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:

• FJC: A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds is a donor-advised fund initially founded by the late philanthropist Marty Silverman. Starting in 2019, the FJC began to use a controversial list of alleged hate groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to determine which organizations it would reject donor recommendations from. The list has been criticized for listing mainstream conservative groups such as the Family Research Council (FRC) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
• The Inner-City Muslim Action Network is a Muslim activist organization operating in Illinois and Georgia that pushes for criminal justice reform in both states. On May 29, 2022, Rami Nashahibi, the group’s founder and executive director, wrote a thread on then-Twitter comparing Jews migrating to Israel from the United States to colonial settlers. In addition, he claimed that they were being aided by American white evangelical Christians and that the U.S. government must “go after” them.
• The Independent Media Institute (IMI) is an advocacy organization founded in 1983 to serve as a syndication service for “alternative weekly” newspapers. In 2022, one of its journalist projects, Economy for All, published an article from “Struggle-La Lucha,” a publication for the Socialist Unity Party. The article blamed shortages of infant formula within the United States on “corporate food monopolies” and “global capitalism.”
• The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a London-based socialist think tank that promotes left-wing economic and environmental policies. Several of its programs, as of August 2023, include advocacy for universal basic income, a reduction in aviation to lower carbon emissions, and greater redistribution of wealth. The group also claims that it was part of the original proposal for the Green New Deal in 2008.
• Naomi Oreskes is a professor at Harvard University, an author, and a climate activist. She has previously written articles and publications criticizing energy companies that have funded inquiries into climate change’s validity. Her writings have been included in the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth produced by Al Gore and she has been a Democrat-invited guest to speak on climate science at several Congressional hearings including in 2023 for the U.S Senate Committee on the Budget.