Per the Free Beacon, a UN-Linked Nonprofit Paid Roy Cooper’s Climate Advisers. His Office Never Said So.
Monday, October 19, 2026. According to a Washington Free Beacon exclusive, the United Nations Foundation, a private charity that is not part of the UN itself, paid for climate positions in the office of then-North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) while those advisers helped shape the state’s climate policy. The money moved through the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of mostly Democratic-led states, and the Free Beacon says Cooper’s office never publicly disclosed it.
Cooper is now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against Republican Michael Whatley (R-NC), with the election on November 3. This page sets out what the documents are reported to show, what the Climate Alliance said in 2024 and declined to say in 2026, and what happened to the policies the advisers worked on.
- $1.7Min grants, 2020–2024The most of any state in the program, per the Free Beacon, citing funding agreements and tax filings.
- $292,677senior climate adviserTwo-year grant for the governor’s top climate position, per the Free Beacon; the same amount appears in 2020 tax filings per Carolina Journal.
- $264,765deputy adviserTwo-year grant for a deputy position, funded April 2021, per the Free Beacon; Carolina Journal found the same amount in 2021 filings.
- 4positionsTwo in the governor’s office, one at the Department of Transportation, one at Commerce, per the Free Beacon.
The United Nations Foundation is a Washington nonprofit founded by Ted Turner. It houses the U.S. Climate Alliance, which governors Jerry Brown (D-CA), Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) launched in June 2017 after the U.S. announced its exit from the Paris Agreement. North Carolina joined that September. Through the Alliance’s Climate Leadership Grant Program, states can receive money to hire climate staff.
The Free Beacon reports that between 2020 and 2024 the foundation awarded North Carolina grants worth $1.7 million, more than any other state received. The report says the advisers were official state employees. It quotes the 2019 application for the governor’s top climate post as promising a “ripple effect throughout the country,” and a later renewal application as aiming to “institutionalize Governor Cooper’s climate legacy.”
This is not new in outline. In February 2024, Carolina Journal, reviewing the foundation’s tax filings, found $292,677 for the governor’s office in 2020 and $264,765 in 2021, plus $315,980 for the Department of Transportation and $144,949 for Commerce, and a further $173,312 for the governor’s office in 2021, about $1.2 million across 2020 and 2021. Fox News Digital reported “nearly $1.2 million” for the state at the time. The Free Beacon adds that Cooper’s office privately asked other Alliance states not to make “too big a deal” of North Carolina’s participation, a claim it sources to a 2018 report by CEI attorney Christopher Horner, and that the state had to file status updates before funds were released.
The Climate Alliance’s position, stated by spokesman Evan Westrup in 2024, is that the funded positions are “managed solely by the individual states, not the Alliance or UN Foundation.” State agencies described the uses in benign terms: the Department of Transportation said its grant covered a clean-transportation coordinator, a study and a webinar; Commerce said its grant helped create an assistant secretary post for clean energy economic development. Then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC)’s office asked in 2024 for transparency about whether the money paid officials working on climate policy. Cooper’s office and then-Attorney General Josh Stein (D-NC), now governor, did not respond to Carolina Journal.
The Free Beacon ties the advisers to offshore wind, grid decarbonization, electric-vehicle policy and building efficiency, and to Cooper’s executive orders. Executive Order 246, signed January 7, 2022, set a goal of 1.25 million zero-emission vehicles registered in the state and 50 percent of new vehicle sales zero-emission by 2030. The Free Beacon says a later 2022 order adopted California’s clean-truck rules, and that the state also pursued entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Transportation and Climate Initiative.
The fate of those efforts is the report’s central argument. By the governor’s own climate page, the General Assembly prohibited the state’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule in 2023 (we could not load that page to confirm; the Free Beacon also reports the reversal). The Free Beacon adds that a 2023 law barred RGGI participation, that the Transportation and Climate Initiative dissolved after states withdrew, that a 2025 law removed the 2030 power-sector target from Cooper’s 2021 energy law, that the legislature blocked a 2024 building-code rewrite, and that the largest proposed offshore-wind developer agreed in April to forfeit its federal lease. Civic Intelligence could not independently confirm the wind and 2025 items.
Critics quoted by the Free Beacon frame it as outside money buying policy the legislature kept rejecting. Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation calls the funding “shocking and offensive.” Daniel Turner of Power the Future says North Carolina voters “need to know their governor was purchased by globalist powers.” Earlier, Chris Horner, a former Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow, told Carolina Journal that the arrangements raise legal and ethical concerns and a conflict-of-interest appearance. These are advocates’ characterizations, not findings.
The Cooper campaign declined to address the foundation funding and pointed to his record of recruiting business investment. The Free Beacon notes his campaign site does not mention climate change. Grant-funded staff in governors’ offices are not unique to North Carolina; Fox News Digital and Legal Insurrection reported similar grants in a dozen state governments. Note that Carolina Journal is the John Locke Foundation’s news arm, Sanders works for that foundation, Turner runs Power the Future, and Horner filed the records requests behind the earlier reporting for allied groups. What is specific here is the size, the lack of disclosure the Free Beacon describes, and the candidate now seeking a Senate seat.
Reported with filings: UN Foundation grants of roughly $1.2 million to the governor’s office, Transportation and Commerce in 2020–21, per Carolina Journal; Fox News reported “nearly $1.2 million” over a slightly wider window.
Reported by the Free Beacon only: the $1.7 million 2020–24 total, the characterization of the “too big a deal” request, the application language, and the later legislative reversals beyond the 2023 clean-truck bar.
Not shown: any violation of state law, the advisers’ names or individual salaries, or any Cooper statement on the arrangement.
Nobody has shown it was illegal. The question for voters is whether a governor’s top climate staff should be paid by a private, UN-linked nonprofit without a public announcement. Per the Free Beacon, the Senate candidate whose office received the funding has declined to address it.
