The Wall Street Journal called it the “sleeper issue” of the 2024 election—“progressive transgender coercion.” But our guest today argues that it wasn’t the “sleeper issue”—it was the central issue. Now that the election is behind us, May Mailman, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, joins us to discuss how the left-wing push on transgender issues has drawn public blowback. Links: How Radical Gender Ideology Became The Central Issue Of 2024 Election Transgender Sports Is a 2024 Sleepe...
Nov 15, 2024•25 min•Ep. 341
As the nation awaits the final results in a few dozen House races, the subject of gerrymandering has once again reared its head. This little understood – and often misunderstood – process of drawing congressional maps has been a subject of discussion in state legislatures and activist enclaves since the practice began in the early 1800s. Both right and left routinely accuse each other of manipulating the process even while both sides openly try to make it work in their interest. Now, as the Supr...
Nov 08, 2024•35 min•Ep. 340
As political parties, candidates, and the increasingly relevant party-aligned but technically independent activist groups that have come to dominate the post-McCain-Feingold world work to draw Americans out to the polls, new innovations have raised the hackles of observers and left citizens asking, “Can they actually do that?” Joining us to make sense of some of the more prominent innovations is Brad Smith, former Chair of the Federal Election Commission, professor of law at Ohio’s Capital Unive...
Nov 01, 2024•24 min•Ep. 339
Will the 2024 election be administered more effectively and more fairly than the 2020 election? There’s reason to believe in many states that it might be, and advocates have made election integrity—making it easy for citizens to vote and hard for politicians to cheat—a key focus of their efforts. Joining us to discuss efforts to protect election integrity in the upcoming and in future elections is Fred Lucas, a reporter for the Daily Signal. Links: Election Integrity Wins: SAVE Act Election Inte...
Oct 18, 2024•29 min•Ep. 338
This week marked the first anniversary of the October 7th, 2023 attacks against Israel by Iranian-backed terrorist groups, most prominently Hamas. Unfortunately, in addition to solemn remembrance, the anniversary was marked by more demonstrations by the activists some might call Hamas-glampers who have come to support irredentist Palestinian nationalism. Our colleague Ryan Mauro, an expert on political extremism, has released a report detailing the pro-terrorist connections and allegiances of ov...
Oct 11, 2024•36 min•Ep. 335
As the country moves through a contentious election season, where the state of the economy and worries over inflation have been a major talking point, a new economic hazard has appeared on the horizon threatening to hammer the American consumer just as Hurricane Helene threatened – and then did – hammer the Southeast: the International Longshoreman Association, a union of dockworkers who manage the transport, loading, unloading, and all other things associated with shipping containers at the nat...
Oct 04, 2024•24 min•Ep. 336
Anybody who has scoffed at the proliferation of t-shirts bearing the image of Che Guevara, the famous associate of Fidel Castro who among other things oversaw purges of political opponents following Castro’s seizure of power, on college campuses knows that sectors of “elite” American society have an unhealthy appreciation for the repressive Communist dictatorship that has ruled Cuba since 1959. But for the subjects of today’s program, the Venceremos Brigades, backed by infrastructure support fro...
Sep 27, 2024•27 min•Ep. 335
Immigration policy is an absolute mess—such a mess, that it can be hard for non-specialists to know even what is going on. And that’s where I for one sit regarding the so-called “CHNV parole” program, a Biden administration initiative to admit half a million or so people from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua on so-called “parole authority” to temporary informal legal status in the United States. Is this legal? Are there appropriate security protections? Which groups support this program? Wh...
Sep 20, 2024•28 min•Ep. 334
We’ve covered “megaphone philanthropy”—the emphasis some left-wing activist groups and their multi-million or even billion-dollar funders place on street-protest imagery, often featuring people yelling through bullhorns—and the Ford Foundation, one of the Left’s multiple billion-dollar funders. Our colleague Ken Braun joins us today to link them, as he has just concluded a deep investigation of the Ford Foundation’s grantmaking. Links: Hoovering Up Henry Money: Free Money Versus Free Enterprise ...
Sep 13, 2024•27 min•Ep. 333
The Internal Revenue Service rule regarding charities in voter registration is explicit: “voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.” Now questions are being raised about whether the Voter Participation Center, a charitable organization that is part of the left...
