Weaponizing Coronavirus, Leftist Foundations Dedicate Millions to Transform 2020 Elections
New networks of leftist organizations have been created, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in confidentially-sourced donations dedicated to fundamentally transforming how the 2020 election is conducted. Already, these networks have formed working groups, sponsored litigation, and lobbied Congress to pass federal mandates about how the 2020 election should be conducted.
They have even funded purported conservative organizations that place articles in conservative publications advocating for the fundamental transformations demanded by the left.
The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a frantic effort by the left to deploy massive new funding streams and to activate new aggressive and transformative organizations. They are pushing for legislative changes such as federally-mandated vote-by-mail and the eradication of state election integrity laws, like absentee ballot witness signature requirements in Virginia.
They are also using new sources of secretly-sourced millions to push media narratives and pay reporters to advocate for transformative election process changes.
All of this transformative frenzy started with the virus and the opportunity it gave leftists to advocate for long-desired changes to how America conducts elections.
In the initial round of legislative responses to COVID-19 in Congress, a wildly disparate group of leftists — ranging from the Union of Concerned Scientists to the Sierra Club to NARAL to the NAACP — rallied around a key coronavirus response: federally-mandated mail elections with the automatic mailing of ballots to every registered voter address.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) killed the effort in the Senate after a radical transformative package passed the House. These two senators deserve enormous credit for stopping it and not capitulating to a tidal wave of pressure from progressive groups. President Donald Trump also understands the danger of mail ballots, and so the effort was doomed from the start.
As a compromise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded $2,000,000,000 from Congress for state elections. She got $400 million instead. Leftist groups have now mobilized an effort to aim this federal money in state capitals at a progressive election wish list.
They still want Congress to give them more money to fund the progressive election process agenda in the states.
The Bipartisan Policy Center calls the $400,000,000 “just a start.” They may be in for a surprise because congressional Republicans, unlike in previous years, understand what this new interest in federal cash is all about and how it will be mobilized in the states to defeat the GOP Senate majority.
In addition to the limitless philanthropy I will describe shortly, the left has created multiple emergency working groups to be cited compliantly by mainstream media sources as unbiased election experts.
One Potemkin outfit is the self-styled National Task Force on Election Crises. In reality, the group is the usual collection of far-left race activists, liberal law professors, vendor grifters sprinkled in with one or two non-crazies to give the organization a whiff of not-entirely-nuts. It is designed to appear bipartisan but in action, it is the opposite.
One member of the task force, Rachel Kleinfeld, published a single article at National Review in her entire career, and it was about how the 2020 election should be put in the hands of the United States Postal Service.
Not only does this largely leftist task force represent phony bipartisanship, but it also uses that misleading brand to place hit-and-run pieces in conservative media, like Kleinfeld did.
Despicable: 9 Liberal Pet Projects Smuggled Into Pelosi’s Coronavirus Bill
Editors and bookers take note.
It was a very bad week for the National Task Force on Election Crises after the rank abuse and biases of the FBI in the prosecution of Michael Flynn were revealed. One of the election “experts” on the task force is none other than James Baker of the R Street Institute, the same James Baker formerly of the FBI, who appears on the emails discussing ways to frame General Flynn.
No word whether even this is a bad enough look to have Baker booted from the task force, or from R Street.
Most readers here are already familiar with the tentacles of the various Soros-funded philanthropies. And sure enough, they are well represented in this emergency effort to transform elections because of the coronavirus pandemic. Laura Silber, director of communications at the Open Society Foundation, urged, “what matters most is that Congress substantially scale up support to the states so that they can implement what policies work best for their constituents.”
“Works best for constituents” is Soros-speak for what is best for the progressive left.
But when it comes to the leftist response to the coronavirus and their effort to transform elections, it’s not just the usual gang from the Brennan Center and ACLU. This effort is much bigger, more urgent, more flush with cash than the standard integrated operation.
On one recent teleconference call, leaders of this effort even considered giving state election officials direct payments to do what the progressives want them to do. In other words, they are researching the possibility of privately funding state and local elections offices in such a way that it doesn’t appear to be a bribe. This could include paying for expansive vote-by-mail, providing ballot design, and manpower help to run the elections. It could include things that those of us in the real America probably couldn’t even make up.
All manner of mischief is available when hundreds of millions of dollars are available.
But it isn’t just Soros and the Open Society Institute that have redirected their philanthropic focus on transforming the 2020 election process. It is names you don’t even know, even if you have heard of Tides and Open Society.
It’s the Funders Committee for Civic Participation and the Proteus Fund. It is the Democracy Fund, the same funding stream that fuels much of the Never Trump movement on the nominal right and their fellow travelers inside wonky Washington think tanks and law schools.
They are even plotting ways to take over cash-strapped local newsrooms to protect the flank of the election transformation march. In some instances, the plan is operational, and they are providing free reporters to newspapers and free content generated by busy leftist writer drones paid for by these philanthropic streams.
One of the new entities is the Democracy Funders Collaborative, a shadowy new outfit under the nominal control of Ilona Prucha of the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and Adam Ambrogi of the Democracy Fund.
Oh, and that’s not all of them. I’m just getting started with the murderer’s row of leftist millions. Not to be confused with the Democracy Fund, there’s also the Democracy Alliance. The alliance has a very secret donor base and it is fully activated in the 2020 election process changes.
A “Litigation Collaborative” is now operational and attacking state election integrity laws in court. It is funded by the State Infrastructure Fund of Neo Philanthropy, the Ford Foundation, the Bauman Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation. So many states are under attack in federal courts already, and the election has barely begun.
It is an orgy of dark money, progressive ideology, and court filing fees. Go to any of these places I name. Peruse their staff listing and biographies. They come in swarms, fully funded, and straight from progressive central casting.
Then there are various efforts by Arabella Advisors to use the federal slush fund to steer state election policies in a progressive direction. Using these hundreds of millions of dollars, the progressive left has set up storefront organizations that cosmetically seem to help election administrators run elections, but are ways to impose progressive policies in places where the people would reject them.
They have artists, designers, tech vendors, translators, security experts, computer geeks, all standing by to “help” state election officials run elections.
What a business model. Your federal tax dollars get them started and your state and local officials pay them as vendors and consultants.
If you are dizzy by now, realize you’d be even dizzier if every new progressive group tasked with influencing the 2020 election process was cataloged here. Influence Watch has that covered.
This constellation of groups enjoys cozy relationships with state election officials in places like Michigan, North Carolina, and Colorado. They work with each other. They exchange emails and texts. They swap employees. They appear at each other’s events.
When a conservative election integrity organization sends some state officials a FOIA request, the response takes months. I have seen public records requests from leftist organizations when the requested documents were provided in minutes, not months, by some of these state election officials.
It’s all about building structural bias into the 2020 election. The hundreds of millions of dollars are moving through a maze, shrouded in smokescreens, shells, and curtains. One group will donate to another group, and the recipient donates to three more, one of whom donates back to the original fund.
And you used to think elections were about issues. Not anymore.
The left has figured out it is all about structure. It is about using tax dollars to pay budding young progressives salaries to mobilize and transform the process. They’ve been taught to believe that the Constitution is an impediment to their progressive utopia. They have joined their version of monasteries and convents at Tides and Neo Philanthropy. They are living the consecrated life, moving hundreds of millions of dollars to build election law structures hostile to candidates who support constitutionally limited government.
It looks like one big money laundering operation. The question we all should start to ask, including law enforcement and banking officials: whose money was it in the first place?
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