influencewatch CRC

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YIKES CRIKEY ITS CRC:

michael watson crc soros reid hoffman splc ~ unions....

why would they out RWI unless there's no penalty/downside and it upside bonus is how to find $?!

IT'S BOASTING ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS?

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation

Finances

In its 2019 annual report Heritage claimed to have more than 500,000 individual donors to either the Heritage Foundation or Heritage Action. [159] Additional information regarding its financing is available from federal tax forms submitted by the Heritage Foundation and many of its foundation donors.

2018 FINANCES

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sw 9 22

news and Controversies

CRC Among Several Conservative Nonprofits Funding Climate Science Disinformation Ads on Facebook

In October 2020, a report found that 51 Facebook ads questioning the credibility of climate science had been viewed over 8 million times in the first six months of 2020, despite the social media website's promise to prohibit ads debunked by third-party fact-checking organizations.^[5] Nine right-wing nonprofits, includingCapital Research Center, Clear Energy Alliance, Competitive Enterprise Institute, CO2 Coalition, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Prager University, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Turning Point USA, and Washington Policy Center, collectively spent $42,000 funding these advertisements.^[5]

Criticism of Former Black Lives Matter Fiscal Sponsor Thousand Currents's "Domestic Terrorist" Board Member

In June 2020, a Capital Research Center piece by President Scott Walter criticized charity Thousand Currents for having Susan Rosenberg on its board.^[6] Walter shared this criticism on prominent conservative radio and television programs, characterizing Rosenberg as "a convicted domestic terrorist" and discussing the connection between Thousand Currents and Black Lives Matter.^[7][8]

Thousand Currents served as the fiscal sponsor of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Project from 2016-2020,^[9] when the Tides Foundation assumed the role.^[10]

Rosenberg was a member of Thousand Current's board as early as 2014 according to tax filings^[11] and was the board's Vice Chairman in 2020 according the charity website's Board of Directors page.^[12] The Board of Directors page is no longer available on the charity's website.^[13] CRC claims the page was deleted within hours of the publication of Walter's story.^[6]

Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, which was responsible for a "string of violent and spectacular operations from 1979 to 1985: armed robberies that led to the murder of police officers and security guards, audacious prison breakouts and a bombing campaign that in addition to the U.S. Capitol targeted government buildings in Washington and New York."^[14] She was arrested in 1984 on several charges, including possession of unregistered explosives and firearms, and sentenced to 58 years in prison.^[14][15] Her sentence was commuted by Bill Clinton in 2001.^[14][15]

Fact-checker Snopes ruled that Rosenberg was an active member of a revolutionary left-wing organization which engaged in violent illegal activities but disputed her characterization as a "domestic terrorist", saying, "In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of 'terrorism', it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned— possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives— should be described as acts of 'domestic terrorism'".^[15]

"Climate Dollars" Section of CRC Website Disputes Robert Brulle Study and Related Media Coverage

Drexel University sociologist Robert J. Brulle studied the 2003-2010 funding of climate change denial groups, finding that 91 organizations had "an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support."^[16] In an interview, Brulle named the Koch Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Sierra Foundation as leading funders during the studied time period.^[17] Brulle's study claims "there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM [climate change counter-movement] funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies".^[16] Brulle said in an interview that climate denial funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund "started out very low, 3 percent in 2003, and by 2009, [accounted for] about one-quarter of the funding of the climate countermovement..."^[17]

Capital Research Center's "Climate Dollars" study criticizes Brulle's study and related media reporting. CRC used the Guardian article originally entitled, "Conservative groups spend $1bn a year to fight action on climate change"^[18] as an example of a news story mischaracterizing the findings of Brulle's study. CRC argues Brulle's study measured income rather than spending and did not determine how much of groups' spending went towards climate change denial in comparison to other political projects.^[19] CRC's study additionally compares the funding of climate skeptic groups to that of environmental advocacy groups, claiming that "In 2010, environmentalist groups’ income was $3.7 billion vs. $1.5 billion for skeptical groups. In 2014, environmentalists outpaced skeptical groups by $4.6 billion to $1.7 billion."^[20]

