The rise of shadow lobbying and its influence on decades of US policy

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today, we’re talking about politics and lobbying in America. It’s hard to imagine a time when the influence of big corporations and billionaires didn’t touch every part of American politics, but the kind of lobbying we have now didn’t really exist before the 1970s. Now, our political debates about everything from energy, finance, and healthcare are deeply intertwined with corporations and their money — and new big players in tech now spend tons of political money of their own.

To understand the structure of today’s political lobbying and how we go here, I brought Pulitzer Prize winner Brody Mullins on the show. Brody has a new book he co-wrote with his brother Luke Mullins called The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government, which came out last month. It’s a definitive history of modern lobbying in America, told through the lens of some of the industry’s most unsavory characters and the influence they’ve exerted on DC politics across decades.

Links:

• If Donald Trump Wins, Paul Manafort Will Be Waiting in the Wings | NYT
• Meta had its biggest lobbying quarter ever | The Verge
• Apple quietly bankrolled a lobbying group for app developers | The Verge
• The Many Reinventions of a Legendary Washington Influence Peddler | Politico
• The Wolves of K Street review: how lobbying swallowed Washington | The Guardian
• Big Tech Has a New Favorite Lobbyist: You | WSJ
• SOPA bill shelved after global protests from Google, Wikipedia and others | WashPo
• The Russia Inquiry Ended a Democratic Lobbyist’s Career. He Wants It Back. | NYT
• The Swamp Builders | WashPo
• The Rise and Fall of a K Street Renegade | WSJ

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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