This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. When Soros insiders try to explain the family dynamic, they draw on the standard texts of empire and heredity. “Roman is Alex,” says a former OSF senior official, referring to Roman Roy, the sardonic failson in Succession. “Smart but fucking impossible and not particularly interested in the details.” Another Soros insider cites not HBO but the Gospel of Luke, casting Alex in the role of the Prodigal Son, who is rewarded with his father’s love despite his wayward years. Alex might be too entangled in the institutions of liberalism, ranging from the centrist Establishment to the activist pressure groups, to perceive its failures. And that’s not even to mention his impending June wedding to Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide-de-camp and the ex-wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner — a gift to anyone looking for proof that the globalists are at last closing in on a one-world government, with the Weiner side plot as a prurient throw-in. As we spoke throughout the spring, Alex could be maddeningly discursive about the Trump administration’s escalating assault on civil society, which may well come next for his own organization. He said America was in a “nihilistic moment,” and he worried about the “lasting damage” the president was inflicting — even as he dismissed Trump as a self-destructive chaos agent. “I talk to real strongmen around the world, and they laugh at him.” At 21, George submitted a letter to Popper hoping to enlist him as an adviser, saying he wished to avoid becoming “a dilettante or a crank.” But George didn’t have the discipline for scholarship, and their correspondence withered. After university, he picked up work in London as a trader, arbitraging securities. In 1956, at the age of 26, he moved to New York, where his brother, Paul, was already working as an engineer. George was already in his mid-60s when he got involved in American political life. In the cautious environment of the 1990s, he funded then-radical programs to reform end-of-life care and harsh drug sentencing, bankrolled the California ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana, and created a new fund for immigrant rights in response to restrictive Clinton-era legislation — all of them libertarian-inflected gambits to “open” what he felt remained closed in the U.S. Alex revered George — “a giant among people” — but was also wounded by his chronic absence. Weber, who was pursuing her own career as an academic, says George “never changed a diaper — well, I remember, he took one off once.” He had an old-world approach to family life: “Dinner was at eight. There was a way to be dressed, to behave at the dinner table.” Alex says he wanted to graduate from childhood altogether. He says that at King Low Heywood Thomas, a prep school in Connecticut, he “played on the basketball team, and my best friend at school was the philosophy teacher. That was my life.” “He was much more interested in the adult conversations — who was coming to the house, who was at dinner,” Weber says. “He starts reading Nietzsche at a too-early age. He becomes sort of difficult to live with.” Alex joined the OSF board in 2011 and set up his own charity. Still, as a graduate student and playboy, he was not seen as a player in family affairs. “I thought at that point you were going to go more into academia,” Vachon says in Alex’s living room. “But then, I think — you would remember better — you started traveling with George a lot.” “I said to him, ‘No, come on — I enjoy your company. You’re my father, and I’m going to be your loyal parasite. I’m going to be by your side.’” In 2017, George named Alex his vice-chair at the foundation, and a few years later, he appointed him his successor. In a rare public comment, Jonathan, who had by then permanently stepped away from OSF, said, “I always knew he could change his mind. As a trader, it’s the thing he’s most famous for.” When I ask Alex to explain the ways he is making the foundation his own, he resists, painting the transition as a continuum. “When he would introduce me, he would say, ‘I’m the failed philosopher, and Alex is the successful one,’” he says. “I don’t think that my father would have been comfortable in any way if he didn’t see similarities, right? We’re both not the most patient people. We both don’t do very well with boredom. We’re both result-driven — we like to win.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alexander Soros, PhD (@alexsoros) Alex’s fondness for collecting powerful figures embarrasses people at the foundation OSF is by some measures the second-largest charitable foundation in the United States budget not only on liberal causes but also on some of the big dark-money nonprofits aligned with the Democratic Party and the pro-Harris spending group Future Forward USA Action is the largest investor in the podcast network Crooked Media Then there are the Soroses’ voluminous campaign contributions to Democrats rivaled only by those from billionaires Michael Bloomberg “A lot of what happens with these people who have a lot of money is they’re like ‘I have a brilliant idea: Why haven’t these stupid people in government thought of my brilliant idea?’” says one Biden official “It wasn’t like he was arrogant; he wasn’t offering crazy ideas.” Another D.C source says he was less interested in trying to twist arms than in cultivating power: “It was not ‘Change this piece of legislation.’ It was ‘I want access to talk about foreign policy.’” It can be helpful to discuss world affairs with a Soros tells me: “Often when I was talking to George Soros he was reflecting the views of x number of European leaders That’s what separated him in my mind from just a Democratic donor It wasn’t just he gave a certain amount to the DNC This guy is probably in contact with a dozen European leaders on a regular basis.” The Biden team and Alex might have been useful to each other on the matter of Ukraine it has invested close to $65 million in war-crimes documentation Some Democrats worried that his chronic in-the-room-ness could be taken advantage of or backfire The fear is they are meeting with him as a conduit to the White House,” one says “The Biden team did a very good job at making him feel taken seriously as a global actor while safely managing what information to share.” Says a political acquaintance Ron Klain’” — Biden’s chief of staff — “ ‘told me Da da da da da.’ His ability to scrutinize that information is a little bit off.” Alex could come across as aloof about the changes roiling the philanthropy that began during his time as heir apparent “Alex’s interest is not in how an organization’s operations function,” says its president fix the place,’ but he wasn’t involved in it.” While he was posting selfies from state dinners thanks to layoffs and restructuring efforts designed to move the unwieldy organization into a nimbler “Both George and Alex carry the notion that they are about ideas first We could not go a day without talking about Karl Popper,” says someone who operated in OSF’s higher rungs “A debate about whether human rights are dead would take over a board meeting  ” Alex didn’t sell the changes well to the newly unemployed when he told the Financial Times his father never meant for the organization to be “an employment agency.” Since 2017 OSF has gone from about 1,700 employees to around 500 today Behind the organization’s reset was a painful admission that after four decades and some $30 billion the world was no longer bending in George’s direction The foundation’s well-meaning civil-society initiatives had not in fact permanently opened repressive societies; many of the key theaters George played in “We must acknowledge this reality and adjust our strategies accordingly,” Nowrojee said in a recent speech in Cape Town OSF has shuttered or scaled back programs devoted to public health OSF insists such grant-making will continue in other formats but it’s undeniable Alex seeks to reorient the foundation’s emphasis “Alex has always fully respected that work but felt it would only have the efficacy and impact and long-term sharpness if we focus like a political philanthropy in the first instance who is making decisions within states and societies,” says OSF senior vice-president Leonard Benardo Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government kneecapped nonprofits aiding refugees an effort dubbed the “Stop Soros” law that represented its latest attack on the foundation George was forced to withdraw OSF’s presence from his home country and I think one of the lessons we learned is that civil-society organizations The more a foundation pushes universal values like human rights or free press the more it might be accused of serving global or elite interests rather than national ones What good was an institution like Budapest’s Soros-founded Central European University if an autocratic regime could force it out of the country And what if such a regime were to do that here If OSF’s new remit was to shift the balance of power a postelection consensus began to congeal everywhere from the liberal New York Times to the progressive Nation to the Substacks of the “popularist” center: Blame the Groups The argument: Nonprofit advocacy organizations had pressured the Democratic Establishment into unpopular left-wing positions on issues such as policing and immigration by claiming to speak for the party’s multiracial working class when in reality they represented a highly educated sliver of the party once-reliable blue-collar voters who disagreed with these positions rejected the Democratic Party and Donald Trump won the presidency Trump’s victory turbocharged the Groups critique the Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol published her book Diminished Democracy which argued that cross-class membership organizations like unions and social clubs were steadily being replaced by top-down NGOs which claimed mass engagement but were really just clearinghouses for petitions and donations nonprofits have gained only more political sway “If you’re your average foundation-funded NGO not just a foundation-funded NGO,’” the political scientist Daniel Schlozman said recently Except: “It turns out it’s all money from the Ford Foundation and Open Society And they’re not doing much of anything except talking to each other.” Amid the right’s obsession with demonizing George Soros there is scant mainstream understanding of what OSF actually does eight progressive NGOs teamed up on a campaign to pressure the Democratic presidential field into pledging to decriminalize border crossings eight of ten presidential candidates at a debate that June pledged their support for it (Joe Biden and Michael Bennet did not.) OSF has funded seven of the eight groups Some OSF-backed groups focus on economic issues budget flows to archetypal Groups “pressing for racial equity” or that aim to “support immigrants’ rights” or engage young voters on “voting rights The most controversial aspects of OSF’s portfolio revolve around criminal justice it subsidized the Drug Policy Alliance’s successful push to decriminalize all personal drug use in Oregon via ballot initiative an extreme experiment the state legislature reversed last fall OSF backed the unsuccessful referendum to dismantle the Minneapolis police department George has spent millions on dedicated super-PACs to support 46 reform-minded prosecutors around the country Virginia’s Buta Biberaj and Los Angeles’s George Gascón Alex’s approach to the 2024 presidential election also involved subsidizing Groups via the family’s Democracy PAC the Soros political operation favors get-out-the-vote tactics After Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination Alex felt that Georgia might be in play and funneled $10 million to the left-leaning BlackPAC for a rural African American mobilization program He directed millions more to galvanize turnout in the Rust Belt states and Texas where the Soroses fund a super-PAC devoted to turning the state blue The Texas group said its mission was “driving up Democratic turnout by targeting people who will support Democrats if they vote but may not vote at all unless someone comes to their door.” Sorosworld’s electoral strategy offered a way not to choose between its idealistic and pragmatic missions — adopting a theory that relied less on persuading moderates than on spurring unmotivated liberals to vote The problem is those voters hardly exist anymore Trump upended the outdated wisdom that high turnout helps Democrats racking up gains among exactly the types of infrequent voters whose doors canvassers were knocking on As the Democratic data scientist David Shor put it recently “We’re now at a point where the more people vote the better Republicans do” — reflecting the drift of non-college-educated minorities away from the Democrats It is mobilization — you turn out your base.’ That is fucking wrong.” Against the idea that left-wing activism has provoked electoral backlash from minorities “the George Floyd protests may have been the reason that Joe Biden won the 2020 election It galvanized people to vote; it’s maybe why we won Georgia.” When I suggest the Groups are better at talking about criminal-justice reform than about crime occurring in people’s neighborhoods Alex suggests Democrats have lost credibility with working-class voters by not talking enough about fentanyl I say that fentanyl in turn exposed the party’s weakness on border control free-associating his way back into a more progressive pose “These solutions that they’re prescribing on fentanyl including going back to these draconian ideas of mandatory minimums on drug possession 30 years of data on the effect of prisons on young men.” peeling off his blazer and resuming battle in a tight black T-shirt he seems entirely sympathetic to the Groups critique Regarding the Trump administration’s wokeness purge “The fact that we’re sitting here and defending DEI as an acronym and we’re taking the bait on that pisses me off because I think that is something McKinsey made up.” The environmentalist group Sunrise comes up and now all they do is talk about Palestine It’s ridiculous.” His friends and allies repeatedly stress that Alex is no left-winger “One of his closest relationships in Washington is with Chuck Schumer,” one Beltway player reminds me the Soroses’ most prominent expenditures haven’t been on progressive advocacy but on the battle for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that turned into the most expensive judicial election in American history — which the Democrat won despite Elon Musk pouring more than $20 million into the race What Alex seems reluctant to do is to choose among these competing forces When I ask him which Democrats might lead the party “Who do I draw inspiration from when I listen to them speak I visited the midtown offices of the Open Society Foundations to meet Nowrojee the Kenyan human-rights lawyer and longtime OSF officer Alex appointed as president last year ‘I really would like to have something of your vision I don’t really want to do it.’” According to Nowrojee “He didn’t want some stone tablet where we kind of put it on a wall and say everybody must march.’ That’s exactly what an open society is not As Alex and I spoke through the early part of the year I kept asking him how OSF planned to address Trump’s deepening attacks on some of the very “open society” causes it funds: civil liberties The work of defending democracy has finally jumped from the theoretical to the frighteningly actual while also possibly reinforcing the impression that the Democratic Party is an out-of-touch organ for elite class interests telling me that “now is the time to play defense” and that his most important job was to help Democrats win back power in the 2026 midterms because I think anybody that has a strategy right now is crazy.” In our last conversations the statue of Teddy Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History but he did not put forward anything approximating a vision Alex was wholly fixated on beating Trump: “Everything else doesn’t matter.” Now that Trump has won We put faith in concepts that don’t exist in real life It takes one man to violate those and nobody to do anything in order for that to just be shredded,” he says “And I think that’s the very important lesson By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York Four current Yale Law School students and one incoming student have been named 2025 recipients of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans Current Law School students Ibrahim Dagher ’27 Summia Tora ’27 and incoming student Eshika Kaul ’28 are among 30 recipients of the fellowship which supports outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate education in the United States.  