If we choose life, we need to stay fully engaged in life, pray fervently and often, and trust that God has a plan for America’s restoration of the Founding Fathers original vision and guiding principles even when evil and bad actors abound
After all the media hype promoting the HandsOff rallies in all 50 US states on April 5, 2024, I became curious as to who these 150 groups represent and who was funding them. I discovered it was much easier to research the organizations than it was to determine where their funding comes from, but I was able to access some of their IRS 990 filings online.
However, the list of large donors (Schedule B) required to be filed with IRS Form 990 is specifically excluded from public view except for donors to private foundations and political organizations, and even that information is very difficult for the average citizen to access.
It was very easy to find a list of all 150 organizations that participated in the HandsOff protest rallies. The list includes names of many organizations CFP readers are likely familiar with such as the American Civil Liberties Union, AFL-CIO, Color of Change, Common Cause, League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, and SEIU. However, there were many other names on this list that I was not familiar with, so I set about educating myself.
The mission statement for each of these groups is prominently posted on their websites, so it was not difficult to learn more about why the organization was formed and what they are currently focused on. However, if you look at the actions of these groups, not just read the nice-sounding words they use to describe their sometime nebulous (nee nefarious) goals, you will find that many of them want to change America into a socialist country.
For example, the Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to “transform” the Democrat Party and America. Their website states that they are “operating inside the Democrat Party and outside in movements of peace and justice.” Again, saying you are for “peace and justice,” sounds good, but in recent years we have not seen a lot of peace or justice promoted by the Democrat Party. These days the Democrat Party can’t even bring themselves to condemn clear acts of violence like rape and murder because they have completely lost their moral compass.
In fact, in the last month we have seen almost daily news segments showing acts of violence by activist groups or individuals burning or otherwise damaging Teslas simply because these deranged people hate what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are attempting to do to restore America. We have even seen videos of individuals punching other individuals in the face because they dared to express a different viewpoint. Since when did it become acceptable to destroy another person’s personal property or physically attack someone simply because they held a different view?
Another group on the HandsOff list is the Democracy Forward Foundation, which was founded in 2017. According to their website, the group’s purpose “is to expose and litigate corruption in the Executive Branch” of the U.S. government. This organization has already filed multiple lawsuits in Trump’s second Administration including trying to stop the shuttering of USAID. Marc Elias, who was general counsel for the Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris presidential campaigns, was previously a key figure in the early activities of the Democracy Forward Foundation and likely still plays some role, if only advisory.
CREW, which is an acronym for an organization founded in 2003 called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is funded almost exclusively by left-wing organizations and foundations, including some labor unions. According to their website, CREW “uses legal actions and activities to defend against corruption and fight for a government that works for the people.” But what does “defending our democracy” really mean? CREW has recently sued Trump’s DOGE team “to compel transparency.” Basically, CREW stands against anything that Donald J. Trump and his team tries to do to rein in government spending and over-regulation.
Another group on the HandsOff list is American Oversight, a non-profit launched in 2017, with an annual reported revenue of $4.9 million in 2021 and $6.5 million in 2023. This group has targeted and investigated many Republicans including President Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Ginni Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Where does all their money come from?
And this brings me to a very large non-profit group called Indivisible, which has chapters in all 50 states. In looking at the IndivisibleMT website, I learned that the group is focused on “taking our nation back through the use of phone calls, social media, face-to-face interactions, and possible direct acts.” Their primary website even has a link to a detailed publication titled “A Practical guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.” Indivisible is just one of many George Soros-funded activist groups, and they claim to be “the coordinator” of the 1,300 HandsOff protest events on April 5.
George Soros and his Open Society Foundation funds a wide range of organizations globally with a focus on “promoting open societies, democracies, and human rights.” One of these organizations is MoveOn.org. The domain name MoveOn.org was originally registered on September 18, 1988, to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach then President Bill Clinton.
The organization gathered steam quickly, and by June 1999, MoveOn established its own political action committee called the MoveOnPac, which had the ability to accept donations online via credit card. The MoveOnPac raised $250,000 in the first five days and $2 million during the 2000 election. In short, MoveOnPac revolutionized campaign fundraising from small donors. (This also opened the door to an easy way to accept donations from foreign donors, but shame on me for mentioning that.) As a result of this success, MoveOn was soon partnering with many other non-profit activist groups including the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation.
According to Wikipedia.org, the Tides Foundation “distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, which are politically progressive.” It is well-known that George Soros has been a substantial funder of the Tides Foundation, and it is reported that he has given Tides at least 3.5 million dollars.
The Tides website currently lists 130 grantees. Because Tides is a public charity, it allows sponsors to donate money to different organizations including for-profit as well as non-profit entities through donor-advised funds. (Just let this last bit of information sink in for a minute.) In other words, donor-advised funds are held in accounts by a non-profit organization like Tides that then make grants to third-party entities on the donor’s behalf. What could possibly go wrong?
Some of the well-known organizations that Tides money is or has supported are Media Matters for America, Wikimedia Foundation (manager of Wikipedia.org), the Occupy Wall Street movement, and Black Lives Matter.
The Tides Foundation also supports liberal lobby groups through its affiliation with the Tides Advisory Fund, who recently gave $1 million to an anti-Israel group. Tides also operates in Canada under the name MakeWay.
In my view, what all these Left-leaning non-profit groups have in common is their desire to stop America from again becoming what former President Ronald Reagan referred to as “a shining city on a hill” and a beacon of freedom for the world. The real agenda of these groups is to destroy the American family and traditional Judo-Christian values, replace belief in God with belief in Big Government, and limit personal freedom on multiple levels.
Conservative Americans need to stop thinking the Democrat Party has no strategy or plan because I think they do have one, even if it is one that makes no sense to those of us who are still clear-thinking. I believe their overall strategy is still the plan that the most extreme members of the Democrat party began to publicly unveil in earnest when Barack Obama first stepped out on stage in October 2008 to announce, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” I watched Obama make that statement, and even now just remembering his words, tone of voice, and steely eyes still causes me to have feelings of sadness and foreboding. However, I also trust that God Almighty has a much better plan for America.
In closing, let’s remember the words of Moses to the Israelites in Deut. 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore, choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” If we choose life, we need to stay fully engaged in life (as messy as it may be), pray fervently and often, and trust that God has a plan for America’s restoration of the Founding Fathers original vision and guiding principles even when evil and bad actors abound.
Read next: Has The Destruction Of Our Great Constitutional Republic Gone Too Far?
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Sherry Knight Rossiter resides in Missoula, Montana, where she is a licensed mental health professional in private practice and an adjunct college professor. She is an unabashed Christian conservative, a former Army helicopter pilot, and a very concerned American citizen.
