InfluenceWatch Podcast

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raked in tens of millions of dollars from personal and corporate supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement amid demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd in police custody. Since that time, many have wondered where all that money went: Today’s guest, Andrew Kerr of the Washington Examiner, was one of them. And when he went digging for federally mandated disclosures from the group, he couldn’t find them. Now he has only more questions, and BLM Global Network Foundation is finding itself in the crosshairs of even ideologically friendly regulators. Links: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/blms-millions-go-unaccounted-for-after-leaders-quietly-jump-ship https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/where-is-blms-office-its-a-mystery https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-threatens-to-hold-blms-leaders-personally-liable-over-missing-financial-records https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/black-lives-matter-shuts-down-fundraising-days-after-liberal-states-threatened-legal-action Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ Follow our socials: • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

The American Federation of Teachers has a public image problem, as increasing numbers of parents become aware of the union’s involvement in prolonging destructive restrictions on schoolchildren in the name of “protecting” them from coronavirus—most notably school lockdowns, which despite widespread evidence that they did not control viral spread and harmed students’ educations possibly permanently continue in places like Flint, Michigan, and forced-masking orders. But rather than enable children to resume their childhoods, Randi Weingarten’s union is challenging the union’s image problem with the classical trick: Control of the narratives put before children. The AFT formed a partnership with NewsGuard, a rating group that tracks the supposed trustworthiness of news outlets, to bring its rating tools into classrooms. And in news that shouldn’t surprise anyone, NewsGuard leans to the left. Joining me to discuss the troubling partnership and NewsGuard’s alignments is Dan Gainor, vice president for Free Speech America of the Media Research Center. Links: InfluenceWatch: NewsGuard: https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/newsguard/ MRC: NewsGuard Ratings System Heavily Skews in Favor of Left-Wing Outlets: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2021/12/13/study-newsguard-ratings-system-heavily-skews-favor-left MRC: Free Speech America CensorTrack: https://censortrack.org/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ Follow our socials: • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

Since Mark Zuckerberg provided hundreds of millions of dollars to assist governmental agencies in administering the 2020 elections through the private Center for Tech and Civic Life, state legislatures have considered and in many cases taken action to prevent future billionaires from privately funding the administration of elections. This week, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter testified on one such bill before the Virginia State Senate; he joins us to discuss the “Zuckbucks” and legislative responses to them. Also joining us are Hayden Ludwig and Parker Thayer, two of my colleagues who have put in yeoman’s work crunching the numbers on where exactly the Zuckbucks went. Links to Virginia's Legislature Response and Scott Walter Testimony: https://capitalresearch.org/article/virginia-moves-closer-to-banning-zuck-bucks-after-scott-walters-testimony/ https://capitalresearch.org/article/answering-questions-from-yesterdays-virginia-senate-hearing/ Links to ZuckBucks Research: https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-bucks-in-key-states/#virginia https://capitalresearch.org/article/democrats-tried-to-use-the-same-2020-election-shenanigans-to-overtake-virginia-this-year/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch Special Guest: Hayden Ludwig.

Elections have consequences, as the country learned last year when the Biden administration took office and as Virginians are learning now that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has taken office to replace Democrat Ralph Northam. Youngkin’s election against the partisan alignment of the increasingly Democratic state has been credited to his emphasis on parental power in education—and his opponent, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, having said in a debate “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” And in keeping with his election message, Gov. Youngkin issued a series of executive orders that banned the teaching of “divisive concepts” like critical race theory and affirmed parents “fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care of their children.” Joining me to discuss the fundamental shifts in Virginia education policy is Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education. Parents Defending Education: https://defendinged.org/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

If you listen to the metropolitan press, the radical-Left ideology of critical race theory is not taught in public schools. But across the country, parents are objecting to curriculum material and education practices that are clearly informed or inspired by the precepts of critical race theory and promoted to school districts by consultancies and advocacy groups backed by the biggest names in Big Business and Big Philanthropy. Joining me to discuss one such group, The Education Trust, and the broader trends of critical race theory in schools is Jay Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation Center for Education Policy. Jay Greene Bio: https://www.heritage.org/staff/jay-p-greene-phd Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