Fellows were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States They will each receive up to $90,000 in financial support for their graduate studies New Fellows were selected from a pool of more than 2,600 applicants nationwide and represent the remarkable contributions and potential of New Americans across a range of fields “This year’s class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows represents the extraordinary promise of New Americans and the vital role they play in driving innovation Director of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans “We are proud to support these exceptional individuals as they pursue their academic and professional goals.” Read biographies of the new Soros Fellows who were chosen through a rigorous selection process led by distinguished leaders in their fields hail from all over the United States and world They include researchers developing lifesaving medical treatments legal scholars shaping policies for a more just society active military officers working on medical and engineering degrees and writers whose work fosters cultural understanding the Fellowship has supported more than 800 individuals whose work is shaping and enriching American society according to an announcement from the foundation The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans was founded in 1998 and selects Fellows based on their achievements potential to make meaningful contributions to their fields and communities and dedication to the ideals of America represented in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution 203.432.4992 an advocate for migrants through theater performance has been named to the 2025 class of Soros Fellows The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is a merit-based scholarship program for immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate education in the U.S Ranjan is one of 30 Soros Fellows selected from a pool of more than 2,600 applicants nationwide She will receive a $90,000 scholarship for her graduate studies “Devika Ranjan’s Soros Fellowship honors the heart of Georgetown’s mission: using scholarship creativity and care to build a more just and connected world,” said Lauren Tuckley director of the Center for Research and Fellowships “Her time as a Marshall Scholar — an award for which our office proudly nominated her — deepened her commitment to ethical storytelling and migrant justice setting the stage for the groundbreaking work she continues today.” Ranjan joins more than a dozen Hoyas who have received the fellowship either during or after their studies on the Hilltop, following Celine Calpo (C’19) who received the scholarship in 2024 and is pursuing a law degree at New York University Ranjan will use her scholarship to continue her Ph.D in performance studies at Northwestern University studying the role of the arts in migration issues “I am so excited to be building on the work that was nurtured at the Lab for Global Performance and Politics and the Culture and Politics program which started my work in critical and creative storytelling around migration,” Ranjan said scholarship and advocacy is all the more necessary now I am so grateful to have been encouraged to pursue my wildest dreams through the interdisciplinary classes and faculty and classmate relationships that I still hold dearly from my time at Georgetown.” from Mumbai with her parents and brother when she was 3 years old Ranjan immersed herself in the arts of her Indian heritage refusing to speak Hindi and forsaking my heritage my mother reminded me that I come from Bollywood movies We screened endless 90s romantic musicals,” Ranjan said “I relearned my mother tongue from [Indian actor] Shahrukh Khan dance and joy are essential even in the most tragic of stories.” Ranjan remembers dancing to Bollywood hits singing along to Broadway musicals with her family and performing in school musicals her parents encouraged her to pursue them as a hobby so she decided to go to Georgetown for its School of Foreign Service to train as a diplomat But she never left the arts behind. When Ranjan discovered the university’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics she was enamored by its mission to encourage social change through the arts Ranjan explored participatory theater methods in conflict and post-conflict zones She traveled to South Asia and created theater pieces with women along the India-Pakistan border suffering from border conflict and domestic abuse and facilitated performance workshops in Kathmandu for people affected by the major earthquake in Nepal in 2015 She was drawn to the power of theater to address global issues and create change “I was inspired by trailblazers applying theater methods for social justice around the world,” she said I was enamored by working on the ground for change.” Ranjan continued her work at the intersection of theater and social justice As a Marshall Scholar she researched the effects of electronic surveillance on migrants in the United Kingdom earning graduate degrees in sociology and applied theater from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Since returning to the U.S., Ranjan has made teaching a core part of her work. She joined Georgetown as an adjunct professor during the 2020-2021 academic year to teach in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies She then worked with underserved high school students, many of whom came from immigrant backgrounds, through the Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago a theater company that amplifies voices from immigrant and first-generation communities She created ethnographic theater pieces centered on issues like family separation “The performances we created never told the audience what to think we allowed the power of narrative to do its work,” she said “I root my justice-oriented mission to facilitate spaces of care to meet migrants where they are and to create ethical Ranjan is now pursuing her doctorate from Northwestern University studying the role of theater in politics and continuing her graduate work on migration issues At Northwestern, she works with immigration lawyers and English as a foreign language classes to host workshops and prepare migrants for their immigration legal proceedings. Ranjan also partners with Global Gardens Chicago an organization that invites immigrants to grow their native agriculture in community gardens “I analyze the ways in which refugee farmers form connections with land water and food through their agricultural work — both rooting themselves within the U.S soil and maintaining their cultural connections,” Ranjan said “I consider the ways in which urban farms can make space for immigrant and refugee livelihoods as a means of agency.” Ranjan said her Soros Fellowship will empower her to continue her work in academia She hopes to continue working with students while also bringing theater to nontraditional spaces “As we prepare for a new magnitude of migration because of the climate crisis I will be positioned to help shape public perception of migrants as well as harness theater tools to improve migrant realities,” she said “The Soros community will nurture my ability to draw attention to urgent migration issues and develop my agility to move among policy JK Anowe, a graduate student in the English department at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Devika Ranjan, a Ph.D. candidate in performance studies at the School of Communication, have each been awarded a 2025 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans Anowe and Ranjan were among 30 scholars selected from a competitive pool of more than 2,600 applications nationwide supports outstanding scholars who are immigrants or the child of immigrants who are poised to make a significant contribution to U.S Each fellow will receive up to $90,000 in financial support toward an advanced degree program as well as access to the Soros Fellowship’s community of distinguished alumni Anowe was born to a family of yam farmers in Issele-Uku interreligious riots repeatedly uprooted his family and embedded violence into everyday life Anowe said he discovered a means of connecting his personal experiences of violence with the structural and state violence he witnessed while growing up.  Anowe is an MFA+MA student in the Litowitz Creative Writing Graduate Program and a Gwendolyn M in English and African studies to build on his graduate thesis by researching how postcolonial writers are reinventing African storytelling traditions in our globalized world He hopes through his poetry to encourage a new generation of thinkers who are invested in preserving African history “Receiving the fellowship at this point in my career is an incredible affirmation of the years of work I have put into my poetry,” Anowe said “With the support of the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation I hope to devote myself to finishing and publishing my first manuscripts At a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is peaking in the U.S. I am deeply honored to join a community that exemplifies all that new Americans bring to our communities here.” — from mountain towns to prairie landscapes and coastal communities Through her family’s journey across the country educator and theater-maker who tells critical and creative stories about migration She specializes in devised immersive performance and has facilitated workshops with refugees and migrants internationally A current Ph.D. student in performance studies at Northwestern, Ranjan is studying borders, surveillance and ecologies of liberation. As associate director of Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago she has worked with immigrant and first-generation teens to create ethnographic immersive theater about community issues like family separation She is a past fellow at the Lab for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University Ranjan studied at the University of Cambridge on a Marshall Scholarship where she was awarded a MPhil with distinction for research on the electronic tagging of asylum-seekers “The Soros Fellowship allows me the space and support to transform narratives about migration in the public sphere through creative non-fiction I am thrilled to be part of a community of immigrants Being part of this community will nurture my ability to draw attention to urgent migration issues and develop my agility to move among policy Northwestern students interested in pursuing scholarship and fellowship opportunities should contact the Office of Fellowships to learn more news@northwestern.edu Get the latest news delivered to your inbox Suggestions or feedback? MIT graduate students Sreekar Mantena and Arjun Ramani and recent MIT alumni Rupert Li ’24 and Jupneet Singh ’23 Soros Fellow Andre Ye will begin a PhD in computer science at MIT this fall Soros Fellowship for New Americans awards 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants $90,000 in graduate school financial support over a two-year period The merit-based program selects fellows based on their achievements and dedication to the ideals of the United States represented in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution This year’s fellows were selected from a competitive pool of more than 2,600 applicants nationwide He graduated from MIT in 2024 with a double major in mathematics and computer science Li was named a Marshall Scholar in 2023 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the Part III mathematics program at Cambridge University Soros Fellowship will support his pursuit of a PhD in mathematics at Stanford University Li’s first experience with mathematics research was as a high school student participant in the MIT PRIMES-USA program He continued research in mathematics as an undergraduate at MIT where he worked with professors Henry Cohn and Elchanan Mossel in the Department of Mathematics Li also spent two summers at the Duluth REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program with Professor Joe Gallian and combinatorics culminated in him receiving the Barry Goldwater Scholarship an honorable mention for the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student Li finds fulfillment in opportunities to give back to the math community that has supported him throughout his mathematical journey This year marks the second time he has served as a graduate student mentor for the PRIMES-USA program and his first year as an advisor for the Duluth REU program Sreekar Mantena graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a degree in statistics and molecular biology He is currently an MD student in biomedical informatics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) where he works under Professor Soumya Raychaudhuri of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard He is also pursuing a PhD in bioinformatics and integrative genomics at Harvard Medical School. In the future Mantena hopes to blend compassion with computation as a physician-scientist who harnesses the power of machine learning and statistics to advance equitable health care delivery where he grew up as fond of cheese grits as of his mother’s chana masala he lived with his grandparents in Southern India who instilled in him the importance of investing in one’s community and a love of learning Mantena was inspired by the potential of statistics and data science to address gaps in health-care delivery He founded the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation a nonprofit organization that has partnered with physicians in six countries to develop data-driven medical technologies for underserved communities including devices to detect corneal disease Mantena also pursued research in Professor Pardis Sabeti’s lab at the Broad Institute where he built new algorithms to design diagnostic assays that improve the detection of infectious pathogens in resource-limited settings He has co-authored over 20 scientific publications and his lead-author work has been published in many journals He is currently pursuing a PhD in economics at MIT where he studies technological change and innovation Also the Carl Shapiro (1976) Fellow in the Department of Economics Ramani hopes his research can inform policies and business practices that generate broadly shared economic growth Ramani’s dual interests in technology and the world led him to Stanford University where he studied economics as an undergraduate and pursued a master’s in computer science As data editor of the university’s newspaper he started the Stanford Open Data Project to improve campus data transparency Ramani also spent time at the White House working on economic policy and at Citadel in financial markets — all of which cultivated a broad interest in the economic world Ramani became The Economist’s global business and economics correspondent He first covered technology and finance and later shifted to covering artificial intelligence after the technology took the world by storm in 2022 Ramani moved to India to cover the Indian economy in the lead-up to its election he gained a much deeper appreciation for the social and institutional barriers that slowed technology adoption and catch-up growth Ramani wrote or co-wrote six cover stories financial journalist of the year in 2024 for his AI and economics reporting and co-authored a six-part special report on India’s economy is a Sikh-American who grew up deeply connected to her Punjabi and Sikh heritage in Somis The Soros Fellowship will support her MD studies at Harvard Medical School’s HST program under the U.S Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program Singh plans to complete her medical residency as an active-duty U.S and after serving as a surgeon in the USAF she hopes to enter the United States Public Health Commissioned Corps While Singh is the first in her family to serve in the U.S she is proud to be carrying on a long Sikh military legacy Singh graduated from MIT in 2023 with a degree in chemistry and a concentration in history and won a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue two degrees at the University of Oxford: a master’s in public policy and a master’s in translational health sciences she served as the commander (highest-ranked cadet) of the Air Force ROTC Detachment and is now commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant She is the first woman Air Force ROTC Rhodes Scholar Singh has worked in de-addiction centers in Punjab She also worked at the Ventura County Family Justice Center and Ventura County Medical Center Trauma Center and published a first-author paper in The American Surgeon a program to support the health of children affected by domestic violence She has conducted research on fatty liver disease under Professor Alex Shalek at MIT and on maternal health inequalities at the National Perinatal Epidemiological Unit at Oxford This website is managed by the MIT News Office, part of the Institute Office of Communications Massachusetts Institute of Technology77 Massachusetts Avenue The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans recognizes the potential and contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants with up to $90,000 toward their graduate studies three students affiliated with Caltech have received this award: Patryk Kozlowski who graduated from Caltech in 2024; Daniel Tang a graduate student in bioengineering; and Clara Seo Inspired by his first-year chemistry class at Caltech and was a co-author on a paper published in The Journal of Chemical Physics He then pursued an interest in quantum chemistry with Garnet Chan Bren Professor of Chemistry and director of the Rudolph A Kozlowski worked remotely for Chan's lab during the COVID-19 pandemic developing simulations of catalysis which have the potential to produce chemicals in a sustainable fashion Kozlowski suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with leukemia He took a medical leave for two years and returned to complete his BS degree at Caltech where he uses computational tools to search for materials that could be useful in a range of technologies moving with her parents first to Singapore and conducted research on the synthesis of biodegradable polymers As a graduate student in chemistry at Caltech professor of chemical engineering and chemistry to develop bioelectrochemical energy systems she is researching how bacteria impact renewable electricity and how biochemical conversions can be harnessed for sustainable energy and chemical production Thirty graduate students were awarded Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans this year, selected from a pool of more than 2,600 applicants. Alumni of the program include former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Caltech alumna Fei-Fei Li (PhD '05) professor at Stanford and pioneer in artificial intelligence The Soros Fellowship program was founded in 1998 by Paul and Daisy Soros According to the press release announcing the class of 2025 fellows are selected "based on their achievements and dedication to the ideals of America represented in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution." Mari Ismail is one of only 30 nationwide recipients of the highly competitive Soros Fellowship Recent Emory College graduate Marwah (Mari) Ismail, who delivered a widely popular talk on resilience after battling serious health issues during her undergraduate career, has won a 2025 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans The 2024 graduate is one of just 30 nationwide recipients of the highly competitive scholarship granted to immigrants or children of immigrants awarded in recognition of the potential to make significant contributions to U.S comes with $90,000 for graduate study expenses and it has all but begun,” says Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy George Yancy who first met Ismail as a first-year student peering through a Zoom screen then later admitted her to his graduate-level seminar courses as an undergraduate student “She has experienced what so many of us would think of as negatives and plowed through them by seeing them as opportunities,” Yancy adds “We will all benefit from what she becomes.” The daughter of Somali refugees who will start Columbia Law School in the fall Ismail is the fourth Emory alumnus to win the prestigious fellowship She has spent a gap year working as a trademark analyst for the Atlanta law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton — something of a break after insisting on attending Emory full-time while undergoing treatment for a rare cancer that took one of her eyes “It’s been a lot these last four years but I was never alone because I had people who had faith in me,” Ismail says “It’s an absolute honor that the Soros Foundation has the faith to invest in me and that just motivates me to continue working hard.” Born at what is now Emory Decatur Hospital Ismail grew up in the country’s largest Somali immigrant population in Minnesota As the oldest of four children