Tag: dark money

Same Game, Different Name: ‘Radioactive’ Arabella Advisors Announces Rebrand to ‘Sunflower Services’ as Prominent Donors Flee

Arabella Advisors, the shadowy for-profit consulting firm that managed a multibillion-dollar network of liberal dark money groups, is now Sunflower Services. The company announced Monday it has rebranded and sold off its fiscal sponsorship business to a new firm amid a series of high-profile investigations into its finances and billionaire Bill Gates’s decision to end a longstanding partnership with the organization.

Now, a public benefit corporation called Sunflower Services will manage fiscal sponsorships for the dark money network. It’s a new name, but the same players are involved. Allan Williams, who served as senior vice president for partner solutions at Arabella, will serve as CEO of the new entity. New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund are the “founding owners” of Sunflower Services, the new firm said in a press release.

It’s unclear if the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the primary political arm of the Arabella network that raised $275 million in 2024, will work with Sunflower Services. The Sixteen Thirty Fund did not return a request for comment.

Arabella CEO Himesh Bhise posted on LinkedIn that the firm sold only its fiscal sponsorship business to Sunflower Services. Arabella also provided more traditional and uncontroversial nonprofit HR and accounting services, and will continue to do so under its new name, Vital Impact. Bhise will serve as Vital Impact’s CEO.

The move from Arabella indicates the firm felt the need to quarantine its fiscal sponsorship business amid the threats of investigations from President Donald Trump, who issued a memorandum in September directing several federal agencies to investigate nonprofit organizations allegedly involved in political violence and the “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations” and funding sources behind them.

Trump’s memo had a “chilling effect” on major liberal foundations across the country, the Free Press reported.

Arabella also received scrutiny from the left. In 2023, D.C. attorney general Brian Schwalb (D.) launched an investigation and issued subpoenas to Arabella Advisors following a series of Washington Free Beacon reports on the firm’s practices. Schwalb closed his investigation in 2024, saying it found no evidence of a legal violation.

Still, the scrutiny from both sides of the political aisle appears to have damaged its relationships with some of its major donors. In June, the Gates Foundation, the influential philanthropy of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said it would cease using Arabella Advisors as a middleman to handle many of its grants. The foundation called it a “business decision that reflects our regular strategic assessments of partnerships and operating models.”

The Gates move, which the New York Times called a “significant blow” to Arabella’s operations, spooked other nonprofits that work with Arabella over concerns of friction with the Gates Foundation, which had donated $450 million to Arabella’s dark money network. Other Arabella clients have pulled back from a partnership with the organization out of fear that the Trump administration will go after them for working closely with the progressive group, the Times reported.

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“Grift To Enrich Herself”: Ways And Means Committee Responds To Stacey Abrams Dissolving Shady Nonprofit

Radical leftist and twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has officially shuttered her dark-money-funded nonprofit network, including the New Georgia Project and its affiliate, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a pair of organizations used to drive voter registration and turnouts across the state.

Last week, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) released a statement that said the move to dissolve Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project comes after the committee launched an investigation into whether the nonprofit illegally funneled millions into Abrams’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Smith urged the IRS to revoke its tax-exempt status. 

Smith continued:

“The entire world watched Stacey Abrams turn her twice-failed gubernatorial campaign into a grift to enrich herself in the name of Democrat ‘Get Out the Vote’ and ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ efforts. The New Georgia Project’s decision to dissolve further confirms the Ways and Means Committee and Georgia State Ethics Commission’s findings that the organization broke the law when it failed to disclose more than $7 million in illegal contributions and expenditures designed to prop up Abrams’s failed 2018 campaign.

“This decision also raises further questions about whether Abrams or other organizations she is linked to have engaged in illegal activity. The Department of Justice should take a close look at every Abrams-linked nonprofit, especially given recent discoveries that Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency awarded $2 billion to a group with ties to Abrams.”

The rags-to-riches story of Abrams is fascinating. By 2023, amid the so-called climate crisis, Democrats used the Inflation Reduction Act, better known as the Green New Scam, to funnel billions in green subsidies into their dark web of nonprofits. Abrams, hired as senior counsel, helped secure nearly $2 billion in federal funding for Rewiring America.

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Massive Purchases of Riot Gear Suggest Antifa Backed by Major Dark-Money Organization

For years, Antifa has positioned itself as a decentralized, grassroots movement. 

Its members appear in the streets clad in black, hiding their identities behind masks and face coverings, equipped with gas masks, goggles, and even tactical-grade e-masks. 

While defenders dismiss this as spontaneous activism, recent findings suggest something much more organized and financed than the public has been led to believe.

After digging into the purchasing patterns of these materials, a troubling trend emerges. 

Suppliers report bulk orders, sometimes exceeding 1,000 items in a single month and in some instances exceeding 10,000. 

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‘No Kings’ Isn’t Protecting Democracy, But Suppressing It

This weekend, a reported 2,500 “No Kings” events are scheduled to occur across all 50 states in what is expected to be a much larger follow up to the “No Kings” protests that occurred back in April and June of this year.

Organizers describe their movement as a necessary defense against President Donald Trump’s supposed assault on America’s democratic foundations, believing that Trump’s actions are akin to a tyrannical ruler’s rather than the legitimate actions of a democratically elected president.

Activists are expecting the largest single day of protest in modern American history, citing increased organic opposition to the Trump administration’s attempts at enforcing immigration law, the attempted deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities, and even the recent government shutdown, which are all being cast as examples of authoritarianism.

But a closer look at the “partners” page of the No Kings website contradicts the “grassroots” categorization of these “anti-authoritarian” protests.

Far from a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, the “No Kings” movement is powered by a familiar network of progressive organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn, Public Citizen, the American Federation of Teachers, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Greenpeace, among others.

Behind them stand the same constellation of progressive megadonors that have driven the “resistance” since 2016. One major No Kings partner, Indivisible, for instance, has received more than $7.6 million from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations since 2018.

Defending the Democratic Party

Seen in this light, “No Kings” isn’t a defense of democracy at all. Instead, it’s a defense of the entrenched power of the Democratic Party.

As such, when progressives say they are “protecting democratic norms” they are in reality protecting their dominance within the unelected government bureaucracy, the mainstream media ecosystem, academia, and other institutions that operate beyond the reach of American voters, all of which Trump is seeking to either reform or dismantle.

This inversion of democratic meaning has been building for decades. From the administrative explosion of the New Deal under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the rise of the modern regulatory state, liberals, on both the left and right, have long viewed the unelected bureaucracy as a safeguard against the kind of populist backlash represented by the MAGA/America First movement.

Within that liberal worldview, elections are sacred only when they affirm the technocratic and managerial consensus. When they don’t, the institutions and those aligned with the ruling regime must step in to stifle any potential changes to the system.

This vision of politics as careful management has gradually reshaped our constitutional order.

Elections now merely swap figureheads atop a vast administrative machine rather than install leaders capable of altering the steady leftward course of American domestic and foreign policy.

This is why former President Joe Biden, who clearly suffered from severe cognitive decline during his term, did not impede the functioning or direction of government, demonstrating that the system, under Democratic leadership, largely functions without the direct involvement or even need for a chief executive.

This can be attributed to the fact that most federal employees politically align with the views of the Democratic Party, as evidenced by 84 percent of all political donations from federal employees going to Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

On the other hand, President Trump, who holds a popular mandate, must contend with a network of adversarial agencies, courts, and bureaucrats who continually attempt to stifle his agenda, all without being accountable to the electorate.

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“Fueled By Billionaires”: No Kings Prepares Color-Revolution-Style Mobilization Against Trump

The Democratic Party’s dark-money NGO network, bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, is reportedly preparing to activate a coordinated, color-revolution-style mobilization across the U.S. this weekend – a replay of failed agitation attempts seen earlier this year targeting President Trump and Elon Musk. The operation, marketed under the “No Kings” banner and portrayed publicly as a grassroots movement, in reality functions as a professionalized protest-industrial complex. Its composition includes a blend of paid activists, white boomers suffering from Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a smaller contingent of organic, unhinged leftists who recite MSNBC talking points by heart. 

Little do these white boomers know, the “No Kings” movement, supposedly against “kings and billionaires”, is, in reality, funded by leftist billionaire kings themselves. In truth, No Kings is bankrolled by far-left foundations backed by the same billionaire class that has been waging a political war against President Trump since his first term. Essentially, one faction of billionaires hates another, so their woke non-profit soldiers create a front group, brand it “No Kings,” and bankroll an army of paid protesters and unhinged left-wing activists. This is America in 2025: the permanent protest-industrial complex of hate and chaos, financed by the left.

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Grand Jury reportedly meeting this week in Hope Florida investigation

Florida’s Hope Florida program, once celebrated by the governor and First Lady as a compassionate outreach effort, is now under a grand jury’s microscope. Prosecutors in the capital are reportedly meeting this week to decide whether criminal charges are warranted in a growing scandal that’s shaken the state’s political establishment.

The proceedings are happening behind closed doors inside Leon County’s 2nd Judicial Circuit courthouse, where prosecutors are taking evidence in the Hope Florida investigation.

At issue: whether anyone broke the law after $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement moved through the Hope Florida Foundation to other nonprofits, and then to a political committee once controlled by now–Attorney General James Uthmeier. That committee later helped defeat a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana.

State Attorney Jack Campbell, who is overseeing the process, declined to provide details.

“No, there’s no comment on that at all. Everything that the grand jury does is, in fact, confidential,” Campbell said when asked about the case last week.

Legal experts say the secrecy is standard procedure. Mario Gallucci of the Gallucci Law Firm is a former New York assistant district attorney and was a principal attorney in its major felony unit. He said these proceedings can take weeks to complete.

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Left-Wing Dark Money Megadonors Including George Soros Spent $20 MILLION to Oppose Trump’s National Guard Deployment in D.C.

Washington, D.C., is under siege not only from rising crime but also from left-wing dark money groups working to undermine law and order. 

Financial disclosures reveal that progressive megadonors, including George Soros, have poured more than $20 million into organizations backing protests against President Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital.

At the center of this network is “Free DC,” a project sponsored by Community Change and Community Change Action. 

The group staged demonstrations near the White House to oppose Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and his goal of federalizing the district’s police force. 

The president’s goal is straightforward: to restore safety by cleaning up homeless encampments, increasing law enforcement presence, and making D.C. one of the safest cities in the world. 

Yet Free DC and its backers have mobilized to resist these efforts, using protests and coordinated campaigns to weaken public confidence in the crackdown.

Free DC promotes radical tactics under the guise of “resistance.” 

Its principles urge followers to “take up space,” “do not obey in advance,” and engage in nightly disruptions by banging pots and pans in neighborhoods across the city. 

The group has also launched “Cop Watch” trainings to prepare activists for further confrontations with law enforcement. 

These methods mirror the organized protest playbook of the radical left—loud, disruptive, and designed to generate chaos rather than solutions.

The money trail exposes how deeply entrenched dark-money networks are in shaping D.C. politics. 

Between 2020 and 2023, Community Change and its affiliated entities received $12.6 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, $5.6 million from Arabella’s network, and nearly $2 million from the Tides Foundation. 

Additional grants from Future Forward USA Action—a Democrat-aligned super PAC—brought millions more into their coffers.

These funds were officially labeled for “civil rights” or “social welfare” but have flowed into groups manufacturing unrest in the streets.

While Free DC only formally began in 2023, its rise coincided with congressional efforts to block a controversial rewrite of D.C.’s criminal code that would have reduced penalties for violent crimes. 

The timing suggests that dark-money donors viewed the group as a vehicle to push back against any attempt to hold criminals accountable.

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Obama Library Funds Are Secretly Flowing To Dark Money Networks

Barack Obama’s long-promised presidential library is shaping up to be just as corrupt as his administration. You probably haven’t heard much about this in the media, but recent tax filings reveal that money donated to the Obama Foundation—supposedly earmarked for his sprawling “presidential center” in Chicago—is quietly being redirected to one of the left’s most notorious dark money groups: the Tides Foundation.

The numbers tell the story. In 2022 and 2023, the Obama Foundation handed over $2 million to Tides, a group best known for serving as a clearinghouse for radical left-wing causes and for shielding donor identities. It should come as no surprise that George Soros heavily backs Tides, and Tides is directly tied to groups organizing anti-Israel protests. That includes demonstrations against the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities. In other words, donations made in the name of funding a presidential library are now helping bankroll organizations promoting antisemitic activism under the guise of social justice.

That’s pretty on-brand for Barack Obama.

“The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers.

Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings.

Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.

The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.

While community members struggle, insiders at the Obama Foundation are doing just fine. The foundation’s CEO, Emeka Jarrett, earned over $750,000 last year. The executive vice president, Rob Cohen, pocketed nearly $650,000, and also maintains ties to the Pritzker Realty Group. His connection to Penny Pritzker—sister to Governor J.B. Pritzker—only highlights the tangled web of Democratic powerbrokers who are thriving while the project supposedly dedicated to “the people” spirals out of control.

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Soros-Funded Dark Money Group Secretly Paying Democrat Influencers To Shape Gen Z Politics

When Taylor Lorenz breaks a story on Democrat dark money, you know something strange is happening. Lorenz, who has made a career as the poster child for progressive social media culture, finally turned her reporting lens onto her own side. And what she uncovered in Wired is pretty dark: a secret program bankrolled by one of the largest Democrat dark money machines in America, designed to quietly pay off dozens of high-profile influencers to steer young voters toward the left.

The story centers around the Sixteen Thirty Fund, one of the crown jewels of Arabella Advisors’ dark money empire. According to public filings, this fund has been showered with staggering sums from progressive megadonors:

  • $257.1 million from the New Venture Fund
  • $64 million from the Open Societies Action Fund 
  • $20.2 million from the Hopewell Fund
  • $13 million from the North Fund
  • $5.6 million from Tides Advocacy

A spreadsheet posted by DataRepublican on X bluntly spelled it out: “That ‘dark money’ group, Sixteen Thirty Fund, is Arabella Advisors and is pure Open Society passthrough.”

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Inside Dem Dark Money Behemoth Arabella Advisors’ Failed Attempt To Create an Astroturf Influencer Army

The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an offshoot of the left-wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors, tried to enforce that dictum when recruiting an army of handsomely paid left-wing influencers to spout Democratic talking points through an effort called “Chorus.”

Contracts reviewed by Wired stipulated that they weren’t supposed to reveal their affiliation with the Sixteen Thirty Fund or tell anybody they were being paid to mouth Democratic Party shibboleths. Presumably that includes complaining to reporters about the stringent terms of the contract and the astroturf nature of the project to “build new infrastructure to fund independent progressive voices online at scale.” Oops.

According to Wired, some of the online Left’s biggest names—including Olivia Julianna, who spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention; the “nonbinary content creator” Adesso Laurenzo, who boasts nearly one million TikTok followers; and Aaron Parnas, a social media journalist described by Rolling Stone as “a sort of 20-something Walter Cronkite”—expressed interest. Then they read Chorus’s proposed contract. It included the following terms, according to Wired:

  • Influencers cannot disclose their affiliation with Chorus or the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
  • Influencers cannot disclose “the identity of any Funder” or reveal they’re being paid.
  • Influencers “must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus,” even those organized independently.
  • Influencers cannot use their monthly stipend “to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing.”
  • Influencers must attend “regular advocacy trainings,” “daily messaging check-ins,” and biweekly “newsroom” events with lawmakers and other figures.
  • Influencers must remove content created at said events if Chorus requests them to do so.

Chorus gave the influencers two days to sign the contract and barred prospective affiliates from enlisting their lawyers to request changes.

On a Zoom call with the influencers, a partner at Democratic fixer Marc Elias’s Elias Law Group, Graham Wilson, boasted that “housing” Chorus through a nonprofit gave them “some real great advantages.”

“It gives us the ability to raise money from donors,” he said, according to Wired. “It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers—you know, ‘Paid for by blah blah blah blah’—that you see on political ads. We don’t need to deal with any of that. Your names aren’t showing up on, like, reports filed with the FEC.” (Elias Law Group made national headlines when it threatened to stop work for longtime client Media Matters if it didn’t fork over $2.25 million in unpaid bills.)

Many of the influencers approached to join Chorus expressed concerns over the setup in a group chat. “Nonbinary content creator” Laurenzo floated sending a “joint email” requesting changes, while a “reproductive justice influencer named Pari” said there were “at least 4 other things that should change.”

Ultimately, most of them fell in line. “I don’t feel strongly about pushing tbh,” wrote Parnas, the young Cronkite. “They aren’t going to modify it anymore. Seems like a take it or leave it.”

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