Who Funds that?
News & Politics
About
The podcast where we go beneath the surface to reveal the web of connected influence, money, and motivation driving the news, sourced primarily from our website InfluenceWatch.org, the Capital Research Center's online encyclopedia of the donors, non-profits, and influencers driving politics. You can watch the video version of the podcast at: http://bit.ly/2rnQygY Listen to all episodes of the "Who Funds That?" Podcast at Ricochet.com .
Episodes
- Who Funds That? EP7: Hasan Piker in the Doghouse?
Americans who know Cuba best—those who fled the Communist-ruled island and their descendants—loathe the country’s Communist regime, in power since Fidel Castro overthrew an American-backed strongman in 1959. Thanks to Cold War geopolitics…
- Who Funds That? EP6: Can Treasury Fix Nonprofit Tax Returns
Today we’ve got a very important and exciting topic to cover: The nonprofit tax return (Form 990)! Now please don’t turn your podcast dial—this actually matters way more than you think, even if you aren’t a nonprofit accountant, because 99…
- "Who Funds That?" EP5: Ohio’s Medicaid Millions
Seven buildings with 288 companies. Empty offices with unopened government notices in the mail slots. Convicted fraudsters vaguely warning that they know who journalists’ families are. It’s all real, and it’s all been uncovered in Columbus…
- Who funds That? EP4 Democrat Union Bosses, Republican Workers
As working-class Americans demonstrate increasing willingness to support conservative political candidates, some ostensible conservatives—some perhaps in service to their think tank’s funders in left-wing Big Philanthropy and others perhap…
- Who Funds That? EP 3: Justice Samuel Alito (with Mollie Hemingway)
When conservatives wax poetic about their favorite Supreme Court justices from what one might call the “ Federalist Society era” of Republican appointments, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia take precedence. The oldest may prefer…
- Who Funds That? EP2 with Corey DeAngelis: Maryland Lawmakers and the Teachers Unions vs. Parents
Maryland, for my sins my home state, is almost completely controlled by the teachers unions—this was proven during COVID-19, when the state had among the longest school closures in the nation. But the end of the pandemic did nothing to cur…
- Who Funds That? EP1: Cutting Class for the Radical Left
Hello, I’m Michael Watson joined by Sarah Lee and this is our first episode of Capital Research Center’s “Who Funds That?” podcast. I am fond of reminding anyone who will hear me that organized labor is an institutional pillar of “Everythi…
- An update on the new podcast
This is not the Influence Watch Podcast. After our 400th episode, we said we'd be back with our new format and new name on April 7th, but we're making bigger changes and they'll take a little bit more time. You'll be able to see us in vide…
- Ep. 400: 2026: A Look Ahead at Who Funds That
Hello, I’m Michael Watson and this is the 400th episode of the InfluenceWatch Podcast. For us, it is a time for looking back and a time for looking forward—we will have a special announcement at the conclusion of today’s episode. Joining m…
- Ep. 399: Will Wealth Tax Wreck the Economy?
You may have seen news reports that California is facing something called “outmigration,” in which residents – including some of that state’s most wealthy – are picking up and moving to greener pastures in states not dedicated to taxing th…
- Ep. 398: The Mullahs' Friends in America
As we speak—it’s February 25th as we record, so commentary on the current situation may be out of date when you hear this—a naval armada of two fleet carriers and their accompanying surface-ship escorts sits off the Middle East as American…
- Ep. 396: Congress Tackles Foreign Nonprofit Funding
Foreign influence in American nonprofit organizations. It’s real, it has influence on our public life, and Congress has taken note of it. Joining me to discuss the influence of foreign funding of voter registration, ballot initiatives, and…
- Ep. 395: The NGO-Government Complex
It’s Minnesota day, again. Before Minneapolis lit politics on fire with immigration-enforcement-related shootings and associated protests and riots, the story from the land of 10,000 lakes was public-benefits fraud, allegations of which su…
- Ep. 394: Union of Minneapolis Democratic Socialist Republics
As Minnesota, the only state not to have voted for Ronald Reagan, continues to dominate the headlines, a question arises: Just how radical is the state, and its largest city, Minneapolis, anyway? A recent decision on the organization of th…
- Ep. 393: Charging the Minnesota Church Disruptors
Amid protests over immigration enforcement by leftists in Minneapolis, a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators allegedly invaded a service at a church whose pastor they claimed was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. (Ex-C…
- Ep. 392: "Turtle Island" and Rejecting America
