3 Perverse Ways Your Tax Dollars Fund the Left’s Dark Money Network

Did you know that millions of your tax dollars go to fund leftist activist groups, who then lobby the government for policies you may disagree with?

The funding comes in at least three ways: directly through contracts and grants, indirectly through unions taking federal employees’ dues and sending a portion to activist groups, and then obliquely, through taxpayer-funded union time.

Examples of direct funding are legion.

USAID awarded more than $800,000 to New Venture Fund, a dark money pass-through nonprofit that cloaks which donors give to which projects, and $27 million to the Tides Center, another dark money nonprofit that supports anti-Israel rioters, among other causes.

An arm of the Open Society Foundations, the funding organ set up by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros and now run by his son Alex, received so much money from USAID that it found it worthwhile to sue the agency to bypass guardrails on funding. The resulting legal battle reached the Supreme Court not once but twice.

In February, the Open Society Foundations released a statement distancing itself from USAID funding.

“The claims that the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, receive funding from USAID or direct the funding of a multibillion-dollar U.S. government agency are manifestly false,” the foundation said.

The Justice Department funded at least one major Soros-backed NGO. One of Soros’ most notorious projects involves his support for “rogue prosecutors” who lower the penalties for crime. Not surprisingly, many of the cities with the highest murder rates have prosecutors backed by Soros.

The Vera Institute of Justice, which claims that the American criminal justice system is “rooted in a history of white supremacy,” has received more than $11 million from the Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2016.

Under Biden, the Justice Department paid Vera at least $73.6 million in contracts, mostly for providing legal services to immigrant children. In just over one year, the Department of Health and Human Services paid Vera nearly $200 million for “refugee and entrant assistance.”

Vera aims to “establish a right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation,” a rather curious stance to take under the Biden administration, when at least nine million illegal aliens entered the country.

Meanwhile, other NGOs also received hefty government funding to house and transport immigrants across the country, including illegal aliens. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of many such groups, received 98% of its revenue—a whopping $284 million—from government grants in the 2023 fiscal year. The Foundation to Promote Open Society also contributed to the committee, sending $75,000 between 2017 and 2021.

The government also supports the Left’s dark money network indirectly. Federal employees in a union give part of their taxpayer-funded paychecks to the union, ostensibly for representation in bargaining for perks like working from home. Yet instead of using all the money to help employees, unions take a portion of those dues and send it to activist NGOs.

About a quarter of federal employees are union members, and the major government unions don’t just negotiate for perks like working from home. They also bankroll the same leftist groups that sent staff and policy recommendations into the Biden administration, using the bureaucracy to force leftist ideology on the American people.

The SEIU, for example, gave $1.6 million to New Venture Fund. The SEIU gave $1.8 million to the Tides Foundation.

The AFL-CIO, America’s largest union and home to the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees, gave $250,000 to New Venture Fund and $100,000 to the Tides Foundation, among other left-wing groups.

Both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO bankrolled the Center for American Progress, which sent at least 60 staff into the Biden administration, and Demos, which wrote and helped implement a policy to turn government offices into voter registration machines likely to help Democrats. Many of these unions have sued to block Trump’s reforms to the administrative state.

Not only did the SEIU and AFL-CIO send part of members’ dues to support leftist causes, but they also benefit from a process known as “official time.” Federal employees can bill the taxpayer for time they spend not doing their jobs, but doing work for the union. This creates yet another stream of taxpayer funds supporting unions that then back leftist causes.

As we’ve seen, your tax dollars fund the Left’s dark money network directly through grants, indirectly through union dues, and obliquely through taxpayer-funded union time.

In this and other ways, Americans are forced to foot the bill for activist causes they disagree with, like climate alarmism, gender ideology, open borders, and the Left’s racial rhetoric.

Congress should seek to prevent this perverse state of affairs.

This is a loosely-edited version of Tyler O’Neil’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight delivered on July 15. The Daily Signal reached out to each of the named groups for comment.

Vera Institute of Justice told The Daily Signal it ceased to be a federal contractor in 2023.

“Prior to that, Vera fulfilled federal agreements to oversee two major sets of immigration-related programs—one for DOJ that served adults, and another for HHS that served unaccompanied children—that operated through networks of legal service providers nationwide,” the organization noted. The programs date from the George W. Bush administration until 2022 and 2023. “The federal government actively sought a contractor to do this work, and Vera carried out these programs to the specifications of the government agencies overseeing them.”

“Separately, Vera has received—and is presently litigating to maintain—cooperative agreements from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs,” the organization added. “In April, DOJ summarily terminated our federal grants, which were awarded to support Vera’s work helping correctional staff across the country improve prison operations, training, and culture for both officers and people incarcerated; expanding access to counseling and treatment for people in mental health crisis, so that police do not have to respond alone in these situations; and supporting police and law enforcement to better serve deaf survivors of domestic violence.”

The New Venture Fund told The Daily Signal it hasn’t received federal dollars in “many years.”

“The New Venture Fund (NVF) has not received taxpayer grant dollars in many years and none from the Biden administration. In fact, the most recent federal grants NVF administered were awarded during Trump’s first term to support bipartisan international aid work. NVF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that uses a fiscal sponsorship model to support a wide range of nonpartisan projects and operates in compliance with the law.”

The White House also responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

“President [Donald] Trump has done more than anyone to root out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government, and has exposed billions of dollars doled out by unelected bureaucrats that is out-of-step with what the American people voted for,” the statement said. “Thanks to this president, Americans finally have transparency over what their tax dollars are funding, and accountability has been restored to stop the blank checks to fringe-left priorities.”