raised by a single mother she embraced expectations to set an example for her siblings and others in the community by earning top grades and working since she was 14 Ismail pursued those expectations — and gave a glimpse of her determination — when she moved away to attend Emory as a QuestBridge Scholar The culture shock reinforced that she made the right decision she found that studying different religions allowed to her connect with a wide variety of people she hoped to help through a career in law “Some students just want to know the answers for an exam,” says James Hoesterey the associate professor of religion who served as Ismail’s honors thesis adviser on research investigating the Somali Civil War’s impact on religious adherence “Mari has the moral conviction to want to make a difference and the intellectual curiosity Her work outside of class opened the path to law school Ismail co-created the Kappa Alphi Pi pre-law fraternity at Emory and served as a Congressional Council Judge for the Student Government Association She also worked as an intern in two Congressional offices Senator Amy Klobucher and then on Capitol Hill with U.S discovering a passion for legal policymaking What had been treated as childhood glaucoma turned out to be a rare malignancy Ismail traveled to the Mayo Clinic for treatment of the rapidly spreading cancer only after successfully advocating for the ability to continue her junior year by studying remotely She talked her way into an intensive Italian course while hospitalized and recovering from a pulmonary embolism more worried about a summer study abroad program than her last round of chemotherapy “Something in me told me that if I come out of this I don’t want my life to fall behind,” Ismail says at least I know I was working hard until the end.” Ismail studied that summer in Bologna and graduated with a minor in Italian Studies director of the Emory College Language Center and Italian professor of practice who led the Italy trip and later included Ismail on a student research team for the second annual Climate on Culture Global Conference in Ireland Ismail wore an eye patch and a prosthetic when she first returned to campus Both proved distractions when people talked with her That prompted Ismail to make two decisions: Ditch the devices to accept her new appearance and apply to share her story at TEDxEmory Her 18-minute talk to a packed audience was among last year’s most popular sessions “It was the perfect moment to close that chapter,” Ismail says “I was blind in that eye since I was 14 because I could always see my future.” Students interested in learning more about the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship and other prestigious awards should contact Megan Friddle in Emory's National Scholarships and Fellowships Program, now part of the Pathways Center Find more information or schedule an appointment through the National Scholarships and Fellowships Program website By exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below) You accept and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License ("Public 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use of licensed material this paragraph does not form part of the public licenses were awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans a merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants Soros fellows receive funding to support their graduate studies at institutions across the country and are recognized for their achievements and their potential to make meaningful contributions to the United States across many disciplines 30 fellows were selected from over 2,600 applicants whose family immigrated to the United States from the United Kingdom majored in ecology and evolutionary biology and minored in astrobiology and mathematics a 2020 Gold Presidential Service Awardee and an associate member of Sigma Xi He was also named a recipient of the 2023 Becky Colvin Memorial Award which supported his senior thesis research on poison-dart frog acoustic evolution He will use the grant to support his work in a Ph.D program in ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University majored in computer science with certificates in Asian American studies and statistics and machine learning She also completed her master’s in computer science at Princeton Zhao researched racial bias in image captioning techniques and helped develop a globally sourced object recognition dataset. This experience inspired her to explore broader challenges in dataset collection such as improving dataset reliability and validity The grant will fund her as she pursues a Ph.D in computer science at Stanford University Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article Alexander Soros (born October 27, 1985, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American philanthropist and a son of financier and philanthropist George Soros later brought him closer to his father and contributed to his active engagement in his father’s philanthropic work The foundation generally kept a low profile and in its first decade it provided fewer than 100 grants Meanwhile, after his elder half brother, Jonathan, became less involved in their father’s vast enterprise, Soros joined the board of directors for Open Society Foundations In December 2022 the board elected him as its chair In June 2023 a spokesperson for George Soros announced that he would hand control of his holdings to the younger Soros On the eve of the high-stakes contest for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Unprecedented levels of funding backing either Dane County Judge Susan Crawford or Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel have come from across the country And while both candidates also received grassroots support from ordinary citizens the bulk of their backing has come from prominent political groups and megadonors Campaign contributions to individual candidates for Supreme Court are capped at $20,000 in Wisconsin but people with more to spend can give unlimited amounts through political action committees or the state political parties saying it had already eclipsed $100 million Among the heaviest spenders are out-of-state billionaires whose millions in donations could go a long way to determining whether conservatives or liberals have a majority on the court The Wisconsin Supreme Court is due to decide cases affecting abortion and labor rights and could have a say in congressional redistricting Big donors have extra motivation this year Wisconsin’s court race is seen nationally as the highest-profile election since President Donald Trump took office and it’s being treated as a referendum on Trump and his top advisor Here are four major players in what has become the most expensive judicial race in U.S By far the biggest spender in the race has been Musk the Tesla founder who now holds a prominent position in the White House as the head of cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency Musk first emerged as a political power player during the 2024 presidential cycle, when he was the election’s biggest spender, spending more than $291 million, according to OpenSecrets Much of that money supported Trump’s reelection campaign Now, the Wisconsin court race is seen as an early test of his prowess outside of Washington He endorsed Schimel in January and has donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin to date including Building America’s Future and his own America PAC announcing a Sunday event in Wisconsin to give two residents $1 million each Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has filed a lawsuit to try to block the giveaway calling it illegal and an “egregious attempt to buy votes.” Three courts rejected the lawsuit including a unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court Sunday night During a recent joint appearance with Schimel on X Musk described the race’s high stakes as nothing less than “preserving democracy in America.” A Crawford victory could lead to new congressional maps in Wisconsin which could tilt the delicate balance of power in Congress Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by Tesla seeks to allow the company to open dealerships in Wisconsin It could eventually find its way to the state Supreme Court and Crawford has argued Musk is trying to buy a Supreme Court justice to support his interests has been a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin among other left-leaning candidates and causes throughout the nation he’s donated $2 million to the state party although his Democracy PAC is not among the outside groups contributing to Crawford That’s come as his political contributions have declined somewhat overall, at least by megadonor standards. According to OpenSecrets he was not among the top 100 political donors last year although some of his nonprofits disbursed funds to other groups Just as Crawford wants voters to equate Schimel with Musk, Schimel wants voters to do the same with Crawford and Soros. In a statement, Schimel described Crawford as “George Soros’ ideal investment.” On social media, Schimel said Crawford “takes her marching orders from George Soros.” At the candidates’ only debate earlier this month Schimel said Soros is “a dangerous person to have an endorsement from.” That’s a reference to other causes that Soros-linked groups have supported and that is the difference,” Crawford argued This election cycle isn’t the first time Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has gotten involved in politics with his neighbor to the north. The billionaire from Chicago, where his family’s name is splashed across buildings, has supported Wisconsin liberal causes before, and was the keynote speaker at last summer’s Wisconsin state Democratic Convention where he castigated Trump and advocated for a Midwestern Democratic wave The Hyatt Hotels heir made some waves himself for self-funding his own gubernatorial campaigns and was a big backer of the Wisconsin Democratic Party when Gov he’s given $1.5 million to state Democrats since Crawford entered the race According to reporting from the Chicago Tribune Pritzker said Crawford losing could spell “deep trouble” for Wisconsin “This is a battle that everybody understands will determine perhaps the future for Wisconsin politics … certainly for the next several years,” he said While it hasn’t come close to Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court elections, Illinois has had its own high-dollar court races. They prompted Pritzker to sign a law in 2021 banning out-of-state campaign contributions to judicial candidates in his own state The shipping magnates Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein may be better known for their Pleasant Prairie-based shipping supply and packing company Uline but they are among the biggest conservative donors in the country While they run a Wisconsin company, the couple is from Lake Bluff, Illinois. They maintain a low profile, but they were the fourth-most significant political donors in the 2024 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets Richard has donated $1.65 million to the Wisconsin Republican Party and Elizabeth has donated more than $2.34 million Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board In what became the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated  conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel on Tuesday night for a spot on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Crawford's campaign had raised just under $28 million and Schimel's The remaining money was raised and spent by third-party groups billionaire donors were also part of Crawford's ultimate victory — namely George Soros an investor and philanthropist known for supporting Democratic causes Here's what to know about Soros and other large donors in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race: George Soros is an investor and philanthropist who built his fortune through his hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, which he launched in 1970 in the U.S., according to his website which he and his Jewish family escaped by concealing their identities How much did George Soros donate to Susan Crawford's campaign?Soros donated $2 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin which then gave the money to Crawford's campaign large donations must first be given to the state parties In February, Crawford defended Soros's support of her campaign, telling the Journal Sentinel it is unlike Musk's support of Schimel "The difference is that we have Elon Musk as Donald Trump's righthand man dismantling the federal government right now," Crawford said "(Musk) has canvassers going around the state hanging flyers from doors that say we need Brad Schimel to protect the Donald Trump agenda You will not see anyone from George Soros to [Illinois] Gov [JB] Pritzker making similar assertions about me." said donors to his campaign were "buying nothing." gave $1.5 million to the state Democratic Party for Crawford's campaign Elon Musk spent more than $20 million on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race split between donations to the state Republican Party and campaign efforts by his own political groups President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Denzel Washington in the East Room of the White House posthumously presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kerry Kennedy on behalf of her late father Robert F Kennedy in the East Room of the White House to Doris Hamer Richardson on behalf of her late aunt Fannie Lou Hamer in the East Room of the White House to Tim Gill in the East Room of the White House Bono gestures as President Joe Biden presents him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of her late husband former Defense Secretary Ash Carter to David Rubenstein in the East Room of the White House to fashion designer Ralph Lauren in the East Room of the White House prepares to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom prepares to posthumously present the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of his late father George Romney to Anna Wintour in the East Room of the White House to Bill Nye in the East Room of the White House to Earvin “Magic” Johnson in the East Room of the White House to conservationist Jane Goodall in the East Room of the White House President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jose Andres in the East Room of the White House “For the final time as president I have the honor bestowing the Medal of Freedom to shape the culture and the cause of America,” Biden said in his opening remarks thank you for all you’ve done to help this country,” Biden said Saturday who served as both a Michigan governor and secretary of housing and urban development; former Attorney General and Sen a former secretary of defense; and Fannie Lou Hamer who founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act AP correspondent Julie Walker reports Hillary Clinton Denzel Washington and others receive the highest US civilian honor Saturday President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary Romney is the father of former Utah Republican Sen one of Trump’s strongest conservative critics The White House said the Medal of Freedom recipients have made “exemplary contributions to the prosperity Soros’ son Alex Soros accepted the medal on his father’s behalf Soros said: “As an immigrant who found freedom and prosperity in America Sports and entertainment stars recognized include professional soccer player Lionel Messi who did not attend the event; retired Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend and businessman Earvin “Magic” Johnson; actor Michael J who is an outspoken advocate for Parkinson’s disease research and development; and William Sanford Nye known to generations of students as “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Lauren is the first fashion designer to receive the honor The Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded 654 times between 1963 and 2024 according to the Congressional Research Service Notable Medal of Freedom recipients from the past include Dr Six Yale students and a recent Yale College alumnus are among 30 individuals to receive the fellowship that supports graduate studies for immigrants or children of immigrants from left: Eshika Kaul and Alex Rocha-Álvarez Third row: Summia Tora and Brian Reyes.  including one who is also pursuing a philosophy Ph.D in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) student in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and a recent Yale College alumnus are among the 30 individuals to receive 2025 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans a merit-based program that supports graduate study for immigrants or children of immigrants.  Current and incoming Yale students receiving fellowships are Summia Tora all students at Yale Law School; Ibrahim Dagher candidate at Yale Law who is also pursuing a Ph.D an incoming student in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese a Yale College alumnus now pursuing a Ph.D in ethnic studies at the University of California is also part of the new cohort of fellows.  