal of admitting …read more

The decision by the seniors group AARP to drop its membership in an influential legislative reform group is the latest example of the left’s successful pressure on corporations and other organizations to disown the group.

Since December, according to the liberal website SourceWatch.org, “at least 108 corporations and 19 nonprofits” have announced cutting ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Among those listed as parting ways with ALEC: Coca-Cola Co., Blue Cross Blue Shield, Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Hewlett-Packard Co.

“A great silencing is taking place across America,” ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling told The Daily Signal. “All people should be deeply concerned when any group believes solutions come from intimidation rather than discussion.”

Of all the organizations in the conservative movement that have antagonized the left during the Obama presidency, this one stands out.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan network of state lawmakers, policy analysts, and private sector leaders that advances model legislation with an eye toward free market policy solutions.

The organization that became known as ALEC grew out of informal meetings of conservative activists in Chicago during autumn 1973. Forty-three years later, the exchange council includes “nearly one-quarter of the country’s state legislators and stakeholders from across the …read more

By signing a “secrecy pact” with fellow Democrat attorneys general preparing to prosecute climate change skeptics, Rhode Island’s top law enforcement officer jeopardized free speech rights and government transparency laws, according to two legal organizations that have taken him to court.

“They sought to write themselves out from open records laws their legislatures saw fit to write them into,” @ceidotorg’s Chris Horner says.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin’s tactics in supporting President Barack Obama’s climate change policy violate state law guaranteeing access to public records, the two groups, Energy and Environment Legal Institute and Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, claim in their lawsuit.

If Kilmartin and the other attorneys general prevail in the deal to keep select details secret, the ordinary citizen will be the loser, Chris Horner, a leading critic of climate change orthodoxy, said.

“It will mean that they can create privilege for what are otherwise public records, even when shared with ideological activists and donors, so long as everyone who wants to keep their scheming secret agrees in advance,” Horner told The Daily Signal.

>>> Commentary: The Left’s Climate Change Hysteria

The lawsuit, filed July 27 in Rhode Island Superior Court, calls for Kilmartin, a Democrat, to release records …read more

Some of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats, demanding that 22 national and state-based think tanks disclose their donors, disparaged them as being part of a network of free-market policy organizations the senators accuse of “laundering” identities while denying climate change exists.

The existence of the conservative and libertarian policy research and education organizations, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and eight fellow senators wrote in a letter to some of the organizations’ leaders, suggests the extent of a “web of denial” about man’s contribution to global warming, or climate change.

“Because your organizations do not regularly disclose where your donations come from, we cannot know for sure how deep and wide the web of denial truly is,” the nine senators write.

Reid and the other senators also assailed the Virginia-based State Policy Network as “a network of organizations bound together by common funding, shared staff, and false messages.”

The network’s members include private, nonprofit Washington institutions such as The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform, but also private, free-market think tanks in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and other states.

“Freedom of speech does not prevent us from speaking out when your organizations, as well-funded agents of hidden principals with …read more

Environmental activists and state government officials, declining to comply with subpoenas by House Republicans probing their “coordinated efforts” to punish climate change skeptics, face additional scrutiny as part of the congressional investigation.

The deadline for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and eight environmental organizations to comply with subpoenas from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology came and went July 27 without their producing requested documents.

So what now?

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House committee, said “noncompliance only raises additional questions.”

In an email to The Daily Signal, a committee aide wrote that “we’re talking with the recipients [of the subpoenas], and we’ll consider all of our options.”

As The Daily Signal previously reported, the House committee has the option to send a “contempt of Congress” finding to the full House.

In a statement last week, Smith said:

The committee is disappointed that the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general and the environmental activist organizations behind the AGs’ efforts have refused to comply with lawfully issued subpoenas. Their noncompliance only raises additional questions. As discussions with the individual subpoena recipients move forward, the committee will consider using all tools at its disposal to further its …read more

Grassroots conservative activists who run a reboot of Ronald Reagan’s political action committee want to know why the government allows one failing company to buy another failing company while both get taxpayer subsidies.

They also want to know why corporate executives with friends in high places have not been subjected to more scrutiny after receiving a multimillion-dollar compensation package at a time when their company remains heavily subsidized at taxpayer expense.

“This is the quintessential insider deal,” one taxpayer advocate said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Citizens for the Republic, a nonprofit, grassroots lobbying group, posed the two questions in a July 15 letter to members of the House and Senate as the lawmakers left Washington for summer recess.

The group calls on Congress to investigate the CEO and the chief technology officer of SolarCity, a renewable energy company based in San Mateo, California. The two SolarCity executives happen to be brothers; Lyndon and Peter Rive also happen to be first cousins to Elon Musk, chairman and co-founder of SolarCity.

Musk is also chairman and founder of Tesla Motors Inc., an electric car company based in Palo Alto, California. In June, Tesla Motors offered to buy SolarCity.

Musk is …read more

Feathers are flying over whether the federal government is overprotecting a rare bird in Colorado, in what critics grouse is an example of lawyers making millions while abusing the Endangered Species Act.

Trial lawyers who collect taxpayer-funded fees under the law file so many suits that they undermine local conservation efforts in Western states, according to government officials, industry advocates, and legal analysts familiar with the situation.

In Colorado, the situation prompted Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, to sue the Obama administration early last year.

Over 25 years, Colorado officials spent more than $40 million to preserve the habitat of a paunchy, ground-dwelling, chickenlike bird known as the Gunnison sage grouse.

Colorado officials worked in partnership with ranchers in Gunnison County, who voluntarily entered into conservation easements on their property that protected the bird while allowing for robust ranching activities.

In the past few years, the Gunnison sage grouse population not only has stabilized but increased in the part of southwestern Colorado where they’re concentrated, local government figures show.

Even so, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service saw fit to list the species as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in November 2014.

Kent Holsinger, a natural resources lawyer based in Denver, says he sees …read more

State government figures spearheading an effort to obtain documents from scientists and researchers who dissent from the Obama administration’s position on climate change are being asked, once again, to come clean about their relationships with environmental organizations.

But this time around, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey have only two weeks to comply with a demand for information from a House committee that the two Democrats have resisted previously.

That’s because the demand comes in the form of subpoenas issued Wednesday to Schneiderman, Healey, and eight environmental advocacy groups. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology took the action after being rebuffed in previous efforts.

In response, a spokesman for Schneiderman lashed out at the committee as “radical Republican House members” with “zero credibility” who are trying to “block a serious law enforcement investigation.”

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the committee chairman, saw it differently.

“The attorneys general have appointed themselves to decide what is valid and what is invalid regarding climate change,” Smith said in a press statement. “The attorneys general are pursuing a political agenda at the expense of scientists’ right to free speech.”

Smith added:

The committee has a responsibility to protect First Amendment …read more