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Liberal Philanthropy and the Fight for Democracy w/ David Callahan | The Nation Podcast · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the nation podcast.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm DD Guttenplan, host of the nation podcast, which takes you behind the scenes on our most important stories by talking to the writers who wrote them.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's no surprise that liberal philanthropy, a long-time pillar of the Democratic establishment, has become one of the Trump administration's latest targets.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: As David Callahan writes in our December issue, liberal foundations have often been depicted as the great puppet masters of the left, bankrolling and directing a whose who of progressive groups intent on destroying the American way of life.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: In other words, catnip for magamadness.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as Callahan points out, the reality of how these institutions operate is far from radical.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: As power brokers of the elite, liberal philanthropists are averse to challenging the systems that spawned them.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Since the 2008 financial crisis, they've largely sidestept meaningful debates about affordability and then material concerns of working people.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And above all, many of these institutions are inert by design, cautious and slow moving, seeing themselves as neutral players above the political fray.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have liberal foundations failed to mobilize working class Americans?
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if so, what can they do to ramp up the fight to defend the democracy they claim to care so much about saving?
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here to discuss all of this is David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, an author of the book The Givers, Welfth Power and Philanthropy in a new gilded age.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: David, as someone who's been reading you for years and really admires your work, it inspired philanthropy.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a great pleasure to welcome you to the nation podcast.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's great to be here.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's start with the news and then peel it back a bit.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: What has the Trump administration done that's different from what other administrations do in terms of how they treat philanthropy in general or if there are specific
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: they've done something that no presidential administration has done in history, which is they have explicitly gone after foundations as the enemy, and they, you know, have called out, Trump has called out the open society foundations run by George Soros as an opponent that should be investigated if not indicted under Rico.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, so they have clearly said, we're going to come after you.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is just a massive precedent-shattering move.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: No president has ever really talked much about philanthropy at all.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much less called for the overt politicization of the Justice Department, the IRS, to go after their philanthropic enemies.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and that sounds pretty dramatic.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we know that when Trump says, go after somebody, Pam Bondi says, how hard and how high, sir.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, these kinds of fulminations on truth, social, or wherever Trump is given to fulminating, they have consequences in the real world, don't they?
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they do.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Justice Department has given notice to its attorneys around the country to go out and find something to investigate if not in date on regarding the Open Society Foundation's operations.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they have also begun a process of politicizing the IRS, apparently,
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: A big effort is underway at the IRS to set up its criminal division, which works with the Justice Department, to be able to go after non-profit groups that they see as engaging in domestic terrorism.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you have both the Justice Department and the IRS being mobilized for this attack on nonprofit groups and philanthropy.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, you said this is unprecedented, but when you're talking about weaponizing the IRS,
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm old enough to remember Nixon and his enemies list, so what's different about this?
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's unprecedented in that philanthropy is the target, right?
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There obviously has been a lot of populist attacks on philanthropy over the past 100 plus years.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: John D. Rockefeller, when he first tried to get a foundation.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Incorporated, charted at the federal level, Congress said no, you know, there was all this sense that Rockefeller was going to use philanthropy as this kind of McEvelle in effort to expand his power later in the 1960s.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was another kind of wave of attacks on
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Foundations, including the Ford Foundation and, you know, in congressional hearings, but over the past 50 plus years, it's been pretty quiet, right?
