The Capital Research Center was established in 1984 to examine how foundations, charities, and other nonprofits spend money and get involved in politics and advocacy, often in ways that donors never intended and would find abhorrent.
From the start, CRC has exposed how those organizations are “captured” by interest groups and used to undermine Americans’ freedoms.
Today, we study unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations. We also keep an eye on crony capitalists who seek to profit by taking advantage of government regulations and by getting their hands on taxpayers’ money.
We’re not afraid to take on the Washington Establishment—Republican, Democrat, or anyone else.
CRC reports take the form of articles on this website, newspaper and magazine articles, and books. We’re also a source of information for commentators and people in the news media.
We do have a specific point of view. We believe in free markets, Constitutional government, and individual liberty. But facts are facts, and our journalists and researchers go where the facts lead them.
CRC is tax-exempt and fiercely independent. We perform no contract work and we accept no government funds—not one cent. We depend on voluntary contributions to fund our important work.
We are the Capital Research Center, “America’s investigative think tank.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center is perhaps most notorious for its “hate map,” which not only neglects to track extremist groups on the left, but also lumps mainstream conservative and religious organizations right alongside some of the most reprehensible neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the country. For this, it has been regularly and rightly criticized. […]
Scott Walter on The Federalist Radio Hour In this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, joins Federalist Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to explain how leftist nonprofits illegally use American tax dollars to push Democrat politics and discuss what Congress can do to stop it. Walter recently testified before the […]
Dozens of Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration Filed by Government Employee Unions, Left-Wing Activists, and Democratic Politicians. “The main function of American trade unions is collective bargaining. It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” — AFL-CIO president George Meany, December, 1955 Last week, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan refused to grant an emergency temporary restraining order (TRO) […]
“Death to America”: 250 Anti-Israel Groups Want to Destroy the U.S. Summary: On the Fourth of July, about 250 organizations involved with the anti-Israel protest movement revealed themselves as anti-American extremists by rejecting or condemning the holiday. Most of them publicly expressed a longing for the destruction of the United States. The groups’ public statements in response […]
The top foundations financing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are refusing to rule out future support of CAIR even after the Capital Research Center alerted them to its executive director’s public celebration of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Biden Administration’s subsequent disavowal of CAIR. CAIR’s Funders In December, the Capital Research Center collaborated with Focus on Western Islamism to […]
Last week, Politico reported on a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the question of abortion regulation to the states, ending the Court’s invention of a constitutional right to abortion. The draft opinion was greeted with predictable outrage from left-progressives, including those in organized labor. Statements Now, many people, especially […]
Summary: The world of K–12 education policy has long been dominated by philanthropic foundations. Much of the education “reform” sweeping across America has been financed and pushed by elite, well-heeled foundations. They have used the billions from their endowments to create various associations and activist groups to promote these changes. The Ford, Kellogg, and MacArthur […]
You don’t want to miss the latest episode of Capital Research Center and Dangerous Documentaries’ new series The Politically Incorrect Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court! Watch it now! In the third episode of The Politically Incorrect Guide podcasters and authors Tom Woods and Michael Malice become the un-PC Schoolhouse Rock to bust myths about the American Judiciary. […]
The First Amendment and the very idea of free speech are under attack in America today. A growing number of Americans don’t believe you have the right to speak your mind if what you have to say might offend someone, somewhere. They advocate for “safe spaces” in which people won’t be offended by ideas they may find troubling. But is that what […]
Money cost saving for goal and success in school, education concept : US dollar bills / cash in burlap bags, a black graduation cap or hat, a certificate / diploma and a book on basic balance scale. Last week, I compared the risk of a college football bet against the odds of an “investment” in […]
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect Bryan Stevenson’s 1995 MacArthur Fellowship. The New York Times’s controversial “1619 Project” is a series of essays and features examining the history of slavery in the U.S. and how that still affects modern America. Commenting on the history of the project itself, the media giant credits the idea […]
The Architects of Woke will release episodes throughout 2019. The series takes aim at far-left post-modernist and Marxist thinkers and activists responsible for the spread of identity politics from college campuses to society at large. The second episode, “Slavoj Žižek & the Romance of Revolutionary Terror”, covers the influence of the famed Slovenian communist […]
As presidential candidates promise to refuse so-called “dark money” and Members of Congress decry the role of money in politics, a Special Report from CRC dispels one of the biggest myths in political discourse: the Left doesn’t use “dark money.” CRC’s report by investigative researcher Hayden Ludwig, Big Money in Dark Shadows: Arabella Advisors’ Half-billion-dollar “Dark […]
The “Green Whitehouse” Agenda (full series) The Enemies List | Green Pays | Sheldon’s Endgame Summary: Americans are accustomed to politicians saying one thing and doing another. But arguments about the funding behind think tanks and advocacy organizations are perhaps the most one-sided of the recurring debates on Capitol Hill. Few are as outspoken on the issue as Rhode Island […]
The first episode of Dangerous Documentaries’ new web series, The Architects of Woke, is live on Facebook and YouTube. The first episode exposes the outsized influence of Professor Judith Butler, the Berkeley feminist, famous as the mother of the modern theory that dozens of “genders” exist, with no relation to the two biological sexes. Judith Butler’s War on Science explains the myriad ways Butler’s gender-bending […]