Sep 06, 2024•28 min•Ep. 332
BlackRock, Inc., a multinational investment company and one of the world’s largest asset managers with a $10 trillion portfolio, has been deeply involved in pushing the politically aligned environmental, social, and governance – or ESG – agenda for the last several years. Now secretaries of state in Mississippi and Indiana have hit the company with summary cease-and-desist orders accusing them of fraud for making “false and misleading statements” to investors related to their ESG push. Joining u...
Aug 30, 2024•14 min•Ep. 331
Protesting, always a feature of the 1 st Amendment right to free speech in America, has become quite the fashion lately among the American left, possibly even more than it was during the height of the anti-war protests of the 1960s.But these new protests – from enflamed government buildings to tent cities on campus, to blocked traffic on major streets, to terrorist flag-waving congregations – seem to be different somehow. Less about engaging a right to speak freely and more about shutting down d...
Aug 23, 2024•25 min•Ep. 330
Hollywood and the entertainment industry are leftist; it has been since before actual Communists tried to infiltrate it in the 1930s and 1940s. But if you’ve noticed that entertainment has shifted from merely having a liberal worldview to being indistinguishable from Big Philanthropy-funded leftist agitprop, that might be because a big proportion of it is Big Philanthropy-funded leftist agitprop. Joining me to discuss the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program are my colleague Robert Stilson and Th...
Aug 09, 2024•21 min•Ep. 329
Left-wingers have been losing at the Supreme Court in recent years thanks to the intellectual success of the conservative legal movement, audacity in Republican management of judicial confirmations, and the aid of the Fates. But progressives are not taking these setbacks lying down; the hot new advocacy cause, led by the classically Everything Leftism-branded Arabella Advisors spinoff Demand Justice, is “court reform,” a euphemism for rigging judicial results by manipulating the composition of t...
Aug 02, 2024•21 min•Ep. 325
Environmental, social, and governance or ESG: What is it, what does it mean for the public? Our guest today, Paul Mueller of the American Institute for Economic Research, argues that ESG strategies “undermine freedom, political self-determination, and economic prosperity.” He joins us to explain how and why. Links: The Threats Posed by Environmental, Social, and Governance Policies ESG Activism 20 Years of ESG Activism The Religiosity of ESG Activists Through the Prism of Amazon Shareholder Meet...
Jul 26, 2024•29 min•Ep. 323
There’s an ongoing policy war being waged between those who favor a weather dependent wind and solar approach to energy consumption and those who look to nuclear power and efficient electrical grids as the answer to future energy needs. And the dividing line between the two isn’t as easy to determine along ideological lines as people might think. While left-leaning charitable organizations and activists do currently fund a push toward the weather-dependent approach, there are some outliers. And ...
Jul 19, 2024•24 min•Ep. 326
How did universities become dens of sympathy for ideologies and factions implacably opposed to America and her allies, most recently demonstrated by the “Hamas glamper” protests at various elite campuses? Many have argued that funding of American universities by rival foreign governments and allies of America’s enemies, perhaps most prominently the People’s Republic of China and the State of Qatar, helped create the situation in which higher education now finds itself, and the House of Represent...
Jul 12, 2024•22 min•Ep. 325
I’m Sarah Lee and this is the Influence Watch podcast. Joining me today is my colleague Parker Thayer because sitting in the hot seat is our regular host Mike Watson, and we’re going to be grilling him on a 5 part series he wrote on the American elite, about which there has been much discussion over the last several years. They are a semi-mythical class made up of an American socio-political creature who, depending on your perspective, either needs to be heavily taxed to pay their fair share or ...
Jul 05, 2024•30 min•Ep. 324
Is it, or at least should it be , charitable to fund political-advocacy protest over controversial sociopolitical issues? Our colleague Robert Stilson calls it “megaphone philanthropy,” and perhaps the prototypical practitioner of “megaphone philanthropy” is the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the $800 million funder of some of the most radical activists within American politics’ Overton Window. Robert joins us to discuss Marguerite Casey Foundation and its “megaphone philanthropy.” Links: Megaphon...
Jun 28, 2024•25 min•Ep. 320
NewsGuard: It’s a teachers-union approved tool purporting to rate information sources on how “nutritious” to one’s information diet they are, but the teachers’ union seal of approval should lead readers to question just what the NewsGuard “Nutrition Label” is actually rating. Joining us to discuss NewsGuard and its links to the left is Illinois-based conservative activist John Tillman. Links: NewsGuard primes children in public schools for life of leftist activism NewsGuard and Uncle Sam: The Nu...
