ackman bill hedge

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see ~ ESG

MERRI OK

beats up harVard, prez fired WOMAN POC WIFE PLAGIARIZED

see pershing square

pic

PALANTIR

MBS PUTIN

THIEL RFK2MUSK

FAIL JC PENNY SHORTED ---- ~ ICAHN

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KARA SWISHER ~ 4 26 // DAVID SACHS

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BTB KILLED JC PENNY’S

SPELLING

AN 11 25

Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) alluded to a secret tape of a call between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in his comments on the House floor following a Tuesday Oval Office meeting between the two leaders. Vindman, in his remarks called for the release of the transcripts of the call.

" Trump has the responsibility to release the transcripts of his call with MBS. You will be shocked by what you hear," Vindman posted on X Wednesday.

This comes, reports The Daily Beast, "one day after the president insisted Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s killing, despite U.S. intelligence officials concluding he ordered the hit, a former Trump national security insider has claimed there is explosive evidence to the contrary."

Vindman was a National Security Council staffer under the first Trump administration, whose work included reviewing certain calls between the president and foreign leaders, The Daily Beast explains.

"Vindman claims that one phone call he reviewed undercut Trump’s astonishing defense of the Crown Prince in the Oval Office on Tuesday, when he said of Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents: 'Things happen,'" they report.

“During my tenure on Trump’s White House National Security Council staff, I reviewed many of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. Of all the calls I reviewed, two stood out as the most problematic,” Vindman says.

"The first, we all know, was between President Trump and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky, which resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment. The second was between President Trump and Mohammed bin Salman," he adds.

“After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi crown prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call. If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking," Vindman says.

Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, was murdered on October 2, 2018, by a team of Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

His remains have never been found. U.S. intelligence and a UN investigation concluded that bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, an assessment Saudi Arabia denies.

When taking questions from journalists following his meeting with bin Salman Tuesday, Trump berated ABC reporter Mary Bruce after she asked the Crown Prince about his involvement in the murder.

"You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said, adding that bin Salman "knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that."

"You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that," Trump snapped.

Trump hosted bin Salman at a state dinner Tuesday night with guests including Elon Musk, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and billionaire investor Bill Ackerman. SIC

Trump has long-standing financial ties to Saudi Arabia, including past business dealings and recent deals involving his family and the Trump Organization.

These connections have recently drawn scrutiny due to potential conflicts of interest, especially as the Trump family continues to pursue new business opportunities in the kingdom.

Simultaneously, Trump's administration has deepened the US's strategic defense partnership with Saudi Arabia, recently designating it a major non-NATO ally.

Vindman isn't backing down on his calls for the transcript of the call in what some say may be yet another Trump cover-up.

"Speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning ahead of Trump and the crown prince attending a Saudi investment forum, Vindman said the call he reviewed was equally disturbing and shocking 'in light of the enrichment that the Trump family has received in the ensuing years,'" The Daily Beast reports.

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AN 10 25

UnHerd Editor Sohrab Ahmari tells the Washington Post that the ravings of the right-wing media's pundit class have lately gotten even crazier.

“Much of right-wing media now resembles star-child radio: a vast chamber of oft-malignant fantasies, where even once-reasonable minds go to get euthanized,” said Ahmari. “Each flick of the feed pulls up a paranoia-monger more wild-eyed than the previous, warning about the evil machinations of all-powerful ... apparitions of their fever dreams.”

It doesn’t’ matter that “the establishment” has been largely dethroned, Ahmari adds. “Populists are in power and still there seems to be no stopping the online right’s slide into irrationality.

Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was wearing clothing that matched security images. There are also bullet engravings, messages to a friend, family members’ recollection that he’d grown increasingly militant in defense of certain causes and even a confession on an online message board. Despite this, some of the right’s biggest voices, like Candace Owens and others had their own theory of who’d killed Kirk.

“Turning Point will not release the footage,” said Owens, referring to the right-wing campus group founded by Kirk. She insinuated that Kirk’s own organization might have been in on the killing, while weaving in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman, who, she claims, threatened Kirk over his growing skepticism of the Jewish state.

IFrame Content

“Years ago, your average amateur broadcaster raving about alien babies could, at best, hope for a few thousand listeners. Today’s star-child anchors command enormous audiences,” Ahmari said. “[Tucker] Carlson and Owens host the No. 1 and No. 3 news podcasts on Spotify (as of this writing). … Liberal America still generally tunes into mainstream outlets while much of the right half of the electorate seems hooked on star-child radio. As UnHerd columnist Richard Hanania concluded, ‘the right is in deep trouble.’”

Ahmari adds: “There is a difference between a progressive (or conservative) worldview coloring the framing of stories and the quest to ‘prove,’ as the some on the right have, that the president of France’s wife is a man.”

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter heralded a new X algorithm that “positively promotes the crank right,” said Ahmari, and the effects of that spread and others are exacting a toll on U.S. democracy.

“This media system promotes mental degeneration and a sense of learned helplessness that can only yield destructive politics,” Ahmari warned. “People convinced that an amorphous they controls events are unlikely to take political responsibility for the shape of our common life — and far more likely to fall in thrall to demagogues and dictators.”

Read the Washington Post report at this link.

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yt grayzone 9 20 25

kirk horowitz, ackman; trump afraid of bibi canary bds

tampa pro gaza comedian vs bad hombre lost debate

senate of not prez

Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say - The Grayzone

billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say

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A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he contemplated a Catholic conversion.

On September 11, one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.”

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.

Since publishing this report, The Grayzone has learned from one attendee of the Hamptons event that Ackman convened the influencers under the auspices of a discussion about Zohran Mamdani and the supposed threat he posed to the West if elected mayor of New York. But the meeting went off the rails when Ackman personally confronted Kirk about his views on Israel. The public face of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorff, joined in the argument, and began “screaming” at Kirk, according to the attendee.

When his hosts presented him with a detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel, Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. Ackman also allegedly demanded Kirk rescind his invitation for Tucker Carlson to speak at his upcoming America Fest 2025 in December.

“The whole thing was a disaster,” said an attendee.

The Grayzone reported on September 12, citing a longtime associate of Kirk, that Netanyahu had offered to organize a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into TPUSA, and that Kirk refused. Another longtime friend of Kirk has told The Grayzone that the conservative activist also rejected an offer Netanyahu delivered two weeks before his death to meet with him in Jerusalem.

Kirk, according to one person with inside knowledge of the meeting with Ackman, said he left feeling as though he’d been subjected to “blackmail.”

In a series of text messages with The Grayzone, Ackman described these account of his meeting with Kirk as “totally false.” He pledged to release a public statement providing his own account of the event, but refused The Grayzone’s request for clarification or further details. He would not accept phone calls from this reporter.

“I think I can easily put this to bed,” Ackman promised, “I have receipts as they say.” He did not abide when asked to provide the so-called “receipts.”

In an apparent bid to reinforce the pro-Israel tone at the Hamptons meeting, Ackman hosted a coterie of pro-Israel operatives and conservative influencers at the off-the-record engagement. One was Instagram influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau of Prager U.