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There hasn't been efforts by either political party to kind of target the non-profit non-partisan donors as part of this sort of escalating, you know, polarization and culture war that we're in, the sort of soft civil war,
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: clearly the boundaries are being moved, and philanthropy and civil society organizations are considered legitimate targets by the Trump administration, which of course is taking a page from the authoritarian playbook worldwide where civil society groups have been targeted by authoritarian regimes everywhere.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was going to say, I guess there are two things that come to mind.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is, and I need to make clear to listeners that no matter what you might have read, J.V.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vance saying, the nation has never gotten any money from the open society foundation, which isn't to say that the magazine wouldn't welcome some, if you're listening, Alex Soros, but we've never had any.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we don't have that dog in this fight.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's also true that, you know, Trump's idol and Vance's idol Victor Orban has gotten a lot of mileage in going after George Soros.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't did.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: He made George Soros into a bogeyman, he closed down Soros's major funded university.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're in Hungary and he's close civil society space more broadly and the same thing has happened in multiple other countries including Turkey I was just visiting Turkey.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a you know been a major attack on non-profits in civil society in Turkey and what has been a uniting thread in these efforts by authoritarian's to close down
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: sources of descent coming from the nonprofit sector is that they have led that these groups engage in terrorism or support of terrorism and of course we're hearing that same rhetoric from the Trump administration which makes it very eerie you know you wonder like the Steven Miller have had like the the game plan up on his uh... uh... his wall in the White House of of all the tactics that have worked so successfully
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think there are lots of pieces to this and I want to see if we can tease some of them apart because, you know, attacks on civil society are certainly a well-established part of the authoritarian playbook.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's clear, I think, to most of our listeners, why we should be worried about attacks on civil society by government.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's probably less clear, particularly to people who, you know, subscribe to the nation or listen to this podcast.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: why we should worry about, you know, the legacies of billionaires.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about the history of philanthropy.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, John D. Rockefeller may not have used his foundation to
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: bolster the monopolies that he already had through standard oil, but certainly Andrew Carnegie used his foundation to, as it were, longer his reputation, you know, as a brutal oppressor of workers on Robert Baron, and generations later, all people in a lot of the country know is that he's the guy whose name is on their library.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, from a left point of view, shouldn't
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, we should, and a lot of these legacy foundations, as they're often called, set up in that gilded age period, Rockefeller, Carnegie, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, which came on the scene later, Ford Foundation, developed in the 1940s.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of these foundations,
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: and most of them are pretty cautious players.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's ironic to hear the Trump administration calling out philanthropy as the right has often done not at the governmental level.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of watchdogs on the right who have long been complaining about liberal philanthropy as this kind of puppet master, as you said, in the introduction.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: but most of these foundations started in that gilded age aren't very radical at all they're quite you know technocratic and plotting in their way of doing business and they're very much part of the establishment.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well I guess that's what I was trying to get at is that from our point of view it's
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that they're plotting in technocratic and not radical or even really much given to entertaining notions about the distribution of wealth and power in society at large is a fault, not a virtue, no?
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is a fault, although it's important to keep in mind that while many of the biggest foundations in America are quite moderate and cautious.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are certainly
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plenty of more forward leaning progressive donors who played a very important role in scaling infrastructure on the left over the last decade in particular.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about the whole range of groups that have expanded since 2016 or new groups that have come on the scene often to engage in electoral work.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you be specific about some of the groups that you have in mind?
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a couple different networks, a movement voter project is, you know, $100 million plus a kind of funding intermediary that works to support grassroots civic participation work.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: around the country, it raises a lot of money from philanthropy.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Way to win is another such network, solid dare.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The democracy alliance, which some of your readers will be familiar with, which started in 2005, as I said, of wealthy donors, who give to a range of progressive organizations, if you think about.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: a big institution like the Center for American Progress or Media Matters for America.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: These nonprofit organizations, which are quite out there in the fight.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're supported by philanthropy.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many of the donors who are behind those organizations, though, are not these more established foundations that were created
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: philanthropic money that has gone into progressive organizations that are, you know, fought the Trump administration during its first term.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of those groups are supported by individual donors or smaller family foundations, which tend to be a more progressive and more willing to, you know, stand up and engage in political conflict.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, I guess what I was getting at is, and maybe this is my own personal hobby horse, which is just the the extent to which the organized left has become dependent on foundation money and the ways in which that constrains the horizon of what's possible.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, media matters for America, or the other one you mentioned, our perfect examples of sort of very democratic, very hard fighting, but also very centrist and very keen to squash anyone to their left groups.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's hard for me to feel their pain too much, as I guess what I'm trying to say.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and there's no question that the donor class is not interested in certain issues, right?
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not interested in a kind of forward-leaning economic justice work, for example.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are the people who have been the beneficiaries of the economic status quo.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And most of them don't want to spend a lot of their donor dollars supporting grassroots labor organizing, for example.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying is that for those of us who think that economic inequality is probably the most important issue, the fact that so many foundations avoid addressing it, is a problem inherent to foundations, it's not, you know, it's not a problem with one foundation or another right anywhere.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can debate that another time.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm curious
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: legal restrictions or guardrails in terms of political activity by foundations because you've listed in your article several foundations that have become very important in terms of progressive work even if it's not necessarily the class-based work that some of us would be pushing for.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there are foundations on the right that are
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and intrinsic and essential part of the right infrastructure.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess what I'm wondering is, you know,
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our foundations always inherently centrist or can they take bold political positions without endangering their statuses foundations?
