The Daily Caller—Chinese Communist Party Using Nonprofit Networks To Attack American Energy, Report Suggests
[Energy Foundation China] has a registered headquarters in San Francisco and one in Beijing registered with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, according to Influence Watch.
EFC used to be part of the U.S. Energy Foundation (EF), which also funds LAF associated groups, until they split into two distinct organizations in 2019. EF and EFC still shared the same office in San Francisco after the split until 2022 and shared company personnel until at least 2024 with 6 EFC employees being compensated by EF up to July 24, according to the Pelican Institute.
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Cleveland Plain Dealer—Sen. Moreno asks Senate witnesses to swear their think tanks don’t take Mexican drug cartel money
Bier, whose Cato Institute is a libertarian-leaning think tank founded in 1977, responded flatly: “We haven’t accepted any drug cartel money.” Duke, whose Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a progressive-leaning fiscal policy research organization, said: “I do not know of anything like that.”
Moreno offered no proof to support his suggestion.
There is no publicly known evidence that either think tank has received money from Mexican drug cartels or affiliated organizations. Both organizations are established Washington policy institutions that publicly disclose their funding sources.
Influence Watch describes the Cato Institute as a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C, that gets money from both right of center organizations like the Charles Koch Foundation and left-of-center foundations and organizations including the Gilder Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, Google, and Facebook.
Influence Watch says the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is a think tank that analyzes how federal budget issues affect low-income Americans, and says its funds come largely “from a wide array of high-profile left-of-center organizations.”
The affidavit episode came at the end of a broader stretch of contentious questioning that drew a sharp objection from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the committee’s top Democrat.
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Washington Examiner— Democrats on track to lose their dark money ‘security blanket’
Some, however, argue that donors have a right to privacy that 501(c)(4)s serve to protect.
“Americans have a right to anonymous political giving, to a certain extent, especially when political violence is becoming all too common, so it’s not surprising that anonymous contributions remain a big part of political money flows, or that they are trending towards Republicans for the first time in years,” Capital Research Center investigative researcher Parker Thayer told the Washington Examiner. “This reversal of trends will probably rattle Democratic operatives that have long counted on their dominance in the ‘dark money’ world to mobilize voters and fund campaigns. It will probably feel rather like losing a treasured security blanket for them.”
[. . .]
On the party side, the Republican National Committee began the year with $100 million more in the bank than the Democratic National Committee. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, commands a super PAC with $304 million in waiting, with no obvious Democratic equivalent. A New York Times analysis found that Republicans possess a $550 million edge over Democrats when accounting for all federal accounts held by the main party operations.
“Perhaps the Democratic donors’ dark money machines are growing less powerful, or maybe dark money donors are pragmatically trying to draw closer to the party currently in power,” Thayer said, qualifying his statement by saying that it’s hard to know what the shift means at this point. “There are a lot of possible explanations, but they all revolve around the axiom that big money will be involved in politics as long as big government is involved in money, and to a like degree.”
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The Daily Caller— Tax-Exempt Status Of Nonprofit Tied To Lefty Violence Under The Microscope
Founded in 2001 in San Francisco, California, [the Progress Unity Fund] bills itself as an anti-racist organization that was “established to help break down the barriers of divisiveness and discrimination that exist in the world, and replace them with a sense of solidarity.” The nonprofit also financially supports organizations tied to pro-abortion activists and has overlapping membership with socialist activists, according to Influence Watch.
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PJ Media—Federal Grant Money Flows to Race-Based Groups During Labor Department Chaos
Mike Watson, director of research at the Capital Research Center, warns that large federal agencies often have entrenched bureaucracies that continue long-standing policy agendas regardless of changes in political leadership. Watson argued that agencies without strong oversight tend to maintain spending patterns aligned with earlier administrations or ideological priorities rather than with new directives issued by any White House.
Watson’s comments reflected a broader concern among some policymakers that federal agencies sometimes move more slowly than presidential administrations when shifting policy direction.
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Robert Bryce (Substack)—More Oklo Insider Sales, TerraPower Gets Key Approval, & Rolls-Royce Keeps Rolling
Yesterday, the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of America’s most strident anti-nuclear NGOs, announced it would support the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa. As ace reporter Ken Braun explained yesterday, the NRDC operates on an annual budget of more than $200 million, and with this announcement, it will be the “first anti-energy NGO to be removed from the InfluenceWatch list of nuclear power opponents.” While this is positive news, I must point out that the NRDC was one of the main culprits behind the foolish, premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan, New York.
