[Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”] President Joe Biden rewarded one of the Left’s most influential and notorious donors Saturday, giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros.

The White House announced the honor in a list of 19 recipients, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and LGBTQ megadonor Tim Gill.

Biden framed Soros’ funding as philanthropy in service of “democracy” and “social justice.”

“George Soros is an investor, philanthropist, and founder of the Open Society Foundations,” the White House explained. “Through his network of foundations, partners and projects in more than 120 countries, Soros has focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.”

Soros, a Hungarian-American billionaire investor, has funneled more than $15.2 billion through his Open Society Foundations (now run by his son Alex), which has awarded more than 50,000 grants worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum.

Soros bankrolled the “rogue prosecutor” soft-oncrime movement by funding the campaigns of local prosecutors who oppose the death penalty and use prosecutorial discretion to avoid charging crimes they consider minor.

Cully Stimson, deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, have extensively exposed this movement and how it has emboldened criminals by enabling them to avoid prosecution. Their book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,” was released in 2023.

Crime rates have spiked across the country, particularly in Democrat-led cities, where murder rates have increased.

Yet it makes a perverse amount of sense that Biden would grant Soros the highest civilian honor—not because the billionaire has funded a movement that puts Americans in danger but because his massive funding network enabled Biden’s allies to implement their radical agenda through the administrative state.

My forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” reveals how Soros, his son, and other major left-wing donors prop up a vast network of woke activist groups that staff and advise the federal government.

Why does this matter? As the Competitive Enterprise Institute pointed out, during calendar year 2023, agencies in the federal government issued 3,018 rules, while Congress only enacted 68 laws, many of them ceremonial. In other words, agencies issued 44 rules for every law enacted by Congress. While the Constitution gives the people’s elected representatives in Congress the ability to make law, the administrative state issues far more rules that impact Americans’ daily lives.

Activist groups bankrolled through Soros’ Open Society Foundations have worked to remake the federal government in the image of pink-haired college students steeped in gender studies and protesting Israel on campus.

The Biden administration has kowtowed to gender ideology, rewriting federal education law to force schools to allow boys in girls’ restrooms and even directing federal law enforcement to refer to illegal aliens by their preferred pronouns. The administration opened the border after groups like the Center for American Progress urged bureaucrats to transform the Department of Homeland Security into a welcome mat for illegals. Biden signed an election executive order that had effectively been written by the activist group Demos, and then the administration brought in Demos to help implement it!

Soros’ fingerprints—along with those of his son—are all over these and other efforts to push woke ideology in the federal government.

The Open Society Foundations had funneled millions to the Center for American Progress, a hub of left-wing advocacy and woke influence in the federal government. Different arms of the Open Society Foundations have funded Demos, the LGBTQ activist group the Human Rights Campaign, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among many others.