Reached by phone by The Grayzone, DuRousseau sounded flustered when asked about his presence at the meeting. He repeatedly demanded to know how this reporter obtained his number, and eventually hung up, refusing to answer questions about the event.

Several Instagram posts by DuRousseau show him and his friend, conservative influencer Emily Wilson, in the Hamptons on August 8 outside Topping Rose House, a posh hotel and restaurant in Bridgehampton, New York.

Two weeks after the meeting, DeRousseau was reportedly junketed on an all-expenses-paid trip by the Israeli government to visit a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub guarded by the IDF on the Gaza frontier. There, he recorded an Instagram video denying that the population of the besieged Gaza Strip was experiencing a famine.

The Grayzone received a similarly agitated response from Wilson, known online as Emily Saves America. Following a phone call and exchange of text messages in which this reporter asked her numerous times about her attendance of the meeting in the Hamptons, Wilson refused to comment. Instagram photos place her in the Hamptons at the same time as DuRousseau.

CJ Pearson, a leading youth coordinator for the Republican National Committee, immediately referred The Grayzone to his communications director when asked if he attended the Hamptons gathering.

The strong-arm tactics of the pro-Israel billionaires who helped fuel the growth of TPUSA were said to have contributed to Kirk’s alienation with evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes uncritical support for Israel as a bedrock principle. Several sources with access to Kirk said he had begun attending Catholic mass with his wife, Erika, and was considering a conversion before his death.

Bree Solsdadt, a Catholic Twitter/X influencer, has publicly corroborated this account of Kirk’s religious realignment. Kirk’s friend, the podcaster and former TPUSA personality Candace Owens, also alluded to the shift when she reflected that he was undergoing a “spiritual transformation” before his death.

Israel-centric influencer summit in the Hamptons

The Grayzone has obtained a partial list of attendees alleged to have been in attendance at the Bridgehampton meeting convened by Ackman this August. They include:

Seth Dillon – Dillion is the CEO of Babylon Bee, the conservative answer to the liberal The Onion satire outlet. Dillon and his crew have derisively mocked famine-stricken Palestinians and their supporters in the West, since Israel’s slash-and-burn campaign began in the besieged Gaza Strip. An evangelical Christian with Jewish heritage, he has claimed, “I did not cease having Ashkenazi blood when I put my faith in Jesus Christ (also a Jew).” Dillon did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Xaviaer DuRousseau – DuRousseau is employed by Prager U, the premier right-wing “edu-tainment” hub targeting the minds of American youth. His boss, Marissa Streit, is a veteran of the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 cyber-spying division. A Black self-described former progressive, DuRousseau now appears firmly in the pocket of right-wing Zionist forces. During his Israeli government-funded visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub inside Gaza, DuRousseau falsely claimed the United Nations and Hamas were to blame for the hunger sweeping the local population. “If I were Israel, I wouldn’t even provide matching socks to Gaza, but here’s all the aid that y’all claim doesn’t exist,” he said in an Instagram video filmed in front of boxes of aid blocked from entering Gaza. “Instead of Hamas distributing the ramen noodles,” DuRousseau continued, “their leaders are eating it all and that’s why they’re on Ozempic.”

A post shared by Xaviaer DuRousseau 𓀀 (@xaviaer)

DuRousseau vigorously defended his close friend, podcaster Emily Wilson, after she stated that “if everyone in the state [of Alabama]” wanted the return of chattel slavery, “go ahead, why do I give a shit?”

Emily Wilson aka Emily Saves America– Wilson is a Los Angeles-based self-described libertarian podcaster and social media influencer with over 500,000 followers on Instagram. On September 9, she recalled on Twitter/X how “a HUGE black guy” robbed her when she was 13. “I hate to say it but things like that just change the way you see certain people. After that I always thought, ‘oh, you guys just hate me,’” she reflected. This month, she and DuRousseau recorded a in which they framed pro-Palestine activist Greta Thunberg’s hairstyle as evidence of her being “slow and short bus.”

“I don’t hang out with anyone really less attractive than me,” Wilson stated in a separate appearance.

Arynne Wexler – A former Goldman Sachs trader seeking cachet in the world of online influencers, Wexler is a vociferously Zionist, self-described “non-lib girl in a crazylib world.” In an interview with pro-Israel podcaster Dave Rubin, Wexler that “we need to bring bullying back” to enforce social norms, crack down on conspiracy theories, and stop the rise of antisemitism. Wexler has praised Ackman’s pro-Israel activism on multiple occasions. She did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Natasha Hausdorff – The legal director of Zionist advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel, Hausdorff is arguably the best-known figure associated with the organization. She was described in one headline by Israel’s most widely-read newspaper, the Adelson-owned Israel Hayom, as “the British attorney who fights Israel’s wars.”

Nate Friedman – Friedman is a young ultra-Zionist influencer best known for New York City man-on-the-street confrontations with Palestine solidarity activists, whom he’s accused of being paid protesters.

Ory Rinat – Rinat was the former to Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law and advisor, before moving on to serve as White House chief digital officer during Trump’s first term. A Jewish pro-Israel operative said to have close ties Netanyahu’s government, Rinat now serves as CEO of Urban Legend, a PR firm which commands “an army of 700 social media influencers who command varying degrees of allegiance from audiences that collectively number in the tens of millions,” according to Wired.

CJ Pearson – The chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, Pearson appeared in photos in the Hamptons alongside Wilson and DeRousseau. The Grayzone is awaiting further information from Pearson’s communications director.

CJ Pearson (left) with Emily Wilson, Xavaier DeRousseau, and an unknown person in the Hamptons

Bill Ackman’s war

As The Grayzone reported on September 12, Kirk was besieged with angry calls and messages from pro-Israel donors to his organization following TPUSA’s Student Action Summit this July in Tampa, Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also phoned him, according to a longtime friend of Kirk, and offered to orchestrate a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into his organization.

A longtime friend of Kirk told The Grayzone the mounting pressure had left him “angry” and “frightened.”

Kirk vented about the pro-Israel intimidation campaign in an August 6 discussion with Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host who was also growing more critical of Israeli influence in Washington.

“It’s all of the sudden, ‘Oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” Kirk.

“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”

He went on: “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”

Kirk delivered his comments around the same time as the tumultuous meeting in the Hamptons with Ackman and the crew of pro-Israel influencers.

A month earlier, Kirk had opened the stage at his TPUSA Student Action Summit for a cathartic outpouring of frustration and rage about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. At the conference, speakers from Carlson and to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith slammed Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”

The mockery by Carlson was particularly galling for Ackman. One day after TPUSA’s conference, Ackman staged a 4,000 word Twitter/X meltdown defending his financial acumen, while insisting that he earned his vast fortune because, “I inherited good genes.”

In fact, the 59-year-old manager of the Pershing Square Capital hedge fund had presided over a precipitous decline in his own personal fortune through a series of bad bets. Between 2015 and 2018, amid a bull market, Ackman’s fund tallied embarrassingly negative returns that cost him an eye-popping $12 billion in losses. His to short the multi-level marketing company Herbalife backfired, resulting in a devastating squeeze that cost him heavily. Ackman’s financial mishaps forced him to slash one fifth of his staff in 2018.

