(Daily Caller)—Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s daughter works for an anti-fossil fuel activist group connected to a sprawling liberal dark money network.
Somah Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and daughter of Deb Haaland, is a communications coordinator for the Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA), a New Mexico-based activist group advocating for “indigenous solutions as means to dismantle and eradicate white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, hetero-patriarchy and extractive colonialism” that has drawn scrutiny from some elected Republicans for its engagement on land use policy, according to its website. PAA is a fiscal project of the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), a group that has received more than $1.5 million since 2020 from funds managed by Arabella Advisors, a for-profit company that oversees a vast dark money network aligned with left-of-center organizations and causes.
In 2022, the Windward Fund, a nonprofit operating as part of the Arabella network, gave SWOP $150,000 after giving it more than $136,000 in 2021 and $70,000 in 2020, according to the Windward Fund’s tax filings. The New Venture Fund, another nonprofit leg of the Arabella network, gave SWOP $282,000 and $425,000 in 2021 and 2022, respectively, after giving SWOP more than $467,000 in 2020, according to the New Venture Fund’s tax filings.
Arabella Advisors-managed funds have also supported other organizations that advocate for a bevy of left-wing political causes, such as campaigns pushing for oil divestment and less stringent criminal sentencing, according to Influence Watch. The five nonprofits that compose Arabella Advisors’ network, including the Windward Fund and the New Venture Fund, do not have to disclose the source of their funding. The five nonprofits also make grants to each other in some cases, making it more difficult to identify the origins of the money, according to the Capital Research Center.
The company provides management services to the nonprofits in exchange for fees, according to the Capital Research Center, and it is currently subject to an investigation by Brian Schwalb, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, for alleged violations of tax law.
Somah Haaland identifies as a “non-binary” person and supports a range of left-wing views, according to her public posts on X, formerly Twitter. For instance, she once donned a shirt that read “all colonizers are bastards” specifically to go shopping in wealthy neighborhoods in July 2020, a time when racially-charged Black Lives Matter riots were breaking out in numerous American cities.
As the PAA’s fiscal sponsor, SWOP helps the organization by handling matters including “fiduciary oversight, financial management and other administrative services” while PAA works to achieve standalone nonprofit status with the government, according to the National Council of Nonprofits.
President Joe Biden announced in December 2020 that he intended to nominate Deb Haaland to become the Interior secretary, a powerful cabinet position that provides considerable influence over the country’s energy policies on public lands. SWOP and PAA are both vehemently opposed to fossil fuel development, and Haaland’s record as Interior secretary has been generally hostile to oil and gas activity on public lands and federally-controlled offshore areas.
Deb Haaland came under fire for her agency’s June decision pertaining to the future status of oil and gas leasing activity in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon region. The Department of the Interior (DOI) closed off public lands within ten miles of the Chaco Canyon from any future fuel leasing activity for the next two decades, a move which Haaland’s Laguna Pueblo tribe celebrated; however, a different tribal group opposed the decision, saying that it would deprive them of economic opportunities, according to Source NM.
Some observers, like Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma, said that Deb Haaland had a “conflict of interest” in that decision, a sentiment echoed by Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog group that filed an ethics complaint against her in August.
Deb Haaland “was evidently involved” with the PAA prior to assuming the top job at DOI, and she purportedly met with PAA leaders during her tenure, according to a June letter sent by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman. Somah Haaland also reportedly participated in a 2022 PAA trip to Capitol Hill to lobby on legislation that would bar leasing public lands for oil and gas development, according to the same letter.
Additionally, in September, Haaland’s DOI released the most restrictive five-year offshore oil and gas leasing schedule in contemporary American history. Haaland touted the agency’s leasing schedule, which drew sharp criticism from energy industry trade groups like the National Oceans Industries Association and the American Petroleum Institute.
“It’s no surprise Arabella’s dark money network pours hundreds of thousands of dollars into the fiscal sponsor of a radical group tied to a sitting cabinet secretary and her daughter, because Arabella seeks power for itself and radical policies for America,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The PAA’s website also includes a section titled the “New Mexico Venceremos Brigade” highlighting the organization’s efforts to encourage people to join Venceremos Brigade trips. The Venceremos Brigade is a group that organizes work trips for Americans to visit communist Cuba, established with the help of Cuban officials “for indoctrinating and recruiting American leftists, arranging and coordinating meetings between international terrorists, sponsoring terrorist activities among Puerto Rican Americans, and providing training for terrorists,” according to a 1976 report by the Department of Justice.
The PAA also features a prominent reference to the year 1680 on its website, an allusion to the Pueblo revolt against Spanish colonizers that year. The website says “1680 to infinity” and that “the Pueblo revolt never ended.”
The DOI, PAA, SWOP, Windward Fund, New Venture Fund and Arabella Advisors all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
