Karen Paget is a former Open Society Foundations fellow, author, and contributor to The American Prospect, a left-of-center publication that advocates for expanding the size of the federal government and increased welfare spending. ^[1]

Open Society Foundations

Fellowship

Karen Paget received a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations in 1998. The Open Society Foundations is a private grantmaking foundation created and funded by billionaire financier and liberal philanthropist George Soros. ^{[2] [3]} Paget’s fellowship provided her with funding to author a book that depicted domestic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities to quell communist viewpoints and tendencies among students in a negative light. The book, which Paget started to write the same year as her fellowship, was published in 2015 and titled Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism. ^[4]

Paget’s work, referred to by critics as a “thoroughgoing but occasionally convoluted narrative,” ^[5] criticizes attempts by the CIA during the 1950s and 1960s to shift the National Student Association, a national high school student-led activism organization, away from communist ideology and closer to an organization devoted to “train[ing] a new generation of leaders, hopefully wedded to FDR’s New Deal policies and yet firmly anti-communist.” ^[6]

Criticism of Money in Politics

In 2001, while receiving support as a fellow from the Open Society Foundations, Paget authored a highly circulated article criticizing money in politics and free speech activity, when used by conservatives. ^[7] The article, written over twenty years ago, lamented the lack of organizational structure within the left-of-center non-profit movement, and called for increased lobbying of government by left-of-center organizations and for federal funds to support the activities of such organizations. ^[8]

Political Contributions

Since 2004, Karen Paget has made political contributions to Democratic Party candidates, political action committees (PACs), and left-of-center organizations. ^[9]

In 2020, Paget contributed $1,000 to the Joe Biden presidential campaign and $490 to ActBlue, a Democratic Party-aligned PAC, referred to as the “online clearing house for Democratic action.” ^[10] The same year, Paget donated $500 to Emily’s List, a PAC that has devoted millions of dollars to electing Democratic Party legislatures that support taxpayer-funded abortion, the organization claims to have helped elect 26 pro-abortion Senators and 150 pro-abortion Representatives. ^[11]