The billionaire also took issue with Carlson’s contention that he had been part of convicted sex offender and late Zionist financier Jeffrey Epstein’s “constellation of people.” Yet Carlson’s remarks were grounded in fact. Indeed, Ackman’s wife, the celebrity Israeli designer Neri Oxman, had gifted an artistic orb to Epstein after he plowed $125,000 in donations into her Media Lab at MIT. She was invited to lunch with Epstein on several occasions, according to the Boston Globe, and complied with MIT’s requirement to keep her gift to Epstein confidential.

Ackman has significantly elevated his public profile by leading fellow Zionist billionaires in a ruthless crackdown on post-October 7 Palestine solidarity activism in the US. By leveraging his fortune, Ackman helped dislodge the political scientist Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University, his alma mater, accusing her of adopting an insufficiently draconian policy toward students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza.

After weeks of pummeling from Ackman, GOP members of Congress, and pro-Israel media, Gay finally quit when conservative activists produced evidence that she had plagiarized in her academic writing. While Ackman claimed victory, he howled with indignation when Business Insider returned the favor with a detailed article which documented multiple cases of plagiarism by his own wife, the designer Oxman. According to the outlet, Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.”

Ackman responded by announcing that he would fund a plagiarism review of every MIT faculty member. He also delivered a 77-page lawsuit threat to Axel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider, accusing them of publishing claims “designed to cause her harm, principally because the reporters do not like me, my support for Israel, and my advocacy.” He quickly dropped the lawsuit, however, claiming he did so because Springer is “an important advocate against antisemitism.”

In May 2024, the Washington Post revealed Ackman as a leading member of a Whatsapp group of 50 ultra-wealthy Zionists coordinating counterinsurgency-style actions against student anti-genocide protesters at Columbia University.

According to the report, the millionaire cabal sought to buy off Black celebrities as propaganda puppets and dangled bribes before New York City Mayor Eric Adams to deploy the NYPD against student protesters. “Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted,” the Post reported.

This June 14, as Israel reeled at the Iranian response to its unprovoked assault days earlier, Ackman launched his next campaign: “@Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world…” the hedge funder declared on Twitter. “Israel does not have the equipment and armaments to complete the job. We do, and it does not require boots on the ground.”

Multiple sources, including a Trump administration official, have revealed to The Grayzone that Kirk personally visited Trump inside the White House to lobby him against attacking Iran. Trump “roared” at Kirk, one said, and shut down the conversation.

A month later, Kirk allowed the simmering rage within the conservative grassroots over Israel’s stranglehold on Washington to pour out at his TPUSA summit. Soon after, he was summoned to the Hamptons for a face-to-face with one of Netanyahu’s most influential allies in the US. Before Ackman and a cast of avaricious young influencers under Israel’s sway, he defied the billionaire power broker, then returned home to prepare for what would be his final speaking tour.

Following Kirk’s killing, Ackman ponied up a $1 million payout for anyone who provided information leading the capture of the shooter. That money may wind up with the father of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, who reportedly turned him in.

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September 12, 2025, edition of The Megyn Kelly Show

MEGYN KELLY (HOST): This is a leftist narrative about Trump and about Charlie, as his supporter. So I mean, there's just no question this guy was buying the leftist narrative about Charlie and, yes, about Donald Trump. And they said he had become more political in recent years. Now how did that happen? What did he do in recent years? He went to college. Guess what college does? It radicalizes young people. I don't know what happened to this particular man, but that is what college does.

You know, we had Bill Ackman on this program talking about what happened to his daughter who went to Harvard and where they turned her into a Marxist socialist communist, which he was still trying to unwind. This is a liberal New York billionaire. That's what Harvard does to your kid.

It's just, look, I don't know what happened to this kid at the university. I'm just saying if we want to talk about circumstantial evidence on radicalization, there's zero for this kid being MAGA or a Republican or in any way in favor of Donald Trump. There's plenty of him hating Donald Trump.

People are like, oh, you know, he was just a gamer. The fact that he wrote these things on the bullets just show he was nothing but a gamer. Yeah, OK, you missed the part where, again, he wrote them on bullets with which he shot Charlie Kirk. Fuck these people and their revisionism, their unwillingness to see what's obvious.

// mma

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Trump billionaire ally blames Biden for Russian invasion that happened under Bush

an 10 24

Billionaire Bill Ackman, a loyal Donald Trump supporter, on Wednesday slammed President Joe Biden for his contribution to Russia's invasion of the country of Georgia.

During an interview with CNBC' Squawk Box, the Chief Executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management declared that the world became "a much, much more dangerous place" under President Joe Biden's administration.

"And the reason for that, in my view, has been the perception — and really the reality — of weakness in the executive branch," Ackman claimed.

Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen replied, "Starting with Afghanistan, I would think."

"Probably begins even before that," the MAGA ally said. "You can look at the acquisition of Georgia, the invasion of Georgia."

Ackman went on to say that the invasion happened during the [ex-President Barack] Obama era.

"But Biden really played a role," the billionaire claimed.

In 2018, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Ricecommemorated the tenth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Georgia in an op-ed published by The Washington Post, She wrote, "Ten years agothis week, during the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Georgia." She also noted, "We in the Bush administration did recognize the looming danger of Russian military action in Georgia."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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neri-oxman-wife-of-plagiarism-critic-bill-ackman-plagiarized-her-dissertation

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12 23 an

america’s prestigious universities play a big role in determining who gets into America’s wealthy elite.

A degree from Harvard, Penn, or M.I.T., to take three examples, is a meal ticket to a lucrative job on Wall Street or a corporate law firm and to the richest and most influential people in the land.

But as America becomes increasingly stratified by wealth, those tickets are easily abused.

Universities that give preference in admissions to the children or grandchildren of major donors serve to widen inequality even further.

Universities that allow major donors to influence what is taught or expressed on campus could be seen to suppress ideas that threaten the wealthy — which could chill freedom of expression and fuel social resentment.

Which brings us to the latest imbroglio.

Last Tuesday, the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and M.I.T. tried to give precise answers to questions from members of Congress about whether their university cultures had encouraged hostility towards Jews — hostility that has surged since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s attack on Gaza in response.

In their opening remarks, all three denied it, and repeatedly condemned antisemitism.

Then Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from New York (and herself a Harvard graduate) asked a yes or no question: would calls for genocide of Jews on campus violate their codes of conduct or harassment policies?

The presidents hedged. “If the speech turns into conduct, yes, it can be harassment,” Penn’s president, M. Elizabeth Magill, a former dean of Stanford Law School, replied in lawyer-like fashion.

“I’m asking if specifically calling for the genocide of Jews — does that constitute bullying or harassment?” Stefanik pressed her point.

“If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment,” said Magill.

“So the answer is yes?”

“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill said.

Faced with the same question, Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, also temporized. “It can be,” she said, “depending on the context.”

