2. Fred C. Koch founded an oil refinery company, then in the 1960s his health began to fail and he gave Charles a larger role in running things at the company. After their father's death, Charles transformed his father's company into the behemoth Koch Industries that made him and David two of the richest people in the world.
3. Years before the 1980 presidential election, Charles and David became increasingly interested in libertarian ideas on economics and began devoting money to those causes. In the 1980 presidential election, David Koch was on the ballot as the nominee for Vice President of the US Libertarian Party. This set him and his brother apart from both major political parties. Following this, they founded and funded academic institutions and academic programs to spread ideas, as well as nonprofit groups to try and build support for those ideas and pressure Congress and state legislatures. After they began seeing third-party as pointless, they became major Republican donors.
4. Obama was trying to pass both a major expansion of government health care spending and a cap-and-trade bill designed to rein in carbon emissions and combat climate change. Charles Koch saw this agenda as an assault on American freedom and that Democrats' policies threaten to erode our economic freedom.The Democrats' cap-and-trade bill passed in the house, but after widespread backlash from many groups including Koch-funded groups, it was never brought for a vote in the Senate. After Obamacare passes, the Kochs helped that many Democrats who voted for it would pay a price through a broad effort to help Republicans win in the 2010 midterms.
5. Koch's spent money on a complex web of dark money groups organizing and ads which was extremely successful and the GOP won enormous gains in the House and in state legislatures in 2010, which helped shape the next decade of American politics.