The 30 fellowship recipients were selected from more than 2,600 applicants nationwide “This year’s class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows represents the extraordinary promise of New Americans and the vital role they play in driving innovation “We are proud to support these exceptional individuals as they pursue their academic and professional goals.” In addition to receiving up to $90,000 to support their graduate studies the new cohort of Soros fellows join an active network of past recipients including nearly 120 from Yale since the fellowship was established in 1998 ’03 M.B.A.; the novelist Sanjena Sathian ’13; AI leader Fei-Fei Li; composer Lera Auerbach; Olympic gymnast Amy Chow; venture capitalist Raj Shah; and computational geneticist Pardis Sabeti Biographies of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship recipients from Yale follow. More about all of the 2025 winners can be found on the fellowship website Briseyda Barrientos Ariza, who will pursue a Ph.D in Spanish and Portuguese in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was born in the Central American diasporic hub of Hyattsville where she grew up listening to her grandfather’s stories about his encounters with regional folkloric figures: shapeshifting horse-women Motivated by the lore that captivated her during girlhood as an undergraduate at Towson University’s Honor’s College she revisited Guatemala and its storytellers to examine their oral stories After receiving the Leadership for Public Good Fellowship and translated 21 oral histories on Guatemalans’ folkloric encounters which served as fieldwork in her undergraduate honors thesis she founded the Honorables of Color organization and received a $1,000 scholarship to champion intentional spaces for students of color within Honors Colleges After graduating Ariza was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue her M.Phil and comparative literatures and cultures at the University of Cambridge she published her poetry in The Trinity Review edited The Scholar magazine, presented at the Cambridge History of Memory & Emotions Conference and was invited to attend the first Central American Futurities Conference which was held at Yale She will continue her scholarship on Central American orature and its revolutionary potential in Yale’s Department of Spanish & Portuguese as a Dean’s Emerging Scholar Fellow and Graduate Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race She aims to establish Centers of Orature Studies across (inter)national institutions to proliferate its study and vernacular while connecting all her communities in the U.S. the child of two devout Muslims from Lebanon who were the first immigrants to the United States in each of their families When he was five his family moved to California’s Central Valley where they would find a permanent home in the city of Modesto He spent his childhood between California’s arid valleys and Lebanon’s humid coasts His visits to Lebanon deepened his connection to Islam in local mosques. As a high school senior, Dagher moved to Beirut for a year to help family protests and a revolution swept across Lebanon, with calls for governmental resignations and constitutional reforms. While the constitutional efforts failed the experience inspired him to explore more deeply what ideas ground the American constitutional system Upon returning to the U.S., he studied philosophy and political science at the University of California and how its analytical method could be used to elucidate bedrock concepts, he took graduate seminars and published several papers in moral philosophy and metaphysics including in top journals like Philosophia and Synthese where he is pursuing research at the intersection of law and philosophy hoping to elucidate what balance of values undergirds the U.S and how philosophical method can move the law forward plans to work in the United States government focusing on national security and innovation policy Before law school, he served as an artificial intelligence (AI) engineer across multiple federal agencies Leveraging his computer science skills, he led a team in building AI tools for bureaucratic processes at the U.S He later built AI models for the Federal Reserve and helped develop quantitative tools at the Department of Defense Bringing both computational and regional expertise to his work in government, Feldman speaks four languages fluently — English After graduating from high school at 16, Feldman attended Wake Forest University as a Stamps Scholar Truman Scholar for his public service work and spent his junior year at the London School of Economics Chile. In addition to to earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics and economics he also earned a master’s in global affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar where he researched Chinese industrial and innovation policies Feldman’s commitment to government service is rooted in his family’s history. For generations, his family secretly listened to Voice of America behind the Iron Curtain, dreaming of freedom in the United States. After local communist officials seized their home, his maternal grandfather sued the Soviet government all the way to the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union and the whole family faced retaliation.Feldman’s paternal grandfather was raised in Kazakhstan where his family was exiled by Stalin’s regime As a teenager, his mother delivered a speech before the city council denouncing government injustice and sent a protest letter to the leader of the Soviet Union In 1990, Feldman’s family escaped communist rule and moved to Israel They later moved to the United Kingdom and then to Fort Worth The daughter of Kashmiri immigrants from India she connected with her heritage as a child through Indian classical dance She has performed across the United States Deeply influenced by her family’s enduring hope of returning to Kashmir despite the ongoing violence she is dedicated to approaching politics with optimism and a relentless pursuit of progress She is passionate about leveraging economic and tax policy to reduce inequality and uplift families. At Wellesley College where she graduated with a double major in economics and peace and justice studies expanding service opportunities for students by establishing partnerships with local nonprofits Her commitment to creating a positive change earned her the Harry S one of the nation’s most prestigious public service-oriented awards Kaul’s interest in tax policy began when she worked alongside lawyers and law students at the Harvard Legal Services Center Federal Tax Clinic to advocate for low-income taxpayers with IRS controversies she personally leveraged her tax certification to secure tens of thousands of dollars in benefits for under-resourced clients including formerly incarcerated individuals and intimate partner violence survivors After witnessing single mothers lose the tax rights of their children to abusive former partners she worked with the tax clinic to create the Single Mothers Project which was aimed at reclaiming these rights without having to retraumatize survivors through repeated interactions with abusers These service experiences fueled her academic interests The Effect of the Child Tax Credit on Child Food Insecurity,” for which she received the Natalie Bolton Thesis Prize for Economic Policy Kaul worked nationally on economic and tax policy at the White House For her dedication to advocating for others she recently received the Upstander Award from the global nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves a Yale College alumnus who is now a J.D was born and raised in New York City between East Harlem and the Bronx he felt at home in these sections of New York where introducing oneself to a new friend-to-be usually included an obligatory mention of where one’s family originally called home and a lively compare-and-contrast of cultures Attending high school in a wealthier part of the city added context to his view of his hometown —he gained access to invaluable educational resources yet his commute from the Bronx entailed crossing racial and socioeconomic divides on a daily basis His gratitude for the education he received and his conviction that such opportunities ought to be available to everyone laid the foundation for his interest in government where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history He later earned master’s degrees in comparative social policy and U.S history from the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship much of his academic research attempted to understand the long aftermath of New York City’s 1975 fiscal crisis and its lessons for equitable urban policy he has engaged local practitioners with technical assistance on how to deploy federal industrial policy funding helped drive the development of anti-poverty and community development ideas in a governor’s office helped defend financial regulations on Capitol Hill he is now exploring the laws potential to drive inclusive economic development He hopes to ultimately work in federal economic policy channeling financial resources with special care for the neighborhoods that need them most a Yale College alumna who is pursuing a Ph.D Berkeley, was born to Mexican farmworkers who raised her between the strawberry fields of Watsonville a farmworker community also known as Murphy’s Camp, she grew up witnessing firsthand the hardships and resilience experienced by agricultural workers As a first-generation college student at Yale, she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts in American studies and a focus on politics in American communities and resilience in her coursework and independent projects A pivotal moment came when she returned home to Watsonville during the COVID-19 pandemic while doing her university coursework remotely saw how her community of farmworkers was overlooked in national discussions This realization drove her to study the history of Murphy’s Camp —she discovered that her home was built as a labor camp for Filipino workers in the 1920s making it a place of deep history that has always belonged to farmworkers student at UC Berkeley, she will continue to give voice to her farmworker community She plans to research the impact of agricultural labor and housing policies from the official dismantling of labor camps in the 1970s to the present with the hopes of uncovering hidden histories of adaptation and transformation and using her scholarship to inform equitable policies that address the needs of farmworker communities Summia Tora, a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School, is the founder of Dosti Network an organization dedicated to empowering Afghans both within Afghanistan and those living as refugees with crucial resources and education As an Afghan refugee who has personally experienced displacement, Tora understands the challenges faced by displaced individuals which fuels her drive to actively engage in refugee resettlement and advocate for access to education for students affected by conflict and displacement In response to the fall of the Afghan government in 2021 Dosti Network launched a global effort to connect Afghans with essential resources for resettlement worldwide and to provide support to those remaining in Afghanistan. Tora has worked with organizations such as the World Bank she has consistently championed the transformative power of education and advocated for refugees her academic work centered on understanding peace perspectives within Afghanistan and documenting the viewpoints of individuals from diverse socio-economic backgrounds Her achievements include being the first Rhodes Scholar from Afghanistan and obtaining master’s degrees in public policy and an M.Sc international human rights law from the University of Oxford in economics and peace & global studies from Earlham College and a recipient of the Central European University Open Society Prize Her work been featured in The New York Times Baltimore hosted Soros’s only local field office for his Open Society philanthropic empire from 1998 to 2023 commonly called the Open Society Institute (OSI) bankrolled Baltimore non-profits for decades The organization was tied directly to Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen the president emeritus of Open Society Foundations emphasized in 2023 how OSI enacted revolutionary ideas on criminal justice reform drug harm reduction and education policy in Baltimore “A defining feature of George Soros’s philanthropy since he launched his first national foundation in Hungary in 1984 is that to a greater extent than any other foundation its activities were guided by local knowledge,” Neier wrote on the Open Society Foundations website “That philosophy helped drive the decision to open an office in Baltimore in 1998 as a testing ground to address critical urban issues.” “We chose Baltimore mainly because we thought it epitomized the urban problems we wanted to address,” Neier continued “The city suffered from economic problems that reflected a substantial decline in population caused largely by ‘white flight’ from the city: a high level of drug addiction; a severe crime problem; and a public education system plagued by student and teacher absenteeism and by suspensions and expulsions from the schools.” crime and education persisted amid OSI’s advocacy which filed non-profit tax forms as the Alliance for Open Society International has spent nearly $2 million since 2016 on two drug harm reduction groups in Baltimore: Charm City Care Connection and Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition as previously reported by Spotlight on Maryland The groups work to distribute clean drug paraphernalia such as syringes and crack pipes with a goal to reduce drug overdoses and overall stigma for drug use The overall violent crime rate steadily decreased by 45% from 2000 to 2014 but spiked by 51% leading up to 2017 Criminal justice reform efforts escalated in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore City police These efforts continued in response to national outrage in 2020 over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota OSI capitalized on the renewed push for criminal justice reform in response to national criticism of law enforcement in 2015 and 2020 It distributed grants to a series of non-profits in Charm City focused on ways to cut police funding decrease incarceration rates and increase community-based efforts to counter crime Open Society Foundations has given more than $600,000 since 2019 to the Citizen Policing Project, which published a 2022 memo titled “the Long Game: DEFUND REFORM and ABOLISH.” The memo details how to defund law enforcement and cites support from OSI Baltimore Action Legal Team has received more than $1 million from Open Society Foundations since 2017. The group hosts a “Community Bail Fund” launched in 2015 that provides financial support for criminals attempting to make bail The Safe Streets program has been plagued with controversies in recent years including a series of FBI raids on its offices fiscal mismanagement and the alleged use of fabricated names for staffers Organizing Black, which received $400,000 from Open Society Foundations since 2022, organized a gathering outside Baltimore City Hall in 2020 where it painted “Defund Police” on Gay Street Data shows these issues have worsened in recent years according to a series of reports by Project Baltimore only 7% of students in the school district tested proficient in math OSI's education and youth development director spoke at a Baltimore City Council Education and Youth Committee hearing in 2020 where she touted their study showing a 44% decrease in suspension rates The committee was chaired at the time by Councilman Zeke Cohen who previously consulted for Open Society Foundations and now serves as the president of the Baltimore City Council Baltimore City Public Schools cited the OSI study on decreased suspension rates and an improved school climate which it attributed to restorative practices adopted starting in 2018 The system allows larger non-profits to conduct the finances of smaller nonprofits which allows them to conceal financial information on tax forms Casey Foundation in 2021 that advocated for government programs to provide more funding for fiscal sponsors Tax experts told Spotlight on Maryland that partnerships between government entities and fiscal sponsors enable a system that hides how taxpayer dollars are spent Open Society Foundations has given significant funds to two of Baltimore's most prominent fiscal sponsors: roughly $8 million to Fusion Partnerships and roughly $7 million to the Fund For Educational Excellence since 2016 works as the operations director for a fiscal sponsor called Bmore Empowered The group received $390,000 from the Alliance for Open Society International since 2021 This includes $10 million towards its “legacy projects,” including the Maryland Black Futures Fund which aims to “ensure that Black power-building and movement-based organizations in Baltimore and across the state of Maryland have the sustained investments and resources they need in their fight to eradicate systemic and institutionalized racism.” Besides Council President Cohen, other Baltimore lawmakers are also tied to Open Society Foundations. Danielle Torain served on Mayor Scott’s transition steering committee in 2021 while working as the director of OSI Alicia Wilson served on Scott’s transition team while working as a member of OSI’s advisory board another member of the mayor’s transition team Reach Patrick Hauf on X or via email at pjhauf@sbgtv.com part of a group of 19 people selected for the nation's highest civilian honor From the sports world, decorated professional soccer player Lionel Messi of Argentina and retired NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson also received the medal Messi did not attend the ceremony because of a scheduling issue "You all literally embody the nation's creed one," Biden told the recipients during the ceremony in the White House East Room and you craft the signs and sounds our movements and our memories." who was assassinated while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968; and George Romney a former Republican Michigan governor and chairman of American Motors Corp Medal of Honor: Delayed but not denied: Medals of Honor awarded decades after heroic acts in Korea and Vietnam the former first lady fiercely opposed by Republicans received a standing ovation as she was introduced to the crowd during the ceremony senator from New York in addition to leading the State Department during the Obama administration She ran unsuccessfully for president against Trump in 2016 "All her career has been dedicated to an eternal truth: America's ideals are sacred and we must always defend and live by them," said the citation read by a military aide before Biden draped the medal around her neck Earlier this week, Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal ‒ the country's second highest civilian award ‒ to former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. for their role leading the House committee that investigated the Jan Saturday's recipients are the second group of Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees Biden has announced this year after awarding 19 others in May including former Vice President Al Gore former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Below is the full list of Biden's latest Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients: José Andrés Renowned chef and founder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen Bono Frontman of the rock band U2 and activist against AIDS and poverty Defense secretary under President Barack Obama secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Michael J. Fox and an advocate for Parkinson’s disease research and development Entrepreneur and advocate for LGBTQI rights and equality Jane Goodall Conservationist known for work studying primates and human evolution Founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and civil rights activist Earvin “Magic” Johnson Retired basketball player who led the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships entrepreneur and philanthropist working with underserved communities through his Magic Johnson Foundation" senator who was assassinated while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 Ralph Lauren known for starting the clothing company Ralph Lauren and philanthropist most notably in the fight against cancer and the preservation of the Star-Spangled