This week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) announced a special session of the legislature to consider various proposals related to public safety. But unusually for a reliably conservative and Republican state—Lee won 65 percent of the vote in his 2022 election campaign and both chambers of the state legislature are supermajority Republican—the session will consider gun control measures, especially so-called “red flag” laws. Joining me to discuss what’s going on in Tennessee and the gun control m...
Aug 11, 2023•25 min•Ep. 281
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks schooling and school reform itself are due for a rethink. In his brief (less than 150 pages, excluding endnotes and acknowledgements) The Great School Rethink , Hess lays out his view on a new way to address the problems of American education, all informed by decades in the education policy field. Hess joins us today to discuss his Great School Rethink . Links: The Great School Rethink A Much Needed...
Aug 04, 2023•29 min•Ep. 280
We’re trying something new for this week: A round-up of stories and discussions not long enough by themselves to carry a podcast, all put together. Joining me to discuss solar panels and China, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s spousal hypocrisy, the burgeoning scandal around COVID origins, and ESG investing’s effects on the energy sector is my colleague Ken Braun. Links: Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims The Sheldon Whitehouse Ethics Mirror Journalists should be ske...
Jul 28, 2023•29 min•Ep. 279
“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” That was the eyebrow-raising statement Vice President Kamala Harris made to a Baltimore audience last week; while the Biden White House amended the transcript to indicate she intended to say “reduce pollution,” the environmentalist movement has more than its fair share of associations with those who would “reduce population.” Joining me to discuss Harris...
Jul 21, 2023•34 min•Ep. 278
As bad and left-wing as teachers unions can be, for some union activists and leftist agitators the normal level of leftism just isn’t enough. For that reason, the Democratic Socialists of America, the nation’s most prominent far-left political group, has pitched a pamphlet encouraging its members to become teachers and partnered with teachers unions and teachers-union-aligned politicians. What does this mean for your children’s schools? Joining us to discuss that and related questions is Rhyen S...
Jul 14, 2023•34 min•Ep. 277
Normally, when the government is sued the public expects the government to defend itself. But what if the government doesn’t defend itself, because it wants the same policy ends as the activists suing it? Then you get “sue-and-settle,” a practice that U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican of Iowa) says “is used by federal agencies and like-minded special interest groups to impose new and burdensome regulations on businesses and communities without sufficient public notice or participation.” Jo...
Jun 30, 2023•24 min•Ep. 276
Over the past few years, conservatives have begun to push back against the powerful “environmental, social, and corporate governance” or ESG investing movement. Helping lead that charge has been today’s guest, Will Hild of Consumers’ Research joining me with my colleague Robert Stilson. Links: About BlackRock Bank of UnAmerica Yes, America, There Is a War on Cars The Proxy Preview: ESG in 2023 Follow us on our Socials: Twitter: @capitalresearch Instagram: @capitalresearchcenter Facebook: www.fac...
Jun 23, 2023•27 min•Ep. 275
George Soros, the famous liberal billionaire investor-philanthropist, is over 90 years old, which would motivate anyone in his position to think about his succession. This week, the Wall Street Journal profiled the heir apparent: Soros’s son Alexander, who claims to be even “more political” than his father. Joining me to discuss Alex Soros and the future of the Soros family advocacy-philanthropic empire are my colleagues Sarah Lee and Parker Thayer. Links: Influence Watch - Alexander Soros Influ...
Jun 16, 2023•28 min•Ep. 274
The private automobile defined post-World War II America, liberating the masses from the regimentation of railroad schedules and the limitations of foot transportation. But the left has never liked the motorcar, or at least the social changes it brought. It liberated middle-class Americans from core-city governments by expanding the suburbs, helped turn renters into homeowners, and lessened public dependence on unionized government workers in city mass-transit systems. And so it has always been ...
Jun 09, 2023•24 min•Ep. 273
A new union-curious faction of conservatism is growing in the run-up to the 2024 election. Leading the charge is a group of otherwise solidly conservative legislators (you’ll recognize the names) and policy wonks who have the ear of venerable conservative think tanks (you’ll recognize these names, too) who insist that if conservative candidates are going to win, they must reimagine 75 years of union distrust and take seriously the idea that the right has become the party of the working man. And ...
