The left-wing group leading a campaign to have Senate Democrats eliminate the filibuster is housed at one of the left’s most powerful dark money networks, business records show.

View Comments (22)

Fix Our Senate is steering a coalition of 60 progressive groups to pressure moderate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, which requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance legislation. The group is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit incubator managed by the D.C.-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors. Arabella’s network of funds is used by the nation’s wealthiest liberal donors to secretly bankroll a host of progressive initiatives.

The coalition has added dozens of groups in recent days as Democrats increase their calls to eliminate the filibuster. President Joe Biden has said he supports filibuster reform and would prefer a return to a “talking filibuster,” but White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president remains “open to hearing” other ideas. Removing the filibuster would help Democrats looking to push through a progressive agenda.  . . .

The coalition led by Fix Our Senate is trying to drum up support by painting the filibuster as a racist tool. On Thursday, the coalition launched a nationwide, six-figure ad buy that “makes the case that the filibuster, a long favored procedural tool of segregationists, has prevented voting rights and civil rights from passing the U.S. Senate.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has similarly argued that the filibuster has “deep roots in racism.”  . . .

As a subsidiary of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Fix Our Senate does not have to register as a standalone nonprofit with the IRS. This allows the group to operate largely in secret.

Fix Our Senate does not have to disclose its donors or file tax forms that would shed light on its financial activity, board members, or contractors. The Sixteen Thirty Fund is used by liberal billionaire George Soros and others in the Democracy Alliance, a secretive donor club that financially supports progressive causes. Arabella-managed funds facilitated $715 million of dark money in 2019.  . . .

The progressive coalition includes gun control, immigration, and health care groups, among others. One coalition member, Demand Progress, is also housed at the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Demand Justice, also at the Sixteen Thirty Fund, was previously linked to Fix Our Senate but does not appear in the coalition.

The anti-filibuster coalition launched just as Senate Democrats began abandoning their stances on the issue. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) has used his Twitter feed to highlight how Democrats, including Sens. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.), signed onto a bipartisan effort to preserve the 60-vote threshold.

While Markey now says the “filibuster was created so that slave owners could hold power over our government,” he tweeted in praise of Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) for his 2016 filibuster, touting Murphy’s efforts to “#holdthefloor.”  . . .

In a statement to the Free Beacon, Cotton criticized his colleagues for switching their positions on the issue. “The same Democrats who hysterically call the filibuster ‘racist and evil’ filibustered themselves hundreds of times over the past few years.” Cotton referred to Fix Our Senate’s goals as “a coordinated, political attack to ram through a left-wing agenda before the voters kick the Democrats out of power in 2022.” . . .

Share your prayers about the filibuster in the comments below!

(Excerpt from The Washington Free Beacon. Article by Joe Schoffstall and Matthew Foldi. Photo Credit: Dreamstime.)