Federalist Investigates: Serbian Revolutionary Linked To USAID Now Works For ‘Bidenbucks’-Affiliated Group
A veritable who’s who of left-wing NGOs had a seat at the table in creating and carrying out President Joe Biden’s executive order transforming the federal government into a taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats.
But one group involved in the “Bidenbucks” cabal has taken leftism to the next level, tapping a renowned revolutionary to lead one of its lengthy indoctrination programs, a Federalist investigation finds. It turns out Vot-ER, a leftist voter registration outfit in the healthcare space, isn’t joking when it boasts that it is “revolutionizing voter engagement.”
And wouldn’t you know it. The corrupt and criminally wasteful USAID has a part to play in this strange story of leftist bedfellows.
‘Alarming Extremist Views’
As The Federalist has reported, Biden’s Executive Order 14019 — or “Bidenbucks” as government watchdogs dubbed it — was the apparent brainchild of Green New Deal peddler Demos, according to documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. The initiative, sold as “Promoting Access to Voting,” recruited (or opened the White House doors to) an army of leftist nonprofits affiliated with the Democrat Party.
The executive order was so weaponizing and constitutionally suspect, President Trump rescinded it on his first day in office.
Vot-ER was on the guest list of invited leftists for a July 2021 listening session led by the Department of Justice, other government agencies, and White House representatives on how to use non-governmental organizations to roll out Bidenbucks. Representatives from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Voters Matter, and the Democracy Fund, also joined the dozens of leftist NGOs in attendance, according to the documents obtained in the Oversight Project’s records request.
“The NGO talking points focused upon efforts to target historically Democratic voter blocks and expressed alarming extremist views. There is no corresponding evidence of efforts increase voter access and education in likely Republican constituencies,” a Heritage Foundation memo states.
‘Contamination of a Physician’s Role’
Vot-ER has deep connections to the power players in the leftist movement. The organization was founded by Alister Martin, an ER physician, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School, and a senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change. Martin also served as an advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House Office of Public Engagement as a White House Fellow. And he was a health policy aide to former Vermont Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin and Rep. Raul Ruiz, a California Democrat, according to his bio.
Vot-ER pushes its leftist voter registration and mobilization agenda throughout the U.S. healthcare system, “seek[ing] to identify low-income and minority voters,” according to InfluenceWatch. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, “doctors affiliated with the group” also “routinely use left-coded language … when interacting with patients and the public.” Founded in 2019, the organization claims it has registered to vote or prepared to vote more than 89,000 people at more than 800 hospitals and clinics.
Vot-ER’s mission is “transforming routine healthcare visits into opportunities for civic empowerment, partnering with trusted health professionals, and reaching historically underrepresented communities.” Politics infused healthcare. What could go wrong?
“Vot-ER develops nonpartisan civic engagement tools and programs for every corner of the healthcare system—from private practitioners to medical schools to hospitals,” the group’s website states.
In September of last year, just weeks before Election Day, the Republican National Committee “sent letters to election officials in six swing states urging them to monitor Vot-ER … for possible violations of election law,” as the Free Beacon reported. The letters, obtained by the outlet, alleged Vot-ER was politically “weaponizing the healthcare system” and “threatening … election integrity.”
The group’s get-out-the-vote materials have ostensibly “been used to register patients in emergency rooms, substance abuse clinics, and even psychiatric hospitals,” according to the Free Beacon.
Vot-ER, the news outlet reported, provides physicians scripts to urge noncitizens to register “friends and family members who are citizens” to vote.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how inappropriate this is,” said Sally Satel, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale Medical School, told the Free Beacon. “It’s such a contamination of a physician’s role.”
In August 2024, GOP Rep. Chip Roy sent a letter to Vot-ER and another organization with reported connections to the get-out-the-vote group “to inquire about the steps [the] organizations [were] taking to ensure non-citizens do not register to vote.” The letter, obtained by the Washington Examiner, also alleged that “Vot-ER has actively worked against efforts to ensure non-citizens do not illegally register to vote in federal elections” by opposing legislation that would have required proof of citizenship for voter registration.
Vot-ER representatives, including Martin, did not return The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment.
