John, I'm excited to share the latest from CRC with you:

• What is "dark money"?
  A decade ago, Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation coined the pejorative "dark money" to describe donations to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that can't be traced to their donors. Since then, partisans like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and author Jane Mayer have used the term to attack conservative donors. CRC's Michael Hartmann takes a tour through the tangled history of 501(c)(4)s and how the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United altered the political landscape here.

• Is the sky falling?
  To listen to die-hard environmentalists, the planet is fast approaching an environmental apocalypse--which can be averted by swapping out gasoline-powered vehicles and coal plants for electric cars and renewable energy sources. Back in reality, more people are alive today than at any time before, and almost all of them are richer, better fed, and better clothed than their ancestors. CRC's Hayden Ludwig ponders whether we'll survive the elites' solutions to the "climate crisis" here.

• Who's staffing the Biden administration?
  Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration has drawn personnel from the Biden and Obama Foundations and from Big Philanthropy, including George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Markle Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Other Biden officials came from the "dark money" philanthropic consulting firm Arabella Advisors and its minions and from the left-wing donor collective Democracy Alliance. CRC's Robert Stilson continues his occasional series on "Nonprofits in the Biden Administration" here and here.

• How does the Left create pop-up advocacy groups?
  An existing tax-deductible nonprofit can use its status to "fiscally sponsor" more nonprofits. People for the American Way (PFAW), a project of the Tides Foundation known for inventing "borking" (smearing a judicial nominee) was the first recorded political group created this way. Fast forward to today, Arabella Advisors controls four in-house nonprofits, each of which sponsors dozens or hundreds of "pop-up" groups. Hayden Ludwig investigates the maze of fiscal sponsorship here.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on how we can better serve our mission of exposing the Left's activists and donors. E-mail me at [email protected], or call me at 202.464.2044.

Best wishes,

Scott Walter, President