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6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

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Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog

More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.

Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found. 

More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies. 

In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.  

“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release. 

But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.

Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known. 

These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.

Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment. 

The Coors Family 
At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In 1972, Joseph Coors, grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, kick-started the Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000. For years, he supported the conservative think tank’s growth, ultimately funneling his funds through the Adolph Coors Foundation, the nonprofit he started with his brother Bill in 1976. 

“There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote in a 2003 tribute.  

Joseph Coors meets with Ronald Reagan in 1981. Credit: Wikipedia

The tradition continues today, with billionaire Peter H. Coors — retired beer magnate and Adolph’s great-grandson — at the helm. The Adolph Coors Foundation funded 22 Project 2025 advisory groups between 2020 and 2023, including $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation. Vance has been connected to Heritage since at least 2017, when he wrote the forward to that organization’s “Index of Culture and Opportunity” and gave a keynote address at a Heritage event promoting the report.  

Of the Project 2025 groups, Coors funded Hillsdale College, which The New Yorker called “the Christian liberal-arts college at the heart of the culture wars,” most heavily, with nearly $900,000 in donations since 2020. Former Heritage staffer James Braid, today Vance’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director, spent 10 months as a James Madison fellow at Hillsdale College in 2021. Braid appeared on camera in a Project 2025 training video recently obtained by ProPublica and Documented. Braid was also an advisor at American Moment, another Project 2025 group. 

The Coors Foundation gave an additional $5.9 million to DonorsTrust, a not-for-profit that describes itself as a philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors — and that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes annually, including to numerous Project 2025 advisors, as well as other organizations that downplay or deny the science and urgency of climate change. 

Charles G. Koch 
At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In terms of raw numbers, Charles Koch — the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate with an oil refinery focus — isn’t the biggest donor to Project 2025 groups in the past few years. But his support for the vast fundraising apparatus that powers conservative charities, including dozens of the initiative’s coalition partners, goes back decades, and his influence can’t be underestimated. A review of public financial disclosures by Greenpeace found that the network of charitable foundations linked to Koch and his late brother, David Koch, donated more than $165 million to climate-change-denying groups between 1986 and 2018. That includes more than $23 million to 16 nonprofits that Project 2025 lists among its advisors. 

Throughout the 1990s, Koch Industries was also a “vital supporter” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Project 2025 advisor. A membership group that connects more than 2,000 state legislators to over 300 corporations and private foundations, ALEC calls itself “a forum for stakeholders to exchange ideas”; New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, describes it as an enormously successful effort “aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.” Foundations linked to Charles G. Koch donated more than $1.2 million to ALEC since 2020, Desmog’s review found, mostly through his Stand Together Trust. 

Charles Koch in 2019. Credit: Wikipedia

Koch’s largest donations to Project 2025 groups since 2020 included $3.8 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a climate-change-denying nonprofit with close links to both the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump tapped Brooke Rollins, TPPF’s CEO since 2003, for a post at the Office of American Innovation; in 2020, he named her to lead his administration’s domestic policy strategy. By 2019, there were so many connection points between TPPF and the Trump administration that Politico’s E & E News wrote a story about it. 

Rollins was succeeded at TPPF by Kevin Roberts, who had been promoted to CEO by 2021, when he left to become president of The Heritage Foundation. Koch-linked nonprofits also donated $845,000 to Heritage since 2020. 

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. They donate heavily to conservative causes through the Ed Uihlein Foundation, named after Richard’s father, a packaging company entrepreneur whose grandfather was an original founder of the Schlitz beer company. 

Among its donations to 13 different Project 2025 groups since 2020, Uihlein’s largest grants went to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($6.6 million), a limited-government think tank that has railed against “the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda,” and the American Cornerstone Institute ($2.5 million), founded by neurosurgeon and former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has called climate change “irrelevant” as recently as 2015. 

Outside the nonprofit sphere, the Uihleins are major donors to the Trump campaign. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that the couple donated $10 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in May 2024. 

The Scaife Family
At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. A billionaire heir to the vast Mellon fortune, which was created thanks to his progenitors’ exploits in oil and aluminum production, banking, and other industries, Scaife provided years of critical financial support to the Heritage Foundation, starting in 1973. A 1999 article in the Washington Post called him the “funding father of the Right.” 

