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 Justice for Muslims Collective (JMC) is an activist organization that opposes alleged national security policy bias against Muslims. The group is fiscally sponsored by Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD), a left-of-center civil liberties activist organization that opposes government surveillance while supporting the right to protest. JMC co-founder Maha Hilal previously claimed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) institutionalizes nativism, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and Islamophobia while targeting “non-white populations.”
• A Better Wisconsin Together (ABWT) is a communications hub that advocates for left-of-center policy within the state of Wisconsin through social media and traditional media advertisements. The group is a state partner of ProgressNow, a national coalition of left-of-center state groups that describes itself as a “year-round, never-ending progressive campaign.” ABWT spent approximately $600,000 in 2022 on ads supporting governor Tony Evers’s (D) re-election campaign. Donors to ABWT in 2022 include the Laborers’ International Union of North America, the North Fund, America Votes, and the Tides Foundation.
• The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is a New York-based think tank that advocates for an ethics-based foreign policy for the United States that retains a moral component. Its programs include a U.S. Global Engagement Initiative, an Artificial Intelligence and Equality initiative, and other initiatives focused on counteracting countries that reject “multilateralism” while embracing “nationalism.” The group receives funding from other Carnegie-associated entities and left-of-center groups including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Carnegie Council Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Kann Rasmussen Foundation
• For the People: A Leftist Library Project (FTP) is a group that provides resources for left-of-center activists to become involved in local libraries, including through training board candidates, increasing public funding, and providing LGBT-themed materials. The group was co-founded in 2023 by activist Mariame Kaba, who previously claimed that law enforcement is a tool of racial oppression. Kaba is also the co-founder of We Charge Genocide, which calls for police abolition on the grounds that law enforcement actions are genocidal towards minorities.
• The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that advocates for human rights laws that adhere to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. FIDH supports the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions(BDS) movement to delegitimize the state of Israel, and blamed the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel on “Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime.” FIDH receives funding from several left-of-center groups including the Open Society Foundations, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and the Ford Foundation.