We’ve covered Mark Zuckerberg’s financing of the administration of the 2020 elections through the Center for Tech and Civic Life before, but our guest today adds a provocative analysis to the evidence that the Facebook chief deserves a thank-you card from President Biden. In a piece originally posted at the Federalist and, as we record on Thursday October 14, the cover story of the New York Post, William Doyle of the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute asserts that “The 2020 election wasn’...
Oct 15, 2021•28 min
The Ford Foundation: While created by a famed family of arch-capitalists, for decades the institution—long, though likely no longer, the largest private foundation in the country—has been the financial backbone of the radical left. And now some are proposing taking radical action to counter its influence; Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio J.D. Vance spitballed on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program: “Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to ...
Oct 11, 2021•26 min
Who are the “Eco-Right,” and what do they stand for? They will tell you that they want to bring a market-based and conservative-minded approach to conservation challenges, but my colleague Hayden Ludwig questions that narrative in a new report for Capital Research Center titled “Rise of the Eco-Right.” Looking into the funding, staffing, and policy positions undergirding the “Eco-Right,” Hayden exposes what he calls “a web of overlapping boards and shared donors—all in service to a destructive a...
Sep 30, 2021•20 min
“Black Lives Matter”: Never has such an uncontroversial statement covered for a more radical political movement. That’s the thesis of "BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution," a new book exposing the radical intellectual undercurrents and leaders of the institutional Black Lives Matter campaign, by Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Mike joins me today to discuss his book. BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution: https://www...
Sep 24, 2021•22 min
“Woke capital”—social liberalism, especially focused on critical race theory and its intellectual children “antiracism” and “equity” carried out by businessmen rather than politicians or traditional nonprofit activists. Much has been written about it, but what does “woke capital” look like from the inside? That’s the subject of "Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam," a new book written by biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has seen the growth of woke capital fro...
Sep 17, 2021•16 min
If you live in Virginia, buckle up—a new wave of absentee-ballot mailers is about to overwhelm mailboxes across the commonwealth, courtesy of the same professional activists who flooded the Old Dominion in 2020. A newly obtained memo reveals correspondence from a pair of left-wing nonprofits in Washington, DC—the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and Center for Voter Information (CVI)—detailing a plan to flood Virginia with 2 million mail-in ballot applications ahead of the November gubernatorial...
Sep 09, 2021•23 min
On his way out the door, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo left one final “present” for liberal ideologues: a parole referral for David Gilbert, serving 75 years to life for his role in the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery that led to the deaths of two police officers and a Brink’s guard. Gilbert was a member of the Weather Underground, a New Left radical extremist group active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Joining me to discuss Gilbert’s likely release, the history, and the c...
Sep 02, 2021•23 min
We’ve covered efforts to ensure that American elections are secure and that it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat, but Congressional Democrats are continuing their efforts to remove security provisions from election law and to give federal bureaucrats control of election administration. And while HR1/S1, legislation to override essentially all state-level election administration regulations, has stalled in the Senate, House Democrats just passed their Plan B: HR 4, the “John Lewis Voting Rights Ad...
Aug 26, 2021•27 min
In an op-ed at National Review, CRC's Research Director Mike Watson raised serious questions about the agenda and ultimate goal of the ostensibly conservative group American Compass, led by Oren Cass, who is promoting a conservative embrace of unions while taking a great deal of money from lefty funders like the Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network. The piece was in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by Cass back in September in which he argued that a reformed version of unioni...
Aug 19, 2021•26 min
We all know the First Amendment must be constantly defended, but many may be unaware of how much that's the case in places that purport to protect free speech and free expression: the university campus. Speech First, a nonprofit dedicated to aggressively standing up for students who fear punitive action if they speak up, has had several quiet wins over the last year as they pursue defending students in court. While the landscape tends to look bleak for free speech, there are groups and goings on...