Banner Decorated professional soccer player who supports health care and education programs for children through the Leo Messi Foundation and serves as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador Known as "Bill Nye the Science Guy" on television educating children about science works as CEO of the Planetary Society and as a vocal advocate for space exploration and environmental stewardship Chairman and president of American Motors Corporation the 43rd governor of Michigan and the third secretary of Housing and Urban Development Co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group renowned for his philanthropy and generous support for the restoration of historic landmarks and the country’s cultural institutions known for philanthropic work and supporting progressive and Democratic causes director and producer who has won two Academy Awards Anna Wintour Fashion icon who has led Vogue as editor-in-chief since 1988 Gabe Whisnant is a Breaking News Editor at Newsweek based in North Carolina he directed daily publications in North and South Carolina Gabe led award-winning coverage of Charleston church shooter Dylan Roof's capture in 2015 along with coverage of the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington You can get in touch with Gabe by emailing g.whisnant@newsweek.com either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content Newsweek has emailed Trump's presidential team on Saturday morning for additional comment The list of 19 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients also includes former U.S. Secretary of State and former first lady Hillary Clinton which also caught the ire of Trump's supporters Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016 who ran against Trump one of Trump's strongest conservative critics The White House said the recipients have made "exemplary contributions to the prosperity Soros, 94, is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who fled communism in Hungary and immigrated to the United States, has been a frequent target of Republican criticism for his financial support of progressive causes and Democratic candidates Soros has reportedly donated over $21 billion to progressive organizations and campaigns making him one of the most influential donors in U.S Republicans often invoke Soros's name in campaign rhetoric casting him as a symbol of elite liberal influence Figures like Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have explicitly criticized Soros-backed candidates and policies framing them as detrimental to public safety and conservative values Soros's contributions have been especially significant in local elections supporting district attorney candidates who favor criminal justice reform—a stance that has drawn ire from conservative critics who accuse Soros of promoting "soft-on-crime" policies Soros' son Alex Soros accepted the medal on his father's behalf on Saturday in the East Room of the White House Soros is a hedge fund magnate who managed client funds in New York from 1969 to 2011 reportedly earning a profit of $1 billion and earning the nickname "the man who broke the Bank of England." By 2018 Soros had transferred $18 billion from his family office to his philanthropic organization Soros has a real-time net worth of $7.2 billion The anonymous social media account @catturd2 which has amassed more than 3 million followers on X a conservative influencer and an administrative assistant with the nonprofit Free Cities Foundation wrote on X: "Biden is giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton and George Soros.. seriously two of the worst people on earth This could be a @TheBabylonBee article with how unbelievable it is." billionaire Trump donor and ally Elon Musk wrote: "Unbelievable." The anonymous and conservative @WallStreetMav account wrote on X: "In a final middle finger to the USA President Joe Biden on Saturday named former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire political activist and philanthropist George Soros recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom." George Soros in an Open Society Foundations press release: "As an immigrant who found freedom and prosperity in America I accept it on behalf of the many people around the world with whom the Open Society Foundations have made common cause over the past 40 years." Open Society Foundations chair and Soros' son in a statement to Newsweek on Saturday morning: "My father is an American hero and has long been a champion of freedom His formative experiences made him a lifelong champion of the values of open society in the US and around the world He has always been ahead of the curve in supporting what is most needed to strengthen freedom in society is the highest civilian award in the United States It is bestowed by the president to individuals who have made significant contributions to the security or national interests of the country cultural or other significant public or private endeavors The medal recognizes a broad spectrum of achievements ranging from public service and philanthropy to advancements in the arts Two other medals are to be awarded posthumously during today's ceremony. They are going to Fannie Lou Hamer, who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Ash Carter Major philanthropists receiving the award include Spanish American chef José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen charity has become one of the world's most recognized food relief organizations, and Bono the frontman for rock band U2 and a social justice activist Sports and entertainment stars being recognized include professional soccer player Lionel Messi; retired Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend and businessman Earvin "Magic" Johnson; actor Michael J. Fox who is an outspoken advocate for Parkinson's disease research and development; and William Sanford Nye known to generations of students as "Bill Nye the Science Guy." Other awardees include conservationist Jane Goodall; longtime Vogue Magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour; American fashion designer Ralph Lauren; American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr.; entrepreneur and LGBTQ+ activist Tim Gill; and David Rubenstein co-founder of The Carlyle Group global investment firm Reporting by The Associated Press contributed to this story ET: This article has been updated with more information Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsweek is committed to journalism that's factual and fair Hold us accountable and submit your rating of this article on the meter. Newsletters in your inbox See all President Biden is awarding the Medal of Freedom to 19 people including civil rights icons such as the late Fannie Lou Hamer and prominent political leaders such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Democratic fundraiser George Soros Denzel Washington as well as Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi and Earvin "Magic" Johnson the retired basketball star who led the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships "These nineteen Americans are great leaders who have made America a better place They are great leaders because they are good people who have made extraordinary contributions to their country and the world," the White House said in a statement Biden will also posthumously grant the medal to former U.S who President-elect Trump has nominated to be his secretary of Health and Human Services; and former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter who served as the chairman of the American Motors Corp before becoming Michigan governor and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development José Andrés – the renowned chef who brought food aid around the world through his World Central Kitchen Bono – the frontman for legendary rock band U2 and activist against AIDS and poverty Tim Gill – the entrepreneur whose work advanced LGBTQI rights and equality a world-renowned ethologist and conservationist whose research transformed human understanding of primates and human evolution a fashion designer who has also helped influenced culture William Sanford Nye - who inspired and influenced generations of American students as "Bill Nye the Science Guy." Rubenstein – the co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group where he built one of the most successful global investment firms - the American writer and director who founded the American Film Institute and co-creator of the Kennedy Center Honors A previous photo caption incorrectly referred to the Medal of Honor instead of the Medal of Freedom Become an NPR sponsor Elon Musk has endorsed Călin Georgescu as Romania's next president But what happens when a tech billionaire and a far-right Romanian politician collide In a world where billionaires and populists are manipulating elections in the name of 'democracy' Mimi Mihăilescu shows how Musk has succeeded in weaponising Romania's sovereignty It’s not every day that one of the world’s richest men decides to weigh in on Romanian politics. Elon Musk, self-proclaimed defender of free speech has thrown his considerable digital weight behind Călin Georgescu the entire Soros network will be banned personally by me But is that true? Does Musk’s post really signal Trump’s approval of Georgescu? Or is this yet another example of the far right twisting reality to fit its narrative? It doesn’t matter. Perception is reality in the digital age and Musk’s post on X was all Georgescu’s movement needed to claim a global endorsement and NGOs accused of working against Romania’s interests So is it not surprising that he’d back a man who promises to rid Romania of the 'Soros network' Yet, this is not the first time the US has interfered in Romania's election under the guise of defending democracy. At the Munich Security Conference on 14 February, US Vice President JD Vance, although he did not explicitly endorse Georgescu, specifically referenced Romania’s annulment of its November 2024 presidential election in which Georgescu had led in the first round before the Constitutional Court intervened Many in the media interpreted Vance’s comments as a rebuke of the Romanian government for blocking a far-right candidate. Musk has endorsed this interpretation: nationalist leader who aligns with the Trump administration’s foreign policy goals If enough high-profile figures say Georgescu's name The gesture has been widely criticised for its resemblance to a fascist salute. Musk brushed off such concerns Georgescu wasn’t just paying tribute to a billionaire ally; he was reinforcing his alignment with their movement Mimi's research passion lies at the intersection of internet culture and politics. She explores the deep and complicated world of memes, social media networking, and digital media studies. Her work critically examines the dynamic and transformative nature of online communities, contributing valuable insights to the field of digital media. This <a target="_blank" href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/elon-musk-calin-georgescu-and-the-soros-spectacle/">article</a> was originally published at <a target="_blank" href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu">The Loop</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license * I agree to receive your newsletters and accept the data privacy notice Your email address is only used to send you The Loop Digest newsletter This article is aberration Soros is a dictator for the left he is the only one against law and order his money is supporting criminals ,illegals and has damage many countries To whomever wrote this article: why say it all like there's "good" and "bad" sides know this: Romanians are tired of empty promising and want something new A leader that for once might actually help Romania But he does seem different and that's what we need What a shame to propagate lies and insults to the person that the Romanian majority puts their hope in to help them navigate with sanity and dignity through the troubled times that come Who are you to decide whom the people have a right to vote and whom not Who are you to repeat accusations KNOWN and PROVED to be FAKE and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" BALTIMORE — Mayor Brandon Scott partnered with liberal billionaire George Soros and a network of harm reduction groups in a years-long coordination to bring drug consumption sites to Baltimore according to an investigation by Spotlight on Maryland Scott announced in an interview with WBAL-TV this month that he plans to push for drug consumption sites in Baltimore during his second term These sites allow people to use hard drugs under the supervision of workers who aim to prevent overdoses The trip appeared to be coordinated and funded by Open Society Foundations which gave $24,000 in 2022 to Fusion Partnerships as a fiscal sponsor for BHRC “to conduct educational visits to overdose prevention sites in New York.” The event was hosted by BHRC’s BRIDGES Coalition which is a partnership between organizations advocating for drug consumption sites in Baltimore “The problem with harm reduction is that it is attempting to mitigate the harms of intrinsically harmful behavior i.e the use of deadly drugs — and it turns out it isn't very good at doing that,” Lehman told Spotlight on Maryland “So the only really effective strategy is getting people off of drugs We have evidence-based strategies for doing that We have laws and tools that exist to shift people into treatment or compel people into treatment.” The BRIDGES Coalition includes several drug harm reduction groups in Baltimore such as Charm City Care Connection and SPARC Women’s Center The coalition also lists Soros’s Open Society Institute in Baltimore Open Society Foundations has given $765,000 to Charm City Care Connection since 2019 provides drug harm reduction services for “people whose gender identities include woman Open Society Foundations touts that it helped build support for drug consumption sites for decades in Baltimore “Open Society opened its first U.S. field office in Baltimore, investing more than $20 million to establish harm reduction services in Maryland,” it stated under a section on its drug advocacy webpage titled “These efforts increased community access to naloxone and built political acceptance for overdose prevention sites,” it continued Scott promoted local harm reduction groups in his 2024 State of the City address “We’re also standing up the Mayor’s Overdose Prevention Cabinet and redoubling our work with partners like Behavioral Health System Baltimore and the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition The mayor announced in August an executive order directing how to utilize funds won in opioid lawsuits against major pharmaceutical manufacturers This included boosting harm reduction efforts Scott’s office did not respond to questions about his support for drug consumption sites and coordination with Open Society Foundations Lehman said Baltimore should focus its drug policies on curbing the use of dangerous substances should be asking who are the people most at risk How can we get them to stop using drugs now I think it’s a much better use of opioid settlement dollars than consumption sites that will not reduce overdose deaths,” he told Spotlight on Maryland Open Society Foundations said it was unable to comment because of the closure of the Open Society Institute in Baltimore BHRC did not respond to questions about its trips to the New York City drug consumption sites New York City launched the nation’s first drug consumption site in November 2021 through the harm reduction non-profit OnPoint. The Baltimore City Health Department, in response to the news, tweeted "we're proud of you The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump blocked a plan for a drug consumption site in Philadelphia the Biden administration did not block the OnPoint site in New York Baltimore may face legal challenges at the federal and state level for its plan to launch drug consumption sites Previous efforts to legalize drug consumption sites in Maryland failed at the statehouse by TAYLOR FISHMAN | The National News Desk WASHINGTON (TNND) — After news broke that President Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Democratic billionaire George Soros many took to social media Saturday morning The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor and will be awarded to 19 of the most famous names in politics Elon Musk called the decision to award Soros the Medal of Honor a "travesty" The White House listed George Soros as "an investor and founder of the Open Society Foundations partners and projects in more than 120 countries Soros has focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy and social justice." in a press release upset about Soros being nominated for this award John Kennedy (R-La.) urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review its decision to allow a company backed in part by foreign money and billionaire Democratic donor George Soros to obtain licenses for more than 200 American radio stations The requested review by the FCC would include making certain that all required steps were followed according to FCC procedures and taking a closer look at the national security ramifications of the sale George Soros is buying WWL AM radio in New Orleans WWL AM radio is practically an institution in my state.” “Any time a broadcast license—as is the case with Audacy—is transferred Soros’s purchase of WWL Radio and the 219 other radio stations had to go before the FCC Soros—went through the FCC like green grass through a goose All three Democrats—there are five people on the FCC—all three Democrats said let it go and [it has been alleged that] they short-circuited the normal process What happened was what some members of the media have called the ‘Soros shortcut.’ They just got together and rammed it through.” Soros—both George and [his son] Alex—believe that America would be better off if we had open borders They believe that America would be better off in my opinion—this is how I read their writings—if we ended jails and if we ran our government like the Communist Party of China Soros—both of them—are entitled to their opinion But my people in Louisiana are entitled to know whose opinion they are hearing on the radio.” “I hope the new FCC revisits this issue These licenses and these airwaves do not belong to me or to the FCC or to Audacy or to WWL They belong to you and you and you—the American people We are supposed to make sure through our FCC—that is why God created the FCC—that these licenses are not just given to anybody.” Watch Kennedy’s full speech here Liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford has left little doubt about what she thinks of the millions of dollars that Elon Musk is spending on behalf of her opponent conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel She and Schimel square off in the April 1 general election "Elon Musk is buying off Brad Schimel," said the account for Judge Crawford for Wisconsin That was followed up with this: "Elon Musk can bank on Brad Schimel to support big corporations But couldn't somebody say the same for Crawford and liberal megadonor George Soros and Illinois Gov Last month, Soros and Pritzker gave $1 million and $500,000, respectively which then transferred the funds to Crawford's campaign Crawford said she sees a major difference between Musk Crawford cited Musk's work for the Department of Government Efficiency which is laying off federal workers and canceling federal contracts in a bid to save money You will not see anyone from George Soros to Gov Pritzker making similar assertions about me." More: 10 federal workers, including at least 3 veterans, fired at the VA Medical Center in Milwaukee "I've made it clear to anyone who wants to support me that I do not have an agenda "I keep an open mind about any case until it's fully submitted to the court And if you hear that and you want to support me At a Milwaukee news conference last week, Schimel was asked about the Musk money that is flowing into the state. The former Republican attorney general said he has made clear that he is not for sale. "If people want to support me because they see what I stand for and they see my history and they think I'm the right candidate for the Supreme Court I'm grateful for that support," Schimel told a small gathering of reporters I will deliver nothing but justice on the Supreme Court without regard to person." In truth, the election has been anything but nonpartisan Both major political parties in the state realize the winner in the election will determine the direction of the high court for at least the next year the state Democratic Party has contributed $3 million to Crawford's campaign out of the $7.7 million that it has raised so far Schimel has received $1.67 million from the state Republican Party from the $5.1 million that he has banked Both sides also have outside groups that are spending big on TV ads in hopes of electing one of the two candidates But much of the attention in the race has focused on the money being thrown around by Musk and Soros Derrick Honeyman, a spokesman for Crawford, said people cannot compare Musk's spending with the donations from Soros and Pritzker. He also noted that Tesla, Musk's firm, has asked an Outagamie County court to overturn a state ruling preventing the electric car company from owning its own dealerships Honeyman said: "There’s a difference between the richest man in the world building a massive and independent canvassing operation for a state judicial race and running huge amounts of ads versus donors to the state parties." laughed off the suggestion that Soros and Pritzker are just "donors to the state parties." State campaign laws allow parties to receive and transfer unlimited funds An individual can only give up to $20,000 directly to a Supreme Court candidate Fischer also noted that Crawford has benefited from outside help including TV ads run by A Better Wisconsin Together and a canvassing operation by the Wisconsin Neighbor Network Action Fund "George Soros loves (Crawford's) record of light sentences on dangerous criminals and poured a million dollars into taking her ideology to Wisconsin's highest court," Fischer said Those on the right are just fine with Musk and his heavy spending in the state Supreme Court race while lefties have no problem with their candidate benefitting from Soros' largess Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice The US has granted over $270 million to the East-West Management Institute an organization partnered with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations Another $90 million was obligated to the institution over several contracts The revelation comes amid growing scrutiny of US aid to contentious institutions and President Donald Trump’s recent freeze on USAID’s budget The institute describes its mission as "strengthening democratic societies by fostering collaboration between governments and the private sect or to build transparent and accountable institutions." its funding primarily comes from USAID and the US Department of State and rule of law initiatives in countries like Albania as well as civil society training in nations such as Kyrgyzstan and Uganda with critics accusing the USAID of acting as a “personal piggy bank” for Soros who is known for his role in the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and alleged interference in domestic affairs “He didn’t spend his own money to destroy the American justice system He used ours,” one social media user commented the White House announced a 90-day freeze on USAID’s budget citing misaligned priorities with Trump’s “America First” policy A White House statement asserted that USAID’s initiatives “do not align with American interests” and sometimes “destabilize world peace.” The move has sparked concerns among global aid organizations reliant on US support Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information plans to shut its Hong Kong office as part of an administrative reorganization but said it will continue to invest in Asia investments in Asia will be overseen from its New York and London offices the New York-based firm said in an emailed statement It will continue to parcel out money to managers in Hong Kong Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed HOST: In the recent flurry of Cabinet nominations Donald Trump has been proposing one name stood out to us - Trump's pick for treasury secretary HOST: And that's because Scott Bessent has worked in finance for decades including for George Soros' hedge fund back in the 1990s And it just so happens that when the announcement came out we were most of the way through making an episode about George Soros' hedge fund back in the 1990s.ROMER: Our show about something that happened three decades ago turned out to be way more topical...GOLDMARK: (Laughter).ROMER: ...Than we thought it would be what we made is not exactly the Scott Bessent origin story come for the Treasury secretary backgrounder; stick around for the epic finance story.GOLDMARK: Or just come for the epic finance story.ROMER: Either way BYLINE: This is PLANET MONEY from NPR.(SOUNDBITE OF COIN SPINNING)GOLDMARK: The name George Soros means a lot of different things to a lot of different people he is primarily known as a philanthropist for his support of human rights and democracy around the world talking about the foundations he funds.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)GEORGE SOROS: Basically the function is to support civil society in holding governments accountable.ROMER: Soros has also become kind of a boogeyman and scapegoat to folks on the right for his support of progressive policies this has a fairly overt antisemitic tinge - for example this 2010 clip from "Glenn Beck."(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW "GLENN BECK")GLENN BECK: You have to see who's behind the puppets Who is choosing the puppets and the players we are going to go back in time before all of those versions of Soros to the story of how George Soros made his name in the first place we are going back to this one trade that his hedge fund made that was so big and so bold that it became the stuff of legends.ROMER: And while we did not finagle an interview with George Soros himself for this show we did get to talk to one key member of his team who was right at the center of the whole thing.Go ahead and just say your name.ROBERT JOHNSON: A You're sounding good.JOHNSON: All right.ROMER: This story takes place in 1992 Rob Johnson was in the process of leaving his job at an investment bank to join Soros' hedge fund as a managing director Soros was running his fund out of an office in Midtown Manhattan which Rob remembers as surprisingly unimpressive.JOHNSON: It had a nice view of the Central Park But it wasn't set up to be intimidating and glorious and grandiose at all.GOLDMARK: Boxy 1990s computers piles of paper everywhere.JOHNSON: There's duct tape on the floor where the carpet's worn out and people were just working hard.GOLDMARK: What was impressive to Rob were the people who worked there - in particular George Soros and the man in charge of running the hedge fund day to day the two of them would invite Rob over to pick his brain about Rob's area of expertise which was foreign currency markets.JOHNSON: I felt like I was going to piano lessons and listening to Beethoven and Mozart really extraordinary.ROMER: Earlier that year Druckenmiller had been talking to the analyst who covered Europe for the fund Bessent had told Druckenmiller about all this trouble the British economy was having And Druckenmiller had realized that this trouble had created an opportunity to go against the British currency And he put down some big bets - over $1.5 billion of the 5 billion the fund managed.GOLDMARK: The idea was that the U.K central bank was vulnerable and that at some point they'd have to let the value of the pound go down Soros and Druckenmiller wanted Rob's take on when he thought that would happen.JOHNSON: Well And we talked about it among the three of us what do you think the probability is that they're going to devalue in three months And I said about 95%.ROMER: They get Scott Bessent on the phone He is in complete agreement.JOHNSON: And he said I don't think this is going to last either.ROMER: And Soros is sitting there looking at Druckenmiller and Rob if you guys really think this is such a great idea borrow even more than all the money the fund manages but don't do it for $1.5 billion or even 5 billion Do it for $15 billion.JOHNSON: And I'm thinking the permission I just got is bold (laughter) and we just got license to go after this this aggressively.GOLDMARK: And while Rob is processing this he remembers Soros uttering a phrase that would become legendary in the world of finance.JOHNSON: There comes a moment when you have to go for the jugular which is you have to decide you're right and go for it.(SOUNDBITE OF LAURENT VERNEREY AND CHRISTOPHE DESCHAMPS' "FUNKY REVERIE")ROMER: Hello I'm Keith Romer.GOLDMARK: And I'm Alex Goldmark The trade that Stan Druckenmiller and George Soros wanted to make would go down in history as one of the most audacious bets any traders have ever made one in which a single hedge fund took on the full economic might of the British government.ROMER: Today on the show we deconstruct that famous trade - what Soros Bessent and Rob Johnson saw that made them think they could pull this off and what their bet can teach us about what happens when markets and governments go to war.(SOUNDBITE OF LAURENT VERNEREY AND CHRISTOPHE DESCHAMPS' "FUNKY REVERIE")ROMER: So on one side of this massive potential bet And we are going to start by focusing on the U.K they had signed up to be a part of what was essentially a precursor to the euro It was called the Exchange Rate Mechanism - or ERM for short.ROMER: The countries involved weren't ready to all share a currency the ERM just said they had to keep their exchange rates more or less fixed against each other So central banks all over Europe had to really stay on top of the value of their currencies a French franc had to trade for this many Italian lire a lira had to trade for this many Spanish pesetas - and so on.GOLDMARK: The U.K.'s prime minister John Major - he'd been a big advocate for joining the ERM He was convinced that if the Bank of England could keep the British pound locked in line with these other currencies it would help stabilize the British economy and bring down inflation.ROMER: It would keep the British economy disciplined.GOLDMARK: That was the idea but things didn't exactly work out that way.KATHRYN DOMINGUEZ: Well Germany started to reunify East and West Germany.ROMER: That is University of Michigan Professor of Economics and Public Policy Germany started spending gobs and gobs of money.DOMINGUEZ: Part of the reunification involved a lot of transfer payments to the East a lot of new investment to try to bring the East closer to the West.ROMER: And all of that spending got the German economy running pretty hot.GOLDMARK: Meanwhile why would I keep my money in the struggling U.K when I could invest it in booming Germany instead and make more money the first thing those investors would need to do is trade in their British pounds.DOMINGUEZ: If they want to invest in Germany they have to move out of whatever currency they're currently holding into marks.GOLDMARK: And a currency works like any other asset So it's like people want to get their hands on German marks and that's driving the price up.DOMINGUEZ: Exactly That's exactly what was happening during this time period that all the other currencies were losing value.ROMER: And here's why that matters it agreed to fix its exchange rate to the other currencies in the group.ROMER: The lowest the value of the pound could go in relation to the deutsche mark was one pound to 2.778 marks and into Germany was pushing the value of the pound down and down and down.GOLDMARK: So much so that people were starting to wonder maybe they could at least renegotiate their deal - lower that 2.778 threshold and essentially devalue the pound.ROMER: The British government was very clear We are not doing that.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)NORMAN LAMONT: Just in case there is the slightest scintilla of doubt no leaving the ERM.ROMER: British Finance Minister Norman Lamont went out on the steps of the Treasury and basically drew a line in the sand.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)LAMONT: We are absolutely committed to the ERM And I hope there is no room for any doubt about that at all - that the government is determined to maintain our position.GOLDMARK: Now to understand the options on the whatever-is-necessary table for the U.K. we're going to have to talk about interest rates.ROMER: It is frankly amazing we've managed to avoid talking about them until now in the show people tend to move their money from countries with low interest rates to countries with higher interest rates like moving from a savings account that offers 3% to one that offers 5%.ROMER: Germany - remember they were spending all this money because of reunification so they were trying to keep their rates high because they were worried about inflation the British - they were trying to get out of a recession it would have been really nice if they could have lowered their interest rates to juice their economy then even more money would have flowed from the U.K to Germany - unless Germany was willing to bring down its rates too.GOLDMARK: So at this big meeting of European finance ministers and central bankers the British start really pushing the Germans Norman Lamont - he just lays into the head of Germany's central bank why won't you lower your interest rates?ROMER: The German central banker who got yelled at - his name was Helmut Schlesinger - he talked about this moment to the BBC for a documentary they made.(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMETARY "BLACK WEDNESDAY")HELMUT SCHLESINGER: As a member of the Bundesbank And I said to Finance Minister Waigel on my side I think I should go now.ROMER: Safe to say the Germans are not convinced to lower their interest rates.GOLDMARK: So if Prime Minister John Major really wants the U.K the British government has pretty much just one option left It can keep the value of the pound up by buying pounds That is how they can try to prop up demand.ROMER: Yeah the Bank of England does have a fair amount of foreign currency on hand - dollars and French francs and deutsche marks it is committed to spending those foreign currency reserves to keep the pound above that 2.778 threshold.GOLDMARK: But there is a limit to this strategy The Bank of England has billions and billions worth of dollars and francs and deutsche marks infinity dollars and francs and deutsche marks They could theoretically do so much buying that they run out of all of their foreign currency reserves.ROMER: And this is where our story turns back to Rob Johnson and Stan Druckenmiller and Scott Bessent and everyone else at George Soros' hedge fund Soros and Rob have just had that conversation where Soros told them to bet three times the fund's value - $15 billion - against the pound And it is worth sitting for a second with the mechanics of the bet they were going to make.GOLDMARK: All right They have been paying very close attention to the U.K.'s attempt to prop up the pound And what they noticed is that when the Bank of England did manage to move the value of the pound up were to come under so much pressure that they had to abandon those fixed exchange rates - devalue the pound - the pound would just fall and fall and fall.ROMER: All of which sets up this kind of rare dream scenario for an investor think of how the British government is propping up the pound as a system.JOHNSON: Where if the system holds and you're betting against the system So you have a 20 to 1 bet.GOLDMARK: So a lot of upside if Soros' fund is right and very little downside if they're wrong.ROMER: Now there is not some casino somewhere where you can roll up with $15 billion and say I would like to bet that the British pound will go down in value the way you make a wager like this is you go to a bank - or lots of banks - and you borrow as many pounds as they will lend you And then you turn around and use those pounds to buy deutsche marks.If the value of the pound does when it comes time to pay back those pounds you borrowed and you will get to pocket the difference.GOLDMARK: So by this point the fund has already borrowed enough pounds and bought enough deutsche marks to amass a position north of $1.5 billion.JOHNSON: But in that quiet period so nobody could see that you were becoming a tsunami They just thought there were little ripples on the water.ROMER: To avoid tipping off other traders to what they're up to they make sure to spread their bets all over the place.GOLDMARK: So all around the world...JOHNSON: Yes.GOLDMARK: ...There's a lot of accounts now that say Soros on them...JOHNSON: Yes.GOLDMARK: ...That just are filling up with deutsche marks.JOHNSON: That's right.ROMER: Over the course of a week so does the pressure on them personally.JOHNSON: When you're involved in an intense episode like that the kind of adrenaline makes it pretty hard to get a good night's sleep What's going on in the other currencies in the system?GOLDMARK: Rob would get up at around 3 a.m. markets closed.ROMER: Even when he goes home and he is in constant contact with the fund which is complicated by his domestic arrangements.JOHNSON: My wife was a New York Fed official I didn't want to talk in proximity to her.ROMER: Because at the time if your wife had heard...JOHNSON: She'd have a responsibility to inform the people at the New York Fed and the