Jun 02, 2023•39 min•Ep. 272
If I could provide just one piece of free advice in public advocacy, it’s this: Don’t openly say you messed up on an on-record call with a reporter—you might as well be bleeding in a tank full of piranhas. But the principal officer of Fix the Court, a liberal organization spun out of the Arabella Advisors “dark money” empire advancing “transparency” changes to the Supreme Court as part of a liberal full-court press towards “packing” the court with additional left-wing rubber-stamp votes, did jus...
May 26, 2023•21 min•Ep. 271
This week, Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham issued the final report on his investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, better known as the “Russia collusion investigation” targeting the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Joining us to discuss the broader “Russiagate” scandal and the Durham Report is Ken Braun, who wrote InfluenceWatch’s extensive profile on the unsubstantiated allegations of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian government entities and the checker...
May 19, 2023•32 min•Ep. 270
Title 42, an emergency policy allowing U.S. authorities to send border-crossers back whence they came (usually Mexico) on public-health grounds, is ending with the COVID-19 public health emergency. And with the Biden administration extremely lackadaisical , to put it mildly, in its approach to general immigration law enforcement, what does the end of Title 42 portend at the US-Mexico border? Joining us today to discuss the end of Title 42 and her work investigating the role of nonprofit organiza...
May 12, 2023•27 min•Ep. 265
I’m Sarah Lee, and this is the Influence Watch podcast. With news last month that Visa and Mastercard had paused a plan to track gun purchases, and last year’s SCOTUS decision that struck down a New York law that put restrictions on concealed firearms used for self-defense, conservatives seem to be winning on the gun issue. In fact, more women and minorities – and even progressives – are buying guns for self-defense. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that during the COVID pandemic, gun sa...
May 03, 2023•28 min•Ep. 268
I’m Sarah Lee, and this is the Influence Watch podcast. Yesterday, three years after the COVID pandemic lockdowns began, American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten, who many feel was the public face of extended school lockdowns, testified in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Weingarten, who had spent most of her time during the pandemic loudly decrying attempts to reopen schools – calling plans from the last administration to reopen in late...
Apr 28, 2023•25 min•Ep. 267
If the “ESG”—environmental, social, and governance—movement had a guiding text, it would the Proxy Preview. Put out by the corporate social responsibility investing nonprofit As You Sow, the Proxy Preview details all the ESG “shareholder resolutions” that activist shareholders, government worker and labor union pension funds, and left-of-center nonprofits want American businesses to adopt. Joining us to discuss the Proxy Preview and the organizations behind it is our colleague, Capital Research ...
Apr 21, 2023•27 min•Ep. 266
The Athenai Institute is a college student-led organization that seeks to limit the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on U.S. college campuses. Since their inception in 2020, they have worked to help young people understand not only the often-underreported billion dollar financial relationship between the U.S. academic sector and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but how the CCP exports their surveillance state techniques -- through apps like the infamous TikTok -- that serve to both dow...
Apr 14, 2023•32 min
National Public Radio is adamant: Nobody is going to make you eat the bugs. In fact, NPR says that believing governments and environmentalist activists want to make you eat the bugs is a conspiracy theory! Oh, and if you don’t want to eat the bugs, you’re little different than Europeans who would not eat indigenous American foods during the period of colonization. But is that really the case? Do major advocacy groups like the World Economic Forum and the broader environmentalist movement in fact...
Apr 07, 2023•31 min
This week, a spree shooter killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee; our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the others affected. Now, even as they have campaigned to take away gun rights in response to similar spree shootings, left-wing interest groups have pushed to remove school resource officers—cops who work directly with the school community—from public schools. Joining me to discuss this anti-police campaign is CRC Senior Fellow Kali Fonta...
Mar 31, 2023•23 min
What connects the disruptive protests against a conservative judge’s speech to Stanford Law and the arrests of over two dozen demonstrators outside Atlanta? Both involved people aligned with the National Lawyers Guild, a radical-left association of attorneys, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers. Joining me to discuss the NLG is our colleague Robert Stilson, who has written and researched extensively on the history of the Guild. Links: https://capitalresearch.org/article/national-l...