Professor Revolutionary
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the leftist Vot-ER offers an intensive training session for healthcare providers. The Civic Health Fellowship (CHF) is an eight-month program guided by “top-tier instructors in community organizing” out of which participants “emerge with a profound understanding of civic involvement, health equity concerns, and effective community mobilization techniques.” The sessions, according to Vot-ER’s website, run from April to November. Fellowship participants receive lessons on “Public Narrative,” “Snowflake & Campaign Structure,” “Tactics,” and “Campaign Strategic Goal Strategy/Planning.” What all of that has to do with registering people to vote isn’t clear.
One CHF’s “top-tier” instructors is Srdja Popovic, a Serbian revolutionary famous for leading the protest movements in the former Yugoslavia that toppled President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 and ended with the dismantling of the country. Popovic was featured in the 2002 documentary, “Bringing Down a Dictator,” which tells the story of a student group called Otpor! or “Resistance!” in Serbian, that employed “civil disobedience, rock ’n roll and ridicule” to nonviolently knock out Milosevic. It was, of course, narrated by Martin Sheen.
The revolution was no easy feat. NATO’s U.S.-backed targeted bombing campaign in 1999 couldn’t upend the Yugoslavian government, which was engaged in various war crimes. Popovic was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He did a TED Talk. He literally wrote the book on “nonviolent” revolution.
“… Otpor’s success suggests that oppressive leaders can best be toppled not by outside military force but by grassroots movements from within,” a New York Times review of the documentary raved at the time,
‘Feeling Betrayed’
But what wasn’t initially public was that Otpor was heavily funded by the U.S. government, in another ostensibly pro-democracy regime change insider job.
“Like the entire opposition to Milosevic, Otpor took money from the U.S. government, and lied about it. When the real story came out after Milosevic fell, many Otpor members quit, feeling betrayed,” Journalist Tina Rosenberg wrote in a 2011 piece titled, “What Egypt learned from the protestors who overthrew Milosevic.” The author examined Popovic’s revolutionary training institution, the Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS). That same year, Voice of America in a feature piece, described CANVAS as a “school of revolution” that teaches activists “how to overthrow a dictator.”
Rosenberg reported that CANVAS’ efforts had been mostly ineffective. By 2019, Popovic and his organization had reportedly trained “activists in 50 countries including India, Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma, Ukraine, Georgia, Palestine, Belarus, Tunisia, and Egypt.” But, oddly enough, regimes, particularly extremely repressive ones, don’t seem to care much for “resistance” revolutionaries hanging around and causing trouble.
‘Even More Alarming’
Interestingly, CANVAS received a chunk of $17 million from the controversial United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for the federal agency’s Civil Society Engagement program in Georgia. Begun in 2021, the five-year initiative was supposed to end next year, although its status is not clear amid the Trump administration’s dismantling of the corrupt agency. The Civil Society Engagement program was implemented by East-West Management Institute, Inc., a USAID-sponsored leftist group, CANVAS, and others.
Things have not gone well in the Republic of Georgia for the engagement initiative. As InfluenceWatch reports, the Georgian government accused USAID of sponsoring a training session that the Georgian State Security Service claimed was intended to teach “civilian activists and representatives of non-profit groups” who they said “will play a crucial role” in attempting to “bring down the government by force.”
“The accusations referred to a training workshop held by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies on September 25, 2023,” InfluenceWatch reported. “The Georgian State Security Service claimed that the workshop held by CANVAS was specifically created to prepare for a revolution.” The Biden administration’s U.S. Embassy in Georgia claimed the allegations were false and “fundamentally mischaracterize the goals of our assistance to Georgia.”
Popovic did not return The Federalist’s request for comment.
The Foundation for Government Accountability, which has sued Biden’s Department of Justice in pursuit of documents on Bidenbucks, believes the Trump administration will shine light on the executive order and the leftist groups involved. Adam Gibbs, FGA’s communications director, said the government watchdog already was concerned about Vot-ER’s “use of the provider-patient relationship to infiltrate healthcare institutions and influence voting patterns nationwide.”
“But this latest revelation is even more alarming,” Gibbs told The Federalist. “The news that Vot-ER is using a USAID-funded Serbian revolutionary to train American healthcare workers in regime change tactics sounds more like a wacky mad lib than a legitimate use of tax dollars.”
Gibbs added that Trump was right to shut down Bidenbucks, but the effort shouldn’t stop there.
“We hope this administration gets to the bottom of what looks like an insidious intersection of the Bidenbucks and USAID scandals,” he said.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Jesus Christ is King
