Remember the Tea Party? It’s Still Raising Millions in Dark Money.

Here are four of their nonprofits.

Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth MartinChip Somodevilla/Getty

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Under Jenny Beth Martin’s direction, Tea Party Patriots has sprawled into a dark-money network where millions of dollars in often anonymous donations slosh around with little transparency.

Tea Party Patriots Action

Founded 2017

In 2019, this nonprofit brought in $3.6 million and paid Martin $246,144 for 25 hours of work per week. It reported to the IRS that it paid for Martin to fly first class because she had to “be able to work on the flights.” Its expenses included a “tenth anniversary event,” even though the organization didn’t exist before 2017. In 2018, its biggest expenditure was a $530,000 donation to the TPP Citizens Fund. The following year, the fund gave it $86,400 for “staffing services,” plus $100,000 to rent its mailing list, and $46,000 in donations.

Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund

Founded 2012

Martin is the chair of this super-pac, which spent nearly $1 million supporting Trump in 2016 and at least $1.2 million backing him in 2020. Its biggest donor in 2020 was Schlitz beer heir and shipping-supply magnate Richard Uihlein. TPP Action was its second-largest contributor, donating more than 10 percent of the $2.5 million it raised.

Tea Party Patriots Foundation

Founded 2010

For much of its 10-year existence, this foundation dedicated to educating the public about fiscal responsibility seems to have spent most of its contributions paying off more than $600,000 of debt from a 2011 conference. Yet in 2019 its annual revenue jumped from about $122,000 to more than $1 million. Its biggest contributors include DonorsTrust, an organization that shields conservative benefactors from disclosure. The foundation has paid both the TPP Citizens Fund and TPP, Inc. for fundraising and other work, according to tax filings.

Tea Party Patriots, Inc.

Founded 2009

Between 2011 and 2012, this nonprofit took in nearly $40 million, and Martin’s salary jumped to almost $300,000. In 2017, it claimed 10,000 volunteers and reported paying Martin $241,500 a year. Yet in 2018, it reported negative revenues and her salary zeroed out.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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