Amazon windfall nets left $640M

Bezos' ex-wife gives fortune to liberal causes

Most of the $640 million in new charitable donations Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott is dishing out will go to nonprofits pushing extreme left-wing causes, including helping migrants who commit crimes and boosting transgender athletes who want to compete against women.

Scott will provide 67 migrantadvocacy organizations a combined $122 million for legal aid and other assistance, according to an analysis of 361 awards she announced Tuesday through her foundation Yield Giving.

The big winners include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which vehemently opposes Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on migrants who commit crimes; and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, which is fighting that state’s efforts to increase illegal-migrant enforcement. Both scored $2 million.

Scott’s other awards include $117 million to 67 prisoner-advocacy groups and other organizations helping jailbirds and excons; and $72 million to 43 groups promoting “gender identity,” “sexual orientation” and other LGBTQ causes — such as championing the rights of transgender girls to compete in female sports.

She’s also earmarked another $18 million to 10 groups pushing clean energy.

Anti-capitalism

Before announcing the $640 million in new donations, Scott had already given away $16.5 billion of the $38.3 billion fortune she came into after divorcing Bezos in 2019.

“Bezos’ wife is using the profits he made through capitalism to [fund] the rope that will hang capitalism,” said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, drawing on Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin’s famed quote: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

“These things that she’s donating money to — whether it’s transgender ideas, helping illegals, prisoner rights, climate change — they’re all trying to transform our system away from capitalism,” Gonzalez said.

Scott — an author of two novels and the third wealthiest woman in the US — was married to Bezos for nearly 25 years and has four children with him.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, she handed out $16.5 billion of her fortune to groups she and her team researched and selected. In December 2022, she launched a database of her charity under the name Yield Giving.

Megan Peterson, executive director of Gender Justice, cheered Scott’s $2 million gift to her nonprofit, saying in a statement it “could not come at a more crucial time” with “a conservative legal movement threatening our fundamental rights here in Minnesota, North Dakota, and across the United States.”

“Building and sustaining a world free of gender barriers requires community organization, education, and changing the ways we talk and think about gender,” added Peterson, whose group recently won lawsuits regarding access to emergency contraception and the rights of trans youth athletes.

Of the $72 million Scott gave to LGBTQ causes, at least $16 million went to nonprofits leading the charge for transgender athletes in female sports, including the ACLU of Alabama, Baltimore-based Soccer without Borders and OutFront Minnesota.

In a note on her website, Scott wrote she’s grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the award-selection process, and evaluators who are vital “agents of change.”

Reps for Lever for Change and Scott did not return messages.