An organization heading a campaign for having Senate Democrats eliminate the filibuster is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a powerful dark money network used by the left, according to a new report.
Fix Our Senate, which in recent days has added dozens of groups to its coalition as the call to eliminate the filibuster grows, is in charge of 60 progressive groups pushing to pressure moderate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, reports The Washington Free Beacon.
According to business reports obtained by the publication, Fix Our Senate falls under the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit incubator that is managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, whose funding network is used by wealthy liberal donors who are secretly bankrolling progressive initiatives.
“This coalition of groups is disingenuous when in reality these are just trade names of the Sixteen Thirty Fund — a branch of the overarching behemoth Arabella Advisors,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told the Washington Free Beacon. “These groups are trying to imitate local grassroots groups, but are backed by Arabella to influence public policy.”
President Joe Biden says he supports filibuster reform, not cancellation, and wants to see the Senate return to a more traditional “talking filibuster” but White House press secretary Jen Psaki says Biden is still open to hearing other ideas on the filibuster.
Under current Senate rules, 60 votes are needed so that legislation can be debated and passed, meaning Democrats must have support from at least 10 Republicans before bills can advance.
Democrats say the filibuster will hold up agenda items on issues such as immigration reform and voting rights and are calling to either eliminate the procedure or change the rules. The filibuster has evolved since its beginnings to become a procedure invoked by the Senate’s minority party to stop bills that won’t pass without at least 60 votes.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that if Democrats eliminate the filibuster, “we will make it difficult still in a 50-50 Senate for them to pass hard-left legislation.”
Meanwhile, the Fix Our Senate’s coalition has launched a six-figure ad buy nationally that makes the case that the filibuster is a racist tool that was a “long-favored procedural tool of segregationists (and) has prevented voting rights and civil rights from passing the U.S. Senate.
“We want to make sure voters understand that the filibuster, an abused and outdated ‘Jim Crow relic,’ is a big part of what is broken about our government and we are encouraging them to make their voices heard and call on their senators to choose progress, not more gridlock,” Eli Zupnik, spokesman for Fix Our Senate, said in a press release.
Fix Our Senate, as a subsidiary of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, also doesn’t have to register as a nonprofit with the IRS. This means it doesn’t have to disclose its donors or file tax forms that would have information about board members, contractors, or financial activities.
Liberal billionaire donor George Soros and others involved in the secretive donor club Democracy Alliance use the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Washington Free Beacon also reports, adding that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund, all managed by Arabella, facilitated $715 million in dark money in 2019. Each of the funds provides its tax and legal status to the groups sitting beneath them.
The Fix Our Senate coalition includes groups involved in gun control, immigration, and healthcare, and one of the coalition’s members, Demand Progress, is also housed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Fix Our Senate did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon’s request for comment.