The university presidents should have answered unambiguously and unequivocally that calls for genocide of any group are intolerable.

Their failure to do so has fueled a firestorm.

Ross Stevens, a hedge fund manager, said he would withdraw a $100 million gift to Penn. Other wealthy Penn donors called for Magill to resign.

Even prior to the hearing, a campaign had been launched by some of Wall Street’s most powerful figures to oust all three university presidents for failing to adequately condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

The influential board of advisers of Penn’s Wharton School’s, chaired by Marc Rowan of Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, called on alumni to withhold donations to Penn.

The billionaire investor Bill Ackman, Harvard alumnus and head of New York hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, called for the three university presidents to be fired.

The day after their testimony, Magill and Gay issued statements in efforts to contain the damage.

But on Saturday evening, after an emergency meeting of Penn’s board of trustees, Magill resigned under pressure.

Over the weekend, calls from donors for Harvard’s Claudine Gay to resign grew louder, as prominent donors demanded her ouster, too.

I can well understand the anger and frustration of these donors. In their congressional testimony, the university presidents should have been clearer that their institutions do not tolerate calls for genocide. Period.

But to use their power as major donors to force or seek the ouster of these presidents is almost as repugnant as the failures of these presidents to unambiguously condemn calls for genocide. It endangers the autonomy of America’s universities.

Who’s kidding whom? Those of us who have spent our lifetimes teaching in prestigious universities are well aware of the influence of big donors. The major job of today’s university presidents is to solicit money, and their largest targets are typically denizens of Wall Street.

For the same reason, boards of trustees are packed with wealthy alumni, often from the Street, who routinely veto candidates for university presidentships harboring views they find offensive.

But not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression.

As a Jew, I cannot help but worry, too, that the actions of these donors will fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose — based on the perilous stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.

*Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.*

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6 23 judd ymail

every year, vaccines save millions of lives. Polio, which used to cripple and kill thousands of children in the United States, has been eliminated thanks to widespread vaccination. Diphtheria, which used to be the most common cause of childhood death in the United States, isexceedingly rare. Other serious illnesses, including measles, whooping cough, and tetanus, are no longer a pervasive threat. Overall there are more than 25 vaccines that can safely "prevent diseases, protect health throughout the lifespan, and help to prevent and mitigate outbreaks."

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the last two decades of his professional life using discredited, manipulated, and cherry-picked evidence to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Now Kennedy, part of the most famous family in American politics, is running for president.

Kennedy's candidacy — and anti-vaccine propaganda — has attracted vocal support from a small but influential group of very wealthy people. Their support may not make Kennedy's longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination viable. But it could help legitimize Kennedy's lies about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. And the consequences could be lethal.

Last Thursday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who inked an exclusive deal with Spotify for $200 million, hosted Kennedy for a three-hour conversation. Kennedy told Rogan's more than10 million listeners that "vaccines are unavoidably unsafe." Rogan, a comedian and former host of Fear Factor, spent the entire episode validating Kennedy's views. Kennedy was presented as a brave truth-teller, standing up to powerful forces. Anyone who doesn't accept Kennedy's conspiracy theories, according to Rogan, is unable to think for themselves.

Kennedy spent the better part of an hour rehashing an article he wrote in 2005, which falsely claimed that childhood vaccines are linked to autism. The article was so flawed it was ultimately retracted by the outlet that published it, Salon. "[C]ontinued revelations of the flaws and even fraud tainting the science behind the connection make taking down the story the right thing to do," Salon's editor wrote.

In the piece, Kennedy relied extensively on the work of Mark Geier, a doctor whose license to practice medicine was revoked by Maryland in 2011. Geier pushed the vaccine-autism link as a frequent expert witness.He also misrepresented his credentials and developed "a 'protocol' for treating autism that involved injecting children with the drug that is used to chemically castrate sex offenders at a cost of upwards of $70,000 per year."

More broadly, Kennedy alleged a massive, multi-decade coverup by governments, non-profits, and private industry to hide the dangers of "thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative" used in some vaccines. Kennedy quotes Mark Blaxill, a vehement opponent of vaccines, who claims that the harm done by vaccines is "bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen."

Kennedy's "proof" was the Simpsonwood conference, a gathering of experts to discuss the possible links between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Kennedy "relied on the 286-page transcript of the Simpsonwood meeting to corroborate his allegations—and wherever the transcript diverged from the story he wanted to tell, he simply cut and pasted until things came out right."

For example, Kennedy quoted developmental biologist and pediatrician Robert Brent as saying: "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits… This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country.” The implication is Brent was acknowledging the link between thimerosal and autism, and explaining why it should be covered up. But Brent actually said he was concerned that "junk scientist[s]" would misuse data to falsely claim that thimerosal in vaccines is linked to autism at the behest of "plaintiff attorneys."

The link between thimerosal vaccines and autism has been disproven again and again by scientific studies. But even if Kennedy was right (he's not), thimerosal has not been used in vaccines (except certain flu vaccines) since 2001. So the alleged dangers of thimerosal are not a reason to avoid vaccines today.

On the Rogan podcast, Kennedy simply waved away this inconvenient fact and continued to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Kennedy told Rogan that it could be aluminum in vaccines that is causing problems. But an adult typically ingests "7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum per day" through foods, and a typical vaccine has less than half a milligram. Infants will be exposed to far more aluminum through their diet than vaccines. And there is no scientific evidence that aluminum is linked to autism or any of the other health concerns cited by Kennedy. Perhaps that's why Kennedy hedged. “There’s lots of other toxins in the vaccines that, you know, could be responsible,” he said.

Ivermectin inanity

Kennedy also used his appearance on Rogan's podcast to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines are extremely dangerous and that people who take COVID-19 vaccines are significantly more likely to die. The data shows the opposite is true.A comprehensive study by the Commonwealth Fund "estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion."

According to Kennedy, thousands of athletes have died on the playing field as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccines. There is no evidence to support this, and a large Australian study found "no association between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and COVID-19 vaccinations."

Kennedy claimed that ivermectin, which can treat river blindness in humans and is also useful as a horse dewormer, can effectively treat COVID-19. These facts, according to Kennedy, were covered up so that pharmaceutical companies could make money selling vaccines. At one point, Kennedy alleged that Bill Gates purposely funded studies in which people would be given lethal doses of ivermectin to discredit the treatment.

But ivermectin was studied repeatedly as a potential treatment for COVID-19. And it has been found repeatedly to be totally ineffective.

Joe Rogan told Kennedy that he took ivermectin when he contracted COVID-19 and credited it for his quick recovery. But Rogan also received monoclonal antibodies, an FDA-approved treatment for COVID-19 associated with a faster reduction in viral load.

Dogpile the scientist

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and Dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine, tweeted that Rogan's interview with Kennedy was "awful," "absurd," and promoting "nonsense." Hotez has previously appeared as a guest on Rogan's show. Rogan responded by offering Hotez, "$100,000.00 to the charity of your choice if you’re willing to debate [Kennedy] on my show with no time limit."

