Re: [Salon] Revealed: how a shadowy group of far-right donors is funding federal employee watchlists

Paul,
Let's not be modest: this is "US," this email list, and its sponsoring organization, with the many "known associates" of these "far-right donors," regularly sharing information to this email list from their Koch-funded media platforms. Who are they? The Heritage Foundation and the people and organizations involved with Project 2025 proudly list themselves as I've attached to their Total War Plan below. As far as your suggestion Paul to read Jane Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money,” which could be entitled as well: "The Origins of American Fascism," what that does is tell about the Koch's, Adelsons, and long-time fascist favoring groups, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), CATO, Traditional Conservative funding Oligarchs, with virtually all having some representation on this email list, and its sponsoring organization, with this email list largely representative of those groups. And in what Heritage calls the "Battle of Ideas," they've received no meaningful resistance. They've won. So we should not be hypocritical in now criticizing  what this email list clearly asked for, and promoted.  

Attachment: Heritage Foundation Total-War Militarization of America Plan.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: Contributors to Total War-Authoritarianism .pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: Peace Through Strength-Hitler on Peace.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


One organization that didn't get listed perhaps due to non-profit tax status (only a guess as they regularly partner with The American Conservative magazine which is listed), is this one, with National Conservatives Mollie Hemingway and Saurabh Sharma who are mentioned below featured in this event representing the New Right: https://quincyinst.org/events/the-new-right-ukraine-marks-major-foreign-policy-shift-among-conservatives/

But the organization is there to buttress Heritage Foundation, help conceal their "true nature" as came out as Project 2025: 
This is so filled with DoubleSpeak that I won't even make an effort at deconstructing it, but read what he really means in Project 2025 in the attached file, and it has no more to do with 'Peace" than that other Conservative did back in the 1930s who promoted "Peace Through Strength" as in the attached file above.  

Maintaining that theme of "Restraint" can be seen below, unless one looks to see how zealous they seem for war against China as "Realists": 
"Today, conservative influencers like David Sacks and Tucker Carlson are calling for restraint (just as the ex-Fox New host did when he cautioned Trump not to start an all-out war with Iran in January 2020).
. . .                                        “I think the value of having that conversation in respect to people who still are neoconservatives is learning the lessons from the past so we don’t repeat them in the future,” said Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who called himself a “recovering neocon,” in a February 2023 interview. 

No, we should repeat them as "New Right National Conservatives" now in the driver's seat, with South African Sacks and Carlson, making a good pair, and that has nothing to do with "Peace." 


Here's another link on this subject which was embedded in the original article, I believe: 

Revealed: the extremist Maga lobbying group driving far-right Republican policies

"At an October 2022 workshop aimed at “communications professionals”, advertised speakers included AFL’s Stephen Miller, Lauren Boebert, the Colorado congresswoman, the Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway and Ben Williamson, a former Trump White House aide."
And, "AFL’s Stephen Miller is Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy; CRA’s Russell Vought is poised to be confirmed as head of the office of management and budget; and in a little-reported move, Trump placed American Moment’s founder, Saurabh Sharma, as special assistant in the presidential personnel office."

There we go, our favorites, Mollie and Saurabh. 

Here's how "Realist and Restrainer" J.D. Vance defines this vaunted "Realism and Restraint" from last spring's "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class put on by the Koch-funded Quincy Institute/The American Conservative magazine:

"The first is that we have to really understand that I think most of us are realists. In other words, we think that our foreign policy should pursue America's interests and pursue it ruthlessly.

"But that doesn't mean, even though we can criticize the moralisms of the past, that we can have a foreign policy that's totally diverse for morality. What I would say is we should have a foreign policy that recognizes that the moral intuitions that should most matter are the moral intuitions of American citizens. That's principle number one, and I'll talk about that in a second."

 

None of that stinkin' International Law/Geneva Conventions/ICC, crap, in other words, as Pete Hegseth, Tom Cotton, et al., agree. 

I highly recommend reading this Henry Giroux article, Fascism's Final Gamble by Henry Giroux whom BG John Johns introduced me to a few years ago: https://peaceandplanetnews.org/fascisms-final-gamble/, and watch this video with both related to Dictatorship, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHqi338seDQ.

