InfluenceWatch Friday

InfluenceWatch, a project of Capital Research Center, is a comprehensive and ever-evolving compilation of our research into the numerous advocacy groups, foundations, and donors working to influence the public policy process. The website offers transparency into these influencers’ funding, motives, and connections while providing insight often neglected by other watchdog groups.

The information compiled in InfluenceWatch gives news outlets and other interested parties research to use in reporting on significant topics that are often overlooked by the American public.

CRC is pleased to present some of the most significant additions to InfluenceWatch in the past week:

• Encode Justice is a youth-led tech activist coalition claiming that Artificial Intelligence (AI) “algorithms are being used as tools of oppression,” and it calls for congressional and government censorship of AI applications. In May 2023, Encode Justice sent an open letter to Congress and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) demanding more youth representation in decision-making for AI policy.
• Ceres is an environmentalist group that pushes businesses and investors into advocating for “stronger climate, clean energy and water policies at all levels of government.” In 2023, the organization endorsed a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule in which certain businesses would be required to report their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions within their annual shareholder reports.
• Civics Unplugged (CU) is a networking organization that seeks to educate and train students to advocate on topics that include politics, climate, culture, and technology. One of its initiatives, DICCE (diversity, inclusion, cultural competency, and equity), develops resource guides to educate on “institutional racism and intersectionality” due to “inequities perpetuated by an unjust history.”
• Zachor Legal Institute is a legal think tank that advocates against anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic activities within the United States. In 2022, it was one of 28 organizations that signed a petition to officials in the Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice asking for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to be investigated and legally challenged as necessary.
• CarbonPlan is an environmental nonprofit group that monitors carbon capture strategies and methods used by other organizations. In April 2021, the group received a $200,000 grant from the FTX Foundation, a nonprofit associated with defunct cryptocurrency firm FTX, which was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Following FTX’s bankruptcy in November 2022, CarbonPlan executive director Jeremy Freeman stated the company would not return the donation and instead would use it for researching the use of blockchain technology in carbon capture.