It truly is morning in America, and even many of the elites are hopeful about Donald Trump’s second term. In fact, a recent poll showed that more of the elite 1%—urban folk with advanced degrees who make more than $150,000 a year—say they would support the new administration than oppose it.
Yet not all the elites are convinced, and many federal bureaucrats are gearing up to oppose Trump from within.
George Soros’ son Alex, who runs his father’s Open Society Foundations, told The Financial Times he aims to “fight” the president, whom he considers a “bully.”
“We have to know what we’re dealing with,” he said of Trump. “These people are bullies. And you fight back, you push back.”
Soros’ opposition to Trump comes as no surprise. After all, Alex Soros heartily endorsed Kamala Harris, almost immediately after then-President Joe Biden announced he would drop out of the 2024 election. Soros snapped selfies with Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He and his father spent more than $85 million in the 2024 election cycle, according to the Financial Times. Biden appears to have rewarded him for this and other activist funding with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
How does Soros intend to “fight back?” He didn’t lay out his plan for the Financial Times, but he didn’t have to.
My new book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” explains how Soros’ Open Society Foundations forms a part of the Left’s dark money network, which props up a system of woke nonprofits that infiltrate and advise the federal government.
It works like this: the Open Society Foundations and its allies the Tides Foundation and the nonprofits established by Arabella Advisors form part of a dark money network. These donors prop up a system of woke nonprofits that send activists to work in the administrative state. They also advise the bureaucrats by drafting early forms of policy that the agencies adopt.
This influence campaign helps explain some of the Biden administration’s extremely woke policies. Why did bureaucrats order Border Patrol to honor illegal aliens’ preferred pronouns? Likely because of the Human Rights Campaign. Why did the FBI target “radical-traditional Catholics?” Partly because of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why did the Department of Labor crack down on independent contractors with an excessive regulation? Because of unions and union-adjacent interest groups like the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Why did administrative agencies bend over backwards to prevent oil and gas shipping in certain areas of the Gulf of Mexico? Because of the Sierra Club and its allies.
The Open Society Institute sent $1 million to the Human Rights Campaign in 2021. The Foundation to Promote Open Society gave $75,000 to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016 and has funneled more than $6 million to the National Domestic Workers Alliance since 2016. The Open Society Policy Center has given $790,000 to the Sierra Club since 2016.
As Trump assumes office, many of these nonprofits will work to oppose him from without, and many of the staff who left these nonprofits to work in the Biden administration will once again find homes in the Woketopus.
The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, urged the Biden White House to “reject our existing immigration system’s reliance on the punitive, enforcement-based approach driven by mass detention and mass deportation,” and instead create “a humane and effective system focused on helping people navigate a byzantine immigration system and on a pathway to citizenship.” Andrea Flores, then deputy director of immigration policy at the ACLU, appeared on Biden’s transition team for the Department of Homeland Security, which would shift its efforts in the way ACLU suggested.
After Trump’s victory in November, the ACLU announced it is gearing up to oppose Trump’s mass deportations by filing lawsuits. The Open Society Policy Center awarded the ACLU a grant for $15 million in 2022.
While the Woketopus combats Trump from without, some of its allies in the administrative state will retrench.
Remember that poll finding that more elites will support the new administration than oppose it? The same poll, from the Napolitan Institute, found that 64% of the Washington, D.C.-based federal employees who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 say they will refuse to follow a lawful order from President Trump, if they consider it bad policy.
Bureaucrats who agree with the Woketopus are deciding to stay put in the administration, planning to oppose it from within. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, urged the Trump administration to hold over career government employees, in the name of keeping on staff who are “up to speed.” Yet protecting these holdovers is also in the interest of Sullivan, and of the Woketopus.
Trump is working hard to root woke ideology out of the federal government, but the Woketopus isn’t going anywhere. In fact, when The Financial Times asked Soros if he wanted to run for office, the Open Society head responded, “I wouldn’t rule anything out but it’s hard for me to see how I’m not in a more impactful position now.”
I’m inclined to agree with him.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
