Who Funds that?

When conservatives wax poetic about their favorite Supreme Court justices from what one might call the “ Federalist Society  era” of Republican appointments, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia take precedence. The oldest may prefer the late William Rehnquist, for a time the lone “originalist” on the court; the youngest may prefer Neil Gorsuch, the libertarian radical appointed by Presiden...

Maryland, for my sins my home state, is almost completely controlled by the teachers unions—this was proven during COVID-19, when the state had among the longest school closures in the nation. But the end of the pandemic did nothing to curb Maryland teachers unions’ ambitions, which are now focused against private education, which the unions and their allies in state government hope to ideological...

Hello, I’m Michael Watson joined by Sarah Lee and this is our first episode of Capital Research Center’s “Who Funds That?” podcast. I am fond of reminding anyone who will hear me that organized labor is an institutional pillar of “Everything Leftism,” the omnibus ideology of progressive-liberal-socialist politics that relies on every single issue—yes, including that one—has one right answer and ev...

This is not the Influence Watch Podcast. After our 400th episode, we said we'd be back with our new format and new name on April 7th, but we're making bigger changes and they'll take a little bit more time. You'll be able to see us in video format on YouTube and we're upgrading our microphones so we sound as good as we possibly can. But getting all that in order is taking a little bit longer than...

Hello, I’m Michael Watson and this is the 400th episode of the InfluenceWatch Podcast. For us, it is a time for looking back and a time for looking forward—we will have a special announcement at the conclusion of today’s episode. Joining me to discuss their work at Capital Research Center are our director of communications and external relations and my usual co-host Sarah Lee, investigative resear...

You may have seen news reports that California is facing something called “outmigration,” in which residents – including some of that state’s most wealthy – are picking up and moving to greener pastures in states not dedicated to taxing them to death. California’s billionaires are most recently eyeing a ballot measure to be voted on this November that would essentially serve as a 5% excise tax for...

As we speak—it’s February 25th as we record, so commentary on the current situation may be out of date when you hear this—a naval armada of two fleet carriers and their accompanying surface-ship escorts sits off the Middle East as American diplomats pressure the Islamic Republic of Iran to renounce its nuclear ambitions and its expansionist agenda to dominate the region. Given the brutality of the...

That teachers’ unions are more interested in radical leftist political power than student achievement is increasingly recognized, and today’s guest brings two new pieces of evidence to pile on the scales. First, AFT president Randi Weingarten, the under-recognized villain of the COVID-19 pandemic, announced to a videoconference of radical-left activists that she was leveraging teachers’ pensions a...

Foreign influence in American nonprofit organizations. It’s real, it has influence on our public life, and Congress has taken note of it. Joining me to discuss the influence of foreign funding of voter registration, ballot initiatives, and the rest of the American nonprofit sector are three of Capital Research Center’s experts on the topic: Senior Research Analyst Robert Stilson, Investigative Res...

It’s Minnesota day, again. Before Minneapolis lit politics on fire with immigration-enforcement-related shootings and associated protests and riots, the story from the land of 10,000 lakes was public-benefits fraud, allegations of which surged to public attention alongside memes about the “Quality Learing Center.” But it’s not just a right-wing internet meme or video investigation—Minnesota has a...

As Minnesota, the only state not to have voted for Ronald Reagan, continues to dominate the headlines, a question arises: Just how radical is the state, and its largest city, Minneapolis, anyway? A recent decision on the organization of the Minneapolis City Council indicates that the city is extremely  radical. While one-party city legislatures in places dominated by Democrats are extremely common...

Amid protests over immigration enforcement by leftists in Minneapolis, a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators allegedly invaded a service at a church whose pastor they claimed was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. (Ex-CNN talking head Don Lemon was also there, claiming to be an independent journalist.) The U.S. Department of Justice has issued statements that they are investiga...

