THE KOCH BROS. CONTINUE THEIR MARCH TO VICTORY.

Charles Koch  (Patrick T. Fallon For The Washington Post)

The wealthy donors who finance the conservative Koch network have many reasons to celebrate five months into Donald Trump’s presidency.

Justice Neil Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court, and a slew of other pro-business judges have been nominated. Major regulations enacted under Barack Obama have been rescinded. Environmental rules have been scaled back. A bill signed into law Friday, which makes it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire employees, offers a blueprint for scaling back civil service protections. The administration has proposed massive spending cuts.

But with Trump’s self-inflicted wounds and persistent GOP infighting in the capital, the financiers assembled at the Broadmoor resort on Cheyenne Mountain are also being forced to reckon with the possibility that golden opportunities to overhaul the tax code and repeal Obamacare are being squandered. Some also quietly fear that voter backlash to the president in 2018 could derail their long-term plans to remake the federal government.

[They] are frustrated that national Republicans are not doing more to capitalize on having unified control of the federal government. But at their summer seminar here in the Rocky Mountains, which wrapped up last night, many were ecstatic—even giddy—about significant conservative gains that have been made this year in state capitals across the country.

Republicans now control the governorship and legislature in 25 states, compared to only six states for Democrats. Last November, the GOP seized all the levers of lawmaking in four new states – Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire – making it much easier to pass far-reaching legislation.

The network, led by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on low-profile races and building out grassroots operations in 36 states over the past decade.

In 2017 alone, several of these states have reduced union power, scaled back regulations, cut taxes, blocked Medicaid expansion, promoted alternatives to public education, loosened criminal sentencing laws and eased requirements to get occupational licenses.

Because President Trump is such an all-consuming story, most of these moves received scant national attention. But the 400 donors who descended on the Broadmoor resort over the past few days have been paying close attention and are keenly interested in the outcome of these state-level fights.

“Even in the past six months we’ve seen a lot of success: We have two new right-to-work states, school choice wins in five states, and a dozen states have reduced spending or taxes,” Roger Pattison, director of member relations for the Koch network, said at a dinner on Saturday night. “I could go on and on.”

“We’re coming off the most successful legislative session that this network has ever had, and it’s a result of your investments,” added Luke Hilgemann, chief executive of Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the constellation of Koch-funded groups.