Today, two foundations Scaife once controlled — the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation — continue to give heavily to conservative causes, including to numerous organizations involved in climate change denial. DeSmog’s review found that Scaife family foundations gave $4.1 million to the Heritage Foundation since 2022, while also contributing to 22 other Project 2025 advisory groups. 

Since 2020, Scaife Family Foundations gave $1.75 million to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a Project 2025 advisor that promotes conservative thought on college campuses. Paypal founder Peter Thiel, who pumped at least $15 million into JD Vance’s campaign for Senate, is an ISI alum who maintains close ties to the organization. Vance himself gave an ISI-sponsored lecture on “our civilizational crisis” in 2021, where he promoted his controversial idea that Americans with children should receive more votes. 

Scaife foundations also donated an additional $1.2 million to the State Policy Network, an ALEC-linked group that supports conservative nonprofits that oppose government regulation, including 25 members of Project 2025’s coalition. 

Barre Seid
At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors. He is reportedly a major benefactor supporting the Heartland Institute, a Project 2025 advisor organization that The Economist called “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change” — a description Heartland approvingly quotes on its website.

In late 2020, Barre donated 100 percent of Tripp Lite’s shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard A. Leo. In early 2021, Leo sold the shares, netting $1.65 billion. The amount is said to be “among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit,” according to The New York Times. 

Since May 2020, Marble Freedom Trust has donated $100 million to Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, a Leo-linked nonprofit. In that time, Concord has donated $22.4 million to eight Project 2025 groups, giving most heavily ($11.9 million) to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. 

Seid also gave $2 million to Independent Women’s Voice, the sister organization of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 advisor. During her time as director for the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation, Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official, authored Project 2025’s chapter on restructuring the EPA — with recommendations that include “cutting its size and scope” dramatically.

The Bradley Family 
At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015. 

But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally. 

The Bradley Foundation and a second philanthropic vehicle it supports, the Bradley Impact Fund, donated over $50 million to 29 different Project 2025 advisors since 2020. That’s not including an additional $56 million to DonorsTrust, which a 2013 Mother Jones investigation dubbed, along with its affiliate group Donors Capital Fund, the “dark money ATM” of the U.S. conservative movement. 
The Bradley Foundation’s Project 2025-linked donations include more than $7.7 million to Turning Point USA, a “powerful ally” of the Trump presidential campaign, which promotes conservative causes on university campuses and is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. Its single largest donation was $27.1 million in 2022 to Project 2025 advisor Turning Point Legal, founded by former Trump advisor, and past president of a coal lobby group, Stephen Miller.

Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog

Continue Reading6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

Jeremy Corbyn: Austerity Is Labour’s Choice

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https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/09/jeremy-corbyn-austerity-is-labours-choice

After 14 years of billionaires doubling their wealth, the political elite’s choice of starving pensioners and children shows austerity as a complete con job.

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.

People are making tough choices because governments have made the wrong choices. We warned that Tory austerity would weaken our economy and decimate our public services. We were ignored, and the poorest in society paid the price. Austerity is not just a buzzword. It is the ongoing, brutal reality for millions of people who have been pushed into destitution. It is the face of desperation and anxiety of those forced into a spiral of debt. It is a freezing cold night for the record numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets. It is the graveyard for those left without vital support: more than 300,000 excess deaths have been attributed to austerity policies.

We often talk about austerity in terms of cuts to public spending, but that is just one side of the coin. By starving public services of resources, the government manufactured a convenient excuse for their privatisation. We saw this most acutely with the NHS: an underfunded public service does not just cause satisfaction to plummet, but the belief in the principle of public healthcare itself. Austerity was never about saving money (the UK’s debt pile increased every single year under the Tories). It was about transferring money from the poorest to the richest. Between 2010 and 2018, aggregate wealth in the UK grew by £5.68 trillion. 94% went to the richest 50% of households. 6% went to the poorest 50%. As child poverty was heading towards its highest levels since 2007, Britain’s billionaires more than doubled their wealth.

