California has doled out nearly $18 million in taxpayer funding to the left-wing Tides Center since Gavin Newsom (D.) became governor in 2019, a Washington Free Beacon review of state spending records found. Thanks to the way the dark money behemoth operates, it’s a mystery whether the money goes to any of the far-left groups it supports.
That setup allows the state to obscure which group actually gets taxpayer dollars after it awards contracts or grants to the Tides Center. The Golden State’s spending database shows that 18 agencies, ranging from health departments to workplace regulators, sent payments to the George Soros-backed nonprofit. The database does not reveal which project gets the cash in the end. State officials also told the Free Beacon that the database is missing information from some departments, meaning total payments to the Tides Center could eclipse the nearly $18 million shown.
The Tides Center essentially acts like a middle man, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars every year to a network of seemingly independent charitable organizations—primarily progressive activist groups. But unlike traditional nonprofits, these groups are housed within the Tides Center as so-called fiscally sponsored projects, enabling them to operate as charities while sidestepping the IRS’s robust financial transparency requirements for tax-exempt groups.
This arrangement is “almost designed to be non-transparent,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher with the Capital Research Center, said. Left-wing billionaires favor structures like Tides’s “precisely because it allows them to shovel their money faster to left-leaning causes,” he added.
“It sounds like California’s government is so eager to give away money, they’re using Tides as a way to shovel money out the door to pop-up ‘nonprofits’ that don’t have to file independent form 990s disclosing who they pay, how much they pay them, or where they send money to,” Thayer said.
The revelation comes as Newsom attempts to shift closer to the political middle ahead of an anticipated presidential run in 2028. The Democrat recently backpedaled on transgender issues, saying it’s “deeply unfair” for biological boys to compete in girls’ sports. Newsom himself has deep fundraising ties to the Tides financial network. As governor, he has raised more than $1 million for the Tides Center and more than $11 million for the Tides Foundation, the Free Beacon has reported.
It’s possible the Tides Center sent the funding to well-qualified, nonpartisan organizations, or perhaps the left-wing group kept the funding in-house. But without additional transparency, it’s impossible to say without answers from the Tides Center or the government, which has largely been slow to respond, if at all. One agency called the Free Beacon after ignoring inquiries sent over the course of a week—then abruptly hung up as the reporter explained the story. Several agencies did provide information upon request, revealing that state funding went to one group dedicated to “health equity” and another focused on “environmental justice.”
The Tides Center did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for the Department of General Services—California’s business manager—referred the Free Beacon to individual agencies and the state’s contracts database.
Like the spending database, the contracts database lists the Tides Center as the sole recipient, even in instances where the Free Beacon confirmed that the money goes to a sponsored project. A section for subcontracting information is also left blank.
It shows, for instance, that the California Air Regulatory Board (CARB) issued a $100,000 “community air grant” to the Tides Center for “financial assistance.” But a spokeswoman told the Free Beacon the grant actually went to one of the Tides Center’s sponsored projects, the Oakland-based Hope Collaborative, which works to “advance racial, economic, and health equity in Oakland’s food system.”
The agency also awarded two no-bid contracts to Tides Advocacy, the political arm of the Tides network, which ultimately sent nearly $7,000 to the Orange County Environmental Justice Fund to help CARB understand how its “rules and regulations impact environmental justice,” according to the agency spokeswoman. The Orange County group describes its mission as environmental justice “through advocacy, public accountability, healing, and systemic transformation.”
CARB was one of just six agencies that told the Free Beacon which Tides Center project ultimately received state funding via the left-wing group. Those six—the air regulator, the California State Library, the state Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Industrial Relations, the Employment Development Department, and the California Workforce Investment Board—provided only $4 million to the Tides Center. That’s just 22 percent of the total the Newsom administration sent to the dark money group.
Representatives for the remaining 12 agencies said they couldn’t easily find relevant records, asked for more time but didn’t provide answers after nearly a week, or didn’t respond at all.
The Department of Health Care Services, for example, since 2019 has paid the Tides Center $8.8 milion—nearly half the total state funding sent to the group. A representative for the department, which manages California’s Medicaid program, asked the Free Beacon for contract numbers, then didn’t respond to subsequent emails.
The Department of Public Health, meanwhile, paid the Tides Center $3.4 million, including $3,000 in late fees, to manage “public health planning for climate change impacts” and for “Covid-19 response therapeutics,” according to the contracts database. The department told the Free Beacon it was treating its inquiry for more information as a public records request, which can take weeks to complete and doesn’t guarantee a resolution.
The Coastal Commission, the agency responsible for protecting the coastline and known for blocking beachfront homeowners from building seawalls, paid the Tides Center over $500,000 from 2019 through 2024. When a spokesman responded after the Free Beacon’s third attempt to contact the agency, he questioned why state funding for the Tides Center merited a story. He said he would see what he could do and abruptly hung up.
The Tides Center—part of a larger network that includes a donor-advised fund and a 501(c)4 political activist group—has a long history of fostering and bankrolling radical progressive organizations. As of March 2025, the Tides Center controls 78 fiscally sponsored groups, including Fair and Just Prosecution, which has helped elect progressive prosecutors, such as George Gascon, Chesa Boudin, and Pamela Price, who were all ousted by crime-weary voters.
Another is the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which led California’s failed experiment to decriminalize certain theft and drug-dealing. The Tides Center also supports the Arab Resources and Organizing Center, the group that tried to blockade a U.S. military ship bound for Israel in 2023, and the Community Justice Exchange, which bailed out the anti-Israel protesters arrested last year for shutting down airports, bridges, and highways.
“Taxpayer dollars should not fund a radical network that seems more intent on tearing the state apart rather than fixing it,” Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland said.
Agencies responsible for some of the Tides Center’s smaller grants were more communicative. The spending database, for example, shows that the California State Library paid the Tides Center $70,000 between 2022 and 2024. A spokesman explained that the money actually went to both the Tides Center and its sponsored project, the National Veterans Network, a group focused on Japanese-American soldiers in World War II, to write school instruction materials about the Japanese internment camps in the United States.
A California Environmental Protection Agency official likewise explained that the $95,000 it paid to the Tides Center through two environmental justice grants ultimately went to Orange County Environmental Justice Fund, the same group that received CARB money.
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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