This will be my last word on the subject as I've now been writing to this email list on this subject for about 10 years now, and other than Bill Polk and just a handful of others who privately indicated approval, I conclude the "game is not worth the candle," at least not here. But will conclude that, like with the Arabs and the farmers  who supported Trump/Vance, why is any of this a surprise? The most "honest" man in America may well be Donald Trump as he promised us he would rule as a Dictator, fudging only in saying it would just be for a day, and now he is. That was fine with this email list of Republicans, TeaPartiers, National Conservatives, Libertarians, Traditional Conservatives, Post-Liberals, New Rightists, et al., as he also promised "Peace." With anyone looking at the "fine print" getting scoffed at, even while a Cabinet was chosen by Saurabh Sharma's American Moment and Heritage Foundation, composed of the worst, openly Islamophobic, pro-Settler/Likud, militarily aggressive fanatics in the world, outside of Ben-Gvir's party, if that. With the US now a model for the global Far-Right. What could go wrong? 

So let's not play dumb here. These "ideas" have been promoted by all the ideologues represented here, as referred to above, for a decade now, and as a "tradition" going back to the 1950s, with Traditional Conservative and the Fusionist both promoting them for decades in forums like the Philadelphia Society, leading the way in "enculturating" these ideas in the American people, in the way that George L. Mosse wrote of happening decades before 1933 in Germany, culminating in the choice of the German Chancellor in 1933, and a representative of all these ideas named above in 2024 as the . . . . of the U.S.

I shared this by George L. Mosse long ago, and I'm sure no one looked at it, but actual history told us what was inevitable, and it was, though most here preferred the "right-wing revisionist history" served regularly to us by . . . .

Attachment: 1. The New Politics.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document





The Guardian (February 13, 2025)

Trump’s Illegitimate Power Grab Brings US Closer to Dictatorship

Experts warn president’s blatant violations of law could upend US government’s system of checks and balances

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/trump-vance-constitutional-crisis




On Feb 13, 2025, at 8:20 AM, @listserve.com> wrote:

13feb25 – Alexandria
 
For a very detailed description of the origin and continuing activities of the rightwing billionaire organizers leading to Project 2025 and the Trump administration’s attack on the federal government and institutions, read Jane Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money”.
 
Paul
 
From: 
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 8:33 PM
To: @listserve.com
Subject: [Salon] Revealed: how a shadowy group of far-right donors is funding federal employee watchlists
 

Revealed: how a shadowy group of far-right donors is funding federal employee watchlists

Project 2025 architects are among those behind the American Accountability Foundation and their blacklists targeting people of color 

A rightwing non-profit group that has published a “DEI Watch List” identifying federal employees allegedly “driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives” is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors.

One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.

The lists come amid turmoil in the US government as Donald Trump’s incoming administration, aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has sought to fire huge swathes of the federal government and purge it of DEI and other initiatives – such as tackling climate change – that Trump has dubbed “woke”.

While the publication of the personal details of government workers – whom the website describes as “targets” – has reportedly “terrified” many in federal departments, the Guardian has discovered that some current and former employees of AAF have taken pains to conceal their affiliations with the group on LinkedIn and other public websites.

One of the donors to the AAF is the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, which has been a driving ideological force behind Trump’s re-election and first weeks in government.

Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said: “It’s not surprising to find a vile project such as this backed by Project 2025 entities and far-right donors who have it out for public employees.”

Disclosure documents show that the AAF has been closely involved in training Republican staffers in collaboration with the affiliated Conservative Partnership Institute, in sessions that promise to train rightwing operatives in skills including “open source research” and “working with outside groups”.

Funding fear

Significant sums come to AAF via “dark money” donor-advised funds, which obscure the original benefactors by design.

In the most recent filings for large donor-advised funds, AAF received $25,000 via the Goldman Sachs Charitable Fund; $16,750 via the National Christian Charitable Fund; and $22,300 via the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund.

But other donors are named private foundations, some of which also donated to affiliated organizations including the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).

In 2022, for example, the Dunn Foundation gifted $250,000 to CPI and $25,000 to AAF. In 2023, the same foundation gave AAF another $25,000 and upped its CPI donation to $2.5m.

