House Republicans introduced the “End Zuckerbucks Act” on July 1 with the goal of stopping donations from certain tax-exempt “nonprofit” organizations to election organizations. The act has 12 Republican co-sponsors including Rep Dan. Bishop of North Carolina and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas.
It targets organizations like the mammoth “philanthropy” group built by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, known as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). If the legislation passes, the IRS would have the power to strip 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from groups that donate directly to state and local election officials. The motivation for such drastic action stems from a very real problem that became glaringly apparent in the last election.
Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, explained to The Daily Caller, “Mark Zuckerberg channeled $350 million to government agencies during the 2020 election with zero transparency or accountability, and he used the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to do it, a left-leaning non-profit.”
Republican lawmakers realized they were looking at corruption wrapped up in a neat, non-profit, multi-billion-dollar package. They are willing to alter the tax code to accommodate safeguards to keep Facebook in check, preventing it from further corrupting and tampering with the election process. If American government is to continue to be “of, by, and for the people,” such a measure is an absolute necessity.
Although Facebook’s efforts to interfere with open and honest elections have now been widely covered, many Americans don’t fully grasp that CZI has also devoted significant funding toward tampering with public education.
CZI is a major funder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a Chicago-based education organization. It coined the “social and emotional learning” concept more than 20 years ago and is now the nation’s largest source of SEL programming, with programs operating in 20 states. It claims to reach as many as 1.7 million students with its left-wing ideology.
CASEL was founded by Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence,” and philanthropist Eileen Rockefeller Growald. The program’s expressed goal was to help “children acquire the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively.”
However, CASEL isn’t just offering social-emotional learning, they’re now pushing a variant known as “transformative SEL” which is heavily steeped in concepts that encourage students to obsess about their race and supposed gender identities. Schools using prying surveys to promote concepts like these have been accused of violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which requires parental access to students’ survey answers.
CASEL’s program literature describes concepts of critical race theory such as “White racial entitlement and dominance.” It promotes leftist ideology under the guise of student and parental “critical social awareness,” and raises concern with “most” teachers being “middle-class White women.”
Besides promoting anti-white bigotry, CASEL’s SEL helps Zuckerberg achieve his stated desire to “strengthen democracy by … ambitious efforts to lift voter participation.” Soon after the 2020 election, CASEL published a guide that instructed educators to “speak out, demonstrate, and hold elected officials accountable.”
CASEL’s social studies program “Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO)” teaches students to value the practice of mail-in-voting and insists voter fraud is “almost non-existent.” Another FHAO resource, “From Reflection to Action: A Choosing to Participate Toolkit,” gives educators detailed lessons to facilitate student-led voter registration drives in schools, as well as activism projects that combine social justice and technology.
Given the ongoing difficulties for students seeking worthwhile career paths upon graduation, the last thing they need is to be force-fed a litany of leftist propaganda under the guise of “education.” And if wealthy and powerful organizations like Facebook seek to worm their way into the classroom — with an obvious leftist agenda of no academic value — it is only right to curtail that effort through every available means.