Federal Reserve system.ROMER: What Soros' fund is up to is perfectly legal but Rob doesn't want the Fed telling their buddies at the Bank of England what they're doing - you know give the British a chance to get out ahead of it So when he wants to talk to folks at the office he sneaks out to his car and calls them on his car phone.GOLDMARK: The size of the fund's bet against the pound starts to creep up - past $2 billion - an incredible amount of money but still nowhere near the $15 billion that Soros authorized.ROMER: And this is by design the British are going to have to devalue the pound But they don't know when it's going to happen they want some very clear sign that things are about to go down.GOLDMARK: Then they get their first glimpses of that sign is a currency in the ERM that has been struggling to keep up its value And the lira ends up coming under so much pressure that by 7%.ROMER: That doesn't necessarily mean the pound is done for and Italy has devalued a bunch of times before But Rob and Soros and Druckenmiller - they start to move.JOHNSON: Part of what we tried to do is be kind of gentle until we had enough of a position on and you could feel the market building up like it could get away from us.ROMER: So the fund accelerates their plans borrowing even more pounds to buy even more deutsche marks.JOHNSON: We could be right So we started pressing.GOLDMARK: On Tuesday their sign to take action turns into a flashing neon billboard Helmut Schlesinger - the guy from the meeting who didn't want to be pushed around - he makes a comment to a journalist He says that he thinks more countries than just Italy might need to adjust the value of their currency but he doesn't need to.JOHNSON: And what that did was it fortified our confidence that the Germans aren't going to let them out of this pickle They're all going to dive on the pile.ROMER: The news of Schlesinger's comments comes out in the afternoon And the Soros fund goes for the jugular.JOHNSON: That's when we just started banging it every few minutes And it basically went through the night and into the next day.ROMER: It's not clear when exactly it happens - that night the role of Soros' fund in this drama shifts from a player that is just betting on the outcome of events to one that starts to actively shape those events.GOLDMARK: When markets open in the morning in the U.K. the Bank of England intervenes twice in quick succession each time buying at least 300 million pounds trying to move the price up from that 2.778 deutsche mark threshold.ROMER: But remember Soros is trying to sell $15 billion worth of pounds Three-hundred million is not going to do anything And this really is the fund's plan - to sell so many pounds that the Bank of England has to give up on that threshold and just let the market drive the value of the pound down.GOLDMARK: By 11 in the morning the British government announces that it is doing the unthinkable the Bank of England tries to juice demand for the pound by using its one other big policy tool It raises interest rates by a full 2%.ROMER: Again The Soros fund keeps selling pounds and selling pounds hundreds of millions at a time testing how deep into its foreign currency reserves the Bank of England is willing to go.GOLDMARK: Rob watches the whole thing play out from the fund's offices in Manhattan.JOHNSON: It felt like it was in slow motion to me this is exactly what I expect to see unfold and there's nothing that's contradicting that we're on the right path.ROMER: The Bank of England started the day with over $40 billion worth of foreign currency reserves buying up all the British pounds everyone is selling off.GOLDMARK: And by now all these other banks and hedge funds - they've also jumped in on this train.JOHNSON: The tsunami of the whole world is going after this now We've got a pretty good-sized position on - this is looking good.ROMER: In desperation announces that it will raise interest rates again without making any kind of official announcement the Bank of England just stops buying pounds They stop trying to prop up the exchange rate And the pound goes into free fall.ROMER: Stan Druckenmiller heard the news first.JOHNSON: He was in the next room But it wasn't - that was - it wasn't like a locker room - big high-fives and bouncing around It wasn't euphoric.ROMER: A little while later a phone call came in from George Soros.JOHNSON: And there was just kind of a little chuckle This is very - and it was quite serene.GOLDMARK: That night went out into the courtyard at the Treasury building and officially waved the white flag.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)LAMONT: Today has been an extremely difficult and turbulent day Massive speculative flows continued to disrupt the functioning of the exchange rate mechanism The government has concluded that Britain's best interests are served by suspending our membership of the exchange rate mechanism.GOLDMARK: The British were out the value of the pound would be set by the market.ROMER: The United Kingdom once the most powerful empire in the world been forced to change its entire economic policy because of a handful of hedge funds and banks The pound fell by about 15% against the deutsche mark came to be known as Black Wednesday.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GOLDMARK: After the break the world figures out who was responsible for breaking the Bank of England we try to get our heads around what exactly we're supposed to think about that giant bet that the Soros fund made.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)ROMER: Outside the financial world nobody really knew at first who the big mover behind the collapse of the British pound had been Rob Johnson says that was by design.JOHNSON: We talked about not being communicative - like just go quiet for a while.GOLDMARK: It worked pretty well While the fund unwound its position and cashed in its profit the public had no idea how big a role the Soros fund had played until a little over a month later.JOHNSON: Gianni Agnelli was at a dinner in London and announced something in the press that he had made more money being a George Soros investor than his motor company made that year.ROMER: The day after that dinner the cover of the British paper the Daily Mail was a picture of Soros with the headline I made a billion as the pound crashed.GOLDMARK: That number by the way - a billion - it seems to be right And if you take into account the additional bets that the Soros fund made on British stocks and bonds and how they would behave after devaluation the profits go well above a billion dollars.ROMER: The world of finance has a pretty easy-to-interpret scorecard - how much money did you make Rob and Stan Druckenmiller and George Soros did very well he says it's more than that.JOHNSON: Many people said to me in the aftermath of that And the answer is probably right 'cause there was sort of what I'll call macroeconomic fundamentals Scott Bessent saw it just like other people Rob totally gets how some people outside of the world of finance view what happened too.JOHNSON: What is this when small groups of people can take on large governments and prevail in this deregulated capital market system?ROMER: Years later spent the equivalent of around $5 billion trying to defend the pound - $5 billion that they basically took from British taxpayers and gave to all the speculators betting that the pound would have to devalue that made some folks a little salty with the headline name if Soros' fund hadn't attacked the Bank of England so suddenly and so intensely the British probably could have found a way to devalue the pound that wasn't so costly the impulse that some people have to be mad at George Soros it's a little misplaced.DOMINGUEZ: You know we can blame George Soros or say that he made money off governments but I guess I wouldn't really put it in moral terms It is one of the fundamental costs of a fixed exchange rate You're setting yourself up for the potential of a run I would say economic incentives were such that this was largely inevitable.ROMER: The British were probably going to have to devalue the pound one way or another It was just too far out of line with economic reality And in the years that followed devaluation British goods got cheaper for the rest of the world Kathryn says it's worth keeping in mind that it wasn't George Soros who set up the rules of the currency game he played It was the European governments.DOMINGUEZ: If you didn't want a hedge fund to come in in this way then you could have restricted their ability to do so If you have basically free mobility of capital then I think you have to assume that if a price doesn't seem like the appropriate price that there is going to be an attempt to make money off of that mispricing.GOLDMARK: So fine They make bets - this price is too high; this price is too low - and if they're right That incentive is what makes the whole thing go.ROMER: But every now and then someone like George Soros and his hedge fund will come along and book a profit so massive that the system just seems absurd - not bad why should these people in Manhattan get a billion dollars from British taxpayers because they could see the U.K was being too stubborn about its economic policy They are the ones who made the bet.GOLDMARK: Three decades on from the trade he shares that ambivalence.JOHNSON: If I go to the equivalent of St we're not going to be talking about the British pound evaluation 'cause that - I mean but that - but I'm not even sure about that.(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE GEORGIA'S "SLUSH PUPPY SOUL")ROMER: This episode was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Martina Castro It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo you are our executive producer.GOLDMARK: I am And I will say some of the archival audio we used today came from our friends at the BBC from a documentary they made titled "Black Wednesday." I also feel like I have to say the best way to support PLANET MONEY and the work that we do is to become a member of PLANET MONEY+ or NPR+ You get sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes And thank you to everyone who already has.I'm Alex Goldmark.ROMER: And I'm Keith Romer Thanks for listening.(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE GEORGIA'S "SLUSH PUPPY SOUL") Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country to receive our stories in your inbox every week when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections a curse on our politics,” former state Sen Robert Cowles said recently of his 2015 decision to buck his party As Wisconsin voters head to the polls next week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents there’s been little discussion of major issues “I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.” Money is pouring into this swing state election so fast and so many ads have been reserved that political observers now believe the current race is likely to reach $100 million by Tuesday across the political spectrum with just the sheer amount of money being spent on a spring Supreme Court election in Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin which has long advocated for campaign finance reform But the elected officials who could revamp the campaign finance system on both sides of the aisle or create pressure for change have been largely silent The Senate no longer even has a designated elections committee The current election pits former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel now a circuit court judge in conservative-leaning Waukesha County Though the race technically is nonpartisan, the Democratic Party, including former President Barack Obama, has endorsed Crawford; the party has received financial support from liberal billionaire George Soros President Donald Trump posted a message on his social media platform on March 21 urging his supporters to vote for Schimel and much of Schimel’s money comes from political organizations tied to Elon Musk A Schimel victory could resurrect those and other voting issues as well as determine whether women in the state will continue to be able to access abortion That has raised concerns among some election watchdog groups which have been exploring whether the offer from Musk amounts to an illegal inducement to get people to vote announcing on X a $1 million award to a Green Bay voter he identified only as “Scott A” for “supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin!” Musk promised to hand out other million-dollar prizes before the election Musk has a personal interest in the direction of the Wisconsin courts. His electric car company, Tesla Inc., is suing the state over a law requiring manufacturers to sell automobiles through independent dealerships Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about his involvement in the race Also on Schimel’s side: billionaires Diane Hendricks and Richard Uihlein and Americans for Prosperity a dark-money group founded by billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David Americans for Prosperity has reported spending about $3 million A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, a union-supported electioneering group, has ponied up over $6 million to advance Crawford Soros has given $2 million to the state Democratic Party And California venture capitalist Reid Hoffman political parties can steer unlimited amounts to candidates “There’s no reason why campaigns should cost as much as they do,” he said Asked for comment about the vast amount of money in the race, Crawford told ProPublica: “I’m grateful for the historic outpouring of grassroots support across Wisconsin from folks who don’t want Elon Musk controlling our Supreme Court.” Schimel’s campaign called Crawford a “hypocrite,” saying she “is playing the victim while receiving more money than any judicial candidate in American history thanks to George Soros and JB Pritzker funneling money to her campaign.” Quizzed Monday by a TV reporter on whether he would recuse himself if the Tesla case got to the state’s high court saying: “I’ll do the same thing I do in every case I will examine whether I can truly hear that case objectively.” A decade after Wisconsin opened the floodgates to unlimited money in campaigns in 2015 some good government activists are wondering if the state has reached a tipping point at which the state’s political leaders can be persuaded to impose controls “I honestly believe that folks have their eyes open around the money in a way that they have not previously,” Nick Ramos executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign told reporters during a briefing on spending in the race A loosely organized group of campaign reformers is beginning to lay the groundwork for change. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign recently called a Zoom meeting that included representatives of public interest groups inside and outside of Wisconsin dark-money researchers and an election security expert They were looking for ways to champion reform during the current legislative session. In particular, they are studying and considering what models make sense and may be achievable, including greater disclosure requirements, public financing and restricting candidates from coordinating with dark-money groups on issue ads But Republicans say that the spending is a natural byproduct of the U.S Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision which equated campaign spending with free speech and opened the spigots for big-money races want to see the brakes on free speech,” said Ken Brown Brown said he does not favor spending limits I believe the Citizens United decision was correct.” Asked to comment on the current system of unlimited money a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin did not answer the question but instead criticized Crawford and her funders Wisconsin was seen as providing a roadmap for reform the state passed the Impartial Justice Act provided for public financing of state Supreme Court races so candidates could run without turning to special interests for money according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Candidates who agreed in 2009 to public financing and spending limits received grants of up to $400,000 for the race The money came from the Democracy Trust Fund which was supported by a $2 income tax check-off “​​Reformers win a fight to clean up court races,” the headline on an editorial in The Capital Times read at the time But the law was in place for only one election Both candidates in the court’s general election that year agreed to take public funding Then Republicans eliminated funding for the measure that summer the money was earmarked to implement a stringent voter ID law GOP leaders had completely overhauled the state’s campaign finance law with Democrats in the Assembly refusing to even vote on the measure in protest “This Republican bill opens the floodgates to unlimited spending by billionaires special interests to influence our elections,” Rep Amid skepticism that Wisconsin will rein in campaign spending A year ago, a proposed joint resolution in Wisconsin’s Legislature bemoaned Citizens United and the spending it had unleashed The resolution noted that “this spending has the potential to drown out speech rights for all citizens weaken federalism and self-governance in the states and increase the risk of systemic corruption.” The resolution called for a constitutional amendment clarifying that “states may regulate the spending of money to influence federal elections.” 