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They certainly can take bold positions, not partisan political positions.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can't come out in favor of one political party or the other, and certainly there are limits on how much they could work to back or pose specific legislation.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's nothing to stop foundations from underwriting grassroots work to turn out voters in key background states, for example.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And foundations, as I mentioned, there's been a lot of funding that has done exactly that over the last 10 years.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it has not come from most of these
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: cautious, they are left of center, they are sort of moderately liberal, but they have a model of change, which is very apolitical in many ways.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They work on one issue, you know, on specific
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know the drivers of what should happen and they imagine that if they work patiently on a given issue then they can make real change and sometimes that's the case but in fact a lot of that issue work.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: exists downstream from the world of power right and power is shaped by who wins elections and it's shaped by who controls narrative and foundations have historically under-invested in power building work and narrative work and as result they often fall short in their goals and I'll give you an example which is foundation foundations have spent a
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Billions of dollars, probably over $10 billion in the last 20 years on climate change work.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've scaled a whole bunch of climate change organizations.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of those big green groups are now over $200 million a year in their budgets.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of that money is coming from philanthropy.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, look at the reversals that we've seen since 2016 on the climate front.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And those reversals came during the Trump administration, after an election that Hillary Clinton lost by 80,000 votes across three key battleground states.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And none of those climate funders had backed any grassroots work.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: to turn out black voters in Wisconsin or Detroit, for example, but as it happened so much of what they had been working for was contingent upon the outcome of the 2016 election.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I can give you many other examples of work backed by foundations which has been reversed.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to negative consequences in the electoral sphere, which these funders could have affected by nonpartisan 3C civic participation funding to turn out key constituencies.
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you said you use this phrase that I like very much a quiet civil war, and it seems to me that whether you call it a quiet civil war or a slow civil war, some writers have done.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: that sometimes it feels like there's only one side fighting and I'll give you an example, you know, you say that they can't organize foundations that can't spend in a partisan manner, but they can do, for example, voter turnout efforts.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have, you know, you have,
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: the Smith Richardson and the Olin and the Mellon and the Shave Foundations, and they were all turning out voters, and yes, it's like Anatol Frans said the rich and the poor all have the right to sleep under the bridges of France.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, the voters they turn out have every right to vote democratic, but they're very sophisticated and making sure that they spend their money to turn out voters who are not going to vote democratic.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So why don't
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't we, why haven't we learned this lesson?
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we have, I mean, the left of center foundations have spent huge amounts of money to turn out voters, black voters, Latino voters, young voters, and have often done so very successfully.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of things that you can do with non-partisan
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: of 501c3 funding to get people to vote and also to educate them on the issues through nonpartisan voter education work and foundations on the left have actually spent a lot of money on this over the last 10 years, over the last few election cycles.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, they have not spent enough money on this.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and instead they have often spent money on issue advocacy work which as I said takes place in the spear which is downstream from electoral results in power.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you one more example.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: reproductive rights of funders, you know, a huge amount of money has gone from liberal philanthropy and to be productive rights groups over the past 20, 30, 40 years.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this has been one of the major areas of investment.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the big reversals we've seen over recent years and reproductive rights have all happened as a result of electoral battles that we lost.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if some of those funders had spent some of the money that on that sort of issue advocacy work on building power and engaging voters, we would be in a very different situation today.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's interesting.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I did a lot of reporting in Pennsylvania before the 2024 election and some of the people who were doing the most interesting to me organizing work and voter turnout work in groups like Pennsylvania stands up or take back Pennsylvania.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: They described this cycle where
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The funders would come in and they would have their priorities and they would give them a ton of money and they would staff up right before an election to do the kind of Canvassing that the funders wanted and then the funding would all go away and they would have to fire their staffs and
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: whatever they built had no continuity.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what should we they be doing differently?
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, this is a big problem but this kind of fly by night transactional funding whereby philanthropy comes in and basically treats these organizing groups in battleground states as vendors to go out and do a lot
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: work, but it's not the same as investing in real long-term power building, and this is what so many foundations, especially the big blue chip, well-known legacy foundations we talked about earlier, so many of those foundations, you know, steer away from investing in real organizing, and
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, the good news is that there's some efforts to change that.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Freedom together foundation, which is a $3 billion foundation based in New York, formerly known as the J.P.B.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Foundation, recently issued a important report aimed at philanthropy, arguing that funders need to spend more.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot more to invest in what they call bigger Wii organizing, which is, you know, serious long-term efforts at the grassroots to engage people, pull them into meaningful conversations, help them discover their leadership potential, help them build a sense of efficacy that they can make change in their lives.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the kind of work that needs to be scaled by philanthropy a year after year over time.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so far, historically many foundations have taken a pass on that, but maybe that will change.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what is it that the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, just to name the two that seem to be the most in the crosshairs at the moment?
