By HAYDEN LUDWIG | CAPITAL RESEARCH CENTER
The states have declared war on “Zuck bucks.” As of this writing, at least 24 states and four counties have banned or restricted private funding for elections. Despite some left-wing intransigence, across the country Democrats and Republicans agree that funding for elections must be transparent and above partisan influence.
But Big Philanthropy disagrees.
In April, I documented the next stage in the Center for Tech and Civic Life‘s (CTCL) strategy to corrupt elections: the launch of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million campaign to centralize control over elections in Washington, D.C., using “redesigned” ballots, a flood of taxpayer funds, and a permanent expansion of the vote-by-mail bureaucracy.
Funding for the alliance comes from a little-known group formed in 2018, the Audacious Project, which operates as part of the foundation responsible for TED Talks.
In 2021 alone, the Audacious Project funneled $920 million to a handful of groups engaged in the left’s current favorite topics: electric vehicles to stop global warming via ClimateWorks Foundation, welfare-state expansion via Code for America, and “modernizing” U.S. elections via CTCL.
All of this money came from prominent left-wing heavyweights such as the Gates and MacArthur Foundations. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is also involved through its front group, Climate Leadership Initiative.
Jeff Skoll, a billionaire who bankrolls a film-production company (Participant) famous for producing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, is part of the project. Ditto for MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos), the third-wealthiest woman in the world. So are investment billionaires Steve Jurvetson, Nat Simons, and John Arnold. The latter two fund the professional left via Sea Change Foundation and Arnold Ventures, respectively.
Two Swiss mega-funders are onboard: Hansjörg Wyss, a medical device CEO with a checkered past who has been accused of illegally donating to Democrats, and the environmentalist Oak Foundation, based in Geneva.
Even Arabella Advisors’ $1.7 billion “dark money” empire is represented in the Audacious Project by the Science Philanthropy Alliance, run by the Arabella network with funding from Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Audacious Project engages in what left-leaning philanthropoids call “big bets” grantmaking—projects that aim to fundamentally transform health care, climate policy, elections, etc., under the guise of “charity.” It’s 21st-century social engineering, largely funded by an establishment that earned enormous fortunes through American markets and rule of law and now use their wealth to destroy those things.
Read the rest of the story at Capital Research