Parents of America, it’s happened again. Right after a period in which teachers union officials, most prominently American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, conducted a preposterous public relations campaign to make themselves the supposed driving forces of post-COVID school reopenings, teachers unions are shutting schoolhouse doors again. The fiercest battle against the most entrenched adversary rages in Chicago, where the Chicago Teachers Union is conducting an industrial action to avoid going to schools to work; joining me to discuss that union, its radical history, and the ongoing state of play facing Chicago parents is Mailee Smith, director of labor policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. See more here: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-teachers-who-dont-want-to-walk-out-on-students-have-options/ Mailee Smith's bio: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/author/msmith/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

Congress has been receptive to the push, with Democrats proposing a bill to fine companies $20,000 each day if they do not have such an “equity audit” in any given two years. Joining me to discuss this proposal and the powers behind it is Santi Ruiz, reporter for the Washington Free Beacon. • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

Since the identification of the “Omicron Variant” of COVID-19, the left and paternalist factions of the right at home and abroad have returned to their favorite policy packages: Harsh lockdowns and tyrannical mandates. And while the American President has ruled out lockdowns “for now,” his party comrade Bill de Blasio, who remains Mayor of New York until the New Year, instituted the most severe vaccination passport regime this side of the Atlantic. No one over the age of five will be permitted to engage in almost any public activity without showing their papers in the so-called “greatest city in the world,” and a harsher edict on workers than President Biden’s OSHA vaccination mandate that has been enjoined by federal courts will take effect before the end of the month. Joining me to discuss de Blasio’s order is Joel Zinberg, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, director of Paragon Health Institute’s Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative, and associate clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. All for Show: De Blasio’s eleventh-hour vaccine mandate is motivated by politics, not public health -- https://www.city-journal.org/mayor-de-blasio-vaccine-mandate-is-ill-conceived Joel Zinberg Bio -- https://cei.org/experts/joel-zinberg/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

I’m Michael Watson and this is the InfluenceWatch Podcast. Our guest today is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment who at age 16 raised money for the Rainforest Action Network and at 17 “lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution.” But our guest, author Michael Shellenberger, isn’t your typical Bill McKibben or Bernie Sanders type: He is a campaigner for the environmental benefits of nuclear energy through his group Environmental Progress and just released a new book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities criticizing how radical-left approaches to criminal justice and homelessness have battered the Bay Area. Ken Braun, who joins today’s conversation reviewed both San Fransicko and Shellenberger’s previous book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All for Capital Research Center; Shellenberger joins us to discuss his theses. Michael Shellenberger @ Environmental Progress: https://environmentalprogress.org/founder-president San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities: https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626 Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y8FHFQ7/ref=dbsadefrwtbiblvppii1 “Pathological Altruism” May Kill a City Near You: https://capitalresearch.org/article/pathological-altruism-may-kill-a-city-near-you/ Antidote for “Apocalyptic Environmentalists” -- Apocalypse Never: https://capitalresearch.org/article/oliver-stones-antidote-for-apocalyptic-environmentalists-part-1/ A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/10/23/a-cautionary-tale-from-the-streets-of-san-francisco Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

By now, the story is familiar. Mark Zuckerberg (https://www.influencewatch.org/person/mark-zuckerberg/) financed the administration of the 2020 elections through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-tech-and-civic-life/). Eric Holder and an army of Democratic lawyers ensured that liberals would compete on favorable district lines and with favorable voting rules, with no small help from a Philadelphia union boss and political fixer who was just convicted of fraud. And liberal “dark money” groups like Arabella Advisors’ Sixteen Thirty Fund poured hundreds of millions of dollars from the most prominent liberal political donors—men like George Soros, Hansjorg Wyss, and Pierre Omidyar—directly into supporting Democratic campaigns. In all, it makes one wonder if the 2020 elections were in some way rigged. Not coincidentally, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections is the title of the book that our guest, The Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway, has just released on the 2020 Presidential election and its fallout. Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway -- https://www.regnery.com/9781684512591/rigged/ Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch