Why was Decarlos Brown Jr. — with a long and violent rap sheet, not to mention severe mental illness — free to stab Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light-rail train last month?

Soft-on-crime judges, district attorneys and politicians are part of the problem, but they have not acted alone.

Private foundations have encouraged and funded dangerous policies, working hand in hand with government.  

The MacArthur Foundation contributed $1 million in 2020 to the Safety and Justice Challenge in Mecklenburg County, NC — where Brown was arrested multiple times — “to continue safely reducing the jail population.” The group gave another $350,000 in 2022.

The Soros Foundation has been instrumental in electing district attorneys who want to defund the police and get rid of cash bail and refuse to prosecute drug crimes.

And Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom solicited half a million dollars from the James Irvine Foundation to help migrants evade federal immigration authorities.

It’s long past time to break up these “public-private partnerships.”

And maybe fundraisers are coming to that conclusion themselves.

“It is unknown what the interdependencies are going to be between philanthropy and government in........

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