To support the Brookings Institution’s work to track and analyze the actions being taken by members of the House of Representatives and its committees to conduct oversight of executive branch actions and policies in the 116th Congress through its House Oversight Tracker webpage.
Strategy: Oversight and Accountability
Trusted Elections Fund
To support the Trusted Elections Fund (formerly known as the Joint Fund for a Healthy Democracy), a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund. The Trusted Elections Fund will undertake efforts to ensure a free and fair election in November 2020.
The Niskanen Center Inc.
General operating support to the Niskanen Center.
Openthegovernment.org
Open The Government, a fiscally sponsored project of the Fund for Constitutional Government, conducts polling focused on racial justice and accountability.
Future Currents
The Social and Economic Justice Leaders Project, a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, is working to establish new models of co-governance between civil society actors and those working within the institutions of our democracy.
Openthegovernment.org
OpenTheGovernment (a project of the Fund for Constitutional Government) will map civil society sectors to identify groups to collaborate with. They will identify organizations who do not traditionally advocate for open government and transparency, but whose own causes could be helped by focusing on this issue.
Wayne State University
This project grant will provide support for the Levin Center at Wayne Law to continue its efforts to strengthen congressional oversight. This work will include academic research and collaboration on congressional oversight issues. By facilitating the development of an academic field focused on oversight and research into effective oversight methods, the Levin Center’s work is part of a longer term strategy to rebuild civil society’s work on oversight and accountability issues.
OpenSecrets
Reports filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) are made publicly available but are not searchable or otherwise usable without laborious review. The Center of Responsive Politics’ (CRP) Foreign Lobby Watch Project will extract and convert this data into a useful form, then make it available for the public.
Protect Democracy Project
The Protect Democracy Project is investigating government actions, engaging in public outreach and education, encouraging oversight by existing government mechanisms, and, when appropriate, bringing litigation against government actions that threaten our democracy.
William J. Brennan, Jr. Center for Justice, Inc.
The William J. Brennan Center for Justice is preparing for the possible invocation of emergency authorities and the threat they would pose to democracy and to the constitutional order. This grant will support the Liberty and National Security Program’s Emergency Powers Project. The project involves legal and empirical research, a bipartisan working group of academic experts and former government officials to identify scenarios and interventions, and implementation of intervention strategies.