So now that NRDC is finally starting to accept rational thought about nuclear energy, when will its leaders apologize for the enormous damage they have done to our power grid? I am not holding my breath.
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Kansas Informer—Kansas leftist groups score big in $1.8 million Soros-linked cash geyser for 2024
According to the Capital Research Center, Soros’ network awarded over $153 million to the four main Arabella-managed nonprofits New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund. In 2023 alone, Soros’ nonprofits sent over $43 million in 27 separate grants to Arabella-managed funds, including $10 million to the Hopewell Fund for a “Free Election Fund” and $10.9 million to the New Venture Fund.
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The Heartlander—Leftist nonprofit hires noncitizen for get-out-the-vote effort in Kansas
According to InfluenceWatch.org, which closely monitors such things, “The Voter Network Foundation is a Kansas-based organization that focuses on voter turnout in underrepresented communities through outreach. Its donors include the New Venture Fund, a left-of-center nonprofit fund that is part of the Arabella Advisors network.
“The organization’s leadership includes staff who worked for Democratic elected officials and for left-of-center advocacy groups.”
[. . .]
InfluenceWatch describes the Mainstream Coalition, formed in 1993, as “a left-of-center lobbying and electoral advocacy organization [that] claims to promote public education, government transparency, LGBT interests, and reproductive health care in Kansas.”
Despite its name, the Mainstream Coalition has consistently fought alongside liberal organizations against conservative legislative proposals such as banning sex-change treatments for minors as well as school choice, including educational savings accounts (ESAs) for families to send their children to the schools of their preference.
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One America News—Florida Bar retracts ‘erroneous’ statement on probe into fmr Trump admin. prosecutor Lindsey Halligan: ‘No such pending Bar investigation’
Although the [Campaign for Accountability] claims that it’s a “nonpartisan watchdog group that uses research and litigation to expose public misconduct,” the group only targets conservative and Republican figures, officials and organizations in its investigations and complaints. Additionally, sources like InfluenceWatch describe it as a liberal group that is often aligned with Democrat operatives on its board, and that it frequently pursues ethics probes against Republicans.
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Townhall—Here Are the Radical Leftist Judges Who Said Trump Cannot End TPS for 350,000 Haitians
Garcia was also supported by the Alliance for Justice (AFJ), which has an anti-Trump agenda, according to InfluenceWatch, which wrote, “AFJ opposes President Donald Trump and blames his Supreme Court nominees for ruling against AFJ’s left-of-center policy initiatives. It has criticized President Trump for appointing conservative justices, and AFJ has campaigned for “packing” the Supreme Court by adding additional justices to “dilute” conservative influence over the Court.”
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Liberty Nation News—Getting Foreign Money Out of State Ballot Initiative Campaigns
The Fairness Project “is a labor union-backed advocacy organization that finances and supports state ballot initiative campaigns to promote left-of-center policies such as government-mandated comprehensive paid family and medical leave, Medicaid expansion, and minimum wage increases,” watchdog website Influence Watch details in its dossier on the group.
[. . .]
“In November 2025, the state of Nebraska sued several nonprofit organizations over allegations they illegally spent over $10 million in foreign contributions whilst supporting state ballot initiatives between 2022 and 2024,” Influence Watch reports. “The nonprofit groups in question included the Wyss Foundation, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Berger Action Fund, the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund and the Fairness Project.”
Funny how the Big Money so often has dirt all over it.
“According to Nebraska State Attorney General Mike Hilgers, the organizations in question violated a 2022 state law barring foreign nationals from funding state ballot campaigns and initiatives,” Influence Watch chronicles. “Hilgers also alleged that Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss had previously sent donations to be passed through the nonprofits for the purpose of funding several local ballot initiatives.”
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The Daily Mail—Gavin Newsom’s wife and her firm pocketed $3.7M from her ‘gender stereotypes’ charity, unearthed IRS filings reveal…days after her sanctimonious rant at the press
‘This isn’t the first time Siebel Newsom’s gender justice-focused nonprofit has made news concerning its financial data,’ said Sarah Lee, spokesperson for conservative charity watchdog the Capital Research Center.
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National Taxpayers Union Foundation—California Can’t Afford a Wealth Tax
NTU’s Andrew Wilford was a guest on the InfluenceWatch podcast and NTU promoted it on their blog.
