InfluenceWatch 2025: The year’s top ten influencers

InfluenceWatch, a project of Capital Research Center, is a comprehensive and ever-evolving compilation of our research into the numerous advocacy groups, foundations, and donors working to influence the public policy process. The website offers transparency into these influencers’ funding, motives, and connections while providing insight often neglected by other watchdog groups. 

The information compiled in InfluenceWatch gives news outlets and other interested parties research to use in their reporting on significant topics that are often overlooked by the American public.  

CRC is pleased to present some of the most significant additions to InfluenceWatch so far in the year 2025: 

Musk Foundation 

The Musk Foundation is a private grantmaking organization and the private foundation owned and operated by billionaire tech entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk created the foundation in 2002, and as of 2025 the group is led by CEO Mark Suzman with Elon’s brother Kimball Musk listed as a board member. 

According to its website, the foundation provides funding and grants toward groups and other initiatives through collaboration with Musk-connected companies such as X.Corp, SpaceX, Tesla, Tesla Energy, and NeuroVigil. Following President Donald Trump’s reelection in November 2024 and the start of the second Trump Administration in January 2025, Elon Musk was noted as heading and as the public face of the newly developed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a special commission created to identify alleged wasteful spending within the U.S government. 

DOGE and Musk have been criticized for the scope of the proposed cuts, leading to the planned layoff of thousands of federal employees and the cancellation of millions in government grants planned for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. One notable action by DOGE was the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in March 2025. USAID employees were placed on administrative leave, and USAID operations are being reorganized under the U.S Department of State led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

In June 2025, Musk announced he would be leaving DOGE and would no longer be involved in the department’s operations. 

National Public Radio 

National Public Radio (NPR) is a national nonprofit media outlet founded by the federal government. It has received funding from federal government and through affiliation with the  Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). 

Based in Washington, DC, NPR claims to operate up to 1,000 local, independently owned “member stations” within the United States and around the world. Member stations pay annual fees to NPR, and member stations have been either partially or entirely financed by state and local governments. Since its founding in 1970, NPR has faced controversy over the source of its funding and allegations of left-of-center biases in its reporting on national and international issues. The right-of-center watchdog group Media Research Center (MRC) has claimed on its website that NPR is “a massive, taxpayer-funded radio network…[for] the left.” 

Efforts to defend NPR have occurred during the Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and both Trump administrations. In March 2025, the NPR CEO Katherine Maher and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) CEO Paula Kerger testified before the Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE)” Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about allegations of bias in their reporting and federal funding they have received. 

Prior to the hearing “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” Subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) sent a letter challenging both CEO to explain,  “As an organization that receives federal funds, both directly and indirectly through its member stations, NPR’s reporting should serve the entire public, not just a narrow slice of likeminded individuals and ideological interest groups.” 

Progressive Turnout Project 

The Progressive Turnout Project is a Carey Committee (or hybrid political action committee (PAC)/Super PAC) initially created in 2015 to increase turnout by Democratic voters for the 2016 election cycle. According to its website, the group claims to be the “largest voter contact organization in the country, specifically dedicated to mobilizing the Democratic Party and defending democracy…Our mission: rally Democrats to vote.” 

According to FEC data and date on OpenSecrets, during the 2024 election cycle the PAC spent over $2.8 million toward the presidential campaign for then-Vice President Kamala Harris and another $20,556 against the reelection campaign of then-former President Donald Trump. During the same election cycle, the PAC received donations from several left-of-center and Democrat Party–affiliated entities including Dem Turnout 2024, the Advocacy Action Fund, and the Green Advocacy Project. 

The PAC contributed over $1 million to Democrat Party–affiliated Super PACs, including the Harris Victory Fund, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC. According to its website, in March 2025 the group spent $1.2 million on grassroots efforts to support circuit court Judge Susan Crawford during the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race on April 1, 2025. Judge Crawford won the state supreme court election against Republican candidate circuit court judge Brad Schimel.  