Just before Christmas, the federal Justice Department secured indictments against four alleged radical-left domestic terrorists alleged to be affiliated with the “Turtle Island Liberation Front.” Our colleague Robert Stilson is deeply fami…
- Ep. 391: Nabbing Maduro
In the early morning hours of January 3 rd , U.S. military, in an impressively covert operation, captured Venezuela’s self-declared president Nicolas Maduro, and his wife and spirited them away to face narco-terrorism charges in a New York…
- Ep. 388: Ripe for Fraud: Minnesota and the Feeding Our Future Story with Armin Rosen
Minnesota was liberal to begin with: It has the distinction of “voting blue, no matter who” since Jimmy Carter led the Democratic ticket, joining only the District of Columbia in refusing to give its electoral votes to President Ronald Rea…
- Ep. 390: Goodbye 2025
The year 2025 has been wild and disruptive in the world of policy and influence, with a new administration coming to power with an aggressive agenda, a major reorganization of the left and Democratic Party’s most important dark-money netwo…
- Episode 344: New Management for the FBI - Re-upload
A new presidential administration does not typically mean new management at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but typically the incumbent FBI director did not oversee the FBI when it raided the President-elect’s house. Given that fact a…
- Ep. 389: Mainstreaming Race Communism
The Groups, the justly maligned nonprofit and otherwise-professional activist groups whom moderate Democrats blamed for the failures of the Biden administration on the economy and immigration, are back and bolder than ever. Joining us toda…
- Ep. 388: Ripe for Fraud: Minnesota and the Feeding Our Future Story with Armin Rosen
Minnesota was liberal to begin with: It has the distinction of “voting blue, no matter who” since Jimmy Carter led the Democratic ticket, joining only the District of Columbia in refusing to give its electoral votes to President Ronald Rea…
- Ep. 387: Goodbye Arabella, Hello...Arabella?
Arabella Advisors, we hardly knew ye. The once obscure, multi-billion dollar, private-equity-owned machine of leftist funding has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Or has it?Arabella, an organization we here at CRC worked diligently to help b…
- Ep. 386: Soros's Not-So-Independent News
What makes a journalistic outfit “completely independent”? According to Drop Site News, the outlet is exactly that, and “reader-supported” to boot. But recent Open Society Foundations spending reports suggest that the outlet is not complet…
- Justice for Greenpeace
It can seem infuriating: Leftist demonstrators wantonly violate the law, only to face no or negligible consequences because the powers that be either support or refuse to oppose their disruptive tactics. But as a famous progressive politic…
- Ep. 385: Effective Altruism, AI, and Shrimp Welfare
A defining feature of the creeping leftism the country has experienced over the last several years is just that: It’s creeping, coming in on padded feet behind the scenes until Americans began to see it everywhere, in boardrooms, schoolroo…
- Ep. 384: When Nonprofits Break the Law
Regular listeners might remember that earlier this year, a North Dakota jury awarded $667 million to Energy Transfer, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, for damages caused by Greenpeace. Because that poses an existential thre…
- Ep. 383: AARP's $9 Billion Partner
In Washington, D.C., the “government shutdown” continues as Democrats demand that Republicans expand subsidies for Obamacare in exchange for lifting a filibuster on a “clean continuing resolution” that would reopen the government through a…
- Ep. 382- Radical Transgender Quackery
It has been a lousy couple of years for one of the leftist factions most deserving of a lousy couple of years—no, not organized labor, institutional transgender activism. Great Britain, home to noted critic of transgenderism J.K. Rowling w…
- Ep. 381: America's Worst Union Mourns a Terrorist
Last week, radical-left terrorist and cop killer Joanne Chesimard, better known by her nom de guerre Assata Shakur, died in exile in Communist Cuba. You would think that leftists, even radical leftists, would let Chesimard go quietly, espe…
- Ep. 380: Tracking Soros Terror Funding
That left-wing violence is on the rise is undeniable; even The Atlantic , the bien-pensant left-wing magazine propped up by liberal heiress Laurene Powell Jobs’s billions has published a piece admitting it. But how high does support for su…
- Ep. 379: The Hidden Power Behind Soros DAs
You’ve heard of “Soros DAs”—prosecutors, whose campaigns were financially backed by George and Alexander Soros, who seek election on promises not to prosecute. But the anti-criminal-justice movement is bigger than one eccentric progressive…
- Ep. 378: A Charlotte Stabbing, Charlie Kirk, and Soft-On-Crime Funders w/Megan Basham