17 members of the Legislature signed on to it Eight of them are still in the Legislature who voted for the 2015 bill weakening Wisconsin’s campaign finance rules Wanggaard did not respond to a request for comment But an aide expressed surprise — and disbelief — seeing the lawmaker’s name on the resolution The story you just read was made possible by our readers We hope it inspires you to support ProPublica so we can continue producing investigations that shine a light on power ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to nonpartisan evidence-based journalism that holds power accountable Founded in 2008 to address the decline in investigative reporting we’ve spent over 15 years uncovering injustice expensive and more critical than ever to our democracy With seven Pulitzer Prizes and reforms sparked in state and local governments our reporting ensures that the public interest comes first ProPublica remains on the front lines of the stories that matter most Your gift helps us keep the powerful accountable and the truth accessible Join over 80,000 supporters nationwide in standing up for investigative journalism that informs Donate to ProPublica I’m a ProPublica reporter covering issues in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest I’m interested in tips about public corruption corporate mismanagement or institutional failures that have harmed people in Wisconsin ProPublica will focus on the areas most in need of scrutiny Here are some of the issues our reporters will be watching — and how to get in touch with them securely Learn more about our reporting team. We will continue to share our areas of interest as the news develops I cover health and the environment and the agencies that govern them including the Environmental Protection Agency including the companies working in those fields and the regulators overseeing them If you don’t have a specific tip or story in mind, we could still use your help. Sign up to be a member of our federal worker source network to stay in touch We’re trying something new. Was it helpful? Email Address: Arrow Right Sign Up ProPublica Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest © Copyright 2025 Pro Publica Inc Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are free to republish it so long as you do the following: indispensable guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington follow the latest on tariffs and executive orders Stay on top of the latest events in US politics with the FT’s trusted and impartial coverage Insight and analysis on US politics from commentators such as Ed Luce and James Politi This subscription does not include access to ft.com or the FT App Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The Federal Communications Commission has approved a controversial deal: it gives control of more than 200 radio stations to a group funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros Republicans in congress are calling it an attempt to interfere in the election and the House Oversight Committee is investigating how the FCC handled the deal The News 4 I-Team interviewed one of the FCC commissioners who opposed the move He says approval was fast-tracked in a way the FCC has not done before a nonprofit funded by billionaire George Soros is taking over the radio station licenses of Audacy Inc. a broadcast company that's been in bankruptcy “This George Soros backed group filed an application with the FCC to get us to approve their purchase of about 200 local radio stations across 40 different markets across the country," said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr Carr says whenever foreign ownership is involved the process takes months so that national security agencies can do a review we'll be creating a special shortcut just for this one entity that is backed ultimately by this George Soros group," Carr said the House Oversight Committee accused FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other commissioners of "bypassing an established process to do a favor for George Soros and facilitate his influence over hundreds of radio stations before the November election." is governed by four trustees who are all U.S In a statement the FCC chairwoman says her agency used the identical process it has in other recent cases where a company is emerging from bankruptcy and that suggesting otherwise is "cynical and wrong" The proposal followed Soros' comment on a post about the presidential election in which former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris involved in progressive political funding through his father's Open Society Foundations challenged the notion that Trump's victory represented a "powerful mandate." "It is not a powerful mandate," Soros wrote on Tuesday. What the numbers "provide Democrats and progressives is an argument against despair and surrender Musk replied to the post with interest: "I would be curious to meet and understand your goals better," he posted Soros responded positively: "I often learn most from people whose views are different than my own Details about when the meeting might take place have not been shared and no further information has been disclosed publicly This is not the first time Musk and Soros have interacted Their exchanges have become more frequent in the aftermath of the election He followed Soros on X on November 15 and has since reacted to several tweets he commented that President-elect Trump defeated Harris because he was a "super candidate" underestimated by his opponents "Too many Democrats are fighting each other over campaign tactics because it is easier than accepting that Trump was underestimated as a candidate," Soros, 39, wrote. "He was a 'super candidate' with increasing appeal to a broader electorate—likely beyond the reach of both Democrats and Republicans." who emerged as one of Trump's most prominent supporters during the election and humorously labeled himself Trump's "first buddy," echoed Soros' sentiments recently tapped to co-lead the incoming Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) "The public also believes in his platform and rejected the far-left ideology of the current Democratic Party," Musk added was a significant financial supporter of Harris' campaign contributing more than $60 million to Future Forward USA Action Musk emerged as a major financial backer of Trump's campaign He created the America PAC and donated about $75 million over three months As people learn more about Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary one story comes up over and over: a legendary trade that he played a small part in while he worked at George Soros' hedge fund in the 1990s Soros' fund set its sights on the British pound betting that some time in the fall of that year Opposing them in this trade was the Bank of England which was determined to keep its currency stable The financial battle that followed was intense and proved to be a watershed moment in the balance of power between markets and governments for a blow-by-blow account of those fateful days in 1992 This episode was hosted by Keith Romer and Alex Goldmark It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Martina Castro Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter Music: Universal Music Production - "Funky Reverie," "Reverend;" Audio Network - "Slush Puppy Soul." Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager once involved in George Soros's investment operations has recently emerged as a potential pick for Treasury secretary in a second Trump administration Having spent decades working alongside Soros—a prominent donor to Democratic causes—Bessent's evolution into a key supporter of President-elect Donald Trump marks a striking political shift Once a reliable donor to Democratic campaigns Bessent's contributions shifted rightward after he left Soros's firm Bessent had distanced himself from mainstream Democratic causes contributing significantly to Republican-aligned super PACs and Bessent's relationship with Soros began in the early 1980s when he joined Soros Fund Management after graduating from Yale University Known for his sharp analytical skills and strategic thinking becoming an influential part of Soros's team in London He then played a pivotal role in the "Black Wednesday" trade of 1992 when Soros famously "broke the Bank of England" by betting against the British pound This trade earned Soros's team over $1 billion and solidified Soros's reputation as a formidable figure in global finance Bessent's role expanded further when he became chief investment officer (CIO) of Soros Fund Management in 2011 overseeing billions in assets and leading the firm's investment strategy He served as CIO until 2015 when he departed to launch his own hedge fund Bessent maintained ties to organizations Soros supported which received substantial funding from Soros George Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who fled communism in Hungary and immigrated to the United States, has been a frequent target of Republican criticism for his financial support of progressive causes and Democratic candidates Figures like Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have explicitly criticized Soros-backed candidates and policies supporting district attorney candidates who favor criminal justice reform—a stance that has drawn ire from conservative critics who accuse Soros of promoting "soft-on-crime" policies In the early 2000s, Bessent supported prominent Democrats like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton Bessent had distanced himself from Democratic causes making substantial contributions to Republican-aligned super PACs and As the founder of Key Square Capital Management Bessent has built a reputation as a prominent conservative donor He has contributed over $1.1 million to Republican committees including significant funds for Trump's 2020 reelection campaign Federal Election Commission records indicate Bessent has donated directly to Trump-aligned PACs and organizations marking a complete break from his Soros-affiliated past an investment advisor with strong GOP connections described Bessent as "one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street." Trump reportedly shares this sentiment calling Bessent "respected by everybody" in the financial world President-elect Trump has been vocal about his plans for a different approach in his second term swiftly working to assemble a cabinet he expects to be loyal Bessent's name has surfaced as a potential choice for Treasury secretary with betting markets and key advisers considering him a viable candidate including a visit to Mar-a-Lago on Friday and an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal he noted that Trump's election "drove the largest single-day increase in the U.S and the third largest in the last decade," a point that reportedly resonated within the transition team Balasore: Tension and fear prevailed at Bagudi Bazaar of Soro in Balasore district after three bike-borne miscreants reportedly opened fire at Bhagwati Traders Shopping Mall this evening three youths came on a bike and fired two rounds at the glass on the upper floor of Bhagwati Traders Shopping Mall around 8 PM and fled from the spot before anyone could identify them the firing of two bullets damaged two separate glasses of the shopping mall Everyone present in and around the shopping mall were shocked and surprised following the firing While the exact cause of the firing is also yet to be ascertained the crime is suspected to be business rivalry a team of cops from Soro police station arrived at the shopping mall immediately after getting information and initiated a probe into the matter The cops are questioning some locals and employees of the shopping mall to get some lead in the crime They also are verifying the footages of the CCTV cameras installed in and around the crime spot Kalinga TV a 24-hour Odia news channel is part of Kalinga Media & Entertainment Pvt was founded by philanthropist and educationist Dr Himansu Sekhar Khatua the noted film maker at it’s helm as the Managing Director Kalinga TV is a 24-hour news channel and plans to be the premiere news channel in Odisha with special emphasis on social development The company was incorporated on 24.04.2013 under the Companies Act of 1956 From left to right: President-elect Donald Trump Photo by Brandon Bell/Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images A hallmark of President-elect Donald Trump’s time in politics has been his consistent insistence on pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire financier and philanthropist had as a candidate received money from Color of Change an organization that had separately received money from Soros.) leading Britain to exit the European exchange rate mechanism How could Trump — who has built a large part of his public profile on the idea that Soros is a too-powerful puppet master trying to flood the country with migrants and degrade the judiciary— bear to work with someone who helped Soros force a currency out of an economic system like the many politicians around the globe who have broadcasted similar antisemitic conspiracies about Soros does not attack Soros because he is actually changing the demographics of various nation states by paying migrants to come in — he isn’t — or because he is spurring protesters to take to the streets — he isn’t — or because he’s hijacked the judicial system — he hasn’t And so long as one politically efficient decision doesn’t interfere with another that Bessent worked with Soros doesn’t matter to Trump — so long as Bessent helps what has Trump ever done that suggests that he actually thinks that hedge fund managers like Bessent have too much control over global markets or that the economy unfairly favors the super wealthy Didn’t his actions in his first term which were remarkably favorable toward the ultra-rich suggest that he actually supports the economic dominance of those who have successfully maneuvered markets to their advantage A genuine criticism of Soros — not a conspiracy theory — could be that we can’t actually all equally participate in society so long as society has billionaires. But that’s not Trump’s criticism. If it were, Trump wouldn’t have tied himself so closely to Elon Musk, a fellow promoter of Soros conspiracy theories and the world’s literal richest man Similarly, if Musk were actually sincerely bothered by the idea of overly influential billionaires, he probably wouldn’t have raised his hand when a Trump aide made a demand to find the “Soros of the right,” as happened at an election celebration at Trump’s Florida estate Attacking Soros is politically useful not because those on the right actually object to his wealth or the idea that someone with enormous wealth might use it to try and shape society according to his own ideals It’s politically useful because they’ve figured out how to portray his ideals as cartoonishly terrifying — in part because you never even need to say the word “Jewish” to have antisemitic associations fire when someone talks about an immigrant financier in New York working to change the face of the nation The ideology that drives Soros’ much-demonized Open Society Foundations is that equal participation in society shouldn’t be based on ethnicity or religion or race, and that everyone should have a fair chance to participate. It’s a concept that the right has converted into the great replacement theory leading many Americans already worried that their place in the country is changing to find it frightening And so of course Trump can appoint both the co-founder of Jews Against Soros — Will Scharf whom Trump intends to be his White House Staff Secretary —  and an ex-Soros employee to his new administration Trump’s issue has never been Soros the man; it has always been the political utility of attacking Soros the myth has never been billionaires having too great a role in society; it has always been Soros’s particular philanthropic and political ideology which is about empowering everyone else to have a role in civil society is that they’ve helped to prevent its implementation They’ve helped keep people from seeing that our society is better and more perfect when we can all come together for discussion and debate when our right to participate in those conversations doesn’t hinge on our ethnicity And so long as Bessent doesn’t stand in the way of that effort his employment history should matter about as much as actual facts do in Soros conspiracy theories — which is to say Emily Tamkin is a global affairs journalist She is the author of The Influence of Soros and Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected] I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward American Jews need independent news they can trust At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S rising antisemitism and polarized discourse This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up Copyright © 2025 The Forward Association Photo by Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images As President-elect Donald Trump finalized the formation of his cabinet he tapped for Treasury Secretary a former top ally to Jewish billionaire George Soros a champion of liberal causes who is frequently the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories from right-wing actors The nominee, Scott Bessent, 62, spent more than two decades as a top executive at Soros’s investment fund before leaving to forge his own path, eventually appealing to some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists Bessent gained Trump’s trust during the campaign by predicting a potential economic fallout if the Democrats won the election and played down Trump’s trade threats in media appearances The Treasury Department plays a crucial role in U.S policy that matters to American Jews and Israel It oversees the implementation of economic and trade sanctions on adversaries like Iran and tax exemption of nonprofits Bessent joined Soros Fund Management in 1991 initially overseeing the firm’s London office before becoming its chief investment officer He left in 2015 and founded Key Square Group with $4.5 billion in capital According to the Financial Times, Soros has historically expressed dissatisfaction with his chief investment officers during challenging periods. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Bessent first got to know Trump three decades ago having formed a friendship with the president-elect’s late brother but played a more prominent role this year serving as a top economic adviser and a leading fundraiser for the campaign Trump’s selection of a Soros protege to implement his economic agenda is particularly notable given his own use of Soros as a bogeyman in fundraising emails last year to stoke conservative fears Soros, the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and Democratic mega donor, is often the subject of campaign memes that depict him as a puppet master who manipulates national events for malign purposes — a common antisemitic trope The attacks on Soros intensified last year over his support of progressive candidates including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who led Trump’s prosecution in the hush-money trial Emily Tamkin, who wrote a book about Soros and is a Forward opinion columnist, said that for Republicans Soros “is kind of a convenient embodiment of everything they don’t like about liberal politics.” But any hesitation about the Soros connection was apparently overshadowed by Bessent’s close alignment with Trump’s views on key issues. In a recent interview Bessent endorsed Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and let’s make Iran broke again,” Bessent said on Fox News Stanley Druckenmiller, a Jewish billionaire who worked closely with Bessent at the Soros investment firm, told The Washington Post after the appointment: “He seems to get along with George Soros and Donald Trump John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who is also Jewish and dropped out of the bid for Treasury praised Bessent as an “outstanding pick” to “successfully implement President Trump’s economic agenda.” Jacob Kornbluh is the Forward’s senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email [email protected].[email protected]@jacobkornbluh