This, of course, is exactly what the anti-vaccine movement wants. Hotez is a distinguished physician and academic who helped develop a non-commercial COVID-19 vaccine that was administered to "over 100 million people in India and Indonesia." Rogan and others in the anti-vaccine movement want to use the credibility of someone like Hotez to legitimize Kennedy's conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Hotez refused to take the bait and offered to communicate directly with Rogan. "Joe, you have my cell, my email, I’m always willing to speak with you," Hotez said. Rogan rejected the offer. Unless he immediately agreed to "debate" Kennedy, Rogan said it proved Hotez isn't "serious about what you stand for."

Hotez countered by asking Rogan if he was serious about addressing the "fact that 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly perished," including "40,000 in our state of Texas" because "they fell victims to vaccine disinformation."

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and one of the wealthiest men in the world, jumped into the conversation, saying Hotez's refusal to "debate" Kennedy shows that he "hates charity" and is "afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong." Musk "has opposed the COVID-19 vaccine and spent much of the pandemic railing against Anthony Fauci." Musk recently hosted a conversation with Kennedy in a Twitter space, broadcasting Kennedy's views to his 144 million followers.

Musk isn't the only billionaire to back Rogan and Kennedy. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager, said he would add another $150,000 to Rogan's offer to induce Hotez to debate Kennedy. Ackman made $2.6 billion for his hedge fund by betting against the stock market before COVID-19 precipitated a crash. Various other millionaires added more money to the pile, but Hotez wasn't persuaded.

Kennedy is benefiting from a steady stream of elite support to boost his profile and anti-vaccine advocacy. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has formally endorsed Kennedy. Dorsey has avoided discussing Kennedy's views on vaccines specifically but praised Kennedy for having an "edge" and "no fear in exploring topics that are a little bit controversial." David Sacks, an investor and close associate of Elon Musk, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent venture capitalist, hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Kennedy this month.

Do any of Kennedy's elite backers believe he has a real chance to be the next president? It's unclear. But supporting Kennedy has become a trendy way to signal you have a rebellious streak. It's a very dangerous game.

---

EMILY ATKIN

OCT 14, 2022

https://heated.world/p/the-dirty-origins-of-the-anti-esg

no twt [elon]

A new trend is sweeping conservative America. It’s called the anti-ESG movement, or anti-”woke capitalism” movement, and it’s one of the biggest emerging barriers to corporate action on climate change.

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Anti-ESG proponents want to stop corporations from following environmentally and socially conscious investing principles, commonly referred to as Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) principles. They say companies are prioritizing “left-wing” goals over the financial interests of businesses and their employees, and should be prevented by law from doing so.

This movement has gained a massive following in the last six months. Elon Musk supports it, as do billionaire investors Peter Thiel andBill Ackman,who are are backing a new financial firm dedicated to anti-ESG investing.

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‘Woke, Inc.’ Author’s Startup to Take On BlackRock

Backed by Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive will tell CEOs to stay out of politics

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Banning “woke investing” is also one of the biggest recent priorities of Leonard A. Leo, the prominent conservative legal activist who runs one of the “best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics,” according to a New York Times investigation published Wednesday. In the past year, 17 states have proposed or adopted legislation seeking to bar state investments in “woke” companies

[twt FT]

the anti-ESG movement frames itself as a strictly financial enterprise. Its proponents insist it’s not a political movement. They’re simply trying to get politics out of the financial system so people can make the most money as possible.

But the anti-ESG movement is, at its core, a lobbying effort created by climate deniers to make money for fossil fuel companies. It did not originate with financial experts or economists, but with two prominent industry operatives who’ve spent decades spreading disinformation about the human health risks of fossil fuels and cigarettes.

These former coal and tobacco operatives first started their movement to ban socially conscious investing in 2004. Only now, nearly two decades later, have they been able to get mainstream conservative America on board.

The anti-ESG movement is the climate denial movement

Before the anti-ESG movement was the anti-ESG movement, it was the anti-CSR movement, the acronym standing for Corporate Social Responsibility. The two leaders of the anti-CSR movement were Steve Milloy and Tom Borelli.

Milloy is a former coal company executive and paid advocate for Phillip Morris and ExxonMobil. His career focus is developing communication strategies to deny or downplay the risks of tobacco and fossil fuel pollution. He is among the most prominent people “clouding the climate change debate,” according to the:{The Washington Post.}:

Borelli is “one of the best-known of the science corrupters who worked for the tobacco industry,” according to The Center for Media and Democracy. In the 90s, while working for Phillip Morris, he led the tobacco industry’s efforts to team up with other polluting industries—like coal and chemicals—to promote anti-science rhetoric. “The climate denial movement is a direct result of these coalitions,” according to CMD. (He now promotes climate denial).

in 2004, Milloy and Borelli formed a non-profit called the Free Enterprise Education Institute. The non-profit’s purpose, according to its tax forms, was to “educate the public about the American system of free enterprise” by “maintaining a website about its research.”

The website they launched was called CSRwatch.com, and was marketed as a news destination for anyone opposed to “corporate social responsibility.” CSRwatch primarily aggregated news articles attacking corporations that had climate change and other socially conscious policies, like refusing to invest in child labor

[pix screenshot]

one article posted to CSRwatch in 2006, for example, slammed corporations that refuse to invest in overseas sweatshops, saying they deprive children in developing countries of good paying jobs. "They try to shut down so-called sweatshops as though no jobs [are] better than what they consider to be low quality jobs, as though working as a 12-year-old beggar, thief or prostitute is better than working in a garment or shoe factory,” it read.

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The article also slammed pro-indigenous corporate policies. "I would love to meet just one corporate social responsibility activist … who's willing to go native for even one month and live in a state-of-the-art mud hut in malaria-infested rural Africa under the indigenous conditions they extol and perpetuate,"it read.

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CSRWatch was directly funded by the fossil fuel industry. From 2004 to 2005, ExxonMobil gave the Free Enterprise Education Institute $80,000. The non-profit also received grants from a Koch family charity foundation, DonorsTrust, and The Randolph Foundation, all conservative groups with ties to fossil fuels.

The original anti-ESG investing movement was not so great at investing

CSRWatch was not Borelli and Milloy’s only effort to push back against ESG investing in the mid-2000s. They also set up a mutual fund called the The Free Enterprise Action Fund, designed to show that being anti-woke was also good business.

The fund sought to achieve long-term investment returns “while aggressively challenging CEOs who use shareholder assets to advance the liberal political agenda.” But, perhaps because neither Borelli nor Milloy had any experience managing money professionally, the fund didn’t do very well, according to a 2006 Slate piece:

Judging by the early returns, these free-marketers are failing the test of the marketplace. The fund has attracted a paltry $5.2 million in assets as of March 31. Returns have lagged the S&P 500 badly. In its first 10 months in business, the fund returned 2.32 percent while the S&P 500 rose 4.72 percent.

Of course, the fund’s poor performance could also simply have been explained by the fact that it’s bad business to ignore environmental and social risk factors. Indeed, this is why the bulk of the financial and corporate worlds don’t agree with the anti-ESG movement. They know that ESG investing, particularly investing with climate change risk in mind, is not ideological. It’s merely the smartest long-term financial decision.

