Thread by @DataRepublican

🧵 THREAD: WHO'S BEHIND TODAY'S OBBB PROTESTS

Today, protesters caused chaos and got arrested in the Capitol building.

Notably, many wore coordinated clothes and had pre-printed signs and banners.

Who financed them? Patience as I build the thread in real time....

https://twitter.com/bullfrog35/status/1937948113085370575

It wasn't hard to find who actually supported the bill. As we will see, they will have many of the same funders and backers.

Popular Democracy has the EIN of 453813436 and receives a lot of DAF money. It is associated with various Make the Road chapters - many of whom receive migration-associated federal grants.

As for who finances Popular Democracy - well, I hate to sound like a broken record, but among other DAFs, Open Society Foundation has given it quite a bit of money.

The next item on the list, Housing Works, is both a federal funds and OSF recipient. It has the EIN of 13-3584089 and is largely federally funded. While they do provide medical care services, one of their mission is to provide "advocacy" - so they are a federally funded advocacy group.

DEBT Collective is an interesting one. I traced their Bluesky account -then traced the "Borrowers not Billionaires" back to a group called Student Borrower Protection Center. And who's their founder? None other than John Podesta. The advisory board contains a lot of big names, including Holly Patraeus (wife of Obama's CIA Director General Petraeus) ...

And none other than Randi Weingarten, who by now is sitting on an insane number of boards... the central figure for No Kings, sitting on NDI, AFT President.

The people in wheelchairs were organized by ADAPT, but it seems by far the most clean of the batch. It reports no grants that I could find.

Community Catalyst has the EIN of 043355127 and receives 12 million in federal grants for, of all things, "vaccine equity"

I'd like SOME originality in funders.

Moving onto People's Action Institute - finding OSF funding is getting really annoying. Their mission appears to be training activists.

Be a Hero, interestingly, resolves to Center for Popular Democracy in Open Society Foundation search. If it's the same fund, then Be a Hero is a spin-off of Popular Democracy using OSF funds.

Protect Our Care appears to be another professional activist network, with a country-wide bus tour ongoing. They are promoting the "This Bill Kills" hashtag which seems them to be the most likely originator of these black "Healthcare Costs Will Kill" t-shirts. It is supported by Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is a core Arabella Advisors fund.

Community Change Action is funded by ... guess who. They are yet another "professional activist" NGO.

Take a step back. If you're wondering, like me, how come there are so many people who are professional activists?

Well, let's put this in context.

Open Society Foundations reports approximately 1.5 billion annually, AFT has 220 million, SEIU 35 million, Arnold Ventures 700 million, and so on.

If there are 5 billion dollars involved and about 100,000 spent per employee, that's 50,000 full time workers. Plus whatever angry disaffected volunteers they can fool.

Families over Billionaires is a SEIU / Indivisible campaign - names you'll recognize from the No Kings protests.

Families USA has the EIN of 42730934 . It's funded by John Arnold and JPB Foundation - created by Jeffry Picower's endowment (deceased), who ... interestingly enough, was the biggest beneficiary of the Madoff fund.

Care Can't Wait claims to be powered by AFL-CIO, which was a sponsor in some of the NoKings rallies.

Care Can't Wait is also powered by Caring For Generations , another one of the organizers.

And I'll end the thread here.

TL;DR - it's pretty much the same financing sources that powered the NoKings rally.

I guess we're moving from "monthly protest" to "weekly protest" now.