CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Genocide the Non Profit Industrial Complex and the Democratic Party

Over the past couple of years, a hybrid type of activist has emerged in Washington, D.C.

To get a paycheck and pay the bills, they toil away inside the non-profit industrial complex – made up of non-profit organizations generally aligned with the Democratic Party.

Then they have side gigs, where they go on Substack and podcasts and rip away at the beast, without mentioning their employment with the public interest group in question.

In the May/June 2026 edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen, we interviewed one of these public interest warriors – Aaron Regunberg.

During the day, Regunberg works on climate change for Public Citizen.

At night, he goes on podcasts and speaks out on topics Public Citizen dares not touch. While Regunberg has repeatedly condemned Israeli genocide in Gaza, Public Citizen has not.

On March 19, 2026, Public Citizen put out a press release titled – $200 Billion for Trump’s Iran War is Grotesque Beyond Words.

But Public Citizen has said nothing that we could find about the billions the Biden and Trump administrations have been shoveling to Israel to commit Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

And that’s true for most of the inside the beltway public interest groups – with few exceptions.

We asked Regunberg – Why is that?

“Liberal groups might be scared of running up against the Democratic establishment,” Regunberg told the Capitol Hill Citizen.

Just this week, Public Citizen held its annual gala at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

And the keynote speaker?

AIPAC recipient and friend and defender of the nuclear power industry Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island).

In a Capitol Hill Citizen front page article in the May/June 2026 issue – Big Tech Campaign to Fast Track Nuke Energy – our reporter Peter Castagno laid out how Senator Whitehouse and Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) “were the primary architects of........

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