The anti-ESG movement doesn’t agree with this assessment for one reason, and one reason only: They’re climate deniers. And the fact that they’re climate deniers is not a coincidence. That is what the fossil fuel industry intended.

The new anti-ESG movement: same folks, different face

The original anti-ESG movement eventually appeared to fizzle. CSRwatch.com stopped being updated in late 2007 and the domain expired in 2008. Shortly after, The Free Enterprise Action Fund was merged into a separate mutual fund that had nothing to do with anti-ESG advocacy.

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The Free Enterprise Education Institute was then acquired by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a much larger right-wing think tank funded by some of the similar players, including ExxonMobil. The NCPPR announced that Milloy and Borelli would remain at the head of the project, which would from then on be called the Free Enterprise Project.

At the time, Borelli said the merger would “significantly enhance our ability to educate the public on emerging threats to our free enterprise system.” And though it took about 14 years, it appears Borelli was correct.

The new anti-ESG financial firm backed by Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, Strive Asset Management, is being led byJustin Danhof, the former executive Vice President of the NCPPR. In a recent interview with the Capitol Account newsletter, Danhof explained his qualifications: “I ran a program called the Free Enterprise Project,” he said. “We were really at the beginning of what you would call any sort of pushback against ESG, woke capital — before it was even a term.”

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It may be more sophisticated today, but the anti-ESG movement is the same as it ever was: a political effort to delay climate action led by fossil fuel industry propagandists. It follows the classic playbook of climate disinformation by trying to “both sides” the idea of climate risk. But Witold Henisz, the director of the Wharton School’s ESG program, put it best: “Climate risk is investment risk. There is no credible other side, only an ideological opposition cynically seeking a wedge issue for upcoming political campaigns.”

“Proponents of climate science and more sustainable investing need to plan and execute their counterattack,” he added. “Silence in the face of such an attack is complicity. Which side are you on?”

The usual suspects: Fossil energy lobbyists

The anti-ESG movement focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on stemming the flow of investor dollars to the renewable firms that that are involved in clean energy and related fields.It’s no surprise, then, to find the Heartland Institute front and center in the anti-ESG movement, which it also calls “anti-woke.” The organization is well known for developing media and legislative playbooks in support of the fossil energy and tobacco industries. The organization is apparently applying the same methodology to stem the flow of investment dollars to renewable energy.

Last June, Heartland catalogued its anti-ESG playbook in a long-form article under the title, “Woke Investing Gets Well-Deserved Pushback.”

“The Heartland Institute has written extensively and testified about the dangers of government agencies mandating banks, companies, and portfolio funds adopt and report on Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards,” noted the article’s author, H. Sterling Burnett.

“Heartland has also provided detailed critiques of efforts by a cabal of large, multinational banks and gigantic financial companies to force every business to adopt ESG goals,” Burnett continued.

The use of the word “cabal” is not a one-off. Burnett continues to deploy coded words that evoke the anti-Jewish canard of an all-powerful financial cult that pulls the strings of the global economy.

Editor's note: Be sure to [subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

“The woke, billionaire corporate elites who run these corporations do this by threatening to withdraw banking or financial services or by applying pressure through their control over large amounts of a company’s stock,” he added.

Burnett also emphasized that Heartland can take partial credit for the growing number of states that have proposed or enacted anti-ESG legislation. “In a joint effort with likeminded nonprofit organizations, The Heartland Institute’s government relations professionals have pushed back against this by working with legislators in various states to shape and adopt model legislation blocking use of ESG scoring in deciding whether to offer banking and investment services. These efforts have borne fruit,” he wrote.

The other usual suspects: Trump supporters

It’s also no surprise to find investor, former Facebook board member and political kingmaker Peter Thiel involved in the anti-ESG movement. He was instrumental in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for office. He also publicly backed two candidates for U.S. Senate this year, both of whom deployed anti-ESG rhetoric during their campaigns.

In addition, Thiel has launched a new financial venture that is apparently aimed at providing an outlet for anti-ESG investors.

Reporters Liz Hoffman and Charley Grant picked up that thread for the Wall Street Journal last May in an article titled, “Woke, Inc.’ Author’s Startup to Take On BlackRock” and subtitled, “Backed by Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive will tell CEOs to stay out of politics.”

“An upstart financial firm backed by Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman has a message for American corporations: Focus on making money, not taking stands,” they observed. “Mr. Thiel invested both personally and through his Founders Fund, joined by Palantir Technologies Inc.”

“Vivek Ramaswamy, who made his fortune in pharmaceutical startups before writing a book last year called ‘Woke, Inc.,’ says he has raised $20 million to start a fund manager that would urge companies not to wade into hot-button social or environmental issues,” they added.

The idea seems to be catching on. Last August, reporters Katherine Greifeld and Elaine Chaim of Bloomberg noted that the firm filed for four more equity ETFs. “The filings land just two weeks after the Strive US Energy ETF (ticker DRLL) launched, which has already accumulated nearly$250 million in assets,” they wrote.

The anti-ESG movement embraces Elon Musk and the religious right

Another leading element in the anti-ESG movement that has recently come to light is the nonprofit organization State Financial Officers Foundation. The group reportedly claims that it is not involved in advocating for elected officials. However, its financial “team” is staffed exclusively with Republicans, many of whom hold elected office, according to research by David Armiak of the Center for Media and Democracy. At least four members of the group are elected officials in Texas, West Virginia, Arizona and Kentucky who are known for promoting anti-ESG policies.

Nonpartisan or not, the Foundation has advocated on behalf of the fossil energy industry, as expressed in a public letter to President Joe Biden last April. It has also publicly aligned itself with high-profile personalities and organizations in the anti-ESG movement.

On Tuesday, for example, the organization’s home page featured a tweet from newly minted Twitter owner Elon Musk that read, “ESG is the devil.”The brief message is of a piece with Musk’s earlier anti-ESG pronouncements, as reported by the New York Times.

The day before that, the Foundation's home page highlighted a tweet from the Washington Stand, a publication of the Family Research Council, an evangelical activist group. The tweet linked to an unattributed commentary that described a Foundation conference in November, in which “conservative leaders made it clear that, moving forward, they plan to be woke capital’s worst nightmare,” the Family Research Council wrote.

As with other anti-ESG manifests, the piece leveraged anti-Jewish sentiment by repeatedly focusing attention on the financial firm BlackRock and its Jewish CEO.

Advertisers are already bailing from Twitter on account of Musk’s tolerance for hate speech on his platform. Issues related to his other business ventures may also come into play. Now that the anti-ESG movement has embraced his rhetoric, the likelihood of additional advertisers fleeing from Twitter has grown.

As for the State Financial Officers Foundation, its embrace of Musk’s “free speech” policy should be a red flag to any remaining corporate sponsors and donors that continue to support the organization, and a clear signal that business leaders can no longer count on the safe haven of Republican policy-making to support their interests.