Before it was pushed from the headlines by the horrifying assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the major national crime story was the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian woman stabbed to death on public transportation in…
- Ep. 377: Ford, Failure, and Fallout: Lessons from Big Philanthropy’s Overreach
After widely publicized revelations of highly ideological nonprofits receiving federal funds and spending them on highly ideological projects, the Trump administration (and now, through the “rescissions” package and “One Big Beautiful Bill…
- Special Edition: Gates Quits Arabella
I'm Michael Watson joined by Parker Thayer and Sarah Lee and this is the InfluenceWatch Podcast. We're recording a special episode from the SPN Annual Meeting because there's big news from the world of Arabella Advisors: The New York Times…
- Ep. 376: Correcting the Record: Why the Smithsonian Needs Oversight
The Smithsonian Institution, the federal government-created and funded entity that manages the national museums in D.C., is under a very political review courtesy of the Trump administration. Progressives decry the move as improper interfe…
- Ep. 375: Breaking Down the Census Citizenship Question and The Funding Behind the Fight
At the beginning of August, Trump took to social media and informed the world he had instructed the Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on “a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantl…
- Episode 348 Re-Up: Fix Education By Breaking Teacher Union Bloat (with Corey DeAngelis)
Almost everyone can look at the education landscape in America today and see that something has gone very, very wrong. Spending per student has increased, and there is no evidence that this increased spending has improved student performan…
- Ep. 374: Dismantling the Censorship Machine
The Biden administration pursued a number of “whole of government” initiatives to advance the Everything Leftism that its staff brought with them into government. Some, like the initiative to promote union organizing, were highly publicize…
- Ep. 373: Everything Leftism and the Antisemitic Teachers Unions
Back in the 1960s, the teachers’ unions, especially the United Federation of Teachers in New York, had a reputation for being strongly Jewish. But today, the teachers unions—especially the National Education Association—are deeply entrench…
- Ep. 372: The Left's Big Bully
The Southern Poverty Law Center, trading on a reputation it earned suing the remnants of the organized Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s, claims to be an honest watchdog of extremism on the political right. But our guest Tyler O’Neill, a senior ed…
- Ep. 371: Gaming the Vote: The Truth About Ranked Choice Voting
Ranked Choice Voting, or RCV, the process by which voters rank candidates by preference, has been in and out of the news for the last several years, as advocates and critics on both sides of the political aisle debate the merits and pitfal…
- Ep. 370: China and the Left's Energy Lawfare
Over the past several years, the public has become familiar with the concept of “lawfare,” the process of using the legal system to gain political ends regardless of the validity of the underlying case. Environmentalist groups have long be…
- Ep. 369: Suppressors, Second Amendment, and the Fight Against the NFA
As Second Amendment policy returns to the national spotlight under a second Trump administration, one provision buried in a massive reconciliation bill could spell the beginning of the end for suppressor regulations under the National Fire…
- Ep. 368: Another Summer of Love
Over the past week, Los Angeles has been rocked by demonstrations against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that have been punctuated by violent riots, with rioters throwing bricks at police vehicles and standing atop burned-o…
- Ep. 367: Explaining Basically Governmental Organizations to Congress
Regardless of his recent falling out with President Trump over the size of the “Big Beautiful Bill” tax and spending package or personal beefs, Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” team performed at least one extremely u…
- Ep. 366: Harvard and Tax Exemptions
The second Trump administration has conducted an aggressive campaign against Harvard University, targeting its use of racial considerations in admissions and hiring and its apparent lack of concern for the rights of its Jewish students. Am…
- Ep. 365: Bulwark Backstory
At one point, in the minds of its writers and supporters, perhaps The Bulwark really was about providing a “bulwark” for “conserving conservatism” in opposition to the right-populism of once and future President Donald Trump. But as our co…
- Ep. 364: Bullies Unite Here
In an era when fewer than six percent of private-sector workers are union members, it’s easy to forget how forceful Big Labor’s activists can be when they’re out rooting for dues and political power. Joining us to discuss how Unite Here ha…