Just before Christmas, the federal Justice Department secured indictments against four alleged radical-left domestic terrorists alleged to be affiliated with the “Turtle Island Liberation Front.” Our colleague Robert Stilson is deeply familiar with the notion of “turtle island,” a name for the North American continent derived from a Native American myth that radical leftists increasingly use to sh...

In the early morning hours of January 3 rd , U.S. military, in an impressively covert operation, captured Venezuela’s self-declared president Nicolas Maduro, and his wife and spirited them away to face narco-terrorism charges in a New York courtroom. In the immediate aftermath, Venezuelans cheered in the streets, celebrating the demise of Maduro’s Marxist regime, one that had decimated their econo...

Minnesota was liberal to begin with: It has the distinction of “voting blue, no matter who” since Jimmy Carter led the Democratic ticket, joining only the District of Columbia in refusing to give its electoral votes to President Ronald Reagan in 1984. For a while, the Hubert Humphrey model of Big Government, strong labor unions, and a business community that operated with a “social conscience” wor...

The year 2025 has been wild and disruptive in the world of policy and influence, with a new administration coming to power with an aggressive agenda, a major reorganization of the left and Democratic Party’s most important dark-money network, and a worrying rise in political violence. Joining me to look back on the year are my colleague Robert Stilson and Capital Research Center president Scott Wa...

A new presidential administration does not typically mean new management at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but typically the incumbent FBI director did not oversee the FBI when it raided the President-elect’s house. Given that fact and other standing disputes with the Bureau, it is not surprising that President-elect Donald Trump and Senator Chuck Grassley have informed FBI Director Christop...

The Groups, the justly maligned nonprofit and otherwise-professional activist groups whom moderate Democrats blamed for the failures of the Biden administration on the economy and immigration, are back and bolder than ever. Joining us today is our colleague Robert Stilson to discuss his profile on one of the most well-funded and radical The Groups you’ve probably never heard of: PolicyLink. The as...

Minnesota was liberal to begin with: It has the distinction of “voting blue, no matter who” since Jimmy Carter led the Democratic ticket, joining only the District of Columbia in refusing to give its electoral votes to President Ronald Reagan in 1984. For a while, the Hubert Humphrey model of Big Government, strong labor unions, and a business community that operated with a “social conscience” wor...

Arabella Advisors, we hardly knew ye. The once obscure, multi-billion dollar, private-equity-owned machine of leftist funding has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Or has it? Arabella, an organization we here at CRC worked diligently to help bring into the light, has in fact, after being rather publicly and unceremoniously dumped by the Gates Foundation in June, simply split, been restructured, been...

What makes a journalistic outfit “completely independent”? According to Drop Site News, the outlet is exactly that, and “reader-supported” to boot. But recent Open Society Foundations spending reports suggest that the outlet is not completely  reader-supported: George Soros’s philanthropy spent $250,000 to support the creation of a “MENA desk” for the group through a fiscal sponsorship cut-out. Jo...

It can seem infuriating: Leftist demonstrators wantonly violate the law, only to face no or negligible consequences because the powers that be either support or refuse to oppose their disruptive tactics. But as a famous progressive politician was fond of saying, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” Last month, a North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfer, the company building...

A defining feature of the creeping leftism the country has experienced over the last several years is just that: It’s creeping, coming in on padded feet behind the scenes until Americans began to see it everywhere, in boardrooms, schoolrooms, and entertainment options. Now, there’s real concern that emerging technology like AI is embracing the ideology of woke on the sly, bringing it into the very...

Regular listeners might remember that earlier this year, a North Dakota jury awarded $667 million to Energy Transfer, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, for damages caused by Greenpeace. Because that poses an existential threat to the environmentalist activism group, Greenpeace has vowed to appeal pending final court action, and supporters published a mass open letter of 400 fellow a...

In Washington, D.C., the “government shutdown” continues as Democrats demand that Republicans expand subsidies for Obamacare in exchange for lifting a filibuster on a “clean continuing resolution” that would reopen the government through approximately Thanksgiving. What listeners might not know is that there are is a big, well-known advocacy group and major corporation that look to benefit from th...