TINA CASEY

Tina writes frequently for TriplePundit and other websites, with a focus on military, government and corporate sustainability, clean tech research and emerging energy technologies. She is a former Deputy Director of Public Affairs of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and author of books and articles on recycling and other conservation themes. She is currently Deputy Director of Public Information for the County of Union, New Jersey. Views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect agency policy.

Who Funds DFER? "Education Reform Now Advocacy" and Its (Hedge) Funders

DFER is actually the more well known PAC arm of Education Reform Now, Inc. (ERN), a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit, and Education Reform Now Advocacy, Inc. (ERNA), a 501(c)(4)social welfare group. Their acronym not only sounds like the word "earn," but also it has the backing of some really huge earners.

DFER co-founder (and founder of the T2 Partners hedge fund) Whitney Tilson explained the hedge funders interest in education noting that “Hedge funds are always looking for ways to turn a small amount of capital into a large amount of capital.”

The Board of Directors for ERN consists almost entirely of Wall Streeters who made their fortunes through financial groups and hedge funds, such as Sessa Capital, Gotham Capital, Covey Capital, Charter Bridge Capital, Maverick Capital, Cubist Systematic Strategies, and Sanford C. Bernstein.

As the New YorkTimesreported: DFER's supporters have included "the founders of funds like Anchorage Capital Partners, with $8 billion under management; Greenlight Capital, with $6.8 billion; and Pershing Square Capital Management, with $5.5 billion."

However, ERN and ERNA do not disclose who its major donors are and how much those big donors give to fund its operations and ambitions.

It is known, though, that FOX's Rupert Murdoch gave at least $1 million to ERN. Murdoch has expressed his desire to get in on education "reforms," stating "When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone...."

The most recent federal tax filings of ERN/ERNA show that it had more than $12 million available to push education reform ($7.4 million for ERN and $5 million for ERNA) in 2013. Its non-profit filings from the most recent major election year, the 2014 mid-terms, or last year are not available.

What is known from the 2013 is filings is that, in that year, ERNA disclosed that it spent $1.7 million in political expenditures, nearly all of which went to DFER. These funds were used for expenditures, like mass mailings or ads supporting particular politicians but that were "independent" and not to be coordinated with the candidates' campaigns.

ERN/ERNA's leader Joe Williams has been paid a for-profit like salary as its executive, with $398,500 in total annual compensation in 2013. He's also listed as "Executive Director Emeritus" for DFER and on DFER's board. Williams stepped down from his staff position at DFER in 2015 and also became a director at the Walton Education Coalition that year. That's Walton as in Walmart's Walton family.

Because non-profits like ERN/ERNA do not have to disclose their major donors to the public, even when ERNA is active in supporting electoral activities the public is left in the dark about which hedge funder is actually helping to fund state and local ads and mailers during the election.

Even though privately held corporations and hedge funders do not have to disclose their donations to operations like ERN/ERNA, a CEO's charitable foundations do have to disclose whom they give grants to.

That's how it is known that the Walton family, of Walmart fame or infamy, has backed such efforts. In 2011, for example, ERN/ERNA received $1.1 million from the Walton Family Foundation. The total amount from all such CEO-controlled foundations given to ERN/ERNA to date is not known.

As Matthew Fleischer noted in the Frying Pan News (reprinted by the Huffington Post)that hedge funder Tilson has followed the Waltons' lead: "in a 2010 documentary, A Right Denied, Tilson suggested that DFER was created because of Walmart patriarch John Walton’s support of vouchers and "school choice.'"

It has been investigative journalists who have helped expose the billionaire network behind ERN/ERNA/DFER, despite the opacity on the surface, as noted by George Joseph in the Nation:

"[A]ccording to Steven Brill in his book Class Warfare, around this time [in 2010] the hedge-fund alliance for education reform really began to take off. That April, for instance, Education Reform Now’s Joe Williams and Bradley Tusk schmoozed over drinks with Paul Tudor Jones II and other hedge-fund billionaires at Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone’s Five Avenue apartment, where they planned a successful campaign to secretly spend millions through a 501(c)(4) political action fund and win the charter cap increase [in New York]. As with Families for Excellent Schools’ mostly secret financing today, Brill notes that Education Reform Now’s donations never became public, and that in May a room full of eager billionaires was able to push the legislature to authorize increased charter-school expansion."

(The Nation's exposé on ERN/ERNA/DFER in New York includes emails and a slide deck about the billionaires and foundations behind such efforts that were leaked to the magazine.)

Despite or perhaps because of this reality, the DFER arm in a state where ads are run merely discloses to the state authority that it received contributions from ERNA, not the hedge funders.

So, the ERN/ERNA/DFER operation is like a shell game when it comes to the public being able to pierce through the layers of non-profits to find the name of a particular billionaire or uber-rich hedge funder whose money is propping up a particular electoral candidate being backed by DFER.

Similarly, DFER in the states has been known to partner with other groups that have similarly murky or occluded funding sources.

Take California and Colorado, for example.

DFER's Gloria Romero Joined with Koch-Connected Groups to Attack Unions

In the last presidential election year, DFER's state leader got heavily involved in pushing a California state proposition that would have undermined the power of workers' voices in elections, Proposition 32.

DFER's California arm was led by Gloria Romero, a former state legislator from Los Angeles, who was termed out from running for re-election after leading the state senate.

Romero failed in her bid to become the state Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2010, and then, like so many other failed politicians, she was welcomed as a leader for DFER.

DFER began filing election disclosure forms in California in 2012. Some of its most high-profile activities under Romero were in partnership with other secretive groups.

Ultimately, it turned out that Romero was not just fronting for the ERN/ERNA/DFER hedge funders but also for non-profits closely tied to the controversial billionaireKoch brothers. And as the Center for Media and Democracy has documented, Charles and David Koch's antipathy toward public schools and unions runs deep and is part of their multi-decade agenda to re-shape America.

To try to win Prop 32, DFER's Romero worked with a group called "Americans for Responsible Leadership" (ARL), which received more than 97% of its $24 million in funding from another group called the "Center for Protect Patient Rights" (CPPR).

As noted by Open Secrets, ARL:

"spent nearly $9.8 million in the 2012 elections, including $3.2 million against President Obama’s re-election bid, according to reports it filed with the Federal Election Commission. The rest was spent supporting Obama’s rival, GOP nominee Mitt Romney, and 20 other Republican candidates, most of whom were running for Senate seats ... ARL also gave $11 million to a group working on a California ballot measure and nearly $1.4 million to organizations fighting two Arizona ballot initiatives," including one on redistricting.

So, a major Republican-backing operation spent millions aiding the objectives of a group with the word "Democrats" in its name to thwart unions? No wonder some in labor created "Democrats in Name Only for Education Reform" or dferdinos.com.

At the time of the election in 2012, the full extent of the connections to the Koch network's CPPR was not known to the public.

As Open Secrets stated, "the state of California ... demanded to know, under state law, who donated the $11 million that ARL sent to the Small Business Action Committee, a group that was fighting a tax-hike initiative and supporting a measure to cut the influence of labor unions. Under order from a state judge ARL eventually revealed that it received the funds from CPPR; CPPR in turn got the money from Americans for Job Security, another dark money group."

