Electioneering by charities—“501(c)(3)s” in the trade—was forbidden, to begin with. But that has not stopped liberal Big Philanthropy from using charitable organizations for activities that dance along that legal line to help Democratic and left-wing politicians get elected. My colleague Parker Thayer recently released an extensive report on the Voter Registration Project, one such “charitable” election-winning scheme, he joins my colleague Robert Stilson and me to discuss his findings.

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Do Americans appreciate foreign nationals using their money to help Americans decide who should lead them? Honest Elections Project Action recently asked people, and—no prizes for guessing this—they don’t. Joining us to discuss this and other findings from their national poll on election-administration issues is Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project.

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This week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) announced a special session of the legislature to consider various proposals related to public safety. But unusually for a reliably conservative and Republican state—Lee won 65 percent of the vote in his 2022 election campaign and both chambers of the state legislature are supermajority Republican—the session will consider gun control measures, especially so-called “red flag” laws. Joining me to discuss what’s going on in Tennessee and the gun control movement generally are my colleague Robert Stilson and John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association.

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Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks schooling and school reform itself are due for a rethink. In his brief (less than 150 pages, excluding endnotes and acknowledgements) The Great School Rethink, Hess lays out his view on a new way to address the problems of American education, all informed by decades in the education policy field. Hess joins us today to discuss his Great School Rethink.

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We’re trying something new for this week: A round-up of stories and discussions not long enough by themselves to carry a podcast, all put together. Joining me to discuss solar panels and China, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s spousal hypocrisy, the burgeoning scandal around COVID origins, and ESG investing’s effects on the energy sector is my colleague Ken Braun.

“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” That was the eyebrow-raising statement Vice President Kamala Harris made to a Baltimore audience last week; while the Biden White House amended the transcript to indicate she intended to say “reduce pollution,” the environmentalist movement has more than its fair share of associations with those who would “reduce population.” Joining me to discuss Harris’s comments and the connections between environmentalism and population control are my colleagues Sarah Lee and Ken Braun.

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As bad and left-wing as teachers unions can be, for some union activists and leftist agitators the normal level of leftism just isn’t enough. For that reason, the Democratic Socialists of America, the nation’s most prominent far-left political group, has pitched a pamphlet encouraging its members to become teachers and partnered with teachers unions and teachers-union-aligned politicians. What does this mean for your children’s schools? Joining us to discuss that and related questions is Rhyen Staley, a researcher at Parents Defending Education.

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Normally, when the government is sued the public expects the government to defend itself. But what if the government doesn’t defend itself, because it wants the same policy ends as the activists suing it? Then you get “sue-and-settle,” a practice that U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican of Iowa) says “is used by federal agencies and like-minded special interest groups to impose new and burdensome regulations on businesses and communities without sufficient public notice or participation.” Joining us to discuss sue and settle tactics and how Congress can push back against them is Karen Harned, a longtime lawyer and advocate for small-business interests.

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Over the past few years, conservatives have begun to push back against the powerful “environmental, social, and corporate governance” or ESG investing movement. Helping lead that charge has been today’s guest, Will Hild of Consumers’ Research joining me with my colleague Robert Stilson.

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George Soros, the famous liberal billionaire investor-philanthropist, is over 90 years old, which would motivate anyone in his position to think about his succession. This week, the Wall Street Journal profiled the heir apparent: Soros’s son Alexander, who claims to be even “more political” than his father. Joining me to discuss Alex Soros and the future of the Soros family advocacy-philanthropic empire are my colleagues Sarah Lee and Parker Thayer.

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The private automobile defined post-World War II America, liberating the masses from the regimentation of railroad schedules and the limitations of foot transportation. But the left has never liked the motorcar, or at least the social changes it brought. It liberated middle-class Americans from core-city governments by expanding the suburbs, helped turn renters into homeowners, and lessened public dependence on unionized government workers in city mass-transit systems. And so it has always been a target of the radical wing of the left, which seeks every weapon to hand to limit the twentieth-century freedoms the car offers. Today, my colleague Ken Braun and I welcome Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, to discuss the Biden administration’s war on cars.

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A new union-curious faction of conservatism is growing in the run-up to the 2024 election. Leading the charge is a group of otherwise solidly conservative legislators (you’ll recognize the names) and policy wonks who have the ear of venerable conservative think tanks (you’ll recognize these names, too) who insist that if conservative candidates are going to win, they must reimagine 75 years of union distrust and take seriously the idea that the right has become the party of the working man. And the working man, they reason, might just need unions. CRC’s labor policy expert Mike Watson disagrees and he, along with our colleague Ken Braun, joins the podcast today hosted by Sarah Lee to discuss statism from the right.

