Best of CRC Media Hits for November 2022

December 2021 was a strange yet fruitful month for media hits. We began to assess the tax filings related to “Zuck bucks”—Mark Zuckerberg’s gift to the 2020 election to help tilt the vote toward Biden—and received a great deal of interest in our findings. We also had op-eds published on court packing, Zuckerberg’s other charitable donations to Democrats, and the “dark money” behind the environmentalist push to smear nuclear energy.

As always, we owe a great debt of gratitude to our friends working on the issues we’re covering for helping to share our analysis and sharing their own with us. We are always pleased to see the press gravitate toward our work as too good to ignore (even though they may want to at times).

Please enjoy the best media hits of December 2021.

“Billion-Dollar Network Is Playing Politics in America’s Energy Sector, Driving up Costs: Ken Braun”
Epoch TV, Ken Braun (Guest), December 23, 2021

The Biden administration previously declared it was all-in to begin moving the United States to a zero-carbon energy system using nuclear power, but a network of organizations is spending close to a billion dollars every year to ensure that this doesn’t happen. The result is the development of wind and solar power systems that are unstable, expensive, and often still rely on natural gas or coal—being run by some of the same businesses as the so-called “green” market, says Ken Braun.

“The New (Old) Court Packing Plan”
The American Conservative, Sarah Lee (Op-ed), December 1, 2021

Today, the country may once again have defenders of religious liberty to thank for saving the Supreme Court from corrupt politics. On one side of this conflict are people like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and lefty “dark money” groups like Demand Justice, which is tied to the massive leftist funding network Arabella Advisors. Led by former Hillary Clinton speechwriter Brian Fallon, Arabella was key in helping organize and fund the vitriolic smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 confirmation hearing. On the other is the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, well known for successfully defending the religious rights of Hobby Lobby Stores before the Supreme Court when the chain sued for a religious exemption from Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. It currently has 52 active religious liberty cases listed on its website, eleven of which are before the Supreme Court.

“More of Zuckerberg’s Election Fund”
The American Conservative, Hayden Ludwig (Op-Ed), December 28, 2021

Leftist mega-donor Mark Zuckerberg channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to the infamous Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) prior to the 2020 election through a major pass-through used almost exclusively by Bay Area billionaires, new filings reveal.

The Mountain View, California-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) is one of the largest pass-through funders in the world, funneling over $2.6 billion to a variety of nonprofits last year, many of them on the professional left.

“Soros Bankrolls Dark Money Hub for Activists Pushing to Dismantle Police, Grants Show”
Fox News, Joe Schoffstall, December 9, 2021

Parker Thayer, a researcher at the Capital Research Center, estimated that Soros has dropped $28 million into prosecutor races since 2015.

Soros’ Open Society Foundations also devoted $220 million in 2020 to a racial equality push, which included $70 million for local efforts geared toward criminal justice reform

“New Filings Confirm Zuck Bucks Flood for Biden in 2020”
Instapundit, Mark Tapscott, December 16, 2021

Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer and Hayden Ludwig find more IRS 990 returns showing Mark Zuckerberg’s immense spending on campaigns to get out the vote in heavily Democratic areas.

“The War on The Electoral College”
The American Conservative, Hayden Ludwig (Op-ed), December 29, 2021

After the disastrous Covid-inspired changes to the 2020 election, you might think the left is finished with voting reforms. But an even bigger effort is coming, one that promises to permanently hand Democrats a built-in advantage and all but ensure no Republican wins the presidency again.

Meet National Popular Vote, the group spearheading the campaign to destroy the Electoral College and abandon centuries of constitutional history in the name of saving democracy (read: electing Democrats). If NPV’s plans succeed, it would mean the end of elections as we know them, with would-be presidents shunting aside swing states and ignoring “flyover country” to schmooze voters in Manhattan and San Francisco. It would create the top-down nightmare that America’s founders fought desperately to prevent.

“Corporate Backers of BLM Undeterred by Group’s Christmas Blitz Against Capitalism, Holiday Shopping”
Just The News, Aaron Kliegman, December 1, 2021

One challenge in deciphering who exactly gave money to BLM and how much they gave is the organization’s opaque finances, which provide little detail about its taxes and funding.

“The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which is the primary group associated with the broader Black Lives Matter movement, has its own IRS tax-exempt status,” said Robert Stilson, a research specialist at the Capital Research Center. “This wasn’t always the case. It previously operated as a fiscally-sponsored project of two other nonprofits: first Thousand Currents and later the Tides Center.

“This arrangement served to obscure details about its finances and other matters, which attracted scrutiny after the foundation raised tens of millions of dollars in 2020.”

“Countering Chinese Communist Party Propaganda”
The Epoch Times, Stu Cvrk, December 7, 2021

The three leftist activists who founded BLM—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—“all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization … [which] is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement inspired by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong,” according to think tank Capital Research Center. Not a coincidence, as they are also connected to the Chinese Progressive Association, which is a group that has deep ties to Beijing.