As Open Secrets detailed: "The state of California wound up fining ARL and CPPR a total of $1 million and requiring the Small Business Action Committee to disgorge the $11 million to the state."

(The Kochs denied any wrongdoing and were not themselves fined. It is not clear, however, whose funds actually paid the fines; it was paid b certified check. Meanwhile, the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity is now hotly contesting long-standing state requirements that major donors of non-profits that are exempt from paying taxes be disclosed to the state,which AFP is claiming could chill its seven-figure donors.)

Even before that historic fine after the election, however, some in California had traced at least some of the money fueling the fight for Prop 32 to the network of Koch front groups--before the voting started. (During the investigation, the state was able to identify only some of the direct donors and the Kochs have said they did not write a check to fund the proposition fight. But there is zero doubt that the Kochs' Freedom Partners directed $115 million to CPPR in 2011-2012; the Kochs told the press that they did not indirectly support Prop 32. That's how the shell corporations and non-profits operate to allow secret donors to deny any responsibility for how their funds are used. The amount the Kochs gave to their Freedom Partners group remains hidden, but it was their operatives who redirected the funds raised to select non-profits aligned with their agenda in that election cycle.)

DFER's Gloria Romero appeared in ads backing both of theKoch network-backed propositions.

So she was asked by Matthew Fleischer, before the election, "about her political alliance with the Koch brothers and other wealthy supporters of Proposition 32, and she conspicuously avoids bringing up their names."

As he noted, “I have sat in the belly of the beast,” she says. “I have seen the realities of money and its influence.”

Fleischer also reported: "'Money is the mother’s milk of politics,' Gloria Romero tells me on the phone. 'It’s flowing to both sides. Government isn’t about drawing lines. It’s not about saying you’re on that side and you can’t come over.'”

Operatives funded or directly employed by the Kochs have made similar claims in their efforts to destroy clean election law limits on corporate influence and the coordination of election groups funded by dark money tied to corporations or CEOs.

Romero's comments echo the Team Koch mantra.

As Pro Publicanoted, the key Koch operative in that election was Sean Noble:

"Plucked from obscurity by libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, Noble was tasked with distributing a torrent of political money raised by the Koch network, a complex web of nonprofits nicknamed the Kochtopus, into conservative causes in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Noble handed out almost $137 million in 2012 alone-- all of it so-called dark money from unnamed donors--from his perch atop the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a group run out of an Arizona post office box...."

That story also highlighted this telling excerpt: "I must tell you that Sean Noble from your group has been immensely helpful in our efforts,' a California multimillionaire wrote to Charles Koch in October 2012 about Noble's help for Prop 32 in an email to Charles Koch" asking for him personally to write a check for more money. That email surfaced after the election.

In fact, it was not until nearly a year after the 2012 elections that the general public learned that the Koch brothers and their operatives had created a behemoth that injected more than $200 million into the 2012 elections, called the "Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce." CMD detailed the Freedom Partners' shell game here.

Noble's group, CPPR, received money from Freedom Partners and TC4 Trust, which was disclosed in IRS filings made public well after the election was over. (Those Freedom Partners' documents also reveal that TC4 funded "PRDIST," which are the David Koch operations that go by the name "Americans for Prosperity" for the public.)

For those keeping score, that's like at least four layersof Koch-hood: Freedom Partners to TC4 to CPPR to ARL to Prop 32. That proposition--the proposition these very special interests tied to the billionaire Koch brothers and their network of billionaires were underwriting--was actually branded the "Stop Special Interest Money Now" proposition.

And it was DFER's Romero who appeared in ads for Prop 32 that were paid for by the special interest money behind that proposition.

In the meantime, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party asked DFER to stop using the word "Democrats" in its name, and the state Democratic Party passed a similar resolution of condemnation.

Even More Koch Ties

So, to recap, DFER routinely funnels out-of-state hedge fund money into state political fights and, in 2012, the leader of DFER-California was working with another murky group funded by yet another group--one operating out of an Arizona mail drop box--funded by still other groups that were part of the Koch network of big secret money in elections.

To be clear, Romero was not working for the Kochs technically; she was working with the Koch network on the DFER effort that appears to have taken much of her time in 2012.

But that may be a distinction without a difference when it comes to sharing a political agenda--even though Romero and the Kochs failed in their 2012 quest in California.

DFER's California leader, its public face, was the public face of key components of that joint but unsuccessful proposition campaign.

In 2013, Romero left DFER's employ to create the "California Center for Parent Empowerment," named after the bill she gained fame pushing into law: the "Parent Empowerment Act," which is better known as "Parent Trigger."

Romero spearheaded that controversial bill when she was in the state legislature but, as CMD has noted:

* "[T]hat California law was based on a proposal from Ben Austin, a policy consultant for a small non-profit education organization called Green Dot Public Schools, which manages charter schools for the city of Los Angeles."

* "Austin subsequently formed Parent Revolution, which promotes these laws across the country. But this is not your local PTA. Parent Revolution is backed by big money, including receiving funding from the conservative Walton Family Foundation (think Wal-Mart), which has spent over a billion to promote school privatization."

* "The rabid pro-privatization Heartland Institute quickly took up the Parent Trigger idea in 2010. The Heartland version of the bill (PDF) went a step further and gave parents the authority to trigger a school's restructuring regardless of whether it is 'failing' or not."

The Heartland Institute has spent untold sums promoting "education reforms" that undermine public schools in America, though it is more infamous for its extremism in climate change denial--even equating those who recognize that climate change is happening with the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Heartland took the California parent trigger bill to the 2010 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose biggest funder is the Koch fortune in myriad ways. The corporate-backed ALEC adopted the bill as a national model for other states. (The Heartland Institute has also received funding from the Koch family foundations.)

In 2013, Romero began collaborating with the state affiliate of ALEC's sibling group, the State Policy Network (SPN), and also helped it pull the trigger in other communities.

That SPN affiliate, the California Policy Center (CPC), has promoted Romero's help with Parent Trigger. SPN has also touted Romero its publications. Romero has also been a featured speaker for another SPN affiliate, the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon.

SPN has received funding from the Koch family foundations. Although SPN distributes some of the funding it receives to its 60+ state affiliates, it is not known if the CPC has directly received any Koch cash.

Meanwhile, Romero's new group, whose website is parentempowerment.org, was granted non-profit status in 2015, but because it is so new, any tax filings about its revenues and expenses are not public. However, its donors would not be revealed in such filings, so it is not known who is now funding Romero or what she is paying herself for education reform.

And just last year, SPN's CPC--the California Policy Center--announced that Romero had joined it as its "Director of Education Reform," in addition to her work at her own organization. CPC advances the ALEC/SPN agenda and opposes a progressive Democratic agenda in almost every way.

Democrats for Education Reform-California, meanwhile, continues on without Romero, with Steve Barr of Green Dot as board chair.

DFER's Jen Walmer Used Out-of-State Cash for Election Materials Dubbed "Raising Colorado"

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