Aug 12, 2021•22 min
We all want honest, free, and fair elections in which it is easy to vote and hard to cheat. In theory, at least; as state legislatures across the country consider legislation to restore normal legal processes for election administration after the emergency changes made in 2020, the federal Congress is still pondering HR1/S1, legislation to override essentially all state-level election administration regulations. Joining me to discuss where the legislative debates at the federal and state levels ...
Aug 05, 2021•28 min
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have been forced to manage their children’s educations in a more hands-on manner thanks to school closures demanded by teachers unions. One of the consequences has been an increasing awareness of the influence of “critical race theory” in even elementary-level schooling. Joining me to discuss the campaign against critical race theory in education is Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education. • Facebook: https://www.faceboo...
Jul 30, 2021•29 min
CRC's Communications Director Sarah Lee interviews CRC's Research Director Mike Waston on the 4-part series he penned for Capital Research on Social Justice Unionism. Broadly defined, Social Justice Unionism is the embrace of social justice activistism on the part of both public- and private-sector unions even when the activism involved has very little to with the original mandate of labor unions. Mike tries to explain why this happens, what it says about unions usefulness in the modern era, and...
Jul 22, 2021•26 min
In this episode: Since last Sunday, Cubans have publicly demonstrated against the Communist regime that has inflicted tyranny on their homeland for over sixty years. Joining us to discuss the background behind the demonstrations and the prospects for a freer Cuba is John Suarez, the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. To learn more check out: https://www.cubacenter.org/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://w...
Jul 16, 2021•32 min
In this episode: Our regular podcast host, CRC’s Research Director Mike Watson, is on vacation so CRC's Director of Communications and External Relations Sarah Lee is filling in. We are thrilled to welcome a Alleigh Marre to talk about a subject that is everywhere in the news right now and one of great importance to parents and school children. Alleigh Marre leads the Free to Learn Coalition, a group that describes itself as a nonpartisan organization established to support parents, caregivers, ...
Jul 09, 2021•14 min
In this episode: What do pizza toppings, test data, and waiting have to do with becoming Mayor of New York City? Thanks to the city’s new, confusing, and poorly administered “ranked choice voting” system, quite a lot. While New Yorkers voted last week on their party nominees for Mayor, on the Democratic side they still don’t know who won over a week later. Joining us to discuss the car-crash outcome in NYC is Michael Hendrix, director of state and local policy for the Manhattan Institute. Subscr...
Jul 02, 2021•16 min
In this episode: It’s a name worthy of Orwell: The “Committee on Information Disorder,” a project of the posh and well-connected Aspen Institute designed to identify “disinformation” for Big Corporations and Big Government to suppress. A notionally private-sector, woke-progressive Ministry of Truth, as it were. Joining us to discuss this effort to control the political discourse is Chris Bedford, senior editor of The Federalist. Read more here: https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/17/a-whos-who-of-...
Jun 25, 2021•23 min
In this episode: “Big Tech”—the major social media and online communications companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google—FAANG, for short. Especially since Facebook and Twitter banned the then-still-sitting President Donald Trump from their services after the riot at the U.S. Capitol in January, conservatives have expressed increasing alarm at the power of Big Tech to remove voices not in alignment with Current Year liberalism from the internet. Joining us to discuss the history ...
Jun 18, 2021•22 min
In this episode: Our regular podcast host, CRC’s Research Director Mike Watson, joins the show to discuss his latest report on redistricting, a four-part series that lives on the CRC website entitled, “The State of Redistricting 2022.” We take a look at the myths, history, and lies around “gerrymandering.” Read more here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-state-of-redistricting-2022-part-1/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebo...
Jun 11, 2021•22 min
In this episode: Radical environmentalists have a problem: Their policies are unpopular, and even a unified Democratic government aligned with them can only advance so many restrictions on personal choice, industrial activity, and employment opportunities before it provokes public revolt. But they have one weird trick to get around public opposition: The courts. Joining us to discuss the tactics that environmentalists are pursuing to have judges force their policies on the rest of us is Capital ...