In 2023, the WL Amos Sr Foundation handed $10,000 to AAF, $55,000 to CPI-affiliated American Moment, and $300,000 to CPI, along with another $200,000 to Project 2025’s architects at the Heritage Foundation.

The Guardian emailed Foundation Source, listed as the administrator of the Dunn Foundation in filings, and William Amos III, who is listed as president of the WL Amos Sr Foundation, to ask about their donations and whether they approved of AAF’s style of political advocacy.

The Guardian also emailed others listed as officers or trustees of other family foundations that have made substantial donations to AAF, including Tina Kimbrough, executive director of the Nord Family Foundation; and Hallie McFetridge, a trustee of the Quinn Family Foundation.

Only Quinn’s McFetridge responded, saying: “As we are a family foundation, different members of the family are able to make gifts as their conscious dictates. Another member of our family made this particular donation.”

She added that she would pass the Guardian’s questions on to that person but that “I can assure you I would find this absolutely intolerable. I strongly disagree with this approach to political advocacy.”

Other heavyweight conservative groups have pitched in for AAF.

AAF was one of two organizations to receive direct grants in 2023 from the Club for Growth Foundation. That foundation is co-locatedand affiliated with a family of non-profits and political committees including Club for Growth Action and Club For Growth PAC, which channel money to conservative causes and candidates from billionaire mega-donors Jeff Yass, Richard Uihlein and their affiliates.

According to tax filings, in 2023 AAF also received $50,000 from The 85 Fund, which is one among a network of organizations funded by Leonard Leo, the conservative mega-donor and Federalist Society mastermind.

Although 2024 filings for AAF are not yet available, last June the organization reportedly also received $100,000 from Heritage for a project whose “goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda”.

‘Incubated’ by the Conservative Partnership Institute

The most crucial support for AAF, however, has come from the organization that birthed it: the CPI, which continues to have a profound influence on the Trump administration and the Republican party as a whole via its own activities and those of its flotilla of spin-off groups.

AAF was founded in 2021 to “take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration”, as Tom Jones, the organization’s head, told Fox News at the time.

In 2021 and 2022, however, CPI’s filings indicate that it was the “directly controlling entity” for the “related tax-exempt organization” AAF, and that CPI funded AAF to the tune of $335,100 in 2021 and $210,000 in 2022.

This was the period in which a well-heeled CPI was incubating a “network of closely affiliated think tanks, legal groups, and training centers dedicated to the thorough makeover of the federal government”, according to the Nation.

That network included America First Legal (AFL), the Center for Renewing America (CRA), the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) and American Moment, along with AAF.

All of these groups were on the advisory board for Project 2025, and most have placed personnel at the highest levels of the new Trump administration.

AFL’s Stephen Miller is Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy; CRA’s Russell Vought is poised to be confirmed as head of the office of management and budget; and in a little-reported move, Trump placed American Moment’s founder, Saurabh Sharma, as special assistant in the presidential personnel office.

Moulding Maga minds

The Guardian reported last year that CPI had been cementing ties between the far right and the GOP by means of training events for Hill staffers and their bosses in Congress

Many of these events were held at “Camp Rydin”, a sprawling 2,200-acre (890-hectare) property on Maryland’s eastern shore purchased after a $25m donation was made to CPI by its namesake, retired Houston software entrepreneur Mike Rydin, in the wake of January 6.

Others were held at one of at least nine adjacent properties on Washington DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue purchased by CPI since 2022, in what reports described as a $41m “shopping spree” that has created a “Maga campus”.

CPI literature describes the precinct as “Patriot’s Row”.

Records obtained from US Senate and House ethics disclosures indicate that AAF has benefited from being front and center at many of these events.

At a 29 May 2024 “Legislative Assistant Symposium” attended by staffers then working for senators including Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and JD Vance, AAF’s Jones was billed as speaking on “strategies for how Congress should approach oversight and accountability”, alongside speakers from CPI, AFL, Advancing American Freedom and anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA.

A parallel event with the same line-up drew staffers for hard-right Maga representatives including Anna Paulina Luna – who recently introduced a bill that would see Trump’s face added to Mount Rushmore – and Paul Gosar, who in November invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories in a newsletter defending Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead national intelligence.