Jun 21, 2024•23 min•Ep. 318
You’ve heard of Mike Bloomberg; those longer in years might remember Tom Steyer; deep readers of Capital Research Center might remember Fred Stanback; the billionaire environmentalist donor is a repeating figure. But you’ve probably not heard of C. Frederick Taylor, a reclusive California billionaire who drives millions to the environmentalist movement. Joining us to discuss Taylor, his Sequoia Climate Foundation, and the effect he’s having on environmental policy is our Capital Research colleag...
Jun 14, 2024•23 min•Ep. 321
The Freedom of Information Act was supposed to ensure public access to federal government documents, including written communications by senior officials. But the law has been wantonly circumvented; perhaps most notably by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “homebrew” email server, but more recently it has come to light that aides of former National Institutes of Health official and de facto COVID lockdown czar Anthony Fauci openly wrote about their FOIA circumvention. Joining us to dis...
Jun 07, 2024•21 min•Ep. 320
Note: This episode contains discussions of subjects that may not be suitable for children. Parental discretion is advised. Everybody’s doing it—sex education. And as American sexual mores have grown more permissive, the organizational institutions devising sex education curriculums have pushed the Overton Window of sexual permissiveness to its maximum. Joining us to discuss the rise of contemporary sex education and the institutions behind it is Kali Fontanilla, Senior Fellow at the Capital Rese...
May 31, 2024•26 min•Ep. 319
This week we cast our eye to the Pacific Coast, with inquiries into two major left-wing funders in the Golden State. First, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is suing the Tides Foundation; even as we say “Let them fight,” we must also ask what these two major left-wing institutions are fighting about. And then we introduce the California Endowment, one of many major left-wing grantmakers of which the average listener might not yet have heard. Joining us to discuss these major Cali...
May 24, 2024•24 min•Ep. 318
What efforts are American nonprofits funding overseas? By and large, we don’t know , and federal disclosure laws are no help because they don’t require American nonprofits (other than private foundations) to disclose their grants to organizations outside the United States. But that may change, as Congress considers legislation to reform “Schedule F” on the nonprofit tax return. Joining us to discuss the proposal is our colleague Robert Stilson, one of the loudest voices calling for the change. L...
May 17, 2024•22 min•Ep. 315
To say the federal government is merely “broke” is a gross understatement; as of recording the US Debt Clock shows the federal debt at over $34.7 trillion with the running annual deficit at nearly $2 trillion. While federal entitlement spending drives the growth in debt, the discretionary decisions of the Biden administration are very much not helping, as a new report from the Heritage Foundation shows. In short, the Biden administration is using a suspiciously expansive reading of the authoriti...
May 10, 2024•23 min•Ep. 316
If you’re a regular listener, you’ve heard the name “Arabella Advisors” before—the management company that sits at the center of a network of left-wing “dark money” advocacy nonprofits. Now, the story of Arabella Advisors, its network, and its influence is told in a volume authored by Capital Research Center’s president Scott Walter, imaginatively titled Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America . Scott joins us this week to discuss the book. Links: A...
May 03, 2024•30 min•Ep. 315
I’m fond of saying—it’s in my Twitter bio—that “there’s always a labor angle.” From bad MLB umpiring to anti-anti-Hamas demonstrations, Big Labor is there. So I am the least surprised person to discover that the left-wing environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) activist investing movement is backstopped in part by and operates in service of Big Labor and its Everything Leftist agenda. Joining me and my colleague Robert Stilson, who studies the ESG movement for Capital Research Cent...
Apr 26, 2024•27 min•Ep. 314
It might be America’s worst teachers’ union—and knowing American teachers’ unions, that’s saying something. Since its takeover by a radical-left-wing, militant caucus in 2010, the Chicago Teachers Union has pushed a radical-left agenda through numerous strike actions and controversially aided the mayoral campaign of Brandon Johnson, a former lobbyist for the union, in the city. Just last month, the union allegedly used school time to rally students to vote for a tax hike ballot measure supported...
Apr 19, 2024•23 min•Ep. 310
Journalism is changing, with nonprofit outlets, especially on the left, playing an increasing role in how information gets to the people. Just this week, the press has praised States Newsroom, the Arabella Advisors-seeded network of DEI-focused state-level journalism outlets, and a senior editor at the government-and-Big-Philanthropy-funded National Public Radio has published an article detailing how the outlet shifted from orthodox-liberal in outlook to a radical vanguardist Everything Leftism ...
Apr 12, 2024•26 min•Ep. 312
