Democrats’ dark-money superstructure is flailing as the party struggles to rebrand and reorganize. A pair of reports published this week illustrate the problem. According to the New York Times, the Gates Foundation is severing ties with groups managed by the influential Arabella Advisors, while Wired reports growing controversy over a dark-money network called Chorus working to cultivate an army of center-left influencers. The big picture that emerges is a movement still smarting from 10 years of Trump-fueled realignment politics.

In late June, according to the Times, the Gates Foundation decided to stop sending grant money to nonprofit groups administered by Arabella, despite spending nearly half a billion dollars on such organizations in the last 16 years. Arabella, as the Washington Free Beacon reported last year, “oversees the distribution of billions of dollars in annual donations to left-wing nonprofits, such as the New Venture Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund,” both of which “collectively raked in roughly $3.3 billion in 2020 and 2021”.

Because the White House is openly seeking “retribution” against political enemies, the Times notes that “Bill Gates has grown preoccupied with protecting the charity that he founded and has led for nearly three decades, particularly at a time when Mr. Trump has threatened individual philanthropists with ties to Democratic politics and the tax-exempt status of specific nonprofits.” The Gates Foundation is clearly under a microscope in Washington, and cuts to USAID, the CDC, and other government partners have reportedly been devastating to the group.

Gates seems to be weathering the blows by courting Trump, meeting with him in late December and again this week, while reportedly “de-emphasizing” diversity and inclusion initiatives. Seven months into Trump’s second term, the deference shown by executives such as Tim Cook and Sam Altman appears to be nudging Gates toward relying more on incentives than penalties.

Along with the Arabella saga, what these controversies reveal is a deep confusion on the Left about how to counter the Right’s thriving dark-money apparatus, currently unified by the urgent prospect of controlling all three branches of government — including a White House eager to upend norms. Republican targeting of the Left, for example, was listed by the Times recently as including: “Executive actions intended to cripple top Democratic law firms. Investigations of Democratic fundraising and organizing platforms. Ominous suggestions that nonprofits aligned with Democrats or critical of President Trump should have their tax exemptions revoked.”

On the Left, Chorus is explicitly designed to challenge Right-wing dominance in new media. But it also best reflects the Left’s directionlessness, whether to tack towards centrists like Elissa Slotkin or populists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As some in the party believe it needs to look more like Zohran Mamdani and less like Andrew Cuomo, others such as Rep. Jim Clyburn, firmly believe the exact opposite, and dark-money groups are panicking.

Do Democratic leaders and benefactors want truly independent media creators? People who will back the likes of Mamdani over Cuomo? Do they want groups so progressive that Mamdani-esque candidates run for office in a climate where fidelity to progressive causes such equity, progressive policing, and trans radicalism are demanded by the base? And at a time when the Republican Party is increasingly emboldened to target groups in those spaces?

As Democrats are tugged in two opposite directions, the dark-money network American progressives have built up and relied on for years is standing at the crossroads, struggling to pick between paths or forge another.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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