A West Hollywood nonprofit that counts “The Big Short” director Adam McKay on its board — and was founded by scions of two of America’s most storied families — is doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to bankroll the social-justice revolution roiling the country.
Climate Emergency Fund has financial ties to anti-ICE initiatives in Minnesota, including a group of protestors who stormed a church service last month with former CNN host Don Lemon, The Post has learned.
Since its founding in 2019, the organization has backed radical groups that have engaged in civil disobedience and vandalism, with one organization creating a “toolbox” for disrupting law enforcement activities.
CEF was founded by filmmaker Rory Kennedy, a daughter of Sen. Robert Kennedy, and philanthropist Aileen Getty, granddaughter of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Investor Trevor Neilson is another co-founder of the group, which was incorporated in Delaware.
Hollywood filmmaker McKay donated $4 million to the charity when he joined its board of directors in 2022. The Academy Award winner and climate activist behind Hollywood films like “Vice” and “Don’t Look Up” as well as HBO’s “Succession,” said the group supports “disruptive activism,” in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone.
“Interrupting business-as-usual forces politicians and the media to pay attention, and forces members of the public to choose a side,” the group’s website reads.
Until recently, Climate Emergency Fund also included “Succession” star Jeremy Strong on its board of directors, according to its most recent federal tax filing in 2024.
CEF gave a total of $45,000 to the New York City and West Hollywood chapters of Beautiful Trouble, a nonprofit that produces a civil disobedience toolkit in four languages, according to its website.
Beautiful Trouble’s website provides instruction in using social media to create a “flash mob,” among other tactics.
Anti-ICE activists connected to Beautiful Trouble recently harassed churchgoers — chanting “ICE out!” as Lemon livestreamed the protest — during a Sunday service on Jan. 18.
Video posted by Lemon before, during and after the church takeover showed him boasting of being embedded with activists’ “Operation Pull-Up.” He was later arrested and released without bond.
“Where are you?” screeched a protestor at the pastor and congregants. “What do you do to stand up for your Somali and Latino communities?”
The church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, was targeted by protestors because one of its eight pastors, David Easterwood, reportedly also works as acting field director for ICE in Minnesota.
CEF gave nearly $500,000 to Climate Defiance, a radical climate activist group, according to 2024 federal tax filings. Last month, Climate Defiance activists swarmed a Long Island synagogue where Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) was giving a speech, cursing the moderate Democrat for supporting a $64.4 billion funding package for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month.
“I actually have some gifts — I have some kneepads for you — you can use these while you blow Donald Trump,” a protester said, according to a video posted by the group on social media.
CEF also doled out more than $520,000 between 2019 and 2022 to Extinction Rebellion, a radical climate-activism group founded in 2018 in England and with more than 300 chapters around the world, according to federal filings.
Earlier this year, Extinction Rebellion activists spray-painted Wall Street’s charging bull statue near the New York Stock Exchange with the words “Greed=Death.”
The group, which is also known as XR, also organized “Tesla Takedowns” last yearto protest Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In 2024, CEF gave $100,000 to Yellow Dot Studios Inc., a nonprofit run by McKay, for a “get out the vote” drive, according to public filings.
Tax-exempt organizations can run get-out-the-vote campaigns provided they are non-partisan.
McKay has publicly identified himself as a member of the radical Democratic Socialists of America, whose high-profile members include New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. However, there is no indication that the nonprofit took a partisan stand.
“Climate Emergency Fund is compliant with 501c(3) regulations,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit said. “We made a grant to Beautiful Trouble in 2024 for their work in the Global South. Our grant to [McKay’s] Yellow Dot supported the production of an issues-orientated video that was non-partisan and did not endorse any candidates.”
The director, who has donated tens of thousands to Democratic Party candidates, has said that Yellow Dot Studios, which he founded in 2023, aims to make hard-hitting anti-oil industry ads and films that “reclaim populist anger.”
His 2021 film “Don’t Look Up,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, is a political allegory about political indifference towards climate change.
McKay did not return requests for comment.
In addition to McKay, CEF’s board includes Steven Donziger, a controversial environmental lawyer who was accused of fraud after he won a lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador. Donziger, who helped secure a $8.6 billion settlement from Chevron, was convicted of criminal contempt involving the case and disbarred in New York in 2020.
Both Getty and Kennedy are no longer on CEF’s board of directors, according to CEF’s website.