About this project
I needed to understand what happened.
This project began with a question that became very difficult for me to put down: What happened to my country?
I am not a journalist, political scientist, historian, or professional investigator. I am one person who loves this country deeply and reached a point where I needed to understand how the United States had changed so dramatically—and how we got here.
There is something else you should know about me.
I voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
I regret that vote.
I don't say that because it is easy to admit. I say it because it is part of the reason this project exists.
Like millions of Americans, I made a political decision based on what I believed and understood at the time. Over the following years, things became harder and harder for me to reconcile. I questioned some things. Defended others. Changed my mind about some. Tried to make sense of the rest.
Then January 6 happened.
For me, January 6 was a breaking point.
What I watched that day forced me to confront questions I had been avoiding—not only about a president or a political movement, but about my own assumptions, the information I had trusted, and what I believed about the country around me.
What followed was not an overnight political conversion.
It was closer to a two-year process of unraveling and rebuilding.
I read. I questioned things I had previously accepted. I reconsidered sources I had dismissed. I argued with myself. I felt anger, embarrassment, grief, disbelief, and eventually an overwhelming need to understand.
And one question kept leading to another.
Who built the organizations shaping government policy?
Who funded them?
Where did the ideas originate?
Who recruited and trained the people who eventually entered government?
How did political organizations, think tanks, religious networks, wealthy donors, media, lawyers, technology companies, activists and government officials intersect?
Which connections were real?
Which were coincidence?
Which claims could actually be proven?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who benefits from the way our government is changing—and does it benefit ordinary Americans?
That became the foundation of Follow the Influence.
The standard
This is not a hunt for a secret mastermind.
One of the most important lessons of this research has been that complicated historical events rarely reduce to one person sitting at the center of a spiderweb.
Power is usually messier than that.
It moves through relationships, institutions, money, ideology, access, law, media, technology and people who discover that their interests overlap.
Sometimes the connections are intentional and coordinated.
Sometimes organizations simply share goals.
Sometimes the same people move repeatedly through different institutions.
And sometimes a connection that looks important turns out not to mean very much at all.
This project tries to distinguish between those things.
A line on a map should never mean more than the evidence underneath it.
Evidence before certainty
This isn't about proving what I already believe.
In fact, this entire project exists because I discovered how dangerous that can be.
I know what it feels like to be certain and later realize that some of the assumptions beneath that certainty were wrong.
So I don't want to replace one information bubble with another.
When evidence contradicts what I expect to find, it belongs here.
When an allegation cannot be substantiated, that matters.
When a connection is circumstantial, it should be labeled circumstantial.
When the answer is we don't know, that is an acceptable answer.
And when documented evidence allows us to name the people and institutions involved, we will name them.
The goal isn't outrage.
The goal is understanding.
Why anonymously?
Because the story isn't about me.
I don't want my identity, background, location, appearance, occupation, or personal life to become part of the argument.
You don't have to like me.
You don't have to agree with my politics.
You don't even have to trust my conclusions.
You should be able to examine the evidence yourself.
That is why sources matter so much to this project.
Why keep going?
A labor of love for a country I still believe in.
There are easier ways to spend thousands of hours.
I keep doing this because beneath the frustration, regret and occasional heartbreak is something much simpler:
I love my country.
Loving a country does not require pretending that everything it does is right.
It does not require defending a political party.
It does not require protecting leaders from scrutiny.
Sometimes love requires asking difficult questions.
Sometimes citizenship means admitting you were wrong.
And sometimes understanding how we arrived at a moment is the first step toward deciding where we want to go next.
I don't know exactly where this investigation will ultimately lead.
I don't expect every question to have an answer.
But the information scattered across court records, government documents, financial disclosures, organizational histories, archives, journalism and public statements tells a story.
My goal is to follow that story as far as the evidence allows.
No farther.
No shorter.
Follow the influence.
How this work is done matters too.
This project is created by one person with substantial assistance from AI for research, organization, cross-referencing and analysis. Read the full disclosure and research safeguards.