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: What have they done to attract the higher specifically or particularly of the current administration in Washington?
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you look around the progressive ecosystem of organizations, there's hundreds of them, there's national groups, there's state groups, you know quite a few of them get money from one of those two foundations and often both of those foundations.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ford, while it was, you know, founded back during this earlier 20th century period based up on a big auto fortune, you know, is quite a progressive, real kind of mothership, a funder of social justice organizations, both here and worldwide.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: the open society foundations again, backed by a billionaire, but quite a major important leader in supporting a lot of progressive work over the past 20 years.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, these are key institutions in the progressive funding infrastructure, and the right knows that, which is why they're
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Targeting it.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they want to turn off the taps and go after the money.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and then they've lost full of men's and going after act blue, which as many of your listeners will know is they're going to key way to donate to progressive groups and also to candidates.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they can do this without injuring themselves.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: In other words, if you go after the act fluid, doesn't that create a precedent that some democratic president who isn't Joe Biden and isn't narcotized by dreams of bipartisan comedy could use to cripple the right leaning foundations and given the distribution of capital in this country aren't there probably more right leaning foundations than left leaning foundations?
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can answer either of those questions.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Believe me, there have been warnings to that effect from some conservative leaders in philanthropy saying, you know, very, very careful about declaring open season on foundations because that game can go two ways, right, and the next democratic administration could target the Charles Cook Foundation or the Bradley Foundation, you know, or one of the scape foundations, so that there is a plenty of targets for both sides if we want to.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: pull philanthropy into this kind of legal battle to attack on every front and weaken your enemies in this cold civil war as I've called it.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so hopefully we won't go down that path because it's certainly could escalate and, oh, by the way, you know, you Yes, Attorney General Attorney General at the state level have wide power over non-profit groups as well.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so those officials could also be drawn into this and we've seen that happen in different places.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in Texas, particularly, yes.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I gather and you were quite clear that you think it would be a bad idea to respond in kind under a democratic administration.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: In other words, you think that going after the safe and coke and Olin and Smith Richardson foundations would be a bad thing.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to be immediately evident to at least some of us, so explain why that is.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm hoping that the Trump administration does not go through with its threats to attack non-profit groups on the left using the IRS and the Justice Department.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: If that is not the case,
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they do follow through and then you have a democratic president in power a few years from now.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this is now one of the tools of war in this ever escalating zone of hyperpolarization, then you know who knows how I'll feel about going after conservative donors.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in general, I think that independence, non-partisan.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: nonprofit organizations should not be targets of government action simply to squelce dissent whether it's coming from the left or the right.
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so there's a kind of zone of freedom from interference from the state that you think is a good thing.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I mean, just to be clear, though, the laws that we have are problematic, right?
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The philanthropy is a form of power, right?
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of ways in which wealthy people can convert
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are money into power and influence using philanthropy.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of money that flows into politics through 501cc3 channels, whether it's coming through think tanks, that try to influence legislative outcomes, or legal groups, which try to influence what happens in the courts.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: or electoral civic participation groups that try to influence elections.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of ways you can use philanthropic dollars to try to affect political outcomes in this country.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many wealthy people are quite sophisticated in doing exactly that.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think we need to understand that this is a form of money and politics often.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're against the money in politics, then you should be concerned about the ways in which philanthropic dollars are used and the wide latitude that the law gives for both foundations and wealthy individual donors to deploy their money to get the policy outcomes that they want.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's that comes a little closer to to meeting at least some of us where we are, which is in general opposed to money and politics and trying to get more of it out rather than more of it in.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I understand that if you're in a war and one side is disarming and the other side is in an arms race that doesn't load well for the side that's disarming.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess the recent head of the J.P.B.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Foundation, Deepak Bargava, who's also, I should say, on the nation editorial board, called this a Code Red moment.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I suppose what he meant was it's unprecedented nature, which you've explained very well.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if it's a Code Red moment, what kind of response should we see?
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: What kind of response should we hope for?
