We often hear leftists accuse billionaires of buying government, and most times the accusations are at least partly off-base.
But not always, and sometimes they are literally doing precisely that: putting privately funded leftists into government offices to run a parallel government that nobody ever voted for. It’s a technocrat’s wet dream.
One such program, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, placed and paid the salaries of “government employees” strategically inserted into Attorney General offices in Blue states, funding regulations and lawsuits aimed at targets that Bloomberg’s NYU-based NGO program identified as vulnerable to its pressure. The goal was, of course, fighting climate change.
BREAKING: Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny
“A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed… pic.twitter.com/G3AzaArong
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 21, 2026
BREAKING: Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny
“A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed its doors in late August amid congressional scrutiny into its funding and operations. The so-called State Energy and Environmental Impact Center’s signature initiative involved placing paid, climate-focused “fellows” in Democrat-controlled state attorney general offices nationwide as those offices sued the oil industry and other energy providers.”
Think of it as a cousin to “Zuckerbucks,” where a private entity funds a program that places people in government offices as either quasi- or fully government employees, with a mandate to pursue the NGO’s agenda. The same sort of thing happens with grants to news organizations, where an outside group pays for employees or “coverage” of specific issues, and the stories are still technically the product of the news organization, but the content is directed at producing the results desired by the people who cut the checks.
In neither case does the public know what is happening.
A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed its doors in late August amid congressional scrutiny into its funding and operations. The so-called State Energy and Environmental Impact Center’s signature initiative involved placing paid, climate-focused “fellows” in Democrat-controlled state attorney general offices nationwide as those offices sued the oil industry and other energy providers.
The center’s sudden closure comes as a surprise: It continued to update its public database tracking state attorney general actions relevant to its climate priorities until Aug. 31, the date of its apparent closure. It also released an episode of its in-house podcast, Recharged with the State Impact Center, less than three weeks prior to that date. And in its 2025 “year in review” report released last December, the center indicated that it would continue operating throughout 2026.
But prior to its closure, the center was coming under increased pressure for effectively paying the salaries of state law enforcement agencies that were pursuing lawsuits in line with the center’s priority of going after energy providers.
Bloomberg, cut a big check to NYU, which in turn established a program to place its people directly into the offices of State Attorneys General, where they proceeded to sue and harass businesses targeted by the organization.
James Comer opened an investigation into the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, and out of the blue, it closed. He sought documents from it, and “poof!” It’s gone.
Gee, I wonder why. Nothing to see here, move along.
The center, which did not announce the closure in a press release or social media post, now states on its website that it is “historical material as it existed on August 31, 2026.” While much of the website remains intact, its contact email is now listed as a private non-NYU address, and a page identifying members of the center’s advisory board has been removed. Its now-former executive and deputy directors no longer list the center as their current place of employment on LinkedIn, according to a Washington Free Beacon review.
The disappearance of the center comes as it faced multiple congressional and state-level investigations over alleged ethics issues related to its funding and its practice of paying the salaries of officials it placed in state attorney general offices. Media reports and lawmakers often referred colloquially to those officials as “Bloomberg fellows” because Bloomberg helped found the center in 2017 with two seed grants worth $2.8 million each. Tax filings show that Bloomberg provided the grants through his eponymous charity, the Bloomberg Family Foundation—one of the country’s most influential charities—that focuses on climate activism.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee opened an investigation into the center last year, stating that its activities “raise questions as to whether participating state attorneys general are acting on independent judgement to best serve the interests of their states’ citizens.”
“The Bloomberg-NYU program effectively offers states partisan money from a billionaire to carry out official functions of their offices,” the panel wrote at the time. Bloomberg, it continued, “disguises his donations as ‘philanthropy'” and uses the impact center as a mechanism “to skirt legislative bodies and effect partisan policy.”
I think it is safe to say that when voters fill out that oval and choose an Attorney General, it never occurs to them that they are also choosing to install a crony of Michael Bloomberg, but that is what’s been happening.
This is not nearly as uncommon a practice as you would like to imagine. It’s not just Attorneys General. Agencies often get the same “benefit,” where NGOs pay for employees to do their bidding, and Soros prosecutors often have employees funded from outside.
The system goes like this:
- Private money pays for an official function voters did not appropriate.
- The host office gets free (or cheap) labor and a national network.
- The donor gets a docket — climate litigation, election administration, progressive prosecution — that would be harder to pass as statute.
Democrats always criticize Republicans when we talk about privatizing some government function to improve efficiency. Their preferred strategy is to privatize government by paying for people to do their bidding using the compulsory powers of government to achieve their own ends.
I assume that the concept is legal, since it has been happening for a while. But I also assume that much of the stuff that we never see and that gets buried in internal documents in the NGOs is sketchy or illegal, which is why the NYU center suddenly closed down with no notice.
Next time you hear a liberal talk about “preserving democracy,” this is what they really mean. A government that can be bought for the right price.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it’s spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there’s nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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