George Soros spent over $100 million trying to defeat Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
His former grantmaker was quietly running a secret plan to reshape the Republican Party from within.
Their own documents reveal what they planned for local GOP groups and why they needed nobody to find out.
The Off the Record Sessions Behind the Dark Money Infiltration of Local Republican Parties
A Republican organizing network funded by liberal foundations held private meetings where participants discussed how to "retake the local party apparatus."
That phrase appears in a report from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the R Street Institute.
Organizers recruited hand-picked attendees through a trusted local official, opened with a private dinner, then ran a full-day, off-the-record session with participants' statements shielded from attribution under Chatham House Rules – meaning you can never find out who said what.
By 2026, the network had grown to include Signal group chats with statewide election officials and staff alongside contacts with Republican congressional leadership and the White House.
The project's own 2026 report describes the operation this way: "The challenge is to take effective action while not drawing unwanted attention."
They didn't want you to know.
The Open Society Operative They Never Mentioned in the Press Release
Advising this effort was Mark de la Iglesia – a former grantmaking officer at George Soros's Open Society Foundations.
Freedom House confirmed his advisory role in the specific Johns Hopkins initiative targeting conservative leaders.
De la Iglesia's background reads like a résumé for the Democrat Party machine.
He worked at the National Democratic Institute, served in the Obama administration, and served as legislative director and foreign-policy adviser to Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
And he was sitting in the room helping plan the future direction of the Republican Party.
The organizers themselves admitted the effort grew out of a gathering that was 90 percent liberal.
Scott Warren, the project's leader at Johns Hopkins, told a Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement interviewer that feedback from that group prompted organizers to build a separate conversation for conservatives – and that separate conversation is the one with a Soros grantmaker advising it.
Brad Raffensperger Carnegie Hewlett and the Dark Money Aimed at Your Local GOP
Johns Hopkins named Brad Raffensperger – the Georgia Secretary of State who famously refused to help Trump in 2020 – as one of the project's architects, alongside Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.
Carnegie Corporation awarded Johns Hopkins $500,000 in June 2026 for its Conservative Agenda for Democracy program.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – a major left-wing donor – put $1.85 million into the Civic Right project through its Independence Initiative.
On top of that, Hewlett sent R Street $1.25 million in March 2024 and another $1.25 million two years later for general operating support.
That's close to $5 million from liberal foundations to reshape conservative party infrastructure from the inside.
By the time WarRoom White House Correspondent Natalie Winters obtained their 2026 report, the results were already visible: secretaries of state coordinating messages in conservative publications and state officials discussing the SAVE Act and executive orders with Republican congressional leaders and the White House – not one of them identified by name.
How Dark Money Infiltrates Republican Primaries and Replaces Conservative Candidates
This is not a grassroots movement.
It is a top-down operation funded by Hewlett and Carnegie, staffed with Democrat operatives, and shielded by rules designed to make sure participants are never held accountable.
The stated goal is to identify, recruit, and place the next generation of Republican candidates and public officials.
Warren described the longer-term vision in a post-election interview as finding "a different kind of conservatism or Republicanism" and acknowledged that some people working with the initiative might eventually leave the Republican Party.
They are not trying to win the argument inside the GOP – they are trying to replace the people making the argument before the base figures out it's happening.
The Tea Party changed the Republican Party from the bottom up – real voters, real energy, real anger that D.C. could not contain.
This operation is the establishment's answer to that moment: wealthy foundations, Democratic operatives, and anti-Trump Republicans working behind closed doors, hand-picking tomorrow's candidates before Republican voters ever see their names on a ballot.
That means the candidate on your primary ballot next cycle – the one with the nice mailer and the conservative talking points – was recruited, vetted, and prepared at a private dinner funded by the same foundations that back the radical Left.
The question every Republican in Kansas and Kentucky should be asking right now: Which of your local officials went to one of these dinners?
Sources:
- Natalie Winters, "Inside the Neocons' Secret Plan to Take the Republican Party Back," Substack, October 19, 2026.
- Daily Caller, "State of Tuesday: The Conservative Establishment Is Planning For A Post-Trump GOP," October 20, 2026.
- The Federalist, "How George Soros And Democrat Dark Money Infiltrated America's Reddest Red State," October 6, 2026.
- Capital Research Center, "CRC in the News: Capital Research Media Appearances for June 2026," July 10, 2026.