Washington, D.C. — Capital Research Center, the right-wing outfit supplying Congressional Republicans with opposition research on nonprofits, released a new report this week smearing voter registration and civic groups as a secret partisan “vote machine.” The report lands as the IRS previews a new enforcement push targeting tax-exempt organizations that watchdogs warn could become a tool for going after the administration’s political opponents, and as CRC pushes a separate, baseless conspiracy theory blaming George Soros for a border crisis in Spain.
Capital Research Center’s New Report Recycles Attacks on Voter Registration and Civic Groups
Capital Research Center, the partisan opposition research shop that has spent years feeding Congressional Republicans talking points against nonprofits, released a new report casting routine voter registration work, ranked-choice voting reform, and redistricting advocacy as a secret partisan “vote machine.” The report makes baseless leaps and bounds to claim that 501(c)(3) charities are illegally coordinating election work today. Registering voters is not evidence of a crime, and CRC’s report never shows otherwise. It is the same playbook CRC has run all year: launder attacks on civil society groups as neutral research, then hand them to lawmakers building the case for defunding and investigating nonprofits.
IRS Preps New Attack on Nonprofits With Flimsy “Terrorism” Pretext
The IRS is preparing a new enforcement strategy aimed squarely at tax-exempt organizations, according to the agency’s chief tax compliance officer, even as the agency operates with a workforce gutted by nearly a third under this administration. The push is explicitly framed around combating “domestic terrorism,” a category the administration has already made clear it associates with any movements that oppose the Trump administration’s agenda. Watchdogs are right to be nervous: an under-resourced IRS given new marching orders to scrutinize nonprofits, at the same moment right-wing think tanks are publishing target lists of civil society groups, is a recipe for political targeting under the guise of tax enforcement.
Capital Research Center Baselessly Blames George Soros for Spain’s Border Crisis
CRC also published a report blaming a George Soros-linked nonprofit for the border crisis in Spain, glossing over what actually preceded the surge: a Supreme Court ruling on sea returns and the government’s own amnesty program, along with the trafficking networks Spanish officials blame for exploiting them.. The report chain of supposed evidence also relies on meetings from 2018 and 2019, seven years before the 2026 court ruling and amnesty at the center of the crisis. Blaming Soros for the consequences of a foreign government’s policy choices is a familiar move for CRC, and it is the same conspiratorial framing the group deploys against philanthropy and civil society groups here at home.
###