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If I could provide just one piece of free advice in public advocacy, it’s this: Don’t openly say you messed up on an on-record call with a reporter—you might as well be bleeding in a tank full of piranhas. But the principal officer of Fix the Court, a liberal organization spun out of the Arabella Advisors “dark money” empire advancing “transparency” changes to the Supreme Court as part of a liberal full-court press towards “packing” the court with additional left-wing rubber-stamp votes, did just that on a call with today’s guest, Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner. Also joining us is my colleague Parker Thayer, who reported on some financial non-transparency at Fix the Court.

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This week, Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham issued the final report on his investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, better known as the “Russia collusion investigation” targeting the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Joining us to discuss the broader “Russiagate” scandal and the Durham Report is Ken Braun, who wrote InfluenceWatch’s extensive profile on the unsubstantiated allegations of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian government entities and the checkered history of the FBI.

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Title 42, an emergency policy allowing U.S. authorities to send border-crossers back whence they came (usually Mexico) on public-health grounds, is ending with the COVID-19 public health emergency. And with the Biden administration extremely lackadaisical, to put it mildly, in its approach to general immigration law enforcement, what does the end of Title 42 portend at the US-Mexico border? Joining us today to discuss the end of Title 42 and her work investigating the role of nonprofit organizations in carrying out the Biden administration’s near-as-makes-no-difference open-border policy is Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center for the Heritage Foundation.

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I’m Sarah Lee, and this is the Influence Watch podcast. With news last month that Visa and Mastercard had paused a plan to track gun purchases, and last year’s SCOTUS decision that struck down a New York law that put restrictions on concealed firearms used for self-defense, conservatives seem to be winning on the gun issue. In fact, more women and minorities – and even progressives – are buying guns for self-defense. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that during the COVID pandemic, gun sales soared, and more than half of those buyers were women. Joining my colleague Mike Watson and me today is Dianna Muller, the founder of DC Project, a women-focused guns rights nonprofit in DC with chapters all over the country dedicated to fighting for the constitutional right to self-defense. Hi Dianna, welcome to the show.

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I’m Sarah Lee, and this is the Influence Watch podcast. Yesterday, three years after the COVID pandemic lockdowns began, American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten, who many feel was the public face of extended school lockdowns, testified in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Weingarten, who had spent most of her time during the pandemic loudly decrying attempts to reopen schools – calling plans from the last administration to reopen in late 2020 “callous” and “cruel” — struck a decidedly different tone before Congress, insisting her goal was always getting kids back to in-person instruction, an assertion that was rather hilariously fact-checked by Twitter’s community notes Thursday. Here to discuss the hearing are my colleagues Mike Watson and Parker Thayer.

Weingarten Tweet

If the “ESG”—environmental, social, and governance—movement had a guiding text, it would the Proxy Preview. Put out by the corporate social responsibility investing nonprofit As You Sow, the Proxy Preview details all the ESG “shareholder resolutions” that activist shareholders, government worker and labor union pension funds, and left-of-center nonprofits want American businesses to adopt. Joining us to discuss the Proxy Preview and the organizations behind it is our colleague, Capital Research Center research specialist Robert Stilson.

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The Athenai Institute is a college student-led organization that seeks to limit the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on U.S. college campuses. Since their inception in 2020, they have worked to help young people understand not only the often-underreported billion dollar financial relationship between the U.S. academic sector and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but how the CCP exports their surveillance state techniques — through apps like the infamous TikTok — that serve to both downplay the regime’s human rights abuses for American students, but to keep Chinese students studying in the U.S. in line and loyal to the CCP. Joining Sarah Lee on the podcast today to discuss these subjects and Congress’ new moves on China is John Metz, co-founder, current board member, and former president of the Athenai Institute.

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National Public Radio is adamant: Nobody is going to make you eat the bugs. In fact, NPR says that believing governments and environmentalist activists want to make you eat the bugs is a conspiracy theory! Oh, and if you don’t want to eat the bugs, you’re little different than Europeans who would not eat indigenous American foods during the period of colonization. But is that really the case? Do major advocacy groups like the World Economic Forum and the broader environmentalist movement in fact want to change what we eat? Joining us to discuss all this is Jim Lakely, vice president and director of communications for the Heartland Institute.

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