Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation hid past grants to leftist causes after its funding of lawfare groups opposing President Donald Trump surfaced.
When Natalie Winters, co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room, posted that Zuckerberg gave nearly $2 billion to the leftist Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) — which bankrolls the anti-Trump legal group Protect Democracy — the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s website listed more than 5,000 grants, many to leftist groups, from 2018 to June 2024. Soon after — on Feb. 14 — Zuckerberg’s foundation scrubbed its website, only listing 680 grants “from January 2024.”
The New York Times ran a hit piece trying to debunk Winters, citing Zuckerberg’s spokesman, who said that “neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor his wife, nor their joint philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, had ever made a donation to Protect Democracy.” Never mind the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Zuckerberg donated $1.75 billion in Facebook stocks to SVCF in 2010, according to InfluenceWatch, and another donation of $200 million in 2018 — amounting to $1.95 billion total. The SVCF uses “donor-advised fund[s],” through which donors can “advise how their gifts are distributed.” The New York Times seized on this, saying Zuckerberg’s account “does not mean that he actually donated any funds to Protect Democracy.” But according to InfluenceWatch, SVCF’s assets skyrocketed from more than $5.3 billion to $13.5 billion in 2017 — likely due to “the appreciation of SVCF investments, which include potentially 36 million Facebook shares, donated by founder Mark Zuckerberg.”
Documents from 2021 to 2023 show SVCF gave more than $4 million to Protect Democracy. The leftist lawfare group is now suing to shield career bureaucrats from Trump’s executive order “Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within The Federal Government,” and to stop federal departments from cooperating with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. As The Federalist previously reported, the group started a “National Task Force On Election Crises” ahead of November, which promoted censorship and legal retribution.
So, even if Zuckerberg did not directly designate money to Protect Democracy, he funneled billions to support the SVCF, which facilitated funding for anti-Trump lawfare — and his foundations have funneled millions to leftist groups.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative may perhaps be most well known for its role in the “Zuckbucks” scheme of 2020 — which funneled nearly $400 million from Zuckerberg through leftist nonprofits to local election offices. The strategy enabled these nonprofits — the Center for Tech and Civic Life and Center for Election Innovation and Research — to influence local election administration and target Democrat-heavy areas, boosting blue turnout during the presidential race.
But the group has gone beyond elections, funding various migrant groups. According to InfluenceWatch, the Chan Zuckerberg initiative has given $1 million to the National Immigration Forum (which “opposes border enforcement policies”), $550,000 to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (which “offers legal services to migrants” and advocates for permissive immigration policy), and $120,000 to the Justice Action Center (which, according to its website, files lawsuits across the country to protect mass migration).
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has also given $665,000 to the Center for American Progress, a large left-wing foundation that has links to the Democrat Party and “enjoyed significant influence” with the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, according to InfluenceWatch. Zuckerberg’s group also gave $3.25 million to the Tides Center — which manages “fiscal sponsorship” for the powerful Tides Foundation, helping with “incubation” and funding of smaller leftist activist groups. As The Federalist previously reported, the Tides Foundation funded anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protestors last spring.
According to an archived Chan Zuckerberg Initiative webpage from Feb. 12 — while the site still included more than 5,000 grants — the foundation gave $1.9 million total to CASA de Maryland and its action arm from 2018 to 2021. The group opposes immigration enforcement, and currently hosts a “raid tip hotline” to “report any ICE activity.” The foundation also gave $50,000 to the Transgender Law Center in 2021 “for core support to the Black LGBT Migrant Project” — which aims for “a world without forced migration, where no one is forced to give up their homeland and where all Black LGBTQIA+ people are free and liberated.”
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has funneled nearly $24 million to the education arm of FWD.us (also known as Forward US) since 2015, according to InfluenceWatch. Zuckerberg founded the pro-leftist group.
FWD.us
Zuckerberg and Chan helped launch FWD.us in 2013, according to InfluenceWatch, and the group is a “directly controlled entity of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.” Other “founders and funders” of FWD.us include Microsoft founder Bill Gates and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a Democrat megadonor who previously said he wished he “made” Trump a “martyr.”
FWD.us has given millions to leftist causes, according to IRS tax documents. Its education branch, the FWD.us Education Fund, gave more than $1.49 million to the Justice Action Center from 2020 to 2022. The group (which has also taken funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, as mentioned earlier) is so radical that it claims former President Joe Biden — who flooded the country with illegals — is too strict, suing his administration for alleged “abuse” and “summary expulsion of thousands of Haitians.”
From 2018 to 2022, FWD.us and its education fund gave close to $1.5 million total to groups affiliated with the leftist giant Tides Foundation. As The Federalist previously reported, the Tides Foundation funded an organization that pushed to impeach Trump and promoted leftist “get out the vote” efforts.
FWD.us and its education branch gave $450,000 total to leftist immigration group CASA de Maryland and its action fund in 2021. According to InfluenceWatch, the group — which also accepted grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — has organized protests against Trump’s immigration policies, and its executive director pledged not to cooperate with requests by law enforcement seeking to discern workers’ immigration status. CASA is suing Trump for his executive order on birthright citizenship.
In 2022 and 2023, FWD.us donated $200,000 to VoteVets Action Fund — which spends millions on Democrat campaigns and publicly opposes Trump’s priorities, according to InfluenceWatch. The group opposed the nomination of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
FWD.us and its education branch have also given $225,000 to the Hopewell Fund, $280,000 to the New Venture Fund, and $2 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund. All three groups are major components of the leftist dark money giant Arabella Advisors, and according to InfluenceWatch, they serve as “incubators and accelerators” for various other left-wing nonprofits and activist groups.
The FWD.us Education Fund has spent millions of dollars on mass migration NGOs, according to its IRS 990 forms. From 2018 to 2022, it spent $355,000 total on Catholic Charities (which has opposed enforcement of immigration law and received millions in government funding for migrant services). The fund also spent thousands from 2021 to 2022 on a group called “Trans Queer Pueblo.” Trans Queer Pueblo’s website, translated from Spanish to English, says the group is an “autonomous community in Phoenix dedicated to fighting for racial and gender justice.” The community is composed of “more than 300 LGBT+ people who are documented and undocumented migrants and people of color” — all fighting for social “liberation.”
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