Jun 04, 2021•16 min
As pandemic restrictions have begun easing in the states, employers are facing a new problem: labor shortages due to unemployment insurance bonuses that were intended to help people laid off from work during the pandemic. Many people are still collecting that benefit and it has led to a situation where employers are desperate to hire people making the rational financial decision to take a check over finding meaningful work. Joining the InfluenceWatch Podcast today is Megan Rose, a civil society ...
May 28, 2021•15 min
In this episode: When people think “political billionaire,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not the one who usually comes to mind. But after the 2020 elections, maybe he should. The Center for Tech and Civic Life, funded principally to the tune of a reported $350 million by Zuckerberg and his wife through entities the couple controls, provided millions of dollars in grants to counties to support their implementation of mail-in voting and other left-of-center election administration procedures. A...
May 21, 2021•14 min
In this episode: In this Congress, bad ideas don’t die—they get marked up by the Senate Rules Committee. And this week it was the turn of S 1, the Senate companion to HR 1, the Democrats’ federal-election-takeover legislation. Joining us today to discuss the potential consequences of HR1/S1 should they pass is J. Christian Adams, right-leaning elections lawyer extraordinaire. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.faceb...
May 14, 2021•13 min
In this episode: The hard lockdownists and their allies in the Biden administration repeat the mantra as often as a chanting monk: “Follow the science,” invariably before proposing some policy that continues the ongoing tyrannies ostensibly intended to reduce the burden of COVID-19. But what happens when the science conflicts with the permanent lockdowns, as it does over school closures? Then stakeholders get involved, and the science need not be followed. That is exactly what happened when the ...
May 06, 2021•17 min
In this episode: CRC’s Communications and External Relations Director Sarah Lee interviews National Association of Scholars Senior Research Fellow Rachelle Peterson about her work related to the Confucius Institutes, ostensible Chinese cultural education centers that function as propaganda arms of the Chinese Communist Party. NAS has been following the Confucius Institutes for years, observing how their funding by organizations and individuals tied to the CCP, and how they’re possibly beginning ...
Apr 29, 2021•19 min
In this episode: Federal law prohibits foreign nationals, except holders of permanent resident (or “green card”) status, from making political contributions in federal elections. But foreign billionaires are free to spend whatever they like on news organizations and advocacy groups that otherwise influence American public policy, and that brings us to Swiss billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss, the major environmentalist donor who just dropped a bid to buy the Chicago Tribune and turn the paper into a clo...
Apr 23, 2021•17 min
In this episode: We have covered extensively the prolonged and unprecedented closures of schools ostensibly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continue to see teachers unions insist, even when their members receive vaccination priority or when school districts conduct extensively disruptive “pandemic theater” like closing for deep cleaning that even the teachers-union, er, “stakeholder” compromised CDC has concluded is unnecessary, that in-person schooling is “unsafe,” without evidence. Pare...
Apr 16, 2021•25 min
In this episode: Last week, Major League Baseball announced it would move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of Georgia election-administration legislation that would make the state’s voter access more liberal than the pre-COVID status quo; in the eyes of Democratic activist and former gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams—who, presaging the actions of another prominent Georgia election-loser of a different political party, never formally conceded the legitimacy of her defeat to ...
Apr 09, 2021•19 min
In this episode: We’ve discussed H.R. 1 before, see episode 161 with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshal, and it is important enough to discuss it again. Joining us today is Capital Research Center president Scott Walter to discuss donor disclosure and his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://ww...
Apr 05, 2021•20 min
In this episode: It’s a tale so old it’s a cliché: The left-wing liberal Hollywood glitterati. But even the “normal” levels of bat-guano leftism from the hills above Los Angeles isn’t enough for some people, so at least one liberal billionaire built his own movie studio to make Hollywood even more of a left-wing propaganda outlet. Joining us to tell the story of Participant Media, that billionaire, and the push to make Hollywood even more of a den of left-wing champagne socialist hypocrites is C...
Mar 26, 2021•20 min
