Soros network rebuilds progressive prosecutor push after string of election losses
The Soros family has pumped more than $1 million into political action committees (PACs) dedicated to electing progressive prosecutors this election cycle, campaign finance documents show.
While some predicted that Soros-backed district attorneys would become a thing of the past after sustaining a string of defeats between 2022 and 2024, records suggest that the liberal family is giving their criminal justice reform crusade another go. Democracy PAC, now run by George Soros’s son Alex, pumped roughly $1.7 million into the federal and non-federal arms of the Justice & Public Safety PAC between March 2025 and April 2026, according to public records.
The renewed spending signals that the Soros network is rebuilding its effort to shape local criminal justice policy ahead of the 2026 elections, despite a voter backlash that removed or replaced dozens of prosecutors linked to its funding.
By directing significant resources to Justice & Public Safety PAC, the family is positioning the group to again influence races where decisions on bail, charging and sentencing can drastically reshape public safety.
The Soros family, led for decades by billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, has spent heavily on charitable foundations and political committees to advance liberal candidates and human rights worldwide, including efforts to make society more equitable through criminal justice reform and other initiatives. The elder Soros transferred control of the family’s roughly $25 billion philanthropic and political network to his son Alex in 2023.
Justice & Public Safety PAC is the organization responsible for providing financial backing to a number of prosecutors who have since become infamous in conservative circles, according to Influence Watch. Among these are former Alameda County, California, District Attorney Pamela Price, former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and former Cook County, Illinois, State Attorney Kim Foxx.
Critics charge that these prosecutors fail to incarcerate dangerous members of society, leading to increased crime. Supporters, meanwhile, maintain that addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty and inequality, will stop offenses before they occur and that harsh punishments for criminals incentivizes recidivism.
Gascon, for one, attracted criticism for ordering his prosecutors not to pursue many sentencing enhancements, which can result in criminals being put away for longer, and for drastically reducing the number of misdemeanors tried by his office, according to the Los Angeles Times. He faced significant internal dissent as crime rates climbed, with rank-and-file prosecutors voting nearly unanimously to support a recall effort against him, Politico reported.
Krasner, meanwhile, has been denounced for presiding over a historic homicide spike in his city while he reduced prosecutions.
These controversies were not without consequences for Soros-backed prosecutors.
Of the 25 district attorneys with links to Soros that appeared on the ballot in 2024, 12 were either defeated or recalled, including Gascon. Sean Kennedy, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund’s policy director, told Fox News Digital at the time that, of the 75 Soros-linked prosecutors his organization had identified since 2022, 50 had either left office or been replaced with more moderate officials.
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Justice & Public Safety backed a progressive prosecutor in Virginia’s 2025 election, providing some potential insight into the kinds of candidates it will bankroll as Election Day 2026 approaches.
The committee spent six figures backing the candidacy of Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney Ramin Fatehi, campaign finance records show. Conservatives criticized Fatehi over his opposition to cash bail, his resistance to prosecuting crimes like shoplifting and his participation in a coalition of prosecutors aiming to prosecute federal immigration agents.
"The old-fashioned view about public safety was not taking into account externalities. It was focused on the idea of crime as an evil unto itself," Fatehi said in a 2021 interview. "Where I part ways is in recognizing that crime is a symptom. It’s a symptom of structural racism, of systematic community disinvestment, of redlining, unequal school policy, the lack of jobs, lack of transportation, a lack of opportunities, intergenerational barriers to wealth building, the disinvestment in the treatment of the mentally ill."
Soros himself similarly argued in a 2022 essay that progressive prosecutors can improve public safety by using resources to address the root causes of crime rather than resorting to jailing criminals for long periods of time. Supporting his claim, he wrote that "black people in the U.S. are five times as likely to be sent to jail as white people," which is "an injustice that undermines our democracy."
The Soros family has other sources of cash available to fund its political goals ahead of 2026, including the Open Society Foundation, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group that brought in nearly $160 million in 2024, according to tax documents.
The Open Society Foundation, the Soros family’s philanthropy, did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital Monday.