The Indivisible Project 

The Indivisible Project (also known as Indivisible) is a nonprofit advocacy organization formed in late 2016 that has helped organize and mobilize grassroot campaigns and protest movements with a focus on “Resisting the Trump Agenda.” Indivisible has been previously affiliated with several left-of-center organizations and labor-affiliated groups including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, and the Tides Foundation. 

According to tax data, Indivisible has received funding from Open Society Foundations (OSF), the grantmaking organization formed by philanthropist Geroge Soros; the Open Society Policy Center, another Soros organization; the Tides Nexus; the Tides Foundation; Investing in US; and Tides Advocacy. In February 2025, following the start of the Second Trump Administration, Indivisible and activist group MoveOn helped to organize demonstrations during townhalls hosted by Republican members of Congress to protest the administration as well as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), then led by billionaire Elon Musk.  

Indivisible release a statement released claiming to have “put Republicans on notice by organizing nearly 200 events across the country and directly challenging them for supporting unelected billionaires like Elon Musk over their own constituents.” By March 2025, Indivisible was listed as a partner organization of Families Over Billionaires, an activist group formed in January 2025 to oppose “tax breaks for the rich” under the Trump Administration. Other listed partners of the group included Americans for Tax Fairness, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Caring Across Generations, Economic Security Project Action, Fair Share America, MomsRising, the National Education Association (NEA), the National Women’s Law Center, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Unrig Our Economy. 

As of April 2025, Indivisible has released several publications including a Substack titled “How We Fight Back” along with activist groups MoveOn and Working Families Power containing essays and videos published by Democratic members of Congress as well as strategies for how activists can, “take action directly against Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans.” Indivisible activists have also opposed efforts by the Trump Administration to deport illegal immigrants including El Salvadoran national Kilmer Abrego Garcia who was deported due to his alleged ties to the MS-13 transnational gang as well as violating immigration law. (Garcia has since been returned to the U.S. to stand trial on criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants.) The group’s website has also released talking points for activists to advocate against said efforts including comparisons of deportation to “abduction” and the enforcement of immigration law to “mass kidnappings. 

American Oversight 

American Oversight (AO) is a judicial activist organization created in March 2017, following the 2016 presidential elections, and has reportedly filed multiple open record requests and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases against both the first and second Trump Administrations. The organization has previously claimed to be the “top Freedom of Information Act litigator investigating the Trump Administration,” with roughly 1,000 open records requests filed in 2018 alone and 56 lawsuits filed during the same year. 

Melaine Sloan, a senior advisor with the organization, helped co-found and was previously the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a legal watchdog group that has also pursued legal action against both Trump Administrations. AO is a member of the Not Above the Law Coalition, a network of roughly 280 left-of-center organizations and movements. The coalition is managed by the left-of-center Democracy Forward. 

The coalition claims to have advocated for and pursued legal action and litigation against the Second Trump Administration over its alleged “far-right” activities. The group was involved with the organizing and planning of “#TeslaTakeover” a series of protests during March 2025 outside Tesla dealerships across the country. The network of organizations claimed the protests were in retaliation against Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk and his heading of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

In an April 2025 FOIA request to determine DOGE’s compliance with federal records retention requirements, AO claimed that the Trump administration failed to address “serious security failures and systemic violations of federal records laws” and instead “has been focused on rooting out instances of perceived disloyalty and abusing its power to weaponize the government against certain groups, including immigrants.” 

Democracy Forward Foundation 

The Democracy Forward Foundation (DFF) is a left-of-center legal advocacy organization that has previously pursued legal action against the First and Second Trump Administrations. DFF is the 501(c)(4) sister organization of Democracy Forward (DF), with both organizations sharing the same website, employees, and board members. The board chair of DFF is Marc Elias, an American attorney who was previously the general counsel of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie LLP before stating his own law firm, the Elias Law Group. 

The group has previously receive funding from left-of-center organizations and advocacy groups including the Democracy Fund, the Center for American Progress (CAP), the Sandler Foundation, and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. 