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have advocated as have others that foundations support grassroots groups around the country that are standing up to the Trump administration's agenda.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that these groups are the best actors to try to affect the kind of long-term political trajectory that we're on.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're in the position to pressure local legislators, to engage citizens, to organize opposition.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's, in my mind, should be a top priority for funders.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They need to kind of activate citizens against this administration.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Funders are certainly engaged in a lot of support of litigation and, you know, there's all sorts of lawsuits happening against the Trump administration, which have been financed by philanthropy or organization supported by philanthropy and all that.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: is great but that needs to be supplemented by grassroots action and then there's this other really critical arena which says narrative and media right i think one thing we have all come to see far more clearly uh in the wake of the twenty twenty four election is just how much of an advantage the right has.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: when it comes to reaching people through media.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And through non-traditional media, including podcasts and different kinds of influencers and YouTube.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is a far, far, far and highly effective media ecosystem that the right has built, and it has built that with huge investments from conservative donors.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And by and large,
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: of funders on the left have not stepped up for similar kinds of work, which is critical.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and we see, you know, on the one hand, you see Fox News dominating the conversation and on the other hand, you see
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's CNN or PBS, both being attached by the current administration and struggling not just to expand which it sounds like you think they should do, but to survive.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so what would an effective response to that look like?
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, think of something like Prager University.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: which now reaches millions of people every month.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has a budget over $50 million a year.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a non-profit organization.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's all supported by philanthropy, right?
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the right, there's no comparable.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: institution on the left that is drawn tens of millions of dollars to make videos on YouTube that influence people and how they see the world politically.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you do see funding from left-of-center foundations for media, but it almost all goes to things like local news or
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: All that's great except that so many Americans have essentially opted out of mainstream news.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to reach them by funding some nonprofit media startup in Charlotte or something, right?
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to reach them through other kinds of mechanisms, often sites that focus on lifestyle, sports, cooking, or
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: exercise or whatever, and slip in some politics, right?
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think of the Joe Rogan's show.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not all politics.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people listen to that show for many reasons, but he also does politics, right?
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's become very influential as a result or bar stool, the whole bar stool thing, right?
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is how the right has engaged a lot of people, and you haven't seen a comparable investment on the left.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are some organizations out there that are addressing this problem.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Accelerate media is one of them.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a nonprofit group that has raised a lot of money.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a buy, different kinds of media properties, that reach people off in young people of color, around lifestyle issues, and it also has the strategy for engaging them on important political and policy issues.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that our failure to do that on the left comes from a kind of elite disdain for the cultural life of ordinary Americans?
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it comes from the left, particularly I'm talking about the kind of mainstream liberal philanthropic.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: foundation world and major donors.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people in that world think about issues.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: They want to fund on specific issues.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: They want to give for reproductive rights or climate change or gun safety.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't think as much about power.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: power and narrative, right, and as I gave those examples earlier, of the billions and billions of dollars invested in climate change only to see that work kind of washed away by very close electoral results, not just in 2016, but in the recent house elections, as part of that big beautiful bill,
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The house wiped out a half a trillion dollars worth of clean energy credits that were had been allocated under the inflation reduction act and the house was, you know, Democrats fell short of retaking the house by 7,500 votes over three congressional districts.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the last election.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So half a trillion dollars in climate funding goes down the drain because of 7,500 votes.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I guarantee you that almost none of the climate funders who gave billions of dollars to help pass the IRA and think through all this clean energy.
• 36:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: strategy gave any money for civic participation work in crucial house elections in 2024.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm talking about in terms of the sort of short-sightedness of a lot of these funders.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Funding on issues is not good enough if you're not also paying attention to how we're in narrative.
• 36:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: What kind of change do you think you'd like to see in the long term?
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the broader point that you got at earlier about the progressive world being too dependent upon philanthropic dollars is exactly on point.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, 70 years ago, there was not a lot of philanthropic money supporting the left.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: mainly labor unions, civic organizations, mass-based groups that civil rights groups, I mean, these were grassroots groups with members, with their own independent revenue streams.
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, all of that sort of slowly disappeared.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in its place, we have a professional left, funded by philanthropy.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is not the same as all these hundreds of philanthropy-backed organizations.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the same as having these sort of deep, large citizen-based groups that can wield a much more profound form of power in our political system.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: David, thank you so much.
• 38:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been, it's been great talking to you.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you taking the time.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you for the article, which is terrific.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The nation podcast is produced by Jack Merkinson and Adam Smith Paras.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our interns are Lauren Norr Walton and Leo Miranda.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and you can get us wherever you find your podcasts.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm DD Guttenblan, host of the Nation Podcast.