Free Beacon: Newsom’s California Has Sent Nearly $18 Million in Taxpayer Funds to Soros-Backed Tides Center
April 2, 2025
California has doled out nearly $18 million in taxpayer funding to the left-wing Tides Center since Gavin Newsom (D.) became governor in 2019, a Washington Free Beacon review of state spending records found. Thanks to the way the dark money behemoth operates, it’s a mystery whether the money goes to any of the far-left groups it supports.
That setup allows the state to obscure which group actually gets taxpayer dollars after it awards contracts or grants to the Tides Center. The Golden State’s spending database shows that 18 agencies, ranging from health departments to workplace regulators, sent payments to the George Soros-backed nonprofit. The database does not reveal which project gets the cash in the end. State officials also told the Free Beacon that the database is missing information from some departments, meaning total payments to the Tides Center could eclipse the nearly $18 million shown.
The Tides Center essentially acts like a middle man, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars every year to a network of seemingly independent charitable organizations—primarily progressive activist groups. But unlike traditional nonprofits, these groups are housed within the Tides Center as so-called fiscally sponsored projects, enabling them to operate as charities while sidestepping the IRS’s robust financial transparency requirements for tax-exempt groups.
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Another is the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which led California’s failed experiment to decriminalize certain theft and drug-dealing. The Tides Center also supports the Arab Resources and Organizing Center, the group that tried to blockade a U.S. military ship bound for Israel in 2023, and the Community Justice Exchange, which bailed out the anti-Israel protesters arrested last year for shutting down airports, bridges, and highways.
“Taxpayer dollars should not fund a radical network that seems more intent on tearing the state apart rather than fixing it,” Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland said.
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Agencies responsible for some of the Tides Center’s smaller grants were more communicative. The spending database, for example, shows that the California State Library paid the Tides Center $70,000 between 2022 and 2024. A spokesman explained that the money actually went to both the Tides Center and its sponsored project, the National Veterans Network, a group focused on Japanese-American soldiers in World War II, to write school instruction materials about the Japanese internment camps in the United States.
A California Environmental Protection Agency official likewise explained that the $95,000 it paid to the Tides Center through two environmental justice grants ultimately went to Orange County Environmental Justice Fund, the same group that received CARB money.