Mar 24, 2023•25 min
To readers of the Capital Research Center or InfluenceWatch, none of the findings reported by New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz and stay-at-home mother, children’s book editor, and political commentator Bethany Mandel in their book Stolen Youth: How Radicals are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation will be that surprising; capture of institutions ranging from school boards to the American Academy of Pediatrics by left-of-center interests will be familiar. But the details and p...
Mar 17, 2023•22 min
In late 2021, following a class action suit in which the Supreme Court decided some college athletes should be allowed to earn money off their image and likeness, a Biden administration lawyer with the National Labor Relations Board named Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo clarifying that some college athletes could now be considered employees of state universities.This memo led to breathless articles from well-known, hard left outlets like In These Times arguing that employees of the state designat...
Mar 10, 2023•34 min
Thirty years ago, Al Gore took office as Vice President of the United States. Over the intervening period, he has lost a campaign for President and reinvented himself as the Nobel Peace Laureate-branded conscience of the climate movement. But years removed from his film An Inconvenient Truth and with countries like Germany following his environmentalist policy prescriptions, has Gore’s vision borne out? Joining me to assess are my colleagues Ken Braun and Parker Thayer. Links: Al Gore's 30 Years...
Mar 03, 2023•31 min
Are America and broader Western Civilization in crisis? Today’s guest, author Spencer Klavan, says yes, and he has written How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises to outline the problems facing the West and the philosophical resources that its defenders have to fall back on in its defense. Links: Making Meta Mandatory: https://capitalresearch.org/article/making-meta-mandatory/ How to Save the West: https://www.regnery.com/9781684513451/how-to-save-the-west/ Federalist Radio Hour...
Feb 24, 2023•24 min
We’re doing something a little different this week: We are joined by Rusty Brown of the Freedom Foundation for a bit of government-worker union wonkery. Brown and his colleagues have been researching certain financial products that the National Education Association markets to its members, and they have many questions about how it all works and whether members are being taken for a ride. Links: Fighting for Workers' Rights: https://www.freedomfoundation.com/ Influence Watch: National Education A...
Feb 17, 2023•28 min
The recent Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that curtailed a state's ability to infringe on Americans' right to carry publicly for their own self defense has brought the 2nd Amendment fight back to the headlines as defenders celebrate and gun control activists plan to counter the ruling. Larry Correia, a firearms expert and successful novelist, chose this time to write a nonfiction book called "In Defense of the Second Amendment," to both explain why winn...
Feb 10, 2023•39 min
Equal treatment under the law, regardless of race: One would think that all could agree on that principle, but in states and localities across the country—even in Republican-controlled states—that principle is giving way to programs that restrict eligibility based on skin color. Joining my colleague Sarah Lee and I to discuss these programs and how to challenge them legally is Glenn Roper, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. Links: https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/3778095-are-...
Feb 03, 2023•24 min
In 2022, Arizona passed one of the most comprehensive school-choice programs in the nation. But later that year, the state elected Katie Hobbs a governor who is backed by the teachers’ unions, and she has targeted that program for elimination, even as other states like Iowa and Texas consider similar expansions to school choice programs. Joining my colleague Hayden Ludwig and I to discuss Arizona’s proposed retreat as other states advance school choice is Jason Bedrick, research fellow in the Ce...
Jan 27, 2023•28 min
It is well known that George Soros and his Open Society Foundations are major funders of left-wing advocacy, but a new report from Media Research Center shines the light on one facet of that advocacy. According to MRC’s research, Soros and his associated philanthropies have funded 253 organizations involved in activist media worldwide. Joining me and my colleague Sarah Lee to discuss Soros’s funding of left-wing media, the broader universe of foundation-funded journalism, and what it all means i...
Jan 20, 2023•29 min
If you believe Axios and the Washington Post, this is just the latest GOP and conservative culture war: A ban on gas stoves proposed by the Biden administration-controlled Consumer Product Safety Commission. But like so many things that the media tells us aren’t happening, until they are, and then you’re a bigot for opposing them, the Left is coming for gas stoves—and all gas appliances, if not convenience itself. Joining me to discuss the proposed ban on gas stoves, the publishers of the shoddy...
Jan 13, 2023•32 min