CRC Launches Copy of CMD's Sourcewatch

In December 2017, CRC launched Influence Watch, a version of Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch focused on the political left-wing.^[21]

:{Influence Watch received $125,000 in support from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, representing over a quarter of the project's budget. Influence Watch is a "signature project" of CRC's president Scott Walker, who worked for Rick Berman's astroturf attack group Berman & Co:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:.:{.}:^[21]

As described in Bradley's grant proposal, "The website will be constructed in partnership with Berman and Company (where Walter worked briefly as director of development), and CRC is collaborating with the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Instituteto make use of their data as it builds the new website’s profile list."^[21]

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.

Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.

An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.

Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.

Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. Video of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.

Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Agenda Focused on Election Legislation

Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.

By the time ALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.

The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.

Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.

Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.

Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust and has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.

Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.

Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Institute led another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”

Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.

Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrityrecently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.

Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”

Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.

Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazine reported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.

All three are active in the Republican Secretaries of State Committee (RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.

The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.

ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation

ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.

Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”

As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.

Training Sessions on “the Left”

Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress....Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.president of the Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation... ;inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.

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Welcome to CRC’s work-in-progress, InfluenceWatch.

Capital Research Center conceived of this project after identifying a need for more fact-based, accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues. Many so-called “watchdog” groups are instead opponents. Armed with 30-years of research and data on advocacy organizations, foundations and donors, CRC also tapped in to a universe of contributors to help build the individual and organizational profiles that will populate the website.

CRC has a perspective on the public policy process as well, but this resource is more important than that. We’re seeking the information to speak for itself—information that frequently is not cited in reports about these individuals and organizations.

InfluenceWatch strives to be comprehensive, and profiles will be frequently updated and written in a manner that’s accurate and measured. Over time, InfluenceWatch will bring unprecedented transparency to the funding, motives, and interconnections of the entities profiled.

The InfluenceWatch team will constantly be editing to improve facts, add new connections, provide more information, improve sources, and otherwise strengthen the value of all of the information on the website.

https://www.influencewatch.org/person/abigail-disney/

Antifa

Antifa–short for “anti-fascist” or “Anti-Fascist action”–is a left-wing extremist movement that violently opposes groups it considers “fascist,” including democratic, center-right conservatives.[1][2][3][4] Antifa lacks a known organizational structure[5] or an official leader or headquarters, though individual groups in certain states reportedly

MOVEMENT

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a movement ostensibly seeking to reform police conduct especially as it involves use of force against African-American suspects and civilians. The movement has been criticized for appearing to tolerate violent demonstrations in its name,[76] for stoking racial tensions, [77] and for

MOVEMENT

Black Lives Matter of Greater New York

For the national movement, see Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter of Greater New York is a direct-action protest organization that claims to support the liberation of the black community from racist oppression. The organization is not affiliated with the official Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and instead

MOVEMENT

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (better known by its acronym, BDS) is an international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel as the expression of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination by isolating the country economically through consumer boycotts, business and government withdrawal of investment, and legal sanctions. Critics allege

MOVEMENT

Fight for $15 (Minimum Wage)

The “Fight for $15” is a corporate campaign principally orchestrated and funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which seeks to unionize the quick-service franchise restaurant industry and raise the federal minimum wage by more than double to $15 per hour, using the slogan “$15 and a union.”

MOVEMENT

Green New Deal (GND)

The Green New Deal (GND) refers to a U.S. House of Representatives resolution and various legislative proposals supported by radical environmentalist groups. While details of the “Deal” are unclear and frequently change, an attempt to estimate the cost of the plan that critics call a “radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire

MOVEMENT

Medicare-for-All

The Medicare-for-All (sometimes styled “Medicare for All”) movement is a far-left policy agenda to enact legislation expanding the federal Medicare program to replace existing healthcare coverage in the United States with a government-controlled system. Various versions of a Medicare-for-All bill have been proposed by various left-wing groups and individuals, including the Democratic

MOVEMENT

People’s Climate Marches

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see anno list in michael watson 10 25

Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he previously worked for a Washington, D.C. public relations firm.

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