Democracy 2025, a major initiative between DFF and Democracy Forward, is a fiscally sponsored project founded in 2022 to develop and produce research reports, legal strategies, and litigation designed to tackle and push against what the project considers “threats to our democracy.” As of 2025, the project has claimed to have produced a “multimillion-dollar war chest” to “counter harmful, illegal, anti-democratic actions from the Trump-Vance administration.” As of November 2024, the Democracy 2025 project consists of roughly 280 organizations and over 800 individual participants. Democracy 2025’s member organizations include Accountable.US, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Brennan Center for Justice, Demand Justice, the National Education Association (NEA), Alliance for Justice (AFJ), the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the Center for Progressive Reform, the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), the National Immigration Law Center, and the Vera Institute of Justice (VIJ). 

Steve Ballmer 

Steve Ballmer is a former Microsoft CEO, serving in that role from 2000 to 2014 after co-founder Bill Gates stepped down. When Ballmer left, he sold nearly all the stock he had in the company. 

Following his departure from Microsoft, he and his wife Connie started the Ballmer Group, a philanthropic organization that, according to its website, has donated to organizations and other movements advocating left-of-center policy regarding education, climate change, criminal justice reform, and prevention of “racial disparities.” According to its website, it donated over $1.23 billion in grants during the 2024 fiscal year. Several organizations that have previously received grants from the group include the Alliance for Safety and Justice Action Fund, Color of Change, the Equal Justice Initiative, PolicyLink, the Bail Project, and the Obama Foundation. 

In 2016, Ballmer founded USA Facts, a research advocacy group claiming to provide data on population rates as well as government spending within the United States. During the 2024 election cycle, USA Facts started “Just the Facts,” an online advocacy campaign that released a series of public service announcements and short videos claiming to educate voters on key policy issues before the election such as immigration, the environment, the budget, and health care.  

Maribeth Witzel-Behl 

Maribeth Witzel-Behl is the former city clerk for Madison, Wisconsin as well as a former member of the advisory board for the left-of-center electoral advocacy group Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). During the 2020 presidential election, CTCL allegedly donated roughly $10.1 million in “relief grants” to parts of the state for assisting local election infrastructure, whereas 84 percent were distributed to Madison along with the cities of Green Bay; Milwaukee; Racine; and Kenosha. She began her position as clerk in 2006 and reportedly administered over 60 elections within the state including those during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Prior to the 2020 election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan reportedly donated $350 million to CTCL through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). 

In January 2025, the Wisconsin Elections Commission launched an investigation after it was discovered Witzhel-Behl had failed to count roughly 193 ballots from two Madison polling stations on election day in November 2024 but did not inform officials until December of that year. In addition, four voters whose ballots had gone missing filed claims for roughly $175,000 each from the city of Madison and Dane County. Additional reporting showed that in September 2024, her office had mistakenly sent out 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots. In March 2025, she was suspended from her position by Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. On April 14, she announced her resignation from the office. The mayor’s office launched an internal investigation into the clerk’s office earlier in March, but it had ended shortly before her resignation. 

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy 

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) is an economic advocacy organization that claims to promote policies for budgetary issues as well as both state and federal taxation policies. Although labeled as “nonpartisan,” the left-of-center policy advocacy group Pew Research Center has previously described ITEP as a “liberal think tank.” 

The ITEP’s X (formerly Twitter) account had previously posted and retweeted articles and stories critical of tax policies implemented or debated during the first Trump Administration. Following the reelection of President Donald Trump in November 2024 and the start of the Second Trump Administration, the ITEP has written several articles and publications on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump Administration’s taxation bill that is being debated in Congress. In May 2025, when the U.S House had begun debate and voting on the Administration’s tax bill, ITEP published an article claiming to analyze the bill’s components and argued that the bill  “is a recklessly expensive bill that would expand economic inequality in America and pay for it in part by stripping health care from millions of Americans and rolling back critical climate investments.” 

According to a statement made by ITEP executive director Amy Hanauer, the new bill:  

gives enormous additional tax cuts to wealthy people and corporations, spikes the deficit, and strips health care from millions of Americans. Reckless tax cuts for the top and new corporate loopholes appear to be the big features of this bill, and they’re paid for by cutting our health care and making American communities more vulnerable to floods, fires, and storms. 

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/influencewatch-2025-the-years-top-ten-influencers/