InfluenceWatch Friday

InfluenceWatch, a project of Capital Research Center, is a comprehensive and ever-evolving compilation of our research into the numerous advocacy groups, foundations, and donors working to influence the public policy process. The website offers transparency into these influencers’ funding, motives, and connections while providing insight often neglected by other watchdog groups.

The information compiled in InfluenceWatch gives news outlets and other interested parties research to use in reporting on significant topics that are often overlooked by the American public.

CRC is pleased to present some of the most significant additions to InfluenceWatch in the past week:

• The Portland Association of Teachers is a teacher’s union representing educators within the Portland public school district. In November 2023, the union voted to initiate a strike which lasted for three weeks while calling for increased planning time, racial justice professional development training,” and increased cost-of-living. The strikes led to over 9,000 students and 550 teachers being absent from schools while scheduling make-up days over the winter break.
• The Jewish Leadership Project (JLP) is a pro-Israeli organization that advocates for combating anti-Jewish bigotry. In September 2023, the organization sent several trucks with large screens to Princeton University that displayed messages criticizing Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber for hiring Robert Malley, a former U.S diplomat under federal investigation for allegedly mishandling classified information. One message read that Eisgruber promotes, “blood libel against Jews & hiring apologists of a nuclear-armed genocidal regime in Iran.”
• Progressive International is a coalition of socialist-aligned organizations and political parties acting to promote international socialist movements. The organization also conducts opposition research against conservative movements: In December 2023, the group wrote pieces attacking recently elected libertarian President Javi Milei of Argentina while claiming that the country of Ecuador’s “electoral integrity” was threatened by its own center-right administration.
• The Asfari Foundation is a United Kingdom-registered charity that promotes left-of-center foreign policy within the Middle East. The group previously donated to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank whose own analyst Rachel Kleinfeld previously claimed that U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) losing her primary in 2022 after criticizing former president Donald Trump was evidence of American democracy decaying.
• Phoenix Women’s March is an informal chapter of feminist activist group Women’s March. As of December 2023, one of its last actions was arranging a march near the Arizona state capital in January 2023 to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The organization’s co-chair, Azza Abuseif, is the executive director of CAIR Arizona, the local chapter of national Muslim activist group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).