It was a political decision to defund, dismantle and auction off our public services. And it will be a political decision to repeat this failed economic experiment. ‘It’s going to be painful’, the Prime Minister told the nation last week, prepping the public for ‘difficult choices’ ahead. Did he get permission from the Tories to reuse their trademark slogans? Other ministers have gone one step further, indicating that they do not have any choice at all but to impoverish children and pensioners. Keeping children in poverty is unavoidable, apparently, if we want to restore the public finances. Scrapping the winter fuel allowance is a necessity, we were risibly told, if we want to stop a run on the pound.

It is astonishing to hear government ministers try to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership. Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands — and we will not be fooled by ministers’ attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they know they don’t have to take.

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Article continues at https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/09/jeremy-corbyn-austerity-is-labours-choice

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn: Austerity Is Labour’s Choice

Labour admits super-rich are propping it up as member numbers collapse again

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Record fall in membership despite earlier claims of increases from right-wing figures

Labour has admitted it is only kept afloat by the money of the mega-rich, after yet another massive fall in party membership numbers – to a level lower than its peak under Ed Miliband and far below the almost 600,000 when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.

According to its latest official figures, the party suffered a net loss of 37,000 members, 9% of its total, by the end of 2023 compared to a year earlier – the biggest year-on-year loss since 2003 when Labour haemorrhaged members during Tony Blair’s illegal war in Iraq. Even the claimed latest membership of 370,000 is suspect according to party insiders, as Labour under Keir Starmer has long padded its figures by continuing to count lapsed members – and its records were long in chaos after outsourcing led to a massive hack and the freezing of its membership administration systems.

Leading right-wing Labour figures have repeatedly briefed that members were pouring in and numbers were rising, attributing this to Starmer. In fact, given Starmer’s deep personal unpopularity, it makes far more sense to attribute the collapse in membership to him, his support for Israel’s genocide, his cowardly assault on left-wing MPs and members and his dog-whistle red-Tory ‘policies’.

And the party has inadvertently admitted that it is only propped up by donations from the super-rich. Party general secretary David Evans has said that the party losing less than the expected £2.5m during the general election campaign was because of “an increase in high-value donations”. Under Corbyn, large numbers of ordinary people chipped in what they could afford – so many that Labour’s debts, grown huge under previous leaders, were wiped out.

Now, even kept afloat by billionaires – and clearly beholden to them, given Labour’s atrocious announcements penalising the poor since Starmer was ushered into Downing Street by the fascist Reform ‘party’ – Labour is still losing money, just less than it would have without the huge donors wanting payback for their investment.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue ReadingLabour admits super-rich are propping it up as member numbers collapse again

In DNC Speech, Sanders Condemns ‘Oligarchs’ Buying Elections and Blocking Change

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks during the Democratic National Convention on August 20, 2024 in Chicago.
 (Photo: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said during his primetime appearance at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night that overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision should be “at the very top” of the party’s list of priorities, particularly given the outsized role that billionaires and dark-money groups have played in recent elections.

“Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in his speech to Democratic delegates and activists gathered in Chicago. “For the sake of our democracy, we must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move toward public funding of elections.”

Sanders, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, argued during his remarks that billionaire and corporate influence on U.S. elections is a major barrier obstructing policy changes that are overwhelmingly popular with the American public.

“These oligarchs tell us we shouldn’t tax the rich,” said the Vermont senator. “The oligarchs tell us we shouldn’t take on price gouging; we shouldn’t expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision; and we shouldn’t increase Social Security benefits for struggling seniors.”

“Well I’ve got some bad news for them: That is precisely what we are going to do, and we’re going to win this struggle because this is precisely what the American people want from their government,” he continued.

Watch Sanders’ full speech:

According to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, super PACs—products of the 2010 Citizens United decision—and other outside groups have already spent more than $1 billion on federal elections this cycle, far outpacing previous election years.

The largest spender thus far has been Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump.

OpenSecrets also found that so-called “guardian angel” megadonors—”a term for big donors who supply 40% or more of a committee’s funds and are a political group’s top contributor”—have spent nearly $200 million so far this cycle.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, which is funded by Republican billionaires, has spent big on Democratic primary contests this year in an effort to oust lawmakers who have backed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Two members of the progressive “Squad”—Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—recently lost primary contests to AIPAC-backed Democrats.

“We must take on Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Egg, Big Tech, and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people.”

