DataRepublican presenter Jennica Pounds describes a federally funded "soft power" NGO network she calls a "uni party"

Jennica Pounds, who described herself as the creator of the website datarepublican.com, told attendees at a Davis County Conservatives event that mapping federal grants and nonprofit networks reveals a coordinated, "soft power" system she characterized as a "uni party." Pounds said her work traces grant flows and board ties linking major international organizations and claimed the network wields real power.

"What we're looking at is a parallel government, a soft power network built not through elections or laws, but through NGOs," Pounds said during her presentation. "Many of these NGOs are run by sitting members of Congress."

Pounds identified the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as the hub of the system and named affiliates and partners she said serve distinct functions: the Solidarity Center and CIPE for economic work, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for political influence, IFES for elections, Internews for media and messaging, and CEPPS as a coordinating umbrella. She said NED receives "over 300,000,000" in taxpayer money each year and that CEPPS has "over $500,000,000 in active USAID grants right now." Those figures were presented by Pounds as part of her mapping.

Pounds said the organizations use grant funding to train personnel, shape media narratives and influence election administration internationally and, she argued, increasingly domestically. "They don't just observe elections. They engineer the standards funded by USAID and closely tied to NDI and IRI," she said. "These are active federal contracts. Real money, real power, no voter input."

Pounds framed her analysis as an explanation for why U.S. foreign policy and certain domestic policies, she said, appear resistant to change: a network of funded organizations, she contended, preserves institutional continuity. She also said some of her material has been shared widely online and that she operates a website with analytic tools that she uses to publish her findings.

The presentation was adapted at the meeting because Pounds' usual interpreter was not available; her mother, Joette Humphrey, read material from a teleprompter as part of the setup. At one point Pounds asked the audience not to record or clip an unpublished portion of her work. The meeting included a brief technical pause to adjust streaming and audio.

The claims in Pounds' presentation were described by her as findings from her analysis; this article reports what she said without independent verification of the grant totals, board affiliations or causal connections she presented. Pounds also identified herself as co-owner of Spirits of the Wasatch Distillery in Salt Lake City, which she said she runs with her husband.