NumbersUSA was part of a network of groups “founded and funded” by John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center called the “puppeteer of the nativism movement and a man with deep racist roots”.

At an event held 15-17 February 2023, hosted by AAF and attended by staffers for Congress members including Luna, Ken Buck and Marjorie Taylor Greene, trainees were to learn skills including “how to effectively draft requests for information from agencies and witnesses”, “tools and techniques for conducting open source research into agencies, individuals, and organizations”, and conducting “mock interviews with reluctant / recalcitrant witnesses”.

AAF’s reticent researchers

Prior to AAF, Jones worked as a Capitol Hill staffer for a string of high-profile hard-right Republicans including Ron Johnson, Cruz and the former senator Jim DeMint, who headed up CPI after he was forced out in an internal power struggle at Heritage.

Since opening his AAF unit, he has blooded a new generation of rightwing opposition researchers. Some of those researchers appear reluctant to publicly advertise their affiliation.

On LinkedIn, four people openly flag their affiliation with AAF: Jones himself; communications manager Yitz Friedman of Brooklyn, New York; development adviser Nadeen Wincapaw of Tampa, Florida; and associate researcher Elisabeth Guinard of Helena, Montana.

Search engine-cached versions of the LinkedIn page of Jerome Trankle of Washington DC, however, indicate that he is research director at AAF. Data brokers also yield an AAF-associated email address for Tankle.

Trankle’s live LinkedIn profile has him doing “ESG & Financial Services” research at “AAF” without using the badged – and searchable – link some of his colleagues use.

The Guardian emailed the address associated with Trankle at AAF to ask why he doesn’t more clearly advertise his affiliation but received no response.

Additionally, an anti-fascist research group claimed late on Wednesday to have identified additional researchers on the basis of LinkedIn profile pictures that had inadvertently been included in purposed evidentiary materials about government workers on the DEI Watch List site.

The Guardian corroborated the inclusion of researchers’ profile pictures in evidence on the DEI watchlist.

One of those identified, Cari Fike, is married to Hugh Fike, a senior director at CPI, and is a former lobbyist for Heritage Action, the 501(c)4 associated with the Heritage Foundation.

The Guardian contacted Fike for comment on her apparent involvement in researching government workers for AAF.

Beirich, the extremism expert, said: “It’s rather ironic that an organization that is targeting public officials through a watchlist that could open them up to harassment and mistreatment goes to such lengths to protect its own,” adding: “Clearly, they understand how dangerous this outing can be.”

Dirt machine

The dirt machine now targeted at government workers was honed on higher-profile targets during the Biden administration.

Early on, AAF pointed its opposition-research machine at Biden nominees including Saule Omarova, nominated for comptroller of the currency; Sarah Bloom Raskin, nominated for vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, supreme court justice, whom the organization falsely claimed had been soft on sex offenders.

In the process of “desperately seeking dirt” on the Federal Reserve nominee Lisa Cook, AAF used a customary tactic of peppering her employer, Michigan State University, with records requests. But Jones went one step further by bombarding “dozens” of her colleagues in a bid to cast doubt on her tenure promotion a decade earlier.

A significant proportion of the nominees targeted by AAF – including Brown Jackson, Cook and Omarova – were women of color.

The dozens of public employees whose information was collected in “dossiers” on the DEI watchlist site are overwhelmingly people of color. Of 44 profiles listed under agencies at the time of reporting, 29 were people of color, and 20 were women of color alone. Just five were white men.

“The fact that many on the list are people of color just adds another layer of vileness to the project,” Beirich said.

“Recent attacks by the Trump administration on public employees shows that the Maga/Project 2025 movement will go as far as possible to make life miserable for public servants.”

This article was amended on 10 February 2025. An earlier version incorrectly stated that employees of Foundation Source act as trustees for the Dunn Foundation; rather Foundation Source acts as an administrator. A spokesperson said after publication that Foundation Source “does not recommend (or decide) specific organizations for its clients to fund”, and that it has no affiliation with the CPI or AAF.

It also clarified that Jeff Yass and Richard Uihlein have not contributed to the Club for Growth Foundation.

 
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