A new Capital Research Center report–Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homeless Advocacy–demonstrates how many homelessness policy space NGOs are involved in radical activism as much (or more than) fixing the homeless problem. We produced this report in cooperation with the Discovery Institute. Some of the media hits regarding Infiltrated and other CRC research are noted below.
We begin with an opinion piece from CRC president Scott Walter that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week, wherein he advised federal lawmakers and law enforcement to tread carefully when investigating the nonprofit sector.
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Wall Street Journal: Investigate Leftist Nonprofits—Carefully
Excerpt from Scott Walter:
To clarify this debate, we must distinguish between speech and lawbreaking. No donor or grantee should be criminally prosecuted for speech. Only those who violate laws should face legal jeopardy.
Another important distinction is between violating nonprofit laws versus breaching criminal laws. Capital Research Center reports have long documented apparent nonprofit-law violations that involve many areas of “charitable” work and span many donors on the left. In the present debate, the most obvious nonprofit law at issue is the Internal Revenue Service’s half-century rule that neither 501(c)(3) charities nor 501(c)(4) nonprofits may urge civil disobedience that breaks laws. The First Amendment protects the right to advocate such lawbreaking, but a nonprofit that enjoys tax privileges can lose those privileges for supporting unlawful conduct.
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Wall Street Journal: How Soros Is Preparing for a Battle With the Trump Administration: As threats from the administration mount, George and Alex Soros are giving out as many grants as ever
The Justice Department memo cited a report from a right-leaning think tank called Capital Research Center that accused Soros of giving money to groups that supported terrorism. It cites the environmental Sunrise Movement, which was supportive of a Georgia protest movement in which a demonstration turned violent and several protesters were charged under state domestic terrorism laws in cases that remain pending.
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NewsNation: Antifa infiltrating Seattle homeless services, report finds
SEATTLE (NewsNation) — A report from two conservative think tanks alleged that members of antifa, the decentralized antifascist movement, have embedded themselves within the homeless industrial complex, and not only in Seattle’s homeless services sector.
NewsNation found evidence supporting the report’s claims, with activists confronting volunteers and disrupting encampment cleanup efforts.
The report, presented to President Donald Trump in early October by the Capital Research Center and Discovery Institute, claims militant activists intentionally disrupt homeless encampment clearances and perpetuate street disorder to advance antigovernment objectives.
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The Daily Caller: Radical Activists Are Hijacking Homelessness Charities To Fund Anti-Cop, Anti-Capitalist Campaigns
Radical left-wing activists have seized control of nonprofits meant to combat homelessness and are using them to advance extremist political causes, according to a new investigation.
The report — which sources said was recently presented to President Donald Trump — argues that groups posing as advocates for the homeless are exploiting public and philanthropic grants, as well as tax-exempt status, to bankroll agendas that include anti-police and anti-capitalist campaigns. The investigation, titled “Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homelessness Advocacy,” was published by the Capital Research Center in partnership with the Discovery Institute and draws on financial filings, legal records and original reporting.
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“Our researchers uncovered hundreds of charities in the homeless industrial complex that function less like direct service providers and more like political actors advancing radical causes,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “Instead of helping those in desperate need, these organizations are using taxpayer dollars to lead protests, launch pressure campaigns and file frivolous lawsuits. To make progress in the fight against homelessness, we must push back against the extremists hijacking homelessness in America.”
The report warns that these ideological campaigns worsen the underlying causes of homelessness, including addiction and mental illness.
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Daily Mail: MAGA kingpins with ‘damning’ dossier on George Soros reveal their next targets… and the ‘smoking gun’ they’re using as bait
More potential targets for the newly emboldened IRS were contained in a 113-page dossier that was handed to Trump last week.
Drawn up by the Capital Research Center it focused on America’s homeless services system, which the right-wing advocacy group claimed had been ‘captured’ by what it called radical nonprofits funneling money into political activism.
The report claimed well-funded advocacy groups with charitable tax status were diverting billions of dollars’ into campaigns that push ‘extremist political agendas.’
Among the groups named in that report, in addition to OSF, were major foundations including Ford and Tides, which were accused of ‘reinforcing extremist agendas’ by funding legal challenges to public camping bans and police enforcement.
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ABC-4 TV (South Carolina): Feds warn of antifa infiltration, hidden funding ahead of ‘No Kings’ protests
Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks the financial web of political activism, told The National News Desk on Monday that the “radical left” often uses moments of mass mobilization to advance hidden agendas.
The way the radical left works is: Anything that brings people into the streets, they jump on the bandwagon,” Walter said.
Walter said that tracing antifa funding has proven difficult. Unlike organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or Greenpeace, antifa has no central office, no registered nonprofit status, and no easily identifiable leadership.
“Antifa is not like the ACLU,” Walter said. “It doesn’t have a big, big headquarters or something.”
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The Federalist Radio Hour: How Radicals Co-Opted the Homelessness Industrial Complex
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Capital Research Center President Scott Walter joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to dive into the data detailing how radicals and extremists are using nonprofits aimed at helping the homeless to achieve leftist political ends.
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Fix Homelessness (Discovery Institute): New Report: How Extremists Infiltrated Homelessness Advocacy in America
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Capital Research Center (CRC) released a new report in cooperation with Discovery Institute exploring how extremist ideological movements are exploiting America’s homelessness crisis, which can include hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people on any given night.
Scott Walter, President at CRC, issued the following statement about the report:
Our researchers uncovered hundreds of charities in the Homeless Industrial Complex that function less like direct service providers and more like political actors advancing radical causes. Instead of helping those in desperate need, these organizations are using taxpayer dollars to lead protests, launch pressure campaigns, and file frivolous lawsuits. To make progress in the fight against homelessness, we must push back against the extremists hijacking homelessness in America.
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The National News Desk: Multiple organizations dig into dark money sources; who’s funding Antifa?
The Capital Research Center is another group researching extremist groups. President Scott Walter told The National News Desk, part of it is understanding the landscape. For example, the National Lawyers Guild, which Walter said is the legal auxiliary for Antifa, shows up any time there’s a protest turned into a riot.
That’s so that the National Lawyers Guild lawyers can both try and keep the police away from activists or intimidate the police,” said Walter.
Walter added that in one of the Center’s recent reports, revealing how a growing number of organizations in the homelessness policy space are aligned with radical and extremist worldviews, it found a group called the ‘Western Regional Advocacy Project’ that gets funding from The Tides Network.
Quite a number of folks who seem to be comfortable with the idea of violence, lets put it that way, receive serious Tides funding,” Walter said.
Both Schweizer and Walter also say they look for specific code words or phrases, typically used on the left, to describe violence. Or at a minimum, aggressive protesting. One of those phrases is ‘direct action.’
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NewsBusters Podcast (Media Research Center): ‘Open Society’ George Soros Backs a Violent Fringe
One of the ironies of the left is they boast about backing democracy and then support people who despise Western civilization in its entirety. Ryan Mauro of the Capital Research Center and Joseph Vazquez of MRC Business discuss the “Open Society Foundations” and how they have supported a violent far-left fringe, including terrorists both foreign and domestic.
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Blaze Media (Glenn Beck): ‘Deadass serious’: FBI goes to Glenn Beck’s home after he helped expose Antifa’s terror network
This is not the first time in recent weeks that Beck’s reporting has created headaches for leftist extremists and their alleged benefactors.
Beck hosted counterterrorism expert Ryan Mauro on the Sept. 17 episode of the “The Charlie Kirk Show” and discussed the findings of Mauro’s Capital Research Center report concerning the funding of U.S.-based groups potentially engaged in terrorism by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Days later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office reportedly issued a directive to U.S. attorneys’ offices in at least three states and several cities instructing federal prosecutors to prepare probes into Soros’ group.
Following his meeting with the FBI agents on Saturday, Beck suggested that Antifa members and their enablers ought to be concerned right now because “the FBI is deadass serious.”
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Fox-5 TV (Baltimore): Nine Baltimore City Council members silent on BCYF oversight
Mike Watson, a director at the Capital Research Center focused on government-funded nonprofits, said the Baltimore City Council should unite to pass common-sense regulations and oversight of [the Baltimore Children and Family Youth Fund].
“I question why they would be against subjecting a city-funded, ostensibly independent non-profit to city scrutiny,” Watson told Spotlight on Maryland. “It’s the taxpayer’s money, it’s the city’s money. Why are you not demanding performance of the program that you created?”
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