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 Land Stewardship Project (LSP) is an environmental advocacy group that promotes agricultural policy reforms including curtailing industrial farming techniques and promoting more community-based food systems. It is part of We Choose US, a Minnesota state-level coalition of organizations that advocate for left-of-center policies. Other We Choose US partners include Unidos MN, Planned Parenthood Minnesota, SEIU Minnesota, and CAIR Minnesota. In 2024, the LSP published an updated Farm Bill Platform that calls for reducing subsidies to industrial farming operations, enforcing antitrust laws against large farms, and increased funding for farmers’ markets.
• The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a professional association for human resources (HR) management personnel. It is headquartered in Alexandria, Virgina, and has affiliated entities in India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As of 2024, SHRM has lobbied for the U.S. Congress to change laws such as the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). It has claimed that current immigrant employment laws hinder U.S.-based companies.
• TakeAction MN (TakeAction Minnesota) is a state advocacy group that promotes left-of-center policies including higher taxes, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, government-funded universal childcare, and 100 percent weather-dependent energy. TakeAction MN endorsed the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders(I-VT) in 2020, as well as the 2024 campaign to reelect U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Also in 2024, TakeAction MN pushed for Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted” during the state’s presidential primary as a method of advocating for a ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.
• The International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) is an international network of more than 200 socialist, communist, and other left-wing-oriented groups created to build a “mass movement against imperialism and capitalism.” IPA’s partner organizations include Code Pink, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the radical-left think tank Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. In 2024, the IPA celebrated the 100^th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s death, supported the re-election of Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela, and called for a trial of U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over what it called the “genocide of the Palestinian people.”
• Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) is a self-described “revolutionary socialist” group that claims Israel is an “apartheid state” and that the Jewish people must oppose “Zionist institutions.” In November 2023, JAWS published an article declaring opposition to the “Zionist settler colonial genocide,” and that Palestine must be free “from the river to the sea.” In March 2024, the group organized a pro-Palestinian event on the University of California, Santa Cruz’s campus, which was condemned by pro-Israel group StandWithUs for requiring attendees to sign a petition affirming “antizionism is not antisemitism.”