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      Biden Campaign Elevates a New Super PAC to Help 2024 Re-election Bid

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      The president and his advisers are elevating a new super PAC, Future Forward, as their leading outside group to rake in cash from his wealthiest benefactors.President Biden and his advisers are elevating a new outside group as the leading super PAC to help re-elect him in 2024, making it the top destination for large sums of cash from supportive billionaires and multimillionaires.The blessing of the group, Future Forward, is a changing of the guard in the important world of big-money Democratic politics. Since the 2012 election, a different group, Priorities USA, has been the leading super PAC for Democratic presidential candidates.“In 2020, when they really appeared from nowhere and started placing advertising, the Biden campaign was impressed by the effectiveness of the ads and the overall rigorous testing that had clearly gone into the entire project,” Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser to Mr. Biden, said of Future Forward. The group, she added, had “really earned its place as the pre-eminent super PAC supporting the Biden-Harris agenda and 2024 efforts.”On Friday, Mr. Biden’s campaign also announced a combined fund-raising total of more than $72 million for the second quarter alongside the Democratic National Committee and their joint fund-raising committee, a figure far greater than what Donald J. Trump raised. Future Forward has raised $50 million so far this year, the group said.Federal candidates cannot legally coordinate campaign strategy with super PACs, but officials in both parties have signaled their preferred entities for a decade. Super PACs can accept donations of unlimited size, unlike federal candidates, who must abide by contribution limits.Future Forward, which is led by Chauncey McLean, a former official on Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, has kept a remarkably low profile for a super PAC that, along with an affiliated nonprofit arm, has raised nearly $400 million in the last five years.The group maintains a sparse website. Mr. McLean said that Future Forward had never sent out a news release trumpeting its activity, which has included producing more than 400 advertisements.“We keep a low profile because we’re just not the story, we’re just not important,” Mr. McLean said in a rare interview. “I just don’t see any reason for popping our head up. That’s not going to change.”The super PAC spent more than $130 million on what are known as independent expenditure ads in the 2020 race between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump. It was also a major spender in the midterm elections in three crucial battlegrounds: Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Mr. McLean, who is based in Seattle, said that the group planned to run “the largest presidential I.E. in history” and that his fund-raising goal was to collect “as much as humanly possible.”Ms. Dunn served as a consultant for Future Forward after Mr. Biden was inaugurated, according to her personal financial disclosure form. But she said she saw a key role in 2024 for other super PACs, including American Bridge, the party’s clearinghouse for opposition research, which also runs television ads.Ms. Dunn and other White House officials have attended American Bridge donor conferences this year. The shift away from Priorities USA has been telegraphed to donors for months, since before the group’s longtime leader, Guy Cecil, announced in March that he was stepping away. Priorities this spring announced a goal to spent $74 million on digital advertising in 2024.In a statement, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, a White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign manager, said Future Forward had been “critical” in 2020 and would “again play a key role” in 2024.Unlike super PACs supporting Republican presidential candidates that have built on-the-ground organizations in early presidential nominating states, Future Forward will have a narrow focus on “research and advertising,” Mr. McLean said.Mr. Biden is dispatching Katie Petrelius, the finance director on his 2020 campaign and recently a White House aide, to Future Forward to help the group raise money.There are no immediate plans for Mr. Biden to headline any fund-raising events for the super PAC, but Ms. Dunn said such gatherings could occur in the future.Mr. Biden, like many Democrats in the party’s crowded 2020 presidential primary, initially resisted soliciting the support of a super PAC but backtracked in the fall of 2019, when his campaign was short on cash and needed more presence on the airwaves. (“To speak to the middle class, we need to reject the super PAC system,” Mr. Biden had said that April.)Both super PACs and nonprofit groups can accept unlimited donations, but only super PACs must disclose the names of their contributors. Future Forward’s largest disclosed contributor has been Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, who has given more than $50 million to the group since 2020.The group has also received millions of dollars from Stephen F. Mandel Jr., a Connecticut hedge fund manager; Karla Jurvetson, a California philanthropist; Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive; and Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange founder, who gave $5 million in October 2020.Mr. McLean said Future Forward would be “giving back any money associated with” Mr. Bankman-Fried. The group said it had also received $1.65 million from Mr. Bankman-Fried in its nonprofit arm. More

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      Major G.O.P. Donor’s Commitment to DeSantis Is Murkier Than Thought

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      The hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who seemed set to be a powerful financial backer of the Florida governor, is said to still be evaluating the Republican primary race.Nearly six months ago, Kenneth Griffin, the Republican megadonor and hedge fund executive, seemed poised to be a powerful financial backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in his anticipated run for president.Mr. Griffin had given $5 million to Mr. DeSantis’s re-election effort, and he told Politico that while Mr. DeSantis was not yet a White House candidate, “he has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well served by him as president.”These days, Mr. Griffin is keeping his cards closer to the vest, and his intentions are harder to discern. A person familiar with his thinking, noting that Mr. DeSantis had not yet made his run official, said Mr. Griffin was still evaluating the Republican primary race as it unfolded.The financier and Mr. DeSantis met in Florida in the last two weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting, which came as Mr. Griffin has taken issue in private conversations with some of Mr. DeSantis’s policy moves and pronouncements. In particular, the two people said, Mr. Griffin was deeply troubled by Mr. DeSantis’s statements that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “territorial dispute” — a remark he later tried to clarify — and that the war was not a vital U.S. interest.Mr. Griffin, who has made clear that he wants to move on from former President Donald J. Trump, was also disconcerted by a six-week abortion ban in Florida that Mr. DeSantis recently signed, according to the people familiar with Mr. Griffin’s thinking, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Last year, Mr. Griffin moved his hedge fund, Citadel, to Miami from Chicago, citing crime concerns.The meeting between the governor and Mr. Griffin was, for the most part, one on one, without staff members, one of the people briefed on it said, and it was one of their few direct interactions. Reading Mr. Griffin’s intentions after the meeting has been difficult for some people close to him.One person predicted the financier was still likely to donate to Mr. DeSantis once he made his candidacy official, which could happen as early as next month. But the person said Mr. Griffin might also give to other candidates who seemed able to defeat Mr. Trump.In a statement, Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Mr. Griffin, ticked off Mr. DeSantis’s “many accomplishments” and mentioned job creation, “increasing the number of quality school options, and prioritizing the safety of our communities.”He went on, “Ken may not agree with all of the governor’s policies, but he appreciates all that the governor has done to make Florida one of the most attractive states to live and work in America.”Kenneth Griffin has made clear that he would like the Republican Party to move beyond former President Donald J. Trump.Mike Blake/ReutersBut Mr. Ahmed declined to address what Mr. Griffin thought about the presidential race. A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.What Mr. Griffin does is being closely watched, after word spread of his unhappiness about how Mr. DeSantis had comported himself early this year.Mr. DeSantis’s supporters say there is still a broad appetite — in the donor community and among prospective voters — for a viable Republican alternative to Mr. Trump.“The money has walked,” said Roy Bailey, a Dallas businessman and longtime Republican fund-raiser for Mr. Trump. “From my conversations with a lot of people from around the country, it has moved to DeSantis. It is a cold, hard fact.”Mr. Bailey disputed the idea that momentum had shifted away from Mr. DeSantis recently.In the first two weeks of May, Mr. DeSantis is set to host a series of small dinners with major donors and supporters from across the country at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, according to two people with knowledge of his plans.If Mr. DeSantis enters the presidential race as expected, he will be armed with a well-funded super PAC, Never Back Down, which said this month that it had raised $30 million in its first few weeks of fund-raising.Two-thirds of that money, $20 million, came from a single donor, the Nevada hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, Time magazine reported.In private conversations, Mr. DeSantis’s associates have indicated that they have $100 million in commitments to the super PAC, along with roughly $82 million in a Florida committee that will probably be transferred to Never Back Down.Still, some donors who had hoped Mr. DeSantis could stop Mr. Trump have cooled their enthusiasm.Thomas Peterffy, a prominent conservative donor, also cited Florida’s abortion law in explaining why he was withholding support from Mr. DeSantis for now. Mr. Peterffy had supported Mr. DeSantis in his state campaigns, and according to one person familiar with the event, hosted Mr. DeSantis at his house early in his first term as governor. But Mr. Peterffy told The Financial Times this month he was holding still, as were some friends.Some donors have also expressed concern about Mr. DeSantis’s pre-campaign strategy. When his allies made clear this year that he would not enter the race before the end of the legislative session in Florida, Mr. DeSantis effectively gave Mr. Trump three months to define him — and taunt him — before becoming a candidate. More

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      Richard Riordan, Mayor of an Uneasy Los Angeles, Dies at 92

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      He was a successful businessman before taking office in 1993 amid civil unrest after the police beating of Rodney King. He became known for impolitic wisecracking.Richard J. Riordan, a Queens-born lawyer, businessman and former mayor of Los Angeles who led the city at a particularly divisive time and brought a free-enterprise approach to rebuilding the city’s infrastructure after a devastating earthquake in 1994, died on Wednesday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He was 92.His daughter Patricia Riordan Torrey confirmed his death.Mr. Riordan, whose unfiltered speech occasionally got him into trouble, began his career in business and turned to politics later in life. He was elected mayor in 1993, in his first effort at electoral politics, and served until 2001, prevented by term limits from seeking a third term.Before that, he was a shrewd investor who turned a modest inheritance into a large personal fortune. He was a venture capitalist in the 1960s, before such investors had acquired that name, and gave his own money away well before philanthropy came into vogue among California’s newly wealthy.A moderate Republican, Mr. Riordan came to politics in 1992, when it became clear that Tom Bradley, the Democratic five-term incumbent mayor, would not seek re-election. Mr. Riordan, then 62, was encouraged by friends to run, in part because of his solid ties across the political spectrum. He won handily, with 54 percent of the vote.But Mr. Riordan was bequeathed a city that was still reeling from riots stemming from the acquittal of four white police officers in 1992 after the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed Black motorist, the year before.“The city was out of control,” said Patrick Range McDonald, a journalist who ghostwrote Mr. Riordan’s 2014 memoir, “The Mayor: How I Turned Around Los Angeles After Riots, an Earthquake and the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial.” “Residents did not feel safe.”Mr. Riordan expanded the police department to 10,000 officers and generally brought a “calming influence to the city,” Mr. McDonald said.A section of the vital Santa Monica Freeway collapsed in the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Mr. Riordan took an unorthodox approach to repairing it, and the work was completed 74 days ahead of schedule.Eric Draper/Associated PressMr. Riordan’s most dramatic moment came with the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994 that destroyed buildings and roads throughout the Los Angeles region.“Dick worked day and night, visited neighborhoods throughout the city, made sure people received supplies and health care, and constantly sounded a theme that Angelenos needed to work together,” Mr. McDonald said. “So while the rest of the world was waiting for post-riot Los Angeles to descend into complete chaos, residents instead banded together, with Dick leading the charge.”Mr. Riordan took an unorthodox approach to rebuilding the Santa Monica Freeway, a vital connector between downtown Los Angeles and the city’s coastal regions. City officials had estimated a loss to the local economy of $1 million for every day the freeway was closed.Mr. Riordan offered contractors a $200,000-a-day bonus for finishing ahead of schedule. The work was finished 74 days before the contracted deadline. “This demonstrates what can happen when private sector innovation and market incentives replace business as usual,” he said at the time.He also had a longtime interest in education and was a strong believer in the effectiveness of charter schools..“That wasn’t within his formal job description of mayor,” said former California Gov. Pete Wilson, whose tenure as governor overlapped with Mr. Riordan’s time as mayor. “Nonetheless, he really took it up.”Neither a polished nor eloquent public speaker, Mr. Riordan was well known for his impolitic wisecracking. In one famous incident in 2004, during a brief stint by Mr. Riordan as California’s secretary of education, a 6-year-old girl at a library event in Santa Barbara told him that her name, Isis, meant “Egyptian goddess.” He responded that “it means stupid, dirty girl.”He later apologized, saying it was a failed attempt at humor. The remark was widely reported and caused public outcry, with some advocacy groups calling for his resignation, but Mr. Riordan remained in his state government role.In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, when asked if he was sorry for some of the jokes he had cracked over the years, Mr. Riordan said: “I’ve learned to count to three before I tell a joke. Usually something’s funny, click click, and you forget you’ve just insulted every Italian in the city.”Mr. Riordan announced his candidacy for governor of California in November 2001. He lost in a Republican primary contest the next year. At right was the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected governor in 2003.Jim Ruymen/ReutersRichard Joseph Riordan was born on May 1, 1930, in Flushing, Queens, to William and Geraldine (Doyle) Riordan, the last of nine children in an Irish Catholic family. He grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. His father was a successful department store executive. His mother taught prisoners to read and write.Mr. Riordan entered Santa Clara University in California on a football scholarship in 1948 and two years later transferred to Princeton. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy there in 1952.Soon after graduating, he joined the Army and served in the Korean War as a first lieutenant. After the war, he entered the University of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1956.He returned to California, a state that had always fascinated him, and began working for a large law firm in Los Angeles. In the late 1950s, after his father died, he inherited $80,000. A neighbor who was a stockbroker recommended that Mr. Riordan invest in technology companies. Three decades and many ventures later, he was worth tens of millions of dollars.Mr. Riordan also liked to give money away, “almost as if it burns his hands,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1988 profile. He created the Riordan Foundation with a narrow goal: to promote childhood literacy. The foundation, which has given away more than $50 million, has expanded over the years to include broader educational and civic initiatives.Mr. Riordan’s first marriage, to Eugenia Waraday, lasted nearly 25 years but ended in divorce, as did his second marriage, to Jill Noel. He married Nancy Daly in 1998, and they divorced in 2008.Mr. Riordan’s life was scarred by personal tragedy. Three of his siblings, including his twin brother, died young. Mr. Riordan had five children with his first wife. His only son, Billy, drowned in a scuba diving accident in 1978, at age 21. His youngest daughter, Carol, died in 1982, at 18, of cardiac arrest associated with anorexia.In 2017, Mr. Riordan married Elizabeth Gregory, who survives him. In addition to Patricia, a child from his first marriage, he is survived by two more daughters from his first marriage, Mary Elizabeth Riordan and Kathleen Ann Riordan; a stepdaughter, Malia Gregory; a sister, Betty Hearty; and three grandchildren.Mr. Riordan ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 2002. He became secretary of education under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, but, frustrated by the bureaucracy he encountered, left the post after 17 months.Mr. Riordan also owned restaurants around Los Angeles, including the Original Pantry Café, a popular diner. Mr. Riordan said he first fell in love with the Pantry when a waiter decided he was taking too long to eat his meal.“I had a book I was reading,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2008. “I was very relaxed, and the waiter came over and said, ‘If you want to read, the library’s at Fifth and Hope.’” Instead, he bought the restaurant.Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Leadership of Foundation Honoring Justin Trudeau’s Father Quits

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      The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation said that accusations of Chinese meddling in its affairs had made it impossible for it to function as before.A foundation honoring the father of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced Tuesday that its board of directors and chief executive had resigned after being swept into a political storm over leaked intelligence showing that China planned to interfere in Canadian elections.A leak, published in February in The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, accused China of being behind a 200,000 Canadian dollar donation pledge to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2016, but did not accuse the foundation of being aware of China’s involvement.The foundation, which has no affiliation with the current prime minister, announced in March that it returned the portion of the donation that it actually received, saying that “we cannot keep any donation that may have been sponsored by a foreign government and would not knowingly do so.”However, returning the donation did not quell criticism from Mr. Trudeau’s political rivals that the foundation had become a tool of influence for China’s government.On Monday, the foundation said in a statement that the board and the president and chief executive, who did not hold that position when the donation was accepted, had decided to step down because “the political climate surrounding a donation received by the Foundation in 2016 has put a great deal of pressure on the foundation’s management and volunteer board of directors, as well as on our staff and our community.”It added: “The circumstances created by the politicization of the foundation have made it impossible to continue with the status quo.”There is no indication that the current prime minister was aware of the 2016 donation. The prime minister severed ties to the foundation, which largely provides scholarships in his father’s name, when he entered politics in 2008.Mr. Trudeau told reporters on Tuesday: “The Trudeau Foundation is a foundation with which I have absolutely no intersection.” He added: “It is a shame to see the level of toxicity and political polarization that is going on in our country these days. But I’m certain that the Trudeau Foundation will be able to continue to ensure that research into the social studies and humanities at the highest levels across Canadian academic institutions continues for many years to come.”In February, The Globe and Mail reported that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation had received a 200,000 Canadian dollar pledge in 2016 which was made by two wealthy Chinese businessmen, at the behest of a Chinese diplomat. The newspaper, citing a portion of a leaked recording made by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said that the diplomat said that the Chinese government would reimburse the two men as part of what it characterized as an attempt to influence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.The account in the article of Chinese government involvement has never been verified.The report was one of a series based on intelligence leaks, most of which involved allegations of political meddling, that started appearing in the newspaper in mid-February, and later appeared on Global News, a Canadian broadcaster.Criticism of the foundation intensified about a month ago, when Mr. Trudeau appointed David Johnston to look into the allegations of improper meddling by China. Mr. Johnston is a former academic and was once the governor-general of Canada who acted as the country’s head of state as the representative of Queen Elizabeth. He was also once a member of the board of the Trudeau Foundation, a fact that some Conservatives argued made him unfit to lead an investigation.David Johnston, a former governor general, is looking into allegations that China meddled in Canada’s two last elections.Geoff Robins/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThree directors, the foundation said, will continue in their roles as caretakers until a new board and president are found.The donation, according to The Globe and Mail, was part of a 1 million Canadian dollar pledge supposedly underwritten by China to curry influence. The remainder included 750,000 dollars for scholarships at University of Montreal’s law school, “to honor the memory and leadership” of Pierre Trudeau, who opened diplomatic relations between Canada and China in 1970.Another 50,000 dollars was to go to the university for a statue of Mr. Trudeau, which was never erected.The elder Mr. Trudeau was a member of the law school’s faculty before entering politics.Sophie Langlois, a spokeswoman for the university, said that it received 550,000 Canadian dollars of the pledged amount.“We are indeed considering all of our options in the light of new information,” she wrote in an email.The focus of the leaked intelligence reports, according to The Globe & Mail and The Global News, is Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The reports suggest that the government of China wanted to ensure that Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party defeated the Conservative Party which it viewed as more hostile toward Beijing. Several government reviews have concluded that foreign influence did not change the outcome of either vote.The Conservative opposition has repeatedly called for a public inquiry, a move Mr. Trudeau has called unnecessary. He did, however, promise to hold one if Mr. Johnston recommends that step.On Monday, the leader of Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, called for an additional investigation. “We need to investigate the Beijing-funded Trudeau Foundation,” Mr. Poilievre tweeted. “We need to know who got rich; who got paid and who got privilege and power from Justin Trudeau as a result of funding to the Trudeau Foundation.” More

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      Sam Bankman-Fried and Allies’ Political Donations Under Scrutiny by US

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      Federal prosecutors appear to be focusing on possible wrongdoing by cryptocurrency executives, rather than by Democratic or Republican politicians. But the inquiries widen an explosive campaign finance scandal.WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are seeking information from Democrats and Republicans about donations from the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and two former executives at the companies he co-founded.In the days after Mr. Bankman-Fried was arrested on Monday and charged with violations including a major campaign finance scheme, the prosecutors reached out to representatives for campaigns and committees that had received millions of dollars from Mr. Bankman-Fried, his colleagues and their companies.A law firm representing some of the most important Democratic political organizations — including the party’s official campaign arms, its biggest super PACs and the campaigns of high-profile politicians such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries — received an email from a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. The email sought information about donations from Mr. Bankman-Fried, his colleagues and companies, according to people familiar with the request, who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing law enforcement matter.The prosecutors have reached out to representatives of other Democratic campaigns that received money linked to the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which Mr. Bankman-Fried co-founded, according to two other people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors are also investigating donations to Republican campaigns and committees by another FTX executive who was a top financier on the right, according to a person familiar with the situation.So far, Mr. Bankman-Fried is the only executive to face charges. Since emerging as a leading political megadonor in the months before the 2020 election, he has donated nearly $45 million, primarily to Democratic campaigns and committees that are now scrambling to distance themselves.There has not been any suggestion that political campaigns and groups engaged in wrongdoing related to the donations they received. The Justice Department’s inquiries appear to be an effort to gather evidence against Mr. Bankman-Fried and other former FTX executives, rather than against their political beneficiaries.But the prosecutors’ requests widen what has quickly become one of the biggest campaign finance scandals in years, as both Democrats and Republicans grapple with questions about their eagerness to tap into a stream of cash from a murky and largely unregulated industry that emerged suddenly as a powerful political player.The fallout has been swift and is only growing, as lawmakers, operatives for political action committees and their lawyers try to minimize the damage.Some politicians — including Mr. Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader in the House, and Representative-elect Aaron Bean, a Republican from Florida — either returned donations linked to FTX or gave the money to charity after the company became embroiled in scandal. Other groups say they are setting the cash aside for possible restitution to victims of the alleged scheme.Prosecutors said FTX was a “house of cards” through which Mr. Bankman-Fried and others diverted customer money to buy expensive real estate in the Bahamas, invest in other cryptocurrency firms, provide themselves with personal loans and make political contributions of tens of millions of dollars intended to influence policy decisions on cryptocurrency and other issues.What to Know About the Collapse of FTXCard 1 of 5What is FTX? More

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      They Are Betting $100 Million on Pluralism. Will It Work?

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      In February 2020, in the midst of a vitriolic presidential election, an idealistic group of donors from across the ideological spectrum met to plan an ambitious new project. They called themselves the New Pluralists and pledged to spend a whopping $100 million over the next decade to fight polarization by funding face-to-face interactions among Americans across political, racial and religious divides.Fixing what is broken in American democracy requires more than changing voter ID laws or the shape of our congressional districts, they argued. It requires forging deep personal connections that will change hearts and minds and ultimately American culture itself.Their experiment rests on a basic idea: Far too many Americans lack the skills, the opportunity and even the inclination to work together across lines of difference toward a common goal. Part of the solution, these donors believe, is embracing a very old idea that has fallen out of fashion: pluralism.The term “cultural pluralism” was coined in the early 1900s by Horace Kallen, a Jewish philosopher who proposed it in the midst of a huge wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. He argued that rather than try to stamp out their Polishness, Italianness or Jewishness, as many white Anglo-Saxon Protestants wanted, America should be a “nation of nationalities” where people learn to work together across lines of difference. The freedom to be different but still participate in political life as a vital part of the whole was key to the country’s genius, he argued. Mr. Kallen thought of the American people not as a melting pot, where everyone turns into the same bland stew, but as an orchestra, where distinct sounds join harmoniously.That notion fuels the New Pluralists, too. Although it’s hard to find two people who describe the project the same way, respecting difference, not papering it over, is seen as central.In his era, Mr. Kallen drew fierce criticism from those who accused him of promoting a Balkanization of the country. A scathing review of his book in The New York Times in 1924 declared that the nation faced a stark choice: “Is it to remain one in spirit, tradition and language, or is it to become a hodgepodge boardinghouse for alien groups?” It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the rise of the idea of multiculturalism, that his ideas were widely embraced.Today the New Pluralists project is grappling with a similar set of challenges as the ones Mr. Kallen wrote about over a century ago. An influx of immigrants is once again challenging prevailing notions of who Americans are and what it takes to make a country harmonious and whole. At the same time, the country does indeed feel Balkanized along a host of fault lines: rural versus urban, young versus old, religious versus secular and, of course, red versus blue.But the critiques that pluralism faces today are different. Far from being considered too radical, pluralism might not sound radical enough in an era of insurrection and potential coups. To some activists, pluralism sounds like both-sides-ism or a call to meet in the mushy middle. And yet pluralism feels more crucial than ever. Our multiracial democracy can’t survive without it.I discovered the New Pluralists this summer after I attended an online workshop on depolarizing hosted by one of its grantees, a group called Braver Angels. I found the group online because, at a time when so much attention is paid to toxic politics, I wanted to know more about groups that stood for just the opposite.Co-founded by Bill Doherty, a Minneapolis-based marriage counselor, Braver Angels is an organization with grass-roots chapters across the country that teach conservatives and liberals to debunk lazy stereotypes and clarify disagreements without yelling. In the workshop I attended, reds and blues wrestled with how they typecast the other side. Nearly all the participants were white and looked to be over the age of 40. And they were, by definition, open to reaching across the partisan divide. In other words, they were low-hanging fruit. I came away feeling more hopeful about the country nonetheless.I realized then that there was a whole ecosystem of groups, created during the Trump years, that is dedicated to bridging divides: the People’s Supper, which helps communities host potluck dinners and other events that promote racial and political reconciliation; the One Small Step project at StoryCorps, which brings together strangers for recorded conversations about their lives; More in Common, which surveys public opinion and put out an influential paper about the country’s “exhausted majority.” The New Pluralists help fund them all.The idea for the New Pluralists came about in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, the New York-based executive director of the Einhorn Collaborative, a foundation started by a Wisconsin-bred hedge fund manager, said it kept getting calls from people who were alarmed by the level of polarization and thought they could help fix it. One call came from Melissa Weintraub, a longtime conflict resolution practitioner who had worked with Israelis and Palestinians.“You know that tool kit I use in the Middle East? I want to bring that to Wisconsin and Iowa,” Ms. Rothberg recalled Ms. Weintraub saying.Right then and there, Ms. Rothberg told me, “we set up a rapid response organizing around bridging divides.” The Einhorn Collaborative gave away $6 million in one-off funds but wanted to do something bigger. In 2019, Ms. Rothberg invited other donors involved in similar work to a meeting in New York to see if they could pool their money to fund these projects on a larger scale. She purposefully invited donors from across the political spectrum. Stand Together Trust, formerly the Charles Koch Institute, which funds social ventures to solve common problems, agreed to join. But that made some social justice funders on the left balk because they didn’t want to be in the same room, Fay Twersky, who attended that meeting as a representative of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, told me.In the end, about a dozen donors stuck with it. They landed on the name the New Pluralists, partly because pluralism felt neutral in an era when so many words have taken on a partisan flavor. This past summer, they brought together a group of grantees for a retreat in Atlanta in an attempt to foster relationships among them. They included the civil rights thinker john powell of the Othering & Belonging Institute and Rachel Peric of Welcoming America. They are called field builders in the New Pluralists’ overly cerebral parlance. The big idea here is to turn pluralism into a coherent field — like public health — with clearly defined norms and practices that can be replicated, measured and improved.Lennon Flowers, a co-founder of the People’s Supper, told me that the gathering felt like a salve. She said the money and credibility her organization gets from the New Pluralists filter down to the local partners, showing that “this work matters and this proves we’re not alone.”But a big question remains: Can a group of wealthy donors change American culture from above? How exactly does that work? If you are trying to change a law, you hire a lobbyist. To change American culture, whom do you hire?Nevertheless, the group is doubling down on its vision. Over the summer, it put out a request for grant proposals from grass-roots groups engaged in this work. Eight hundred applications poured in — too many to fund. That’s when the New Pluralists began an effort to challenge donors to devote $1 billion over the next decade to pluralism, an initiative it announced at a White House unity summit in September.“The need is so great, and the opportunity is so great that we need more of philanthropy to take this seriously,” the New Pluralists’ executive director, Uma Viswanathan, told me.Even the most fervent of the New Pluralists admit that they aren’t sure they will succeed. But I hope they do. After all, orchestras don’t sound good by accident. People have to practice.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More