Revealed: how a shadowy group of far-right donors is funding federal employee watchlists

Project 2025 architects are among those behind the American Accountability Foundation and their blacklists targeting people of color

A rightwing non-profit group that has published a DEI Watch List" identifying federal employees allegedly driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives" is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors.

One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the most subversive immigration bureaucrats".