In practice, Skocpol wrote,

The Koch network has gotten 85 percent of what it has always wanted out of the Trump presidency so far — especially the huge government-starving, upward tilted tax cuts, the evisceration of the EPA, weakening of labor regulations and unions, cuts in social spending, and ultraright judges who will eviscerate government regulatory capacities and further weaken liberal forces.

In 2016, according to Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, Trump was crucial to bridging the gap between his followers — “protectionist, anti-elite elements that are skeptical of globalization and free trade” — and free-trade conservatives.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia, made a parallel point:

On most issues the Trump administration, working together with a Republican Congress the Kochs helped to elect, has embraced the vision of the Republican Party that the Kochs have pursued aggressively over the past three decades. That includes implementing massive cuts to taxes, especially on businesses; dismantling the Affordable Care Act; appointing very conservative, free-market oriented judges to the federal judiciary; and efforts to undermine economic and environmental regulations.

Hertel-Fernandez noted that

trade and immigration are, to be sure, a point of disagreement between the Kochs and the Trump administration, but those are still only two areas where the Kochs have not gotten their way among many other successes.

No issue is more important to the continuing strength of the Koch network than campaign finance — Koch-aligned organizations were instrumental in successfully pressing the case that resulted in the key 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United — and the Trump administration’s judicial nominees are virtually certain to secure, if not broaden, the legal protections crucial to the Kochs.

Much of the multimillion dollar Koch empire is built on donor anonymity based on the use of tax-exempt organizations that do not have to publicly report contributors. (The Koch family has, of course, made many donations in its own name.)

There have been a number of thorough depictions of the Koch network, including notable ones by Nick Confessore of The Times and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.

In a 2015 story, Confessore reported that the Koch brothers planned “to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, an unparalleled effort by coordinated outside groups to shape a presidential election.” The Kochs, Confessore continued,

are longtime opponents of campaign disclosure laws. Unlike the parties, their network is constructed chiefly of nonprofit groups that are not required to reveal donors. That makes it almost impossible to tell how much of the money is provided by the Kochs — among the wealthiest men in the country — and how much by other donors.

In a 2014 District of Columbia federal court case in which Americans for Prosperity successfully challenged the California Attorney General’s attempts to require disclosure of donors, Derek Shaffer, a lawyer for A.F.P., a Koch group, argued that contributors could be subject to harassment, just as civil rights supporters were in the 1950s South:

For some 50 years, Your Honor, since the Supreme Court in 1958 upheld the right of the NAACP to resist compulsion by the state of Alabama of its membership list, courts have recognized that the First Amendment protects against this sort of compulsion in this sort of circumstance.

In practice, the Trump-Koch alliance has been extraordinarily productive, and the alliance is the odds on favorite to win the battle to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, where he is likely to cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future.

For two decades, key Democrats have argued that as the party of the multiracial, multiethnic rising American electorate — and the political home of single women and younger voters — they have the demographic wind at their backs. But time and again, the Republican Party, the de facto party of white America, has surged back.

Looking toward November, the Koch organizations are already committed to attacking incumbent Democratic Senators in Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Florida while looking at their chance of influencing the outcome in as many as 14 other races. In addition, the network plans to support Republican candidates for governor in Nevada, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Florida, a list that is expected to grow longer as the midterms heat up.