In recent years, Sanders has repeatedly urged the Democratic Party to ban super PAC spending in its primaries, arguing that it’s hypocritical for Democrats to call for campaign finance reform while simultaneously allowing billionaire-funded groups to pour staggering sums into their primary contests.

“What you’re seeing from AIPAC and other super PACs is simply outrageous,” Sanders said earlier this week. “Democrats often talk about the need to end Citizens United, and we agree. They talk about moving to public funding of elections. But if you’re serious about the power of money in politics, you can say today, sorry, no super PACs allowed in primaries.”

During his DNC speech on Tuesday, Sanders also demanded an immediate cease-fire to end Israel’s “horrific war in Gaza” and said he looks forward to working with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, to pass an agenda that strengthens public education, slashes prescription drug prices, and expands healthcare to all.

“Let us be very clear: This is not a radical agenda,” said Sanders. “But let me tell you what a radical agenda is, and that is Trump’s Project 2025. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, giving more tax breaks to billionaires is radical. Putting forth budgets to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is radical. Letting polluters destroy our planet is radical.”

“We must take on Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Egg, Big Tech, and all the other corporate monopolists whose greed is denying progress for working people,” Sanders continued. “On November 5, let us elect Kamala Harris as our president and let us go forward to create the nation we know we can become.”

Campaign FinanceCitizens UnitedDemocratic National CommitteeDemocratic PartyDonald TrumpElection 2024Kamala HarrisOligarchyProject 2025Bernie Sanders

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIn DNC Speech, Sanders Condemns ‘Oligarchs’ Buying Elections and Blocking Change

6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

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Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog.

More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, which have close ties to Donald Trump and JD Vance, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” document. Design: DeSmog

More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.

Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found. 

More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies. 

In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.  

“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release. 

But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.

Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the forward to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known. 

These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.

Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment. 

The Coors Family 
At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In 1972, Joseph Coors, grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, kick-started the Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000. For years, he supported the conservative think tank’s growth, ultimately funneling his funds through the Adolph Coors Foundation, the nonprofit he started with his brother Bill in 1976. 

“There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote in a 2003 tribute.  

Joseph Coors meets with Ronald Reagan in 1981. Credit: Wikipedia

The tradition continues today, with billionaire Peter H. Coors — retired beer magnate and Adolph’s great-grandson — at the helm. The Adolph Coors Foundation funded 22 Project 2025 advisory groups between 2020 and 2023, including $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation. Vance has been connected to Heritage since at least 2017, when he wrote the forward to that organization’s “Index of Culture and Opportunity” and gave a keynote address at a Heritage event promoting the report.  

Of the Project 2025 groups, Coors funded Hillsdale College, which The New Yorker called “the Christian liberal-arts college at the heart of the culture wars,” most heavily, with nearly $900,000 in donations since 2020. Former Heritage staffer James Braid, today Vance’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director, spent 10 months as a James Madison fellow at Hillsdale College in 2021. Braid appeared on camera in a Project 2025 training video recently obtained by ProPublica and Documented. Braid was also an advisor at American Moment, another Project 2025 group. 

The Coors Foundation gave an additional $5.9 million to DonorsTrust, a not-for-profit that describes itself as a philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors — and that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes annually, including to numerous Project 2025 advisors, as well as other organizations that downplay or deny the science and urgency of climate change. 

 Charles G. Koch
At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

In terms of raw numbers, Charles Koch — the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate with an oil refinery focus — isn’t the biggest donor to Project 2025 groups in the past few years. But his support for the vast fundraising apparatus that powers conservative charities, including dozens of the initiative’s coalition partners, goes back decades, and his influence can’t be underestimated. A review of public financial disclosures by Greenpeace found that the network of charitable foundations linked to Koch and his late brother, David Koch, donated more than $165 million to climate-change-denying groups between 1986 and 2018. That includes more than $23 million to 16 nonprofits that Project 2025 lists among its advisors. 

Throughout the 1990s, Koch Industries was also a “vital supporter” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Project 2025 advisor. A membership group that connects more than 2,000 state legislators to over 300 corporations and private foundations, ALEC calls itself “a forum for stakeholders to exchange ideas”; New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, describes it as an enormously successful effort “aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.” Foundations linked to Charles G. Koch donated more than $1.2 million to ALEC since 2020, Desmog’s review found, mostly through his Stand Together Trust. 

Charles Koch in 2019. Credit: Wikipedia

Koch’s largest donations to Project 2025 groups since 2020 included $3.8 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a climate-change-denying nonprofit with close links to both the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump tapped Brooke Rollins, TPPF’s CEO since 2003, for a post at the Office of American Innovation; in 2020, he named her to lead his administration’s domestic policy strategy. By 2019, there were so many connection points between TPPF and the Trump administration that Politico’s E & E News wrote a story about it. 

Rollins was succeeded at TPPF by Kevin Roberts, who had been promoted to CEO by 2021, when he left to become president of The Heritage Foundation. Koch-linked nonprofits also donated $845,000 to Heritage since 2020. 

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. They donate heavily to conservative causes through the Ed Uihlein Foundation, named after Richard’s father, a packaging company entrepreneur whose grandfather was an original founder of the Schlitz beer company. 

Among its donations to 13 different Project 2025 groups since 2020, Uihlein’s largest grants went to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($6.6 million), a limited-government think tank that has railed against “the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda,” and the American Cornerstone Institute ($2.5 million), founded by neurosurgeon and former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has called climate change “irrelevant” as recently as 2015. 

Outside the nonprofit sphere, the Uihleins are major donors to the Trump campaign. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that the couple donated $10 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in May 2024. 

The Scaife Family
At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. A billionaire heir to the vast Mellon fortune, which was created thanks to his progenitors’ exploits in oil and aluminum production, banking, and other industries, Scaife provided years of critical financial support to the Heritage Foundation, starting in 1973. A 1999 article in the Washington Post called him the “funding father of the Right.” 

Today, two foundations Scaife once controlled — the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation — continue to give heavily to conservative causes, including to numerous organizations involved in climate change denial. DeSmog’s review found that Scaife family foundations gave $4.1 million to the Heritage Foundation since 2022, while also contributing to 22 other Project 2025 advisory groups. 

Since 2020, Scaife Family Foundations gave $1.75 million to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a Project 2025 advisor that promotes conservative thought on college campuses. Paypal founder Peter Thiel, who pumped at least $15 million into JD Vance’s campaign for Senate, is an ISI alum who maintains close ties to the organization. Vance himself gave an ISI-sponsored lecture on “our civilizational crisis” in 2021, where he promoted his controversial idea that Americans with children should receive more votes. 

Scaife foundations also donated an additional $1.2 million to the State Policy Network, an ALEC-linked group that supports conservative nonprofits that oppose government regulation, including 25 members of Project 2025’s coalition. 

Barre Seid
At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors. He is reportedly a major benefactor supporting the Heartland Institute, a Project 2025 advisor organization that The Economist called “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change” — a description Heartland approvingly quotes on its website.

In late 2020, Barre donated 100 percent of Tripp Lite’s shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard A. Leo. In early 2021, Leo sold the shares, netting $1.65 billion. The amount is said to be “among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit,” according to The New York Times. 

Since May 2020, Marble Freedom Trust has donated $100 million to Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, a Leo-linked nonprofit. In that time, Concord has donated $22.4 million to eight Project 2025 groups, giving most heavily ($11.9 million) to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. 

Seid also gave $2 million to Independent Women’s Voice, the sister organization of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 advisor. During her time as director for the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation, Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official, authored Project 2025’s chapter on restructuring the EPA — with recommendations that include “cutting its size and scope” dramatically.

The Bradley Family 
At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015. 

But it was c, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally. 

The Bradley Foundation and a second philanthropic vehicle it supports, the Bradley Impact Fund, donated over $50 million to 29 different Project 2025 advisors since 2020. That’s not including an additional $56 million to DonorsTrust, which a 2013 Mother Jones investigation dubbed, along with its affiliate group Donors Capital Fund, the “dark money ATM” of the U.S. conservative movement. 
The Bradley Foundation’s Project 2025-linked donations include more than $7.7 million to Turning Point USA, a “powerful ally” of the Trump presidential campaign, which promotes conservative causes on university campuses and is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. Its single largest donation was $27.1 million in 2022 to Project 2025 advisor Turning Point Legal, founded by former Trump advisor and past president of a coal lobby group Stephen Miller.

Original article by Joe